Lynne was a mother first. And I have always felt, in a way, that she was always a mother, even before Caleb was born. It seemed to me that she wanted to be a mother almost immediately after she and Scott were married, and the three years that lapsed between their wedding and Caleb’s birth were peppered with conversations about babies, pregnancy, and the eventual joys of motherhood.
Lynne is a wonderful mother. And although Bill and I were married a year before she and Scott were, I have always been grateful that she became a mother first, because in many ways, she taught me how. I watched with admiration as she cross-stitched a bunny for his room; I watched with humble respect as she sewed all the bedding for his nursery. And she held and nursed and cared for her newborn as though she’d been doing so all of her life.
And when I– finally– was pregnant, she loaned me all her books and talked through everything with me so that, when William came, I almost felt like I might be prepared.
I wasn’t.
But it wasn’t her fault.
I remember crying to her, long distance in the middle of the day, that William just wouldn’t sleep. I was frustrated, fed up, frightened that he wouldn’t do as I knew he needed to do. And Lynne, composed and ever helpful, said, “Rebecca, no one ever said this would be easy.”
Parenting isn’t easy, but Lynne almost makes it look as though it is. If I weren’t the one fortunate to be her confidante, if I weren’t the one on the other end of the line during those late-night phone calls, I might think that she always had an easy time of it. I might think that, for some, parenting comes Absolutely Naturally.
It doesn’t.
But if you relax enough, and you do what you love, and you love those children, then parenting can be a Really Good Time. And now, long distance, Lynne and I share our Really Good Times and our hard ones about her three (Caleb, 11; Seth, 8.75; Madelyn, 5.5) and my three (William, 9; Everett, 6.75; and Emma Grace, 4.5) and, once in a Too Long while, we all get together and have a Wonderful Time.
Now Lynne is going to do a New Thing, something brand new to all of us who have shared these years and lives: she is going to become mother to Gwen, a little darling from China, a daughter she loves and dreams about even though, for now, she has never seen her face.
For the fourth time in her life, Lynne is waiting to meet her child.
Pregnancy is different from this, you know. There’s the baby, after all, growing Entirely Too Big, making himself known More and More. The eventuality is concrete.
But this expectation is one of hope and faith, tied to the mail and the telephone cord. And, once again, Lynne is doing it admirably, loving faithfully the Idea of someone she has not yet met. Sweet Gwen will be loved well. She already is. And she has one of the Best Mommies I know.
