The heart of the matter

I usually write about the day to day life, joy and struggles of motherhood.

I don't dive into difficult, sensitive, complex subjects.

Like the right to own a gun.

Or the real price of cheap clothes.

Or high fructose corn syrup.

Or abortion.

This time, however I decided to write my thoughts on the latter.

These are just that.

My thoughts.

My opinions.

You can agree or disagree.

I am past that point of getting into endless debates, discussing various scenarios to prove one point or the other. 

I used to believe abortion was ok. 

After all, life is tough and hard and there are so many situations when expecting a child is the worst news you can possibly get or at least that's what you think.

Then, a few years ago I saw the movie "The Silent Scream" where an abortion is actually filmed with the help of the ultrasound.

I remember I broke down and cried.

A feeling of dread and indescribable pain came over me combined with a strong desire of protecting little ones.

It has never left me.

It only grew stronger over time. 

When I was pregnant with my daughter after a miscarriage, I was terrified I would lose her too. 

The doctors did extra tests and ultrasounds to make sure things were ok.

Which meant I got my first ultrasound very early. 

At 6 weeks and 5 days. 

My husband and I went in and I was scared, worried and a complete mess.

But things went well.

And on the screen, there it was, the thing we had been hoping and praying to see.

The baby's heart.

Beating away wildly with great passion and determination. 

I still have the picture. 

The next ultrasound was at 8 weeks.

Things were good.

The doctor jokingly said "Your gummy bear is just fine".

Because that's what she looked like back then with her tiny arms and legs. 

Sometimes when my daughter is asleep, nursing peacefully I lay my hand on her chest.

Her heart still strong, beating away, filled with life.

The same heart we saw more than 3 years ago.

I have no doubt in my mind that the tiny thing we saw at the beginning and at every consultation afterwards was my child.

She was just very little back then but already she had everything she needed to grow just like she does now when she is 2.5 years old. 

She had human DNA, a human's heart and at 8 weeks, a human head and limbs. 

Many will say a child is not a child at that stage.

Other words are used.

Like fetus and pregnancy.

Anything to distance ourselves from the reality of a "baby", "child" or "tiny human".

Because if we didn't, abortion would be unbearable. 

Many will say at this stage, the fetus is not a human.

But how can we trust our current definition of what being human means?

We used to define slaves as non-human.

Coloured people.

Jews.

Twins.

Homosexuals. 

Even women.

At some  point in history, all these categories were considered sub-human or non-human.

So now we have another category, the unborn child. 

And we're supposed to believe the arguments because...?

The relationship between a mother and a child is like nothing else in this world.

My daughter is my child, she lives in my house and eats my food (most of the time, anyway).

But she is not my person. I don't own her.

I never have.

She is just very very close to me at the beginning when she is in my tummy.

And then slowly she becomes more and more detached from me over the years.

My body is not only mine, it is hers as well during pregnancy.

Letting her be part of me is beautiful.

It is the most one can give another human being who is as defenseless as it can possibly be.

And the real test of being human is just this: how we treat those who depend on us completely, whom we have nothing to gain from, who cannot repay us, whom we can do anything we please with because we are all they know. 

They count on us so completely, it scares us. 

We have no choice but to show them who we really are.

We don't need to hide behind social norms, politeness, masks, flattery, give-and-take games. 

They just want us. 

Children.

Animals.

And sometimes the elderly. 

We can be cruel to them.

We can deny them anything, including life itself.

They cannot fight back. 

Or we can take them in.

Accept them.

Accept that life with them is worth more than life without them.

They ask a lot from us and by giving it to them, we will become more that we have ever thought possible. 

We have one more heart in the world we can love and who will love us back, one more heart to help heal when broken and who will help ours heal.  

May all hearts be blessed, big and small!

Blaming Mom

A couple of days ago I talked to my grandmother on skype.

She is 87 years old and quite amazing I might add.

She is my dad's mom and the only grandparent I have left.

She is energetic and kind and just really sweet.

We talked about a lot of things but one issue she mentioned really got me thinking.

It's a story I have heard many times before, as older people like to repeat the parts of their lives they find important.

