The day my mom left (and motherhood really began)

My mom arrived in Canada on September 12th. I was still pregnant.

And I lived those last days of that pregnancy exactly how I’d always hoped I would: walking with her, eating good food, preparing the baby’s clothes, doing the things you do slowly when you know time is limited and you’re careful with it because it is.

Baby I. arrived on September 23rd. Eleven days after my mom landed.

Learning to be a mom alongside my own

There’s something nobody tells you about having your mom with you when your baby is born: doing it together changes everything.

Not just the first days with the baby. The first days of me. That new version of me who didn’t know anything and was scared of everything and sometimes cried for no clear reason. Having her there, in that process, was the greatest gift of that year.

We spent Christmas together. New Year’s together.

We had gone two years without sharing those dates — her in Colombia, me in Canada — and suddenly there were four of us: my mom, my husband, me, and a three-month-old who didn’t understand any of it but was the center of all of it.

We didn’t do anything spectacular. But being together was everything.

January 9th

Her flight was that day.

We were together until the end. We shared things, we hugged, we had lunch, we had coffee, we told each other how much we loved each other. That kind of day you wish would never end but ends anyway.

At 7:20 in the evening we all headed to the airport.

My mom was sitting next to the baby in the car. And Baby I. — who doesn’t talk, who doesn’t understand calendars, who doesn’t know what a flight or a goodbye is — took her hand. And didn’t let go the whole way there.

As if she knew.

The airport

We arrived. The time came to say goodbye.

My mom was leaving her baby. And her baby’s baby. That’s a double pain I don’t know how to describe.

She picked up Baby I. She held her up. She said beautiful things I’m not going to repeat here because they were just for her. She gave her all the love that fits in an airport and in four months and in a whole lifetime of loving well.

And she handed her back to me.

I passed her to my husband. And I hugged my mom.

Hard. Trying not to cry. Trying not to let her see that I needed her. That I wasn’t ready to let her go. That I wanted to say stay even though I knew perfectly well it was time.

It was time.

Since that day

The next morning I woke up alone with the baby. My husband works. And the new routine was exactly that: me and Baby I., all day, alone.

I went from having her there every day — fighting and loving and eating together and figuring out the baby together and laughing when Baby I. did something funny — to having only the memory of all of that.

It’s not that she’s gone. She texts. She calls. She’s there.

But she’s on the other side of an almost seven-hour flight. And when Baby I. does something for the first time and I want to share it, I share it over video. We talk every day. And that’s different. It’s not bad. But it’s different.

What nobody tells you about immigrant motherhood

It’s not that you’re alone from the beginning. Sometimes you have help, you have your mom, you have that support system you managed to build in another country.

The blow isn’t the constant absence.

The blow is the goodbye.

It’s knowing that at some point — at the birth, at Christmas, at whatever — the person you love most in the world is going to have to leave. And you’re going to have to keep going. And you’ll be able to do it. But that day at the airport, in that moment, it won’t feel possible.

And yet you’ll do it anyway.

I’ll see her again soon. I know.

But it doesn’t stop being hard to say goodbye again.

Did you also have to say goodbye to someone important after your baby arrived? Tell me in the comments.