Always a Mother by Gretchen Kellaway

I started this journey into parenting several months into my 18th year. Actually, if calculations are correct, the journey was already started just as I turned 18, in fact. Still a baby in many ways, totally uncertain, scared to death. However, it was what I always wanted, the role I always told myself I wanted to play! Mother! I was never really young- okay that may be false since there was a time, before the teenage years, when childhood was all the rage. I played that game like all the children of my generation! I was a child, a fairy child, growing up on good old fashioned magic and wonder! Given the chance I would go back to that time. The old soul won though in the end, mature before my time, faced with hard lessons and even harder truths. That is another story for another time though. Right now, I am talking about not remembering what it's like to not be a parent. I feel like I have been on this path in life forever, while I am only closing in on my 13th year! 12th if we only go by ages and my oldest child will be turning twelve in May. Ah, to think before I know it, I will have a teenager.

Perhaps I feel like I have always been a parent, forgetting what it's like not to be one, because I was still technically a child when he was born, but I look back and wonder, what teenage me was like. There is a fog in my memory, almost as if I went from big eyed child to mother in a short span of time. There is a gap! A big gap, where time is lost and motherhood began.

I can remember every moment of parenthood! Every sleepless night and crazy morning. The ups, the downs, the sideways moments, from that first mumbled cry of the first born, to the one push wonder of the last. Yet, I have no tales, no rousing good times to speak of before parenthood took hold and after childhood ended. There are a few that stand out of the fog, like glistening dew drops of youthful dreams, but nothing more than a handful.

I honestly, cannot remember not being Mom, mommy, mama, occasionally as my youngest boss baby likes to call me "dada"! I have told the tale of my first child being born, an awakening, a rebirth, a bonding unlike anything I have ever felt before. I was born when he was born, my life began with him. I have never had a day of regret for this journey into the life of being a parent and not an individual. I wake up each day exhausted, just as I go to bed each night the same way. I close every message with I love you, we say goodbye to each other everyday.

I try to think back, to come up with rousing memories of the time before children and I honestly can't do it.

It is almost as if, I have always been a mom.

When asked for a crazy side story, I can tell you of the time The Oldest and I got the flu, sleeping in a chair two feet from the bathroom door. I can tell a fish tale, of the time when he was just three and we set the fish he caught free in the river by our house. How he cried, because how would it find its family so far from home.

I have tales of random dance parties in the kitchen, rocking out to MJ as Smiles my nine year old perfected his break dancing, shirtless may I add. Or how about backyard campouts with not only my three monsters, but my two nephews? Making up ghost stories about dragons and ghost cats finishing with The Campfire Song sang quite loudly at midnight?

Even some of the stories outside parenting that are enduring or exciting, all happened while I was a parent. I do not remember not being one. I can't remember what it's like to not have sleepless nights, late night ER visits because of high fevers or low fluids during stomach flu season.

My best friends have become four small boys and my exciting Friday night plans include Scout parties and game night. When thinking of date night, I think of personal pan pizzas and Harry Potter Marathons, sitting on the living room floor picnic style. Or Taco-building Tuesdays and dinner chatter that is filled with fart jokes and calling people poopieheads.

This is my life, these are my stories. No drunken college parties, no waking up somewhere unknown. I never experimented with sex or drugs. Even in high school, I was the one found at home with my mom on Saturday nights having karaoke sessions in the kitchen, The Platters playing our soundtrack.

I couldn't imagine what my life would have been like if I had taken that road trip to California when I was 17, dreams of being a rock star or an actress on my mind, instead of the road I ended up taking.

I was young and in love with the idea of falling in love, I wrote songs and dreamed big, but my final dreams were small. I lived out the smaller dreams, that ultimately became the bigger ones.

Watching four boys be born and grow. Being the instrument behind who they would be when they grew up, pushing them towards their dreams instead of living my own. Honestly, I think I got the better deal. I ended up with four worlds in my hands.

I am sure if I look hard enough, if I think really long, I may have a tale or two. The ones I do have- the ones that start with "There once was a boy"- are way more exciting. They are open-ended and have so many possibilities.

I have always been a parent, I will always be a parent, I don't remember being anything else,

and I don't want to!

Gretchen Kellaway- Like everything she writes, Gretchen’s blog “How My Brain Works” is honest and heartfelt. Gretchen’s self-proclaimed “wandering brain” is a result of her trying to balance all the things! From wrangling four boys, working on her art projects, and being heavily involved in Scouts, she sometimes wonders how her brain works at all! Gretchen’s greatest achievements to date are not duct taping her children to chairs and being honored as a Trailblazer in Scouting. She is married to Patrick and has a serious obsession with tea, collecting owls and reading science fiction. Check out how her brain works here :http://howmybrainworks.weebly.com/about.html

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