Mother’s Day 2021—my first as a single mom and my first without my own mom. 😥

I’ve been thinking a lot about Mother’s Day, especially since the end of March when we lost my mom. I knew it was going to be hard without Dennis this year. Despite the fact that I told him every year that all I wanted was to not have to cook or clean, he went out of his way to find a gift to give me in the morning. And he always bought roses—a dozen for me and a dozen for the child who made me a mother. He didn’t cook, so we would order something and pick it up and just spend the day relaxing.

I had kind of wrapped my head around spending Mother’s Day with just my kid and my brother-in-law and ordering takeout, watching TV, finishing a book. Instead, I invited my dad over, told him I would cook a ham, and we are spending our first Mother’s Day alone together. It’s sad and strange, and it’s definitely not easy. But we’re together.

I was not a very emotional person growing up. I didn’t cry at movies or books, I looked at the more practical side of things, thinking versus feeling if you’re a follower of Myers-Briggs. Generally speaking, I still default to the “thinking” side, but the “feeling” side started to creep in when my first nephew Kyle was born. All of a sudden, there was this innocent child in my life that made me feel a lot of things. The world was a little less practical and a lot more emotional.

I was 32 when Kyle was born. I lived alone, I worked full-time, and I wasn’t dating, so this little boy became the new center in my universe. I was happy to spoil him rotten and had pretty much resigned myself to the idea that I wouldn’t have kids of my own. I always wanted kids, expected to have kids, but I had no desire to be a single mom. No disrespect to all the moms and dads who choose to go it alone, it just wasn’t something I wanted for myself.

When Dennis found his way into my life, we knew we couldn’t wait too long if we wanted kids. I was 36, in love, and about the healthiest I’d been since my 20s. When our first pregnancy ended in a miscarriage, I was devastated and pretty much stayed in bed for a week. So I relished every minute of our second pregnancy, and I will be the first to admit that I had it easy. I was only sick once after a bowl of fresh pineapple (and Corinne absolutely hates pineapple), and I was going up and down from our third-floor apartment to do laundry up until the day I went to the hospital. I never felt a single contraction because they had to give me an epidural to break my water, and I ended up having a C-section 11 days after Corinne’s due date.

And the second they told me she was a girl, I burst into tears. I was happy and I was overwhelmed, and I realized that I really had no idea what love was until that exact moment. I loved my parents, and I loved my siblings. I loved my husband, and I loved my nephews and nieces. But in that moment, I realized that I never really understood the capacity I had to love another human being. In that moment, I understood what it meant to know that you would do anything for someone else’s happiness and well-being. I was a mom, and life would never be the same.

I know how much my mom loved us because I feel it for my own daughter. She told me probably hundreds of times over the course of my life that it didn’t matter how old I got, I would always be her baby girl. She was with me through all the important stuff—graduations, new jobs, my own wedding, the birth of her first granddaughter, and the loss of my husband. Today, I struggle with her loss, without my husband to offer comfort, and knowing that now I’m Mom and Dad to our daughter.

To my mom, your baby girl loves you and misses you. ❤️‍🩹

To my husband, I hope I can fill your shoes for our baby girl. I love you and miss you. #cancersucks 💜

To my daughter, you make me want to be the best mom I can be for you. I love you. 💕

Friday morning, I finished a new book that will release next month (although you should totally pre-order it now). I was going to wait until June to review it, closer to my own birthday because there’s a birthday element to it. But today I read the words “Giving up is easy. It’s finding a way forward that’s tough.” They hit home, and I knew I had to post it today because giving up IS easy, and this mom is fighting to find her way forward.

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Book Review

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
5 Stars for Waiting to Begin by Amanda Prowse

317 pages
Publisher: Lake Union Publishing
Publication Date: June 8, 2021
I received an advance copy of this title from NetGalley and Amazon Publishing UK.

Publisher’s Description

1984. Bessie is a confident 16-year-old girl with the world at her feet, dreaming of what life will bring and what she’ll bring to this life. Then everything comes crashing down. Her bright and trusting smile is lost, banished by shame―and a secret she’ll carry with her for the rest of her life.

2021. The last 37 years have not been easy for Bess. At 53 she is visibly weary, and her marriage to Mario is in tatters. Watching her son in newlywed bliss―the hope, the trust, the joy―Bess knows it is time to face her own demons, and try to save her relationship. But she’ll have to throw off the burden of shame if she is to honor that 16-year-old girl whose dreams lie frozen in time.

Can Bess face her past, finally come clean to Mario, and claim the love she has longed to fully experience all these years?

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Main Characters:

• Bess (Bessie) – the main character whose story unfolds in alternating chapters on her 16th birthday and her 53rd birthday. Bessie has dreams of becoming an air hostess (flight attendant), and Bess serves school lunches for a living.
• Michelle – 16-year-old Bessie’s best friend. They do practically everything together and even plan matching outfits.
• Lawrence – 16-year-old Bessie’s high school crush
• Philip – Bess’s older brother. They are very close as teenagers but have grown distant as adults.
• Mario – 53-year-old Bess’s husband who works on construction sites
• Jack & Natalie – Bess and Mario’s children. Jack starts the book on his honeymoon after marrying Daniel.

Calling Amanda Prowse! 📣 Amanda, please stop making people cry. OK, don’t because we all need a good cry once in a while.

Waiting to Begin is the story of Bess, told in alternating chapters on her 16th birthday and her 53rd birthday. I can relate to a lot of things in this book because I am only two years older than Bess. I used Sun-In, I made mix tapes, I listened to Bonnie Tyler. I mean, what Gen X-er didn’t belt out “Total Eclipse of the Heart” at full volume anytime it came on the radio?

This is how Amanda sets a scene. She makes reference to things that people remember from whatever time she’s talking about. This is how she creates stories that you can get lost in. She makes it so real and relatable that characters like Bess and even Lawrence and Michelle (you’ll understand when you read the book) remind you of people you knew in high school. Everyone knew a Bess, whether you liked her or not. And every high school had a Lawrence. Every single high school had a Lawrence. And then there’s steadfast Mario, the guy that no one really paid attention to in high school (we don’t even meet high school Mario in the book), but he’s stable and solid and totally the guy that girls want to marry.

Neither of Bess’s birthdays go really well in this story, but it is a story worth reading. Bess is not going through a mid-life crisis. It’s more like an unusual and beautiful coming-of-age story. We watch her become a wife and a mother, all the while holding onto a secret that colors every single facet of her life. And she can’t really begin her life until she lets that secret loose.

I have never read an Amanda Prowse book that I didn’t like. I just love her more every time I read a new one. Amanda’s books make you feel her characters’ stories so deeply, and this one is no exception. 💖

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