The fact that we can make babies is insanely magical and utterly mundane at the same time. Every species procreates in its particular way in order to sustain its existence and propel it into the future: I like that the reference to sex education as teaching about "the birds and the bees" is both literal and metaphorical. To quote the immortal Cole Porter, "Even educated fleas do it."
Maybe the way humans reproduce seems miraculous because we have the mental capacity to think about it, choose it, and rhapsodize about it.
Motherhood is a gift I treasure. Today I miss my mother, just as I have every Mother's Day since she died six years ago. But this year I miss her especially much, because my daughter is pregnant with a baby girl.
I have so many questions that I didn't know I wanted to ask my mother when she was alive. Myself in the grandmother position now, I wish I could ask her: Did you worry this much when I was pregnant? Did you worry about your daughter suffering complications or (God forbid) death in childbirth the way I do? Did you feel the red-hot DNA from the generations before you projecting through you to the generations after you, as one friend described grandparenting to me?
Did you feel yourself settling onto an upper branch of the family tree so high up it makes you dizzy to look down, and where you never imagined yourself perched?
If my mother did have any of these thoughts, she didn't ever let on. I'm sure she worried secretly in her heart, but she never voiced any of it. She might have told me that I think too much. My mother was not one for introspection.
But I do remember the one indelible time my mother gently rubbed the infant belly of one of my daughters and said how amazing it was that her tiny ovaries already contained the eggs that would someday ripen and mature into babies, just as this little one had from my ovaries, just as I had from my mother's ovaries, and she from her mother's ovaries, and so on back through the ages. I remember the naked reverence of that moment for both of us.
The birth of a child brings out the poet in us, or maybe it's the philosopher within. Birthing a new baby is wild to think about, and it's unremarkably normal at the same time.
I look forward to my daughter's adventure into motherhood as I get to spend her first Mother's Day with her. I consult my memories of being the first-time mother, some dim and some vibrant. When you're a mother who's new to the trenches of motherhood, leaking breastmilk and wiping a wee behind and longing for a shower, let alone an adult conversation, you can feel a little resentful of some old crone telling you to cherish these days, that they are fleeting, that one day you will miss this time of infancy. Sure, you think. You come deal with this load of wash and these clinging hands. You know motherhood is wondrous, you know you're grateful for the miracle of life, but maybe not just at that exact moment. And the old crone senses your irritation. But let this old crone remind you that Mother's Day is that blessed annual event when you maybe get to sit back and relax, to claim credit for your achievement, to enjoy your breakfast in bed and your dyed-macaroni-shell necklace.
This Mother's Day feels like a changing of the guard for me. Another mother is having another daughter, a lovely sign of hope for our family and for the world. I am so proud of my daughter and her mothering instincts as she prepares to take her place among parents. It's a daunting task. It's a simple task. It's the most amazing, frustrating, joyful, beautiful, humbling, gratifying, holiest role I've ever played in my life. As I'm certain it will be for her.
I sense my mother's presence especially this Mother's Day. She would have loved being a great-grandma. She loved all babies with a mother's love, and I feel her spirit hovering around her loved ones these expectant days. Her lullabies linger in my heart.
The cycle of mother-daughter-mother turns even without her physical presence. The birds and bees do it. Families do it. We'll be falling in love with our newest member. And still the world, oblivious to our blissfulness, keeps spinning.