Family Relationships Blog Day from WOW – Women on Writing

“Today I’m participating in a mass blogging! WOW! Women On Writing has gathered a group of blogging buddies to write about family relationships. Why family relationships? We’re celebrating the release of Therese Walsh’s debut novel today. The Last Will of Moira Leahy, (Random House, October 13, 2009) is about a mysterious journey that helps a woman learn more about herself and her twin, whom she lost when they were teenagers. Visit The Muffin (http://www.wow-womenonwriting.com/blog.html) to read what Therese has to say about family relationships and view the list of all my blogging buddies. And make sure you visit Therese’s website (http://www.theresewalsh.com) to find out more about the author.”

In honor of the WOW blog, todays post is a short but very sweet one.

My son and I were cooking this morning, it’s an activity that we do as often as we can in my small kitchen. Below is the picture I snapped while he was trying to imitate mommy mixing the lasagna. Too cute. Enjoy.

A Mother’s Unconditional Love

I first felt the powerful bond of a mother-child love when I looked at the pregnancy test. That fleeting second that I found out I was pregnant changed me forever.

I knew there was no going back to my old self. The feelings and thoughts I had prior to becoming a mother washed away with the incoming tide of motherhood. I would never again think only of myself. I now thought and did for two.

It’s very rare, almost non-existent, that I am speechless. Within that wonderful moment of finding out I was going to be a mother, I was at a complete loss for words. My emotions took the reigns. My brain had yet to comprehend what was taking place within my womb. I was developing my son with every passing second. I was also becoming a mother at the same time.

I savored and adored my pregnancy and unborn child. I would sit for hours caressing my engorged stomach, full with new life. I talked to my son as if I had already bore him. I knew he could hear me and he would often kick me to reassure me he enjoyed our conversations. Even then, my motherly love enveloped him. I knew I would never love anyone or anything more.

When the day came that I brought my son into this world, I had given birth to a new me as well. I’ve never felt so powerful, so life giving, and so enormous in my life. Enormous in the sense that there was nothing that would ever keep me from my child. I had all the strength and courage in the world to nurture and protect my new baby.

Within moments of holding him, I memorized his scent and his movements. I could have picked him out of the nursery blindfolded if I had to. We had the bond. That impermeable mother-child bond. Never before had I felt such immaculate love and conception. I was his and he was mine. Nothing in this world could break our ties. I had created, nourished, and given life to the most beautiful little baby that I had ever seen.

My son is three now and the unconditional love I felt the moment I knew I was going to be his mother hasn’t wavered the slightest. If anything, it grows stronger everyday. I need my son just as much as he needs his mommy.

We sleep together, we laugh together, and we play together. I feel most vibrant when he is nestled in my arms at night sleeping soundly. When I gaze at his perfect face I can’t help but be overcome with emotion. Tears run down my face and I lick the salty liquid that is pure love.

Until you become a mother you never really understand the bond between mother and child. It moves mountains and plants seeds of love in everything that it touches. A mother is not a force to be reckoned with, but a gentle giant that cradles the body of the most important being on the planet.

When I hear my son call “mommy” I know angels are flying within that decibel of sound. The stream of silent, unconditional love runs to and from my son and I. He loves me, but I adore him more than life itself.

Please share your comments below. Mothers learn from each other in the most loving ways.

Curling Up With A Good Book

I took last weekend and stayed home. And when I say stayed home…I MEAN stayed home. I had done any errands previously during the week and purposely kept my schedule open on the weekend to do nothing except relax. I don’t recall ever leaving the house.

As I thought about what I should do with my 48 hours of free time, I could feel an unspoken and understood longing emanating from my bookshelves. I casually strolled over and inhaled. I adore the smell of books. That delicious scent of a book’s binding, and the way that the pages unintentionally take on the smell of their surroundings lures me close to their silhouettes every time.

I ran my fingers over each title as I read it and carefully chose the one that best danced off my tongue.

I vowed silently to myself to only rise from the couch to eat, sleep, drink, and go to the bathroom. Other than that, I wanted nothing more than to sit and curl up with my literary find. If you visit my blog frequently, you are more than aware that my love for reading and writing overpowers most everything that I do. So naturally, choosing a weekend to do nothing with would wontedly lead me to one or the other.

To read with nothing but silence around you is exhilarating. I get completely enveloped not only in the book, it’s plot, and the characters, but also in myself. I reflect on my weak areas as well as my strong points. I sometimes see myself in the characters and can’t help but wonder “what if?”

I read and read. I didn’t even turn the TV on. It was fantastic. It was magical. It was rejuvenating.

Try it sometime.

The Power of A Blank Piece of Paper

Sometimes when I look at a blank piece of paper, I see nothing. Other times I see a whole new world waiting to be prodded.

Once I add a pen to the mix doors open that once were closed. Locked even. No-name characters beg to be applied to every day scenarios that intermingle with the psyche. That luscious and fluid grace that ink provides as it’s being coaxed out of the tip with subtle movement from my hand screams creation in an otherwise gray world.

I can’t wait to play with lucid words and parenthesise my thoughts all while deciding if I want to rhyme or sing the previous word.  Symphonic phonics grabs at my tongue. I repeat the words that I scribed like Beethoven felt his notes; with passion, longing, heartache, smiles, desire, and an avidity for all things meaningful.

Sometimes I am called to write long, flowing prose styles and other times my soul grabs at all things lascivious. Either way, a blank piece of paper is so much more that white and blue.

Those thin blue lines dance under my lids and the pure, snow white of the paper invokes dozens of meanings to words I never knew existed prior till now. Happy endings and false pretenses have nothing on what sits enigmatically upon my banister of contemplations.

Playful bantering of synonyms that kiss, and sounds dance to the rhythm of a beat not quite known to them. Writing is such a rapture of mine I could never abandon it. I have to write to survive. I have to gather all the emotions and thoughts that I feel or I’ll surely go mad. If they never see the light of a book’s binding, I’m fine with that. They live on blank pieces of paper that mean nothing to another, yet everything to someone else.