I read the most profound blog post on what it is to be a mother this evening. I cried some, knowing…FEELING it all too well. It is the most exasperating relationship of a woman’s life, this being a mother, and the ONLY relationship where the goal from the start is to live a life APART from you.

My three are six years apart - just far enough apart to begin and complete a wave, only to begin it again, and then again, once more. There is also a definite ‘undertow’ feeling to it…it’s what a rolling average must ‘feel’ like…never quite exact, yet telling an accurate story, just the same.

I will very likely become a grandma soon (there are some life lessons my oldest son tuned out, sadly) and will still have a single-digit ’second-soul’ at home, all while being tossed to and fro by the hold tight/let go dance of mothering the teen in the middle into adulthood.

Of all the wonderful complexities of motherhood I’ve experienced to date, I am still most in awe of how different ‘mothering’ is from one child to the next to the next. It’s like I’m three women (and then some) rolled into one.

It occurs to me that if I did the ‘hold tight/let go’ dance in the rest of the relationships I have in my life, I might actually come close to being the ‘real me’ in all of them.