Motherly love

I never realized falling head-over-heels with a person I have met for just a couple of seconds of my life is possible until the second day of Christmas of 2007. Until that day I became a mom. The otherwise clichéd love at first sight became very real that day.

How can I describe the way I felt the special day I became a mom? What word can possibly illustrate that phenomenally real feeling, the feeling that has grown so solid over the last 16 months and the very feeling which I know is only going grow deeper and stronger over the years to come?

What’s the best word for the sensation I get when my baby stares into my eyes and smiles at me or when I gaze at him as he sleeps innocently in his crib? How do I explain my inability to be angry at him when he bites me while breastfeeding (accidentally at first and on purpose later!) or my lack of annoyance when he wails and runs the opposite direction when we are shopping at the mall?

Now that I am a mother myself, I can verify through my experiences that it’s definitely not easy to find just one word to describe such form of genuine, motherly love. Well, that’s it! I figure there can be no better word to describe such nonpareil feeling of love than the word “mother” itself.

I’m thankful to God and feel privileged to be a mother because only a mother can contain much love in her and yet be strong to let go when the time is right. Only a mother can be strict when there’s a need for some disciplining and yet be a clown during playtime. No one can handle such a juxtaposition of emotion as well as a mother. No one can understand the true meaning of motherly love but a mother herself.

Happy mother's day to fellow mothers out there!

P/S: My respectful cheers to adoptive mothers who choose to give so much love to deserving children, putting “mothers” who abandon their newborns and those who abuse their children to shame.