Tell me About Your Childhood

I often find myself wondering who you will be and what kind of things you will do when you are all grown up.  I'm so excited to watch you fulfil your dreams and to fall in love and graduate and start a career and travel do all the wonderful things that you are going to do.  And every once in awhile I find myself wondering what you will say about your childhood.  What will you say about growing up with me as your Mother.  What memories will you have of me and your Dad that will shape your future.  Maybe you will remember your Dad teaching you how to cook, or me showing you not to be afraid or shy around new people.  I think hard about how we are going to get you through your childhood relatively unscathed, with all the joy and love that you have now.  Because if you can keep your easy going personality, your enormous easy smile, your authentic joy in the discovery of new things, your strong attachment to the people you love, your determination and focus and your unrelenting happiness....I have done my job.  You are already an amazing little baby girl, with so many wonderful qualities.  And I know that you will change, and that you won't always light up when you see me, and that you won't always be able to get right back up after a fall, and that's okay too, because it's part of growing up. And your life won't be perfect, even if I imagine it that way every single day.  I don't have the power to give you a perfect life without any pain or anger or sadness.   But I do have the power to make sure that the good outweighs the bad and that in the end, when someone asks you about your childhood, you will have fond memories and it will make you smile.  I love you Little Miss. You're perfect in my eyes.

As I Rock You To Sleep

Tonight you fell asleep in my arms as I rocked you and sang you a lullaby.  You don't often fall asleep in my arms, but every once in awhile, when you get really sleepy and the timing is just right, you drift off while I rock you.  I looked down at your face, your beautiful soft skin, your long eyelashes, your thin little lips completely relaxed into a little smile and I couldn't help but to cry. Your short past and your long future presented themselves to me, and the magnitude of my role in your life became apparent.  I have the great privilege and responsibility of being your mother.  I hold the power to shape your vision of yourself and I take that very seriously.  As I continued to rock you, the realization hit me that every single person on this earth has a mother; our relationship, while unique because of the people we are, is not some miraculous thing.  But it feels that way.  In the quiet moments. when you're sleeping in my arms, or gazing at me with your piercing blue eyes, and sometimes in the hectic moments, when you're smearing cereal in your hair, I get an overwhelming burst of emotion.   You are my daughter, my first born, and my love for you is bigger than any other love that has ever been experienced, it is as big as only a mother's love for her child can be. Just wait, one day you might rock your own baby in your arms, and you'll know that love.  Not until then will you understand what it means to be on the receiving end of that love.  It means that you are precious beyond words, that you are more important than any possession, that you are loved completely and without reservation,

Sleep tight, little miss!

The Life of Your Mother

From your Great Grandfather Zenon Lepage to his wife, your Great Grandmother Rose Lepage:

"Votre mère a eu la vie bien dure.  Nous avons vécu deux ans chez mes parents qui étaient bien bons, mais pour une jeune épouse, ce n'étais pas chose facile et elle ne se sentait pas à l'aise.  Après notre déménagement à Batoche les grossesses se succédaient les unes après les autres souvent sans médecin.  Puis deux grossesses qui se sont terminées avec des bébés mort-nés.  Ensuite arrivée à Vonda en 1943, petite maison, sans commodités, sans eau ni toilette.  Je ne crois qu'il y en a eu beaucoup qui ont travaillé aussi fort: lavage, racommodage, lavage de planchers de bois, fabrication de vêtements pour les enfants avec du vieux linge et des sacs de farine, et garder des petits, les nôtres et ceux des autres.  D'après mois elle a accompli une tâche impossible.  Quand je pense à tout cela, les grossesses, les accouchements, la fatigue, se lever à cinq heures du matin, se coucher à dix ou onze heures, travailler sans arrêt toute la journée, je j'y comprends rien.

Merci ma Rose chérie"

"Your mother had a hard life.  We lived for two years with my parents, who were good people, but for a young wife, it wasn't easy and she never felt comfortable.  After we moved to Batoche, the pregnancies happened one after the other, often without a doctor present.  And then two pregnancies that ended in still births.  We arrived in Vonda in 1943 to a tiny house without plumbing, no running water, no toilet.  I don't know of anyone who worked so hard: laundry, housework, washing the wood floors, making clothes for the kids with old garments and flour sacks, watching the kids: ours and other peoples.  In my opinion, she accomplished the impossible.  When I think of it all: the pregnancies, the deliveries, the exhaustion, getting up at five in the morning and going to bed at ten or eleven o' clock, working non-stop all day, I can't even imagine it.

Thank you my Dear Rose"

16 pregnancies! 14 babies! I can't imagine being the mother of fourteen children.  Your great grandmother Rose was a hell of a woman.  Grandpere Zenon obviously had deep respect and love for her.  But with that being said, be thankful that you were born in a time where you get to have a career, where you aren't bound to extreme religious ideals, where birth control is readily available and it's use is strongly encouraged, where you have a flush toilet! Be grateful that you can earn respect in many different ways, not just at how well you manage a household. He really said it: "Your Mother had a hard life". 

Motherhood IS hard, I think.  Not necessarily as much so, or in the same way that it was for Grandmere Rose, but in that you have to work hard to be good at it.  You need to do a lot of laundry and you lose a lot of sleep.  You worry a lot, and often have to put yourself second. I'm very new at this motherhood racket, and I'm sure I will find a million other things that make it really hard.

But I know that there is deep reward in being a mother: not the cleaning and being up at 5 am part, but in the weight of a newborn in your arms, the cuddles, the gazes of admiration from your nursing infant.  It is fulfilment of an entirely new kind.  I feel more deeply than I have ever felt, and I love more deeply than I have ever loved.  It's like a floodgate opened in me when you were born, and I became a new kind of person.  I became a Mom,  It's not all I am, but it's probably the most important part of me.

I Hope You Dance

I Hope You Dance Lyrics

Lee Ann Womack

I hope you never lose your sense of wonder,
You get your fill to eat but always keep that hunger,
May you never take one single breath for granted,
GOD forbid love ever leave you empty handed,
I hope you still feel small when you stand beside the ocean,
Whenever one door closes I hope one more opens,
Promise me that you'll give faith a fighting chance,
And when you get the choice to sit it out or dance.

I hope you dance....I hope you dance.

I hope you never fear those mountains in the distance,
Never settle for the path of least resistance
Livin' might mean takin' chances but they're worth takin',
Lovin' might be a mistake but it's worth makin',
Don't let some hell bent heart leave you bitter,
When you come close to sellin' out reconsider,
Give the heavens above more than just a passing glance,
And when you get the choice to sit it out or dance.

I hope you dance....I hope you dance.
I hope you dance....I hope you dance.
(Time is a wheel in constant motion always rolling us along,
Tell me who wants to look back on their years and wonder where those years have gone.)

I hope you still feel small when you stand beside the ocean,
Whenever one door closes I hope one more opens,
Promise me that you'll give faith a fighting chance, 
And when you get the choice to sit it out or dance. 

Dance....I hope you dance. 
I hope you dance....I hope you dance. 
I hope you dance....I hope you dance.. 
(Time is a wheel in constant motion always rolling us along 
Tell me who wants to look back on their years and wonder where those years have gone)

Nora, I hope you participate fully in your life.  Enjoy the good moments and don't wallow in the bad ones.  Keep moving, keep laughing, keep dancing. This is your life: Do it Your Way!!