last night i said to josh, “when you’re expecting a baby, you spend time thinking about the mistakes your parents made and how you’re going to do things differently with your own kid. once your baby arrives, you can’t believe how well your parents succeeded at such a demanding and difficult job.” i wonder how many other people feel this way – i bet lots.
my mother was here visiting us yesterday and today. she was here the first week that josh went back to work, too, and she spent hours and hours in our hot kitchen cooking us delicious dinners, trudged endlessly up and down the three flights of stairs to the basement doing loads of laundry and diapers, and didn’t let me spend a penny as we shopped for groceries, baby supplies, nursing bras, etc. this visit, she showed up with more home-cooked meals to add to our freezer, and when we asked her to stay and have dinner with us last night she agreed only under the condition that we allow her to prepare it and to clean up afterwards.
sitting on the couch last night, nursing my daughter and watching my mother wash dishes in my kitchen, i felt an enormous lump in my throat. it took me a little while to name it, but eventually i realized that it was a lump of gratitude and that its size was dwarfed by the enormity of the debt i owe my mother. this debt has been growing for 31 years now, and when i began to try to tally up all the meals she cooked, loads of laundry she did, sick foreheads she stroked, words of encouragement and pride she spoke, discipline she rightfully and justly bestowed, games she played, songs she sang, books she read, birthday parties she planned – well, you get the idea. my head spun just trying to comprehend the endless and neverending ways she has mothered me (and continues to do so) and the realization that i could never pay her back for all she’s done for me tore at my heart.
but then my tiny daughter grunted and chewed at my nipple with her hungry little mouth and for the first time i really got it. i can never pay back the debt i owe my mother, but i can pay it forward. and i think that’s what parenthood is all about. we take all the good that we were given and we give it to our children, and if we’re lucky we live to see them pay it forward once again.
(november, 1976)
(july, 2008)
4 comments:
Darn it! Now you're making me reconsider having a child someday. (That was beautiful, by the way)
Liza and Josh, Congratulations on the beauteous Bebe. We've been on a parallel course down in Needham these past weeks and it is so fun to read about your similar adventures. I also am very impressed with your blogs. They are both very funny and heartwarming. I had to respond to this one because it brought me to tears. It is so true that you do pay it forward. I also wonder if your mom is as exhausted as I am and would she go drinking with me?
Liza, you have said exactly what I felt this past week watching my mother do the same thing, a second time in two years. Nursing her baby as her baby nursed hers. There really are no gifts and no concrete ways to thank them other than to pay it forward and I can't wait for the day that I am waiting hand and foot on Maggie as she takes care of her newborn. Well, maybe I can wait a little.
lucky mamas all around. xo
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