It's Easier Than You Think...

...Forgetting you're a mommy. That is, until God sprinkles in those days that hit you with reality like concrete. For instance, when you take your baby to get her two month shots and spend the next hour crying louder then she is as you rock her, wailing "I'm sorry, I'm so sorry!" repeatedly. Then, after the crying stops, decide to go ahead and go to Chico State to tie up lose ends before graduation. In which, after waiting an hour for your appointment in the Evaluations office, finally sit down to talk to the adviser, on cue, your daughter sets her mind to scream. She then decides to scream from one end of campus to the next. You would think more Chico State students would be familiar to the screams of a baby, after all, it does have one of the best child development programs around.

Or even the day when you take your daughter to her favorite store, Target. When in the middle of blissful shopping you smell her poopie diaper. By time you get her on the changing table in the handicapped stall, diaper half way off, you come to the realization that feeding her is the more pressing matter (one in which the entire occupants of the restroom would agree). Thus, spending the next half-hour hunched over the changing table feeding her and amazingly, finish changing her at the same time.

So, last night as my husband and I laid in bed listening to Ava coo sweetly in her sleep, he posed this question to me:

Do you feel more like a mother, or more like a wife?

Honestly? I just feel like me.

A Family History

On our bookshelf sits five photos that are dear to me. The first photograph is an Easter portrait of my sister and I from 1979, complete with a painted lemon yellow sun and pastel colored plastic eggs. The next one is a Christmas portrait from 1980, we're sitting in front a backdrop with a cozy fireplace. Every time I look at these two pictures I am overwhelmed. My mom had it hard raising us. We lived on Government cheese, butter and rice in a house rented out from my great-grandma. And that's when we were in a "better" position in life. Before that, it was by the unfailing grace of God that we survived life. These photos stand as mementos of sweet times that were knitted within times that I am thankful to forget. But, I often wondered, how we could afford these luxuries in a time when we were given five dollars a day for groceries. That thought leads me to the next photo that I treasure. It's from June 21st, 1975. It's the wedding photograph of my grandma and the love of her life, Elmer Hooker, my grandpa. My sister and I come from a long line of very strong and dominate women; this was our method of survival. My grandma helped my mother in ways that cannot be counted. She taught her to be strong, and to fight for us. My grandma also was responsible for those photographs, without which, those sweet times would have been suffocated out by the dark ones. And now, when I look at the last two pictures on our bookshelf I see them through the lens of the first three. They are my daughter, Ava's first valentines photographs. She is my sweet angel and I am thankful that she wont have to deal with the things I had to in my childhood. However, I am thankful that I experienced the things I did in my own childhood because it has taught me to cherish every moment and every struggle in my new life as a mommy.