Women begin to come and go and I barely believe I actually am one of them.
Fifteen years of marriage and three kids in I feel like I’ve slid across some invisible line into a middle ground of sorts. Not really young and twenty, and not really feeling the lean of the bend of fifty, rounding that half way mark to one hundred. Silly as it may sound, I see myself like that picture of your mother holding you in footie pajamas, perched on the edge of darkest brown couch. Small, square, boxy picture with a slightly yellowed haze paused over it. You know the one I’m talking about? Well, just the same, it’s how I see myself. Only slightly worse posture.
Oh, my.
I believe that’s my mother.
Crown of brown hair cropped short and teeth straight, white, and full! A picture of a woman meant to right perch babies on her knee.
I wonder if she felt the switch to woman from girl at that moment? Or if it all just happened and somewhere down the line you stopped slurping soup, looked up, and believed you might actually be that woman in the picture. The one that knew she was doing the role of motherhood because that’s what she was meant to do!
And it takes a woman to be a mother. No matter when you begin.
