An Essay on Motherhood

I guess we all have this idea that if we ask really nice over and over and over they'll remember all the little  lectures and inane things we beg them to remember, from how to load the dishwasher properly to "whose shirt is this on the refrigerator?" It's a part of the leaving. Or the preparing to leave. Sometimes they hear us, they do, but most of the time they don't. So we say it again. 

There's always this nagging guilty feeling, followed by a pick up your bootstraps and get over it, one that makes me feel that maybe I'll make it through motherhood unbroken, even though it's been almost fifteen years.

I was listening to a podcast the other day. It was early and I was watering the horses in the barn. For a full minute, I stood with my cheek on Dodger's, the horse who also remembers the 80's, we have alot of conversations on Tuesday mornings. An author was discussing her memoir and was quoting Anne Truitt, and her feelings about motherhood.

That the goal is NOT to make it through Unbroken, that Motherhood is shattering.  

I've been fighting this feeling awhile now, So I was pretty floored by the statement. I suppose what she means is that there will  be fragments that reflect the light and others that get thrown into the dark.  It's an ever changing puzzle and every day we step up to piece it together.

In these photos, not only do I see the passage of time, but a psyche that I helped build, and I hope that it's been enough. 

I know Shine and Robin Dodd aren't the only parents out there who get tired of the sound of their own voices.. finally. Although I will admit, it took awhile.

That the times that I've felt like a bellowing drill sergeant in my army of one, can be balanced out by driving down the road with the windows down, Taylor Swift blaring, singing at the tops of our lungs on the way to the ice cream shop, or the days that we let it lie without a Mike Brady speech.

To that day that will come sooner than we think,  when we'll hand you over to the world, with hopefully the same lack of self doubt, that I see in this first Sunflower picture.

  It will always remind me, no matter how old you get,  that you have been destined for greatness since the day you were born. Happy 15th birthday Holly Dodd. 

                                                            

                                               -Love Robbie