Only a Mother Can Know

There is a feeling, an experience that only a mother can know.

When a woman conceives and then spends roughly the next nine months with another life, human being growing inside her, there is a bond that forms. A bond that no one other than that mother can ever experience. The father doesn’t experience it, even the child doesn’t experience it. Nope…no one other than the mother! That little being for all those months draws from the mother’s life source to develop and grow. When the child is born, the life source is severed. Yet the deep connection can never be.

It doesn’t matter if that child is two months and is sent to spend time with their first babysitter or daycare provider, five years and going off to kindergarten, eight and having their first sleepover at a friend’s house, sixteen and pulling out of the driveway for their first drive alone, 18 and going off to college or 30 and going back to another state many states away to continue in his education, the departure is never easy. Seeing that child separate from you – the one that was at one time connected by more than technology – at one time was connected by a living source and was physically “one” with you, is a feeling and an experience that only a mother can understand.

At the moment of separation, there is a pain that shoots through the mother’s body from head to toe. As time goes on, the pain is reduced to a discomfort and then eventually the pain subsides. However, when another separation takes place, that unpleasant feeling is there all over again.

Such is the case yesterday when watching son walk to the train that would carry him back to Chicago. It was a very cold, dreary day. Having a mother’s heart, it doesn’t matter how old he is or how independent and self-sufficient, it is still my responsibility to make certain he is cared for. And so, there he went carting the big blue bag that I had packed to make certain he had food and water for the 24 hour trip back.

(If you look closely in the second photo, you will identify the big blue bag again.)

 

Yes, there are some things only a mother can know!