Mother’s Day

Happy Mother’s Day, Dear Readers.  Here’s wishing you all a wonderful holiday.  I hope it’s the best MD ever.

I had a glorious time visiting Boston for my granddaughter Carly’s first birthday.  The birthday girl- and her parents- enjoyed it, too.

But somehow, looking at this picture, my mind drifts back to 1977.  I was pregnant with Natasha and the whole mother-to-be gig just didn’t seem real to me.

Seriously, I just thought I was simply fat and sick.  On a drunken cruise from morning ’til night.

Of course, the people around me didn’t see me this way.  They were excited.

“What do you want?” they’d ask happily.  “A boy or a girl?”

Easy answer.

A boy, of course.

When I’d married Bill in 1976, he was already the father of three lovely girls.  Julie was fifteen, Patti was eleven and Amy was nine.

Here are my stepdaughters on my honeymoon in Aspen in 1976.

Fair’s Fair Sidebar: When Patti (the one laughing on the left) got married, she went to Europe on her honeymoon.  It sounded fun and so I asked her if  I could  go with her and her husband, Dave.  She looked at me like I was crazy.

“Why would I want to take you on my honeymoon?” she asked.

“Because I took you on mine,” I replied.

…Anyway, in 1977, I found out I was expecting.

Boy, were those pre-historic pregnancy days.  Practically back with “the stork brought you.”  No home pregnancy sticks to pee on, no complicated matter-of-course genetic testing, no test (other than that scary wicked-looking needle amniocentesis thing) to tell you if it was a boy or a girl.  No doulas, no push presents…

Pregnancy and birth in 1978 were old school.

But I wanted a boy with all my heartburn-stricken heart.

I wanted a boy because we already had three girls and I wanted to to do something “special.”

And I wanted a boy for more practical reasons.

Boys didn’t cry or whine a lot, boys didn’t fight with their friends over petty b.s. or whimper about being left out.  Boys loved their mothers.  (And I was afraid that if I had a girl I would turn into my mother.)

But the question “What do you want? A boy or a girl?” remained ubiquitous.  I heard it from everyone everywhere I lumbered.

A classic.

Until one day in summer of 1977.

I was at the Meadows Club in Rolling Meadows watching my husband play tennis.  (We were living in Barrington Hills at the time.)

John, a business associate, was also practicing.  When he spotted me, he came over to say hi.

We exchanged the usual pleasantries and then he asked me a question.

“What do you want?  A son or a daughter?”

That rocked me.

I just stared at him.

Huh? A son or a daughter?

This was a concept that had never occurred to me.  Now it was no longer about gender or sex.

Now it was about…

RELATIONSHIPS.

OMG.

And in that “Aha” moment, I became a parent.

Sure, I had plenty to learn.  (I’m still learning how to do it.  And now I’ve got to master this long-distance “grandma” thing.)

But that was the day that I realized that the baby and I would be in it forever.

And we have been.

Loving, learning, crying, arguing and laughing for the past (almost) thirty-nine years.

So thanks, John.

You did me a favor.

Your question made a mother out of me.

Now look at this.  It’s my Mother’s Day gift to all of you.

Blessings.

Love, Ellen