She told me again about the time her mom (my great-grandmother) forced her to eat tomato soup because that was the rule at the table and how she got really sick after that.

And how her own grandmother came to her rescue by making it clear that forcing someone, especially a child, to eat like that is unacceptable.

My great-grandmother has been dead for 20 years.

Still, my grandma remembers stories like this very vividly and feels the need to tell them to me once in a while.

When I was little and would visit my grandma and my great-grandma who lived very close, I remember noticing how my grandma would be slightly irritated by her mom. Sometimes she would snap at her.

Then, when my great-grandma died, my grandma was devastated.

I recall her crying at the funeral, overcome with terrible grief and sadness.

I was 8 or 9 years old at the time and I clearly remember thinking "Why is she so sad? She was always so annoyed by her, by the things that she had hurt her with while growing up and afterwards".

There was a similar pattern with my mom and her own mother.

Whenever she came over to talk to my mom there would be arguments.

Not real loud fights or anything but arguments nonetheless.

My mom would be irritated and even angry.

I know many of my mom's stories about the ways her mom had failed her, hurt her or disappointed her and some of those are not nice stories at all hence why she remembers them.

Then, when my maternal grandma died and I came home from college for the funeral, I found my mom in an unrecognizable state.

She was a shadow of herself.

I did not understand why she was so devastated when they never seemed to get along and there were those deep wounds that never seemed to heal.

Fast forward to the present day, I so happened to bump into some articles about motherhood that somehow all ended up about being the shortcomings of different mothers.

An article about how someone sat on a train and was shocked to see a mom read a book and not interact with her 10 year old son.

A discussion about a movie and how the mom was to blame because she had encouraged the child to put on a happy face in a difficult situation (thus indirectly prompting the child to repress some emotions).

Another article about how someone called the police on a mom who was trying to strap her screaming tantruming toddler in a stroller.

All this made me think about my own mom.

Do I blame her for things?

Yes, I do.

Do I remember vividly the times when she snapped at me, yelled at me, ignored me in a critical moment, criticized me or hurt me in any way?

Yes, very clearly.

My mom failed me quite a few times.

How could she not?

She is only human.

And throughout a lifetime, you have many opportunities to fail the people you love and you will fail them, unavoidably.

Could she have done worse?

Oh yes, very much so.

But somehow it seems that in today's world when we know so much about psychology and how wounds from the past shape us and sometimes incapacitate us, it is so very easy to look back and say:

I am like this because my mom did or did not do something for me.

She really hurt me and some sides of me suffered and I became different.

Smaller, cheaper, not whole

She can rightly be blamed.

There were others too, but she started it.

For some people, the things that were done to them are tragic.

But even those from "regular families" have their big bag of hurtful things to carry.

My daughter is two and a half.

I often think of myself as the memory I will be for her in the future.

I wonder what she will see me like, remember me like.

She cannot remember things yet and already I know I have started building her bag.

She can already blame me for failing her at times when I was impatient or angry or indifferent.

I am sure she will have a lot more to blame me for when she is older.

It will be her choice whether to do that or not.

I try to be a good mom, a present mom.

But I also want to set an example by telling her about the amazing things my own mom has done for me.

I might tell her when she is older that my mom gave me time-outs when I was little and would lock me in my room and I would be completely terrified and thinking she left and didn't love me anymore (mind you, many books still say this a good way to discipline a child); and that that is why I would never do that to her.

But mostly, I want to tell her how my mom was wonderful in her support in everything I did and the way she took care of me when I was sick and would listen to me talk about my crushes, my grades, my friends, my teachers and my homework.

I haven't seen my mom in year, we live so far away.

Our talks on skype are sometimes nice and sometimes can feel like a chore which is sad.

But sometimes, like yesterday, we talk for two hours and I feel I can tell her about my worries, my struggles and my problems.

Because she is there. She's always been there.

And I am tired of blaming mom.

Because, honestly, it's not fair that our emotional memory remembers the bad things so easily and so vividly and takes the good moments for granted.

I hope when my daughter is 87 and she talks to someone about me she will say

"My mom, she was completely absent/hurtful that time when things were bad.

But the next time she was there. And the time after that. And I am glad she was."