Peering Into a Catholic Motherhood's Toolbox
Madeleine's pet gecko! To motherhood belongs the distinguished commodity: our own special toolbox of learned skills, the intelligent planning, and the intuitive wisdom gained and increased with each passing year of motherhood tucked under our belt. With this process of mother-becoming, an old self is shed like the skin of my daughter Madeleine's gecko. The old skin (in my own sad case) is, sadly, the selfish hoarder (granted, who was but a young girl), ultimately a person in denial about her own self-worth, and she casts that insecurity onto her friends and spouse and other family members like a crystal reflecting a prism. When the child bursts upon the scene, her heart explodes with a wild-animal kind of love. The passive aggressive, the petty, the thief of joy-- her selfish insecure moth-like insect transforms. A mother is like a gecko with a fresh new skin, or in my case, a mother butterfly with her own little swarm of caterpillars. Every mother h...
