Any May a Beautiful Change.

I got my copy of Any Day a Beautiful Change in the mail on my daughter's birthday last week, and since then it's been celebration, a date with my husband, and then taking care of that daughter when she was sick for 36 hours. And now, I think I might be hoarding it. Either way, I want to participate in this lovely kick-off because I am so proud of you, Katherine, for the words I will soon read.

In this season of motherhood, I am reflecting on the beginnings of becoming a mother, on that beautiful change I felt in my life. For me there are so many moments that pointed out motherhood as a change from what life had been before I became a mom. Many of those are the wow moments, of bliss, of amazement, of fullness. Gazing at my newborn asleep in my arms, running my fingers through all of that newborn hair, calling for Ron to get the camera because my newborn must be hugging me. But on Friday, April 29, 2005, when I hobbled through the door of our beach apartment late in the afternoon with my newborn girl in my arms, I felt change. We were fresh from the hospital, eager to get home, and what I saw as I crossed the threshhold was sun streaming over dust, grown from a week of labor and cesearean. What I felt was hungry; we'd left the hospital right before our celebratory dinner. What I heard was my new child crying, hungry, wet, out of sorts, in no place familiar.

In that first moment in our apartment with our new girl, the light of day smoothing everything over as the nighttime cannot, I saw that motherhood was not just holding and rocking and changing and feeding and reading and singing and pushing a stroller; it was everything. In that moment I saw that my life had become more, and that I had to be more. I saw that I would be changing and feeding and dressing and working out and preparing meals and reading and dancing and singing every day now. I saw life, not that different from life now, seven years later (although the concept is no longer new), all of its parts, all ready for me to do at once.