I eat most of my meals cold – if I get to eat at all. I don’t prefer cold food. I actually really like eating hot food – especially when I have spent a lot of my own time cooking it. But usually, I am too busy cutting food into toddler sized bites, or blowing on food that is too hot, or getting new drinks to replace the ones that spilled, or napkins, or forks, or more ketchup. And before I know it, everyone has eaten and it is time to wash the dishes or give the baby a bath, and I have only taken three bites of my own meal.
They didn’t tell me about this part of motherhood when they handed me my 6 lb 5 oz baby. They made me watch a thirty minute video about what to do if I felt emotionally unstable around my baby. They made sure that I had a proper car seat. They gave me a couple of flyers about newborn care, and they said, “Good luck,” and sent us out into the aftermath of a December snowstorm with our newborn.
They somehow forgot to mention, “Oh. By the way, enjoy eating cold food from this moment on. From now until Kingdom come. Amen. Welcome to motherhood.”
And I think I’m grateful. I think I’m glad that there aren’t any books that talk about how you will put your own needs after the needs of your child for the rest of time. I’m glad that there aren’t any books about how every child that you add to your family will push you further and further down the list of people that you think about and the order in which you take care of them. I think I am glad that there isn’t a book called, Mommy is Last.
Because it might have scared me. No. It would have scared me. Because I used to be so selfish. I used to think of only myself. I used to decide what I wanted to do and just do it. I think I would have been terrified if someone had handed me a copy of, You’ll Never Think of Yourself First Again Magazine.
See. There is a reason that people don’t tell us all of the really hard parts of motherhood before we have babies. It is because before we have our baby in our arms, we could not possibly understand that every sacrifice seems so small in comparison to the gift of being a mom.
Every cold meal, every sleepless night, every sag and mark, every sloppy outfit, every night in, every time that we put ourselves last… are all worth it.
We overlook each one – because we realize this one fleeting truth.
The time that our babies are with us is short, and these moments… these moments are simply what will not last.
And the truth is, I think in each of our hearts we whisper quietly, “I’ll eat every meal cold if it means that you’re with me.”
