May days...

I love May. It's one of my very favorite months. Kind of interesting since I was born in July and most people pick their birth month as their favorite. But July is generally too freaking hot. I love the other aspects of it, but not nearly as much as I love May. Everything is green and vibrant, the weather is almost perfect, not too hot, not too cold. What more could you ask for?

PLUS, I celebrate mothers in May. For me, May is the month my own mother was born in, the month the whole country celebrates mothers and the month I myself became a mother. My baby boy is turning five on Saturday. I'm thinking of course, as I do every year, of the year he was born, what I was doing five years ago today. It was my second to last day of work and I started having intermittent contractions that didn't go away until T was born at 2 a.m. on Sunday. It sounds worse than it was.

Becoming a mother was a strange thing for me. I had the baby blues, I realize in retrospect, but I didn't immediately bond with my baby. And as much as I adore him now, it's hard for me to even contemplate that I didn't instantly love this little creature more than anything in the world. Prior to having a child, I thought I would undergo some bizarre change the moment I gave birth. I was going to be a Mother. Mothers were completely different people than regular old females. I envisioned myself changing so drastically that I wouldn't know me anymore.

Obviously, that was kind of stupid. I'm still me. I'm not even all that different, although there are some necessary changes, the least of which is the havoc wreaked on my body by bearing and nursing three children. But realizing that I was still fundementally me brought me to an incredible realization - mothers were so much more than that. My own mother was suddenly a person, my grandmother, the other mothers I saw on the street or the playground - they were all more than just mothers. We might discuss our children exclusively, but lurking in my head is the thought that they are just like me.