Who am I Now?

I have been reading what I call, "a little book." It won't be on the New York Times Best Seller List. I probably won't see the author being interviewed by a talk show host. It has a limited audience but nevertheless speaks to those of us who pick it up.

The gift of an Ordinary Day - A Mother's Memoir, is a meditation on midlife. It speaks to those women who have passed babies and preschool and little league and moved on to curfews, hormones and children leaving home. It is a book about midlife want and loss. The author, Katrina Kenison assures us that mothers can reinvent themselves as their teens grow up. Mother's can truly claim new ground right along with their teenagers. Her book gives women the tools to switch gears and to find fulfillment and joy in this next part of our lives.

Kenison writes, "At mid-life, I managed to convince myself that physical movement was a prerequisite for change. Going somewhere else would satisfy a restlessness of spirit. Now, I recognize the restlessness for what it was-the first stirrings of fear that my own life would be over when my children left home. I began to ask the question, who am I now?"

"Once upon a time I took pride in the predictable patterns of our days; nap times and bath times and bed times. Later I taught my sons to cook for themselves and I proofread book reports and chauffeured carloads of boys. Now we're in a different place and a different time, and I need to become a different kind of mother. A mother who knows how to back off. A mother who's gaze is not so focused on her two endlessly absorbing children, but who is engaged in a rich full life of her own. "

"I must be a mother who trusts in who her children are, even if they aren't exactly who she thinks they ought to be. Who keeps faith in the future, even when the things her children do in the present give her pause. A mother who remembers, above all else, that the greatest gift she can give her nearly grown sons is the knowledge that, no matter what, she loves them both absolutely, just exactly as they are."
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"What confirmed me as a mother from the first moment of birth to the now as each prepares to leave , is a heart full of love. That is the constant, the "never change". Love is the infinite, durable strand that's woven itself through all the days of a shared past and will wind it's way through our unknowable futures, no matter how much life separates us, no matter where my sons journey may ultimately lead them."

Katrina Kenison, in this small book, teaches the art of letting go and holding on. It is available at the Muskogee Public Library and on-line at Amazon. Enjoy. Chrissie