Motherhood is elusive!

I wrote the following on my last birthday.

A monumental day!

The day my latest baby was conceived.

I just read my thoughts again,

And recognised the pain in my heart.

The acceptance, the wanting and the hope that lay in my words.

Motherhood is elusive, it is something that I have wanted from childhood and today as I celebrate my birthday it is something that still eludes me.  Or is it?  Is mothering something that requires you to have borne your own child, to nurture your own flesh and blood, to love only those who resemble you in looks, spirit or personlaity?  Or is it something more? 

Mothering began for me as a small child.  It was expressed in the caring of dolls and the play with our cats.  My sister and I would bathe our dolls, we would change their nappies, we would dress them and we would talk to them mimicking the mothering behaviours of our own mother expressed to our younger siblings.   Our cats did not escape the intrinsic mothering instinct.  They shared the dolls wardrobe as we dressed them in their clothing and pushed the cats in the dolls prams.  Surprisingly, we never felt the scratch of complaint from our cats; they appeared to enjoy it as much as we did. It was expressed in the rescuing of mice from the cats and care that was taken to ensure they felt safe once again. 

My early adult years were spattered with periods of loneliness as I waited to meet someone that I wanted to share my life with and with whom to start a family.  Marriage and mothering, in my mind, were never mutually exclusive.  Marriage would be shortly followed my motherhood.  As the years crept by and that prayer remained unanswered I gave up on the idea of mothering my own children and found solace and comfort in mothering the children of my siblings.  I found joy in that role and cultivated the status of favourite aunty.  My weekends were often filled with the company of little people that I could mother.  A little different than mothering dolls and cats and oh so much more rewarding. 

I met my beautiful and oh so very handsome husband, Ronnie, when I was 34.  How lucky I am that his mother took her mothering responsibilities seriously: she saw possibilities and arranged for us to meet and the rest, as they say, is history!  We married after a short courtship and decided to commence the journey into parenthood immediately.  We talked of traditions we would like introduce to our children, we talked of the joys of mothering and fathering.  We dreamt, we hoped and we prayed but those children did not come.  Mothering my own children was a yearning that remains unsatisfied. 

There were some miracles; lives were created, but were short lived.  My heart soared with joy, with hope with delight only to come crashing to depths my soul has not known before.  With each successive loss my heart broke a little more, I changed, I hurt and I softened.  I feel my children, I am waiting for the time when they can become a part of my life, when I can love them, nurture them, treasure them.  I wait for the time when I can continue mothering.