Today (the Saturday before Mother's Day) is celebrated as Birth Mothers' Day in our house. Tonight, we will light the candles that each of my girls has especially for this day and they will send their thoughts, prayers and questions on the smoke as they each blow theirs out. We will be both profoundly happy and profoundly sad. All at once. I will hope that the 3 women across the globe who gave my children their start in Life, will somehow feel how much they are treasured and how deeply they are loved and respected.
Being a Mother changes you. I often say that it changed me in every way. In every cell. I am changed.
Which brings me to the movie Castaway, with Tom Hanks. You remember it. FedEx executive survives plane crash and lives on deserted island for (5 years?). Thinking always of his True Love. Finally escapes island and is rescued and returned to the United States. Where life has gone on without him. Including the fact that True Love has married and has a baby.
The first time I saw it, I was not a Mother.
When Tom Hanks visited his True Love and they were so torn. Middle of the night. Hearts pounding. She hops in his car (which she has stored all that time for him). It is raining. I think, "OH BOY! She will divorce her husband and live happily ever after with her True Love!" I did not understand it when she told him to take her back home. And ... she did not leave with him. She stayed with her new life as a wife and Mother. What? How could she stand it?????? Her TRUE LOVE was alive and THERE and she stayed?? I could not understand it. I didn't like the ending.
Flash to recently. I bought the movie in the $5 bin at Wal-Mart over Spring Break. I watched it late one night recently, after everyone was sleeping. It was all familiar, as I had seen it in the theater those years ago. During my NON-MOM period.
So, it gets to the part where Tom Hanks visits his True Love and they drive off in the rain. She asks him to return her. She goes back to her life as a wife and a Mother. I sit on my couch and cry my eyes out! This time, I COMPLETELY understand her. She CANNOT leave her baby! She CANNOT leave her husband and family and all the choices and Life she has made. She stays. OF COURSE!! It struck me how my point of view has changed since I have become a Mother.
As I get ready to be placed in a day of honor tomorrow, for my position as Mother, I am so very thankful. I am thankful to be a Mom. I am thankful to be so changed. So see so clearly. To be so blessed, lucky and fortunate.
How. What did I do to deserve such a great gig? I am a Mother.
THAT is my True Love.
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