Mother Pain

It starts with twisting, grinding waves of pain that we are happy to endure because there is going to be a wonderful gift at the end. We give birth to a brand new being. We are privileged to watch this new little person grow and develop. The first years are especially fascinating as they learn to sit up, crawl, walk, talk. These children become more complicated as they grow older. We feel joy as we see our little ones developing distinct personalities, making friends, going to school. We often experience pain for our children if they have failures, but mostly things are still positive. They are young yet. I’d say the true mother joy gets harder to feel when they reach the age that they are really working at breaking the bonds with us, somewhere in the 13 to 16 range. Joy turns to bewilderment as our little people become big, confused, angry teenagers. There is the pain of their disdain of us, but we know it will go away one day, because we felt it ourselves about our own parents, and we know we now love them. Eventually our kids move out of our houses and we cry to see them go, the Empty Nest pain, but we also feel relief that they are going out on their own and we get to be just ourselves again, without appendages who want something from us all the time.

But sometimes our fledglings fly out of our cozy, safe nests and they crash and burn and then a different kind of pain enters our lives. This pain is as grinding and twisting as the pain of their birth, but there is no promise attached to it. Right now, my oldest daughter is experiencing that pain. She has recently learned that her 19 year old son, who had joined the Army and gone through basic training with no difficulties and seemed to be a happy member of the military, has gone AWOL. He did not return to his unit after Christmas. I’d bet she is blaming herself somehow and hoping to fix things, all the while knowing that his decision will have a dramatic affect on his life in the future--knowing that he doesn’t realize this yet and is just riding the moment. Her pain is deep, and my pain is deep, too. I feel spasms in my gut for both of them. I had a hard time getting to sleep last night.

I know that my Blogster friends have felt all these kinds of pain and they might have encouraging, hopeful or soothing things to say to my daughter. I invite you to visit her blog, which is where she had the courage to write it all down, and leave her a comment. Her blog is: http://postcardsfromnorfolk.blogspot.com/. The post about my Grandson is “The News From Norfolk”. I’d appreciate it if you could support her in some way. I am still trying to help my kids lead happy lives. We mothers need all the help we can get, no matter how old our kids are.