My Real Life

Just a reminder that the Friday Five is a chance to just write…no worries about errors or content…just write for five minutes.

Write from your heart.

Today’s prompt:

Motherhood Should Come With…

Go.

A rule book that begins by saying “None of these rules apply.  Your children will be unique and different from other people’s children, and so what works for your neighbor probably won’t work for you.  They are also completely unique and different from each other, so the techniques you used for your first won’t work for your second, and what worked with your second won’t work with your third.  Basically, Mom…you’re on your own.”

Armor for your heart.  Your heart will break a million times over when your child is mistreated by other children on the playground or not understood by his or her teacher.  Your heart will also break when you have to send them to their room or take away a favorite toy, and you will finally understand the saying “This will hurt me more than it will hurt you.”  Your heart will break when they shout at you “You don’t love me!” and it will feel irreparable when they yell, “I hate you!”  Because even though you know that you love them more than they’ll ever know and that they don’t hate you, not even one little iota, and despite the saying about sticks and stones, you’ll know that words can definitely harm you.

A bigger rib cage, because as much as your children will break your heart on a daily basis, your heart will expand to sizes you can’t imagine possible.  At least as many times as your heart breaks, your heart will fill with love double that amount every time you see your child run off the school bus toward you, or catch them in a quiet moment, playing sweetly with each other.  When you see your three older children crowded around their baby brother, and see him smiling at them as if there were nothing better in the whole wide world than these three “big” people, your heart will grow.  When you sneak into bedrooms to kiss sweaty, sleepy heads, you’ll inhale their scent, cover their shoulders with the covers, and whisper ‘I love you’ over and over in a mantra that you can never quite say enough.

A box of tissues to wipe away your tears of joy and pride when they graduate from pre-school, get the role they want in the school play, make a touchdown, and learn to roll over.  Tissues to wipe away the tears of anticpated sadness at the fact that they will, one day, leave you to begin their own lives, and despite the fact that they will come home to visit and will always be your babies, their lives are not truly yours anymore.

One more child than you thought you wanted because these surprises first stun you, then amaze you, and then make you wonder why you ever thought the previous number was enough and you wonder how you all ever survived without this little one.

Patience because you’ll need it, and because you’ll need to teach it to your children, because Lord knows, you aren’t perfect either, Mama, and the babies need to be patient with you, too!

Time’s up.