Lucas Camilo

There is just a month left of kindergarten in Seattle, so Lucas and his friends are starting to visit the first grade to get a taste of life with more order and more quiet raising of hands.  It’s exciting to imagine Lucas in an environment that he’ll love: books with bigger words, a quieter setting where he might be heard better in the classroom.  But we’ve loved his kindergarten class so much — Mr. McCullough is such a loving teacher, and the kids and their families have been incredibly welcoming to Lucas.  So the transition feels a little scary, too. (Can you find Lucas in Garden Class?)

Our big parenting news is that we went out on Wednesday!  We were able to leave Lucas with his nurse and Ida with her cousins (and aunt and uncle), and Burke and I went out to a show.  It was really fun and a little bit surreal to be out without our kids.  I love Burke for being an amazing dad, and I could watch him play with Lucas and Ida forever.  But it was also refreshing to remember that we like hanging out even when we don’t have kids in our arms or a dinosaur album on the stereo.

I started to write about Mothers’ Day the other day but I decided it sounded too dour, so I scrapped it and just said Happy Mothers Day to all the mothers I know.  We all certainly deserve celebration.  But “Motherhood” is so fraught with pedestals, shoulds, guilt, and domestic appliances that I sometimes have trouble relating to the idea.  And then we have friends who are amazing women and don’t have kids, and I feel weird about this day that celebrates motherhood as the pinnacle of womanhood.  (Fortunately, someone else wrote that article better than I did, here.  Its short and worth a read.)

But I am very proud of being a mom, and I certainly don’t mind people celebrating me doing a good job of it.  And my role as mother grows to encompass two kids, I keep thinking about how much Lucas has taught me about how to be a mom.  He’s taught me crazy, amazing life lessons.  How to be steady even with fear and the unknown.  How to love a baby with my whole, exploding heart when I could only hold him an hour a day.  How to read books over and over and over again.  How to teach others about experiences of disability.  How to be deeply passionate about animals.  How to distinguish a zuniceratops from a styracasaurus.  Already Ida is starting to teach us new lessons, and I know I’ll get to reshape and expand my understanding of “mothering” to fit her needs and brilliance, too.  So why not celebrate my motherhood?

The other reason I couldn’t bring myself to say anything cynical about mothers day is the moms (and dads) I’ve gotten to know in the world of disability.  You all are a fierce, dedicated, fun crowd with some huge hearts.  I think about our MTM family that we know mostly through facebook and the family conference, people like Shannon Mashinchi and Mark and Erin Ward who give so much to other families as they care for their own kids.  I think about the amazing radical parents we met through My Baby Rides the Short Bus.  And I think about the parents in Seattle who we’ve connected to through support groups.  I think of the mom who saw Lucas and me on the playground a couple of years ago.  She walked up to us and briefly introduced her son who was a year or two older than Lucas and also had mobility limitations.   She gave me her name and number and said we should meet so she could “download” everything she knew about the transition to kindergarten.  No small talk, just immediate connection and an eagerness to be helpful and generous with everything she knew might be useful to us.  I feel so proud to have joined this tribe of mothers and parents.  So, happy Mothers’ Day to all of us.  And I pronounce Friends-of-Kids Day to celebrate all of our friends who help us raise these amazing kids, too.  Happy Day to all of you.