Seven years ago today, I went into labor at the deli counter in the Price Chopper. It was the one day ever that they didn’t offer to help me out to the car with my groceries (she remembers, vindictively)… which was okay, since this little lady didn’t arrive till suppertime the next day.

Her birthday is also the day my mother persona was born. Up till then, I worried that said persona might not make an appearance; I’d sat through all the childbirth videos in Lamaze class thinking, “What greedy little monsters they are! Look at the agony they put their mothers through… and then they want to nurse right afterwards!!”

Then mine was born. The doctor held up the wet, huddled, terrified creature in the palm of his hand and said, “Say hello.” This totally new self ripped out from somewhere in my heart and vowed, “I promise I’ll take care of you! I promise it will be all right!!” That was that. No turning back.

I went looking for a poem, and the very first one I found was Anne Stevenson’s “Poem for a Daughter”:

‘I think I’m going to have it,’
I said, joking between pains.
The midwife rolled competent
sleeves over corpulent milky arms.
‘Dear, you never have it,
we deliver it.’
A judgment years proved true.
Certainly I’ve never had you

as you still have me…

The rest is here. Poetry Friday is at The Simple and the Ordinary today.