When I was pregnant, hormones raging, I had a panic attack one day (not sure if you can call it that?) and I started crying hysterically… why? Because as a baby was growing inside me, I was perhaps more aware of life itself… being born, dying… and I started thinking about my parents. And I started thinking about the day when they will no longer be around. As a result, I started crying hysterically, and when my husband said “why are you crying?” I replied, “I don’t want my parents to ever die… I want them to live forever.” (in between sobs… it might have taken me a minute or two to get these sentences out.)
It is amazing how your perspective on so many things change when you become a mother. First, you experience and realize the extraordinary power of your body (you grew a human being inside you! Then… you make milk! HOLY COW –no pun intended!) For months after I gave birth I would look at myself and look at my son and say “that didn’t really happen… he didn’t really come out of ME…”
Second, and the most important thing I realized when I became a mom was the power of life and the reality of finite life… just as I am now giving life to a human being, someone gave life to me, and that there is a circle of life, birth, growth, death; and then it hit me: the awful reality that parents don’t live forever and that my time with them is precious.
