I know I had a blog titled someone's mom earlier, but this is a totally different topic. I have noticed on the roads the past few days/weeks people driving horribly. People serve into my lane with virtually no room to spare or pull out in front of oncoming traffic. I just can't fathom how people can be so careless.
The swerving car narrowly misses my front right fender. I take a sharp breath and hold it without realizing I've done it. Heat rushes up my spine and prickles race up my neck and itch my scalp. After a few seconds of swearing inside my head, I think, Hey! I'm someone's MOM! and I wonder what would happen if I were hurt. Even if I just had to be rushed to the hospital, would anyone know to contact the daycare?
While these thoughts tend to the macabre probably due to a good horror habit courtesy Stephen King and Dean Koontz, people's moms die all the time. Good men with families go to work in the morning and don't come home. Before, I obviously worried about my own safety, but I never really worried about what would happen if I were just gone. My husband would be sad, and I would worry about him moving on, but part of getting married is knowing that someday you will have to go on without your partner, or vice versa. My family and friends would miss me and it would be sad, but after awhile life would continue. My daughter is the first person whose life would be absolutely altered by my loss. And when that car swerved, I didn't think of me.
Of course, to all you veteran parents out there this seems kind of like, duh, Captain Obvious! But it wasn't a conscious process in my mind to being more concerned about her than my own safety. It just struck me as pretty cool that one day without even thinking about it, I put her first in my mind.
It is scary to think that I am her forever mommy. I have to do all I can to be there for her as long as possible, which since I was 39 when we finalized, will be shorter than most parents can expect to be around for their children. If I am very lucky, I will get to be around for her to be my age. While I want a long life for me, I want to make sure I am there for her questions when she has her first date, prom, boyfriend, eventually baby. Being able to share her with my mom is the most precious gift I can imagine.
It is really amazing how such a little thing as Lil Bit can make me love so much, could change my world so profoundly. I am overwhelmed by how all the cliches about parenting are true, how deep the love and protective instinct are, how every day I fall more in love with her. What a privilege it is to be someone's mom.
So I drive a tad more defensively, set the cruise control at the speed limit (or close ; 0), and have soup instead of ordering pizza. My perspective of others has also become more tolerant and compassionate as I realize that other people are someone's mothers and fathers and deserve to be home for their families. Again, there is no way to put words to how deep the change in my world this little girl has made.
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