Mother's Day has a different spin for those of us whose moms and grandmothers are gone, we aging baby boomers. In my case, Mother's Day 2006 is about my daughter, who became a first-time mother with the birth of triplet girls in January.
Talk about jumping into motherhood. Triplets!
My Forum office wall is decorated with photos of daughter Jessica and her older brother. Mug shots spanning the years they were kids through young adulthood border larger photos of them in woodland settings. It's a visual representation of "my, how time does fly."
So, there's an 8-by-10 photo of this glowing 5-year-old, cradled in the arms of an autumn maple tree, the leaves shimmering gold in the filtered sun, her smile the center of the world, wisps of her summer-light hair dancing in the breeze.
Each photo tells a story: elementary school, a rabbit hunt with her brother, a prep school in New England, Oak Grove in Fargo, graduation from Concordia College, then Vermont Law School. There she is again, radiant in her wedding dress, gripping my arm as we walked across the September grass of a Vermont inn where she married a good man.
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And now she's a mother, three times over. She and husband, Jason, have risen to the challenge. Their lives changed forever when the girls were born. They have become wonderful parents.
And she, an exceptional young mother.
I'm in awe of it all. I follow the progression of the photos from her childhood to her motherhood. Who is this person? Can she be the 5-year-old who climbed trees with happy recklessness; who rode the woolly backs of sheep and minded not a bit when she took on the smell; who came home covered with mud and burs after a hike in the spring woods with her brother; who could devour a meal of wild rabbit just hours after she and her brother had returned from a successful midwinter hunt; who, as the smallest member of the team, played basketball with enough intensity to overcome her size; who understood the beauty of Mozart when she was 9; who failed the driver's license test three times because she couldn't parallel park; who was always adventurous enough, confident enough to leave home to pursue her dreams?
Is the little girl in those pictures the mother of three? Are those three little miracles - McKenna, Bennett and Harper - already nearly 4 months old? Do I see Jessica as a baby in their beautiful faces?
It's her first Mother's Day as a mother. Incredible.
And so for me, Mother's Day takes on an entirely new emotion. You baby boom fathers of daughters know what I'm talking about. As Judy Collins sang a few years back: "Who knows where the times goes/ who knows where the times goes ..."
Zaleski can be reached at jzaleski@forumcomm.com or (701) 241-5521.
