Mommy

I am mommy.

 

I am the maker of rules. Handed down like Moses.

 “No, you may not have a chocolate—it is almost time for dinner.”

“It’s bedtime.”

“If you do that one more time with the toy, mommy will take it away.”

 

I am comforter. I scare away the middle of the night monsters.

 

“Shhh shhh, it’s okay.  Mommy’s here.”

 

I sit on my hands when I put her in time out.

She’s crying for mommy but I know that I cannot pick her up.

She won’t learn not to hit that way.

 

I am the warm body she snuggles into in the morning, when she doesn’t quite want to leave sleep.

 I am the hand that strokes her back.

I am the lips that kiss her tummy and make her giggle.

 

Somewhere in her memory is another woman.

My daughter grew under her heart—listening to it beat.

Somewhere in my daughter’s murky memories is the knowledge of loss.

That woman left her to an uncertain fate.

 

Sometimes I am jealous of that woman.

She knew the sound of my daughter’s first cry.

She and my daughter were once one being.

She is my daughter’s birth mother, her China mother.

 

But I—

I am mommy.