My magic flower…

On Mothers day five years ago my oldest son Alex planted this Clematis for me.  It was planted in the urns that flank our front door.  It was a fabulous day and everyone was working and planting to make me happy. I got to sit in a chair and watch everyone work, I was expecting our fifth child and I was so very happy.  On May 16th a few days later I lost the baby, it was a second trimester loss and the anguish was unbearable. At the time I thought my heart would split wide open.  It seemed that I would never stop hurting  and that time was standing still.  Time will not stand still. Not even when we are in pain, we are always moving changing and growing just like this flower.
Almost one year later I brought home our fifth child baby Elijah, when I arrived home from the hospital this flower was in bloom welcoming us home. It seemed very symbolic to me at the time but that was just the beginning.
The following year almost a year and half later we brought home Samuel (baby number 6) and  I swear the Clematis was blooming even though this baby came home in August, and it was not the season for it to bloom.  Now it certainly was not in bloom in January when we brought home baby Grace, but here it is today with its first bloom just in time for Mothers day again.  The plant has hundreds of blooms and it will be blooming big and bright on May 16th.  May 16th will be the day my oldest baby will graduate from VA. Tech .
Being a mother is such a strange experience. You wait and pray anxiously while you are pregnant for your baby to come and be with you. You spend everyday after that helping them grow up and get ready to leave.  I am on sensory overload right now with my oldest baby graduating, my next in line just got her license and we are touring colleges. Hannah is right behind her older sister, with a brand new learners license. My baby Riley who is now 11, will graduate from elementary school in a month. It will be the first time we do not have a student in that school in seventeen years. Elijah is completing his first year of preschool and is now 4 years old, Samuel begins school  next year and is almost out of diapers. I look at baby Grace and I see her little life speeding by.  I also see how fast life is every weekend when I watch mothers and fathers send their children down the aisle to start their new lives.
The loss I feel as they leave one stage and move to the next is a pain no one prepares you for.  I look at them sometimes and try to find that little baby inside of them. I find myself wondering “Where oh where did my by baby go?”  I guess in a lot of ways it’s all like that clematis, its roots are still here but every year it is a little different a little bigger, a little stronger but always here for the important stuff.
Next weekend is going to rock me to my core. I am glad the Clematis is blooming.