Sometimes I'm on another planet

I defended my thesis on Tuesday. Thursday I attended a lecture and went to mt Stats class (I curse my freshman-year-self nearly every day for not finishing these two 100-level generals with the rest of the freshman at BYU. It always seemed easier to take them Later. Now that Later is here I'm thinking Earlier may have actually been the better choice. But I digress...)

When I'm on campus it feels as if I never left (for a week) to, you know, HAVE A BABY. People ask me how motherhood is and it feels so disconnected from where I am at that moment: school. My school-self and my mother-self aren't acquaintances. I feel like they're parts of two lives. Last semester--with all its art and craziness--seems like a lifetime ago. But a lifetime I revisit now and again when I actually go to class. Weird.

Thinking about motherhood as I walk around Cougar Campus, it feels like a foreign place. But on the same token, when I think that I'm technically still a student and that I have a midterm in a few weeks, school seems just as far away.

Why can't I reconcile the two parts into one me? Maybe it's because of the newness of everyday that I still don't feel like I'm living in my own skin. This child is mine? This child is mine. This child is mine! And I can't get enough of her. Because I'm her mama. She knows my face and my voice and when she's fussy people hand her to me, rather than some other mother-figure in the room. Because I'm the mama. I'm her mama. I make her feel calm and safe and quiet. And I can't get over it.

I was asked to write up a paragraph of the greatest accomplishments of my undergraduate career. I still haven't finished it. In fact, my cursor is blinking after the first sentence of my brainstorming document: I gave birth to a perfectly beautiful baby girl. (insert blinking cursor here).

It just hit me again. Holy crap.