Mother's Day

I didn't want to be a mother.

Ever.

It wasn't just youthful selfishness. I just never imagined myself as a mother. When other little girls were playing with baby dolls, I was reading and riding bikes and motorcycles and playing sports. When our second grade class was giving the assignment to describe our future career, a lot of girls wrote they wanted to be mommies. I wanted to be a professional skydiver. I asked for a tubal ligation for my high school graduation present. Some people just feel destined to be parents, ready from the minute they exit the womb to nurture and raise their own young.

Yeah. Wasn't me.

So needless to say, I felt the glass of my carefully-sculpted world crashing around me in June 2007, barely a month after I had wrapped on college and was working my way toward a successful career that I had worked my ass off for to that point, as I sat on the bathroom floor staring at six different pregnancy tests all telling me the same thing: FUCK YES, BITCH, YOU'RE KNOCKED UP! Some digitally read "Pregnant." Some had two pink lines. But they all said the same thing:

My life. Was. Over.

I took a shower and sobbed until the hot water ran out, then I sat on the bed and stared into space, wondering what to do. I resolved that I was going to have an abortion. I was 22 years old and in no way prepared or ready to have a kid. No fucking way. I was barely dependable owning a dog. I was working on moving in with my boyfriend, who don't get me wrong, was a good guy, but a father? Shit. Neither of us were there. Considering the night I conceived was the night of my 22nd birthday, and the grand event was the culmination of entirely too much alcohol and other recreational substances to figure out the mechanism of "pulling out", this was pulling the plug on a party that was far too loud and far too exciting to stop.

Then I told A. I was planning for the same, "FUCK. FUCK. FUCK" reaction that I had had. He didn't want to grow up either. We were two big kids who enjoyed our days in bed, our concerts, our dive bars and our hard liquor. We were not parents. And then he smiled. That son of a bitch was happy. Overjoyed. Ecstatic.

And when I said, "I'm not sure I'm ready for this. I'm thinking about...." I saw the horror in his eyes. The hurt. The shame. The sadness. And I knew what I had to do. And I knew what I couldn't do.

So I spent nine months preparing to be a mother, when my friends and peers from college were moving to LA and New York and Chicago to be journalists and PR reps and teachers in Spain, and on February 15 I gave birth to a beautiful, health baby girl.

I felt nothing when she was born.

I felt nothing for almost two months. I wasn't postpartum, I just still wasn't grasping this new life, my new life, her new life, our new life. In nine months I'd gone from a drunk college grad to a wife and mother. I resented a lot of it. I tried to be happy and express how wonderful it all was, but I didn't like this squirming baby and I didn't like her crying. I didn't like waking up all the time and never sleeping, and I didn't like changing diapers. I had to Google how to change diapers.

Then one night, around 3 am, when we were wide awake yet again, I was playing "Just What I Needed" by the Cars and singing quietly to her when I realized that I loved her. It just sort of hit hard and fast, and in that moment I realized that this little baby was the love of my life.

And now, fifteen months later, I can't imagine life without my Punky. She is my joy, my everything, my world. Everything I do in life is for her, without a second thought. She makes me smile and laugh, she makes me cry at how beautiful and wonderful and downright hilarious she is. The other day, I went to McDonald's and got an orange Hi-C, stuck it in the cupholder and was driving off to run our errands, when from the back seat I hear in the tiniest whisper... "Peez?" And there she was, holding out her little hands and scrunching them open and closed. I turned around and looked at her again. "Peez?"

When I was sick last week, I wanted to die. And yet this little girl, my little girl, came up to me, laying on the couch and praying for death, and would give me kisses, and nuzzle her head on my side.

Things like that. She is amazing. She is absolutely everything I never thought I wanted. She is my life. She makes me strive to be better for her and for myself; I fall in love with her as I watch her discover her world around her, point at the birds and laugh, or sit on the grass just because it feels funny. Things I never thought I'd realize or understand, things I never even cared about, I see it all in her and I fall in love so much that it hurts -- goddamnit it hurts -- and I realize and I know that this is where I am supposed to be. With her.

Happy Mother's Day to all you moms out there. And if you're not a mom, know your mom loves you this much too.

Taint.