The moment I realized I wanted to become a mother is one of my most vivid memories.
I had just graduated from UCLA and had invited my little sister to stay with me for a week after graduation. I knew that her living situation with our own biological mother was unstable. She was 14 years old and about to enter high school in one of the poorer areas outside of Reno, Nevada. I thought that if I could get her excited about college and the class jump it could provide, if I could show her what it looks like to not live in poverty, then maybe I could plant a seed of hope to help her navigate the turbulent future she had in front of her.
I’m a natural giver. I pour my heart and soul into the people I love, or at least… I try to.
I was only 22 years old. I was only a kid myself. I had never wanted children. I think I was terrified of becoming my parents. Parenting is a huge responsibility! But one morning as I stood in the kitchen of my college apartment, cooking eggs for the sister I spent I spent so much of my childhood caring for, I realized that I could do it. I realized that I wanted the life that I had spent so many years rebelling against.
On the other hand, I’ve always struggled to feel settled. I spent most of my 20’s gallivanting around L.A. I backpacked through Thailand. I road tripped through the United States for months on end, lived on the East Coast, and loved every minute of exploration. It wouldn’t take much to convince me to move abroad after Dominic graduates. Thus, my existential crisis: my two natures.
Raising Dominic is teaching me so much about my limitations, my strengths, and the uniquely different ebb and flow of family life. Stuck in a sleepy Northern Californian town for two more years, I’m searching for some sort of control over my future. I may find a great love hiding here, or I may not and move to a foreign country for awhile. I know we can’t control these things as much as we try. As I get older and meditate on on what the future may hold, I’m saddened that I’ve spent (and still do at times), so much of my time concerned with things that I can’t control.
Life will work out how it wants to. I need to find the beauty in my everyday.