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I am the Velveteen Rabbit.
Today, Kate was ill. She threw up on me at least five times. I did a lot of laundry. I didn’t have time to shower. The few presentable items of clothing I own (due to my body’s odyssey through pregnancy and nursing) are now distinctly unpresentable.
I am the Velveteen Rabbit.
Motherhood has made me both flat and lumpy. Like that famous rabbit, my newness has been worn away. I am worn. But I am also real. My transformation has taken place. The self-obsessed girl has been replaced by a mothering woman.
Yes, in a way I am patting myself on the back. But not really. I know I didn’t get here on my own.
Several years ago, when Amelia was still an infant, we had friends whose first baby died shortly before its birth. This was during a time when I was still struggling with serious postpartum depression and the unimaginably world-shaking transition from graduate student (all day in the library’s quiet) to full-time Mom (all day and all night with my little screamer), from designer of my own destiny/writer of my own ticket, to trailing spouse.
As I battled to overcome anger and despair, I promised myself that I would never have another child. I loved my baby, but being the mother of that baby was a daily, hourly, occasionally even a moment-to-moment, trial.
One day as I talked with my friend who had lost her baby, I suddenly and inappropriately burst into tears and had to run from the room. I suppose my friend thought that I was empathizing with her grief in an over-the-top fashion. But it was something else. I felt horrible about what had happened to my friend, however my composure was crushed not by my sympathy for her, but by my own guilt. In light of her tragedy, I thought I should be even more thankful for my own baby, my own chance at motherhood. Instead, I felt that death would be a welcome release from my responsibilities. I wanted to be a person who wanted babies. I wanted to be thankful and happy about my opportunity to be a mother, but I was not.
I have been taught that “God’s commandment to multiply and replenish the earth remains in force.” A few years ago, these words gave me pain, because if you take two parents and end up with one child, how is that multiplication? I felt unable to live what I believed and it hurt. But time passed, I prayed, and eventually the grace I needed came. Things looked different to me than they had before. I felt differently than I had before. Being a mother was easier than it had been before. Finally, I was more interested in babies than I had been before.
Today, flat and lumpy, but a real mother at last, I don’t know what I’d do without my three beautiful children. The rabbit gave up his whiskers and perfect fur; I have sacrificed things more meaningful to me than clean laundry and fresh makeup to attain my status. I have discovered that day-to-day motherhood is filled with trivial tasks and mundane matters, but that doesn’t make it trivial or mundane. Of course, I am not yet the mother that I want to be. But I have hope because I have already seen that change is possible—that God can change us if we let him. I continue to seek to become a new creature under his care.
*I am entering this essay, first published in October 2007, but revised several times since then, in Scribbit’s April 2009 Write-Away Contest.
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6 Responses to “I am the Velveteen Rabbit”
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What a wonderful analogy/metaphor. Not only is that a wonderful tender book but I agree with the journey we make as mothers.
I can just imagine the pain she must have gone through to lose a child,
It was a terrible time for my friend and her husband. It was their first child and delivery was just a week away. They were full of anticipation and excitement. Then, that terrible news, out of the blue. And they still had to go forward with the delivery. I know it was incredibly hard, but since I haven’t tasted grief like that, I think I probably don’t know what it was like.
I lovedlovedloved this post. So beautiful. Like the Velveteen Rabbit, my “pretty” has been loved off too. And I’m glad of that.
Thanks Antique Mommy! Coming from you, that means a lot!
I, too am a mother of four children. My youngest and the only girl just turned 22 last month and was married the month before. You are probably a great mother because you think about it and strive to be so. The truth is that even after they are grown and gone from home you will still always anguish to have been and be a better mother. At this moment the worst thing I think is how “the velveteen rabbit” was my favorite story in the world, yet my children have no idea because it was one of the stories I never read to them.
Wow… that is wonderful to think of mothering that way. in the throws of life, becoming “real” is hard, but we do it. I congratulate you on your recognition and courage to find and love the mother in you.