Two Mississippi...Three Mississippi....

I took a long look in the mirror this morning. By long, I mean I did three Mississippis. That's long for me. The mirror and I are not friends, hardly even acquaintances. It's part of my new approach to life or more specifically, my new approach to me: forgiveness. And that starts with looking me in the face. Baby steps though. Start with a glance. One-Mississippi-Two-...
It's been a journey, to put it mildly. I won't get into the details just yet. We'd need a big pot of tea or a couple of bottles of wine for that. It's the stuff that fuels the writing, wiggles the pen, disturbs the sleep. And no, I'm not grateful in any way for the bumps along the road, but I am accepting. At fifty-four, it's foolish to be anything else.
I've been mothering for thirty years. As I'm writing this, it's thirty years to the day when the first labour pain popped my eyes open and I sat up abruptly from sleep. My first thought was, "Holy shit!" What was I thinking? I didn't have a clue of how to be a mother. I was having a hard time just being a someone, how on earth was I going to look after a person I didn't really know. Maybe I should reconsider and just keep walking around pregnant for my remaining days. That seemed the better choice despite grabbing on to parking meters when I walked downtown and the person inside me decided to twist her head (though I was sure it was a his head) to let my cervix know it had some work to do.
How bad could this labour thing be? My good *&^%$# grief! Who could imagine pain like that. Thirty years later I still squirm in remembrance. Still set my bottom jaw and bend my knees and lean forward at the hip and want to growl a hugeARRRGGGHHHH.
I survived. I made it through that and three more "live" births and seven of the other kind. Just details. We'll get to that. All I need to focus on is I'm still standing.That's a great start!-