Like many of you, I have a mother. In fact, I’ve recently gotten to spend a lot of time with her and my father, both of whom have been in town for a few weeks to help out after Simon was born. (Julia’s parents were in town before that to also help out. It’s been sort of a parental torch-passing, really.)
I love my mom, and she’s a wonderful parent (same goes for you too, Dad, but I’m not supposed to say anything for a month — you know, legally). Loving, giving, patient … all that and the proverbial bag of chips, to this day, even now that I’m old enough that I don’t feel like anyone’s baby.
But this year, on Mother’s Day, I find myself with more than one mother figure to contemplate. Because, you see, my wife has somehow managed to — while still remaining fully my wife — also become a mother. Now, at some level, this was fully anticipated — I’ve read up on all the biological underpinnings of this transformation and all. But it’s still something of a shock that this beautiful, fun woman I’d known for many years had all this mothering inside her. Who knew?
In times past, I had always considered myself the tough one. When hiking up a mountain (or its Scottish equivalent), I was usually the one in the lead. I was the one, say, who went on a bonus hike to the relatively creepy garden of carved wooden objects while Julia rested up from the morning hike to the waterfall. And so forth.
And then Julia told me that she wanted to have a drug-free childbirth for Simon. Now, I will admit that I initially took this in the same way that I might say that I want to have a chocolate milkshake appear in my hand: it would be nice, if not terribly likely. But Julia kept saying it. More importantly, she said it to the nurses when we checked into the hospital the night Simon was born.
And after seeing her go through that labor without any drugs, I relinquished the title of Toughest Stadler. Which title, you know, technically, I had never actually won. But Julia certainly did, that night.
But it wasn’t just some extraordinary burst of strength on the occasion of Simon’s birth. No, her amazing abilities have continued the whole month-and-change that is Simon’s life. It hasn’t always been easy — there have been challenges for both Simon and Julia — but through it all, she’s just kept going. And doing amazingly well, no less.
It’s like finding out that you’re married to Wonder Woman after years of thinking you’d been living with a very nice Diana Prince … only without the invisible plane and so forth. (And yes, I did have to look up Wonder Woman’s non-secret identity on Wikipedia. What the heck, Wonder Woman can fly? I mean, without the invisible plane? What?)
Point being, my wife — and, more to the point on this day, my son’s mother — is amazing. She’s tough, she’s loving, she’s beautiful. And I love her.
