Becoming a Mother Matured Me and Saved My Life

Daily writing prompt

When was the first time you really felt like a grown up (if ever)?

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Twenty-four hours before I became a mother of four children under seven, I was carefree. My former husband and I had just moved into our own place after two years of marriage. My days consisted of playing cards and drinking beer with friends at my sister’s apartment. I had dreams, but I had long stopped believing that I would ever accomplish them, so I just drifted through life. Married at age 19, I was twenty-one with no goals.

Then, my sister, my only sibling and friend, died. My mother, overcome with grief, asked me to tell her children that their mother was never coming home. I didn’t know how to tell children ages 6, 4, 3, and nearly 2 what death meant or that they would never see their beloved mother again.

When I arrived, their apartment was packed with friends and neighbors who had heard the news that a beautiful soul had died. I gathered the children around me, with the youngest on my lap, and I told them that their mommy had gone to heaven to be with God. I thought that none of them understood what I was saying. But the four-year-old girl with big brown eyes looked at me and asked, “Whose gonna be our mommy now?” Without thinking about it or consulting my young husband, I responded, “I am!”

I had no clue how to parent. I kidded someone that all I knew was to feed one end and wipe the other and not get the two confused! But you learn fast. I slept in her bed with all four of them as close as they could get to me. If I cried, they would cry, so for nearly twenty years, I did not mourn my sister.

Becoming a mother meant putting beer and cards away and living a life that my children could imitate, such as attending a church and teaching them the love of God and how to love others. I had to mature because the buck stopped with me. I had to learn that as a mother, everything falls in your hands, and you can’t tell children that you need some time alone, especially when they are afraid every time you leave the house you might not come back. I had to renew my dreams and pray to God to help me fulfill them to get us out of poverty.

I worked twelve hours to sixteen hours a day and on weekends to make ends meet, when my husband left because he was tired of taking care of other men’s children. I couldn’t leave, no matter how hard it got, because I knew the pain of being abandoned by both parents.

I became a grown-up in the space of twenty-four hours, and my life changed for the better. The children saved me, instead of the other way around. I don’t think I would still be alive if I had not been blessed to be their other mother. I know that I wouldn’t have fulfilled my dream to teach college without them. To God be the glory for the plans he has for our lives, to give us a future and hope.