Reflections on motherhood

Just today, I was having a conversation with my friend, and in the dialogue, I used the word "bosom." Since then, something has struck me. I have heard the word bosom before, and obviously have thought I knew what it meant, always considering it somewhat of a synonym for chest or breasts. Tonight, however, I realized that I never knew what the word "bosom" meant until I became a mother, and even then it was not instantaneous. For me, the word "bosom" is not just an old fashioned way of saying breasts or chest. Here is dictionary.com's definition of bosom:

1. a) The chest of a human: He held the sleepy child to his bosom.
b) A woman's breast or breasts.
2. The part of a garment covering the chest or breasts.
3. The security and closeness likened to being held in a warm familial embrace: We welcomed the stranger into the bosom of our family.
4. The chest considered as the source of emotion. adj.
adj. - Beloved; intimate: a bosom friend.

Throughout the last two years and three months, I have experienced an emotion that I cannot exactly put into words. I believe it began slowly and quietly inside me the day that Jace was born and has grown stronger and more intense with every day that has passed since then. I am not sure that I can describe this emotion, becuase it is something entirely foreign to me, something that I have never before experienced. I have been thinking of it a lot recently, with all the new things that have gone on with Jace. The only way I can try to describe it is as an ache. A desperate, loving, longing ache that I have never before felt. When he cries, it is the ache, the physical pain that I feel hearing him cry. My body physically responds to his cries. When he is having trouble breathing, it is the ache inside of me that so desperately longs to blow my breath into him, to breathe on his behalf. It is the same ache that I feel when I smell the top of his head - that may be totally crazy (Thomas thinks so), but it is definitely worth the money for me to buy the name brand Baby Magic shampoo, because when his freshly washed hair dries, the scent of him brings a flood of the emotions of the last two years that creates this emotion, this ache, within me. I believe I will use Baby Magic until he is old enough to tell me it's too babyish and he wants something else. :-) This is the same ache that I feel every time I hear his precious little voice say, "Mommy." I have been told that there will be a day when I long for him to stop calling my name, and maybe so, but at this point in our lives there is something magical about that title, something that fills my heart with an aching love. I will do almost anything for him when I hear that simple word.

Anyway, all this to say that I think I have finally made a realization. This emotion that I have felt growing stronger and stronger inside me as I continually fall more in love with this little boy is an aching contained in my bosom. I can think of no other word to describe the part of my body that physically feels this aching, this emotion - it is contained in my bosom. Maybe this sounds totally crazy, but I really feel like my bosom is not my chest or my breasts, my bosom is the physical portion of my body that came alive inside of me because of Jace and grows with him everyday. When I fell in love with Thomas, he became a portion of my heart and my soul, a part of me, and he continues to grow within me the closer we become. When I fell in love with Jace, he too became a part of me, that grows along with him, within me, that I am convinced will always live inside me, even after he is grown. He became a part of me and that part is within my bosom. So I've decided that I have my own definition of this word that I used to think was silly. While it is located somewhere within my chest, and it is security, closeness, familial, emotional and beloved, for me, my bosom is the part of my body that is Jace, and it cannot be defined apart from him.

Being a "Mommy" truly is a magical thing.