What My Mother Gave Me

My mother gave me her worry— that gene that runs through women in my family like a river that never learned to rest. She gave me her hands: small, capable, always reaching for something that needed fixing. She gave me her laugh— loud, the kind that fills a room and embarrasses teenagers and she never, not once, made it smaller for anyone. On Mother's Day we give cards with flowers and cursive that say: You're my everything. But everything is too small. Everything doesn't include the 3 AM feedings. The lunches cut into shapes you didn't ask for. The fights she started with the school, the doctor, the world— because motherhood is a fist made of love and she was always swinging. I am my mother's daughter. I know this because I worry like her, laugh like her, reach for things that need fixing like her— and someday, if I'm lucky, some small person will carry my worry forward and call it love.