The day I became a mother — otherwise known as my son’s birthday — is today.   He’s 15.  I haven’t had a good week with my Ex-husband, and my episodic depression is rearing its ugly head, so I’m a little more pensive than usual.  I think back to my fears when I was pregnant that first time.  I’d read too many magazines and seen too many articles, not unlike what we all  see today online, about how having children takes the spontaneity out of life, that romance dwindles.  I was an employment attorney at the time so I dealt daily with glass ceiling issues and the “Mommy Track”  — so while I was ridiculously happy about having this planned child, I was also afraid  that it would ruin my career, finances, body, sex life, and marriage.   Maybe I was just being a nervous mother-to-be after having been child-free for so long, maybe it was just the pregnancy mania.  Maybe somewhere deep inside I had reason to be insecure.   Never in my wildest nightmares, however,  would I have imagined not having a birthday dinner with my son on his birthday because it is Daddy’s day for that.  That was never part of the plan.

So now, I wait.  I had to tell the Ex that I got a cake so that he wouldn’t beat me to the punch.   (It wasn’t supposed to be like this).  And the boy will be so tired from having had school, sports and straight with his Dad; he probably won’t have much time for me anyway.  Still, I’ll go through the tradition of a cake and small gifts.   I’ll have his friends over another time.  I  made a Happy Birthday  poster last night.   One of the sisters helped decorate it.  I don’t always do things like that, but I’m feeling so vulnerable these days, and I’m noticing that we don’t celebrate things enough, especially since the separation and especially since the move to smaller digs.   So I made a poster.   I wanted to find a newborn picture of him to attach.   It was a little bittersweet to see those pics of me, the Ex and the newborn baby boy.  We were so happy.  We had no idea what we were doing.    We had no idea what was down the road.

But now I sit.  I grew him in my belly, I birthed him, I nursed him.  Yet my rights are determined by a mutually agreed upon (ha!) court order.   Damn.  Told you I was feeling a little blue.  But I’m alone now.  I’m allowed.  I’ll pull it together for the little celebration.  In case you’re wondering, the Ex and I have, in the past, shared some holidays/celebrations, but it stopped working, it really never did.   Why that is the case  is beyond the scope of this post.   So now it is what it is. I am, of course, thankful for a healthy, happy first-born.  He changed my life.  He’s a good kid.

So Happy Birthday, Boy.  But this is more than his birthday, it is the anniversary of the day I became a mother, and all that that implies.

Just Me With . . . a birthday cake.