She's the one who made me a mom.
Of course, like everything, this is infinitely more complicated on the mission field - logistically, financially, emotionally. Even though the baby she once was still peeks out in her smile, and she has only just celebrated her 17th birthday, she is also tenacious and strong and driven, and we've known this has been coming for a long time, which helps. She's getting ready to breathe deeply the air of her own dreams, and I'm so excited for her.
That doesn't dull the hurt, though. It has, however, allowed me to participate in an interesting phenomenon. Friends and family - the older, wiser women in my life - have circled my emotional wagon, as it were, in a new and different way recently. Just as women stick close to a new mom with a watching, knowing gaze when a baby is about to be born, they almost do the same as that baby is being birthed into adulthood.
They know the pain I am feeling. They see the restless shifting of emotional weight I am doing as the waves of joy and pain crash and reside during this transition. They know what it is to try to hold on to what is right now even as I seek to embrace a reality I have never experienced and don't understand. But they do.
As with labor, this is a shared and careworn pain. It is as personal and individual as any experience can be, yet it is also universal in an uncanny way. The rip of the fabric of our family being torn in two is fresh and sharp for me, but the edges have already frayed for the wise women who have come alongside.
This gives me hope.
I see the fabric of these women's lives frazzled but not undone, and I know the edges of my pain will soften as well. I am grateful for these women - these mothers - who have been where I am and have done what I am doing and who silently, knowingly come alongside.
I can sense that it costs them to do so.
Last night - my last night with all my babies sleeping under my roof and close enough to touch - I know the women who love me were also hurting. They, too, grieved a little all over again for their babies who have gone on and moved out and who are far away. They count the time since last their babes were gathered and when they might gather again. I feel it. These women's hearts rebreak a little each time they rush to try to soothe another's. The ones whose children haven't yet left join in, too, thoughtful and contemplative and pulling the covers up a little more snugly under little chins.
They do this because mothers are tough and brave and strong. We each hurt alone, but we always do so together, too. Fraternity is important - that great brotherhood of fathers, who have their own hurts and struggles and pain, but maternity also births us into a great sisterhood. I'm grateful for it right now.
I know that the edges of my pain will also fray and soften, and it will be yet another mark in the tapestry of my identity and motherhood. And, when it has softened enough, I will be able to be a watcher and a waiter and wise woman for some other mom in my life. Then, too, I will revisit this place of knowing and grief and in-between-ness. I will count days and mark time once again. Even though right now I would never want to experience this ache again, I will. And it will be good for me, and remind me that I have healed - if not completely, enough - and that will give someone else the hope that they will someday heal as well.
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