Your mother's right, she's really up on things

Hey, Megs,

Yesterday was Ella's 5th birthday. That means that I've been a mom for five years now. (It was also Tyson's 31st birthday.)

Kevin and I asked Ella where she wanted to eat for her special birthday dinner, and she chose sushi! She had a California roll for dinner. She never ceases to amaze me. To end the dinner, we got a free green tea ice cream sundae. Yum-E! (I am going to start using that term to describe delicious things in the hopes I can get Oprah to give me a magazine, a la Rachel Ray. My term for extra virgin olive oil will be XV-double O.)

When I put Ella to bed last night, I told her the story of when she was born. My mom always did that on our birthdays. I told her about how we went into the hospital at about 10 a.m. on the 12th, but that she wasn't born until just after midnight on the 13th. At this point in my little tale, Luke walked in to listen. Ella asked, "Did Luke wait a long time to be born?" "Yes, he did," I said, "even longer than you. Because," I explained, "Luke was a stubborn baby and he was upside down and backwards."

Ella thought that was hilarious.

I remember several things about Ella's birth more clearly than the rest. First, the CD player in my delivery room was broken. So, instead of listening to Ray Charles during the delivery as I had planned, I had to listen to Alan Jackson. His was the only music available to me, via video on CMT. Then, when the nurse showed Ella to me, I couldn't help but to exclaim, "Oh, she looks just like her father!"

But probably my clearest memory (most likely because it is not shrouded in a haze of the epidural) was the night of the 14th. Kevin was sitting with me in the room, and we had Ella with us. My mom had treated us to dinner from Ruth's Chris and had just left. We were watching the Cubs play in the NLCS. They were five outs away from the World Series, as we all know, when Steve Bartman reached out to try to catch a foul ball.

I couldn't believe it when I saw it.

I think about motherhood a lot when I look back on that moment. It's a tough spot to bring a child into. I mean, if even something so inconsequential as sports can be decided by such a cruel hand of fate, what chance have the rest of us?

But Ella doesn't care about that. I don't even know why I cared about the Cubs that year. (Actually, I do. It's because, before I met Kevin, I briefly dated a guy that liked them. Sue me.) So, I guess my issue is not so much with the cruel hand of fate, but with my own lingering doubts about my ability to raise my children without coloring their worldviews with my own superstitions and neuroses.

I gotta tell you, it's tough!

I hope all is well with you.

love, molly

previous post title source: "Tell It To Me," Old Crow Medicine Show