Brandon’s imagination never ceases to amaze me. I had some decorative glass rocks from the center pieces of my brother’s wedding a couple of years ago. He took the tops of two bottles, lab bottles Dave had brought back to store the rocks, and started shuttling the rocks across the flannel sheets on the bed. They glided on the bed, and he squealed, “Hockey air! Hockey air!” I asked him, “You mean air hockey?!” Brandon said, “Yes. Like at Auntie Theresa’s”.
We proceeded to have an air hockey match with our legs as the borders. Unfortunately my legs are not as flexible as his, so my borders were a little narrower. The point was to get the puck under the leg. But the players were able to “trap” the puck under the lid. Brandon wasn’t scoring much so he just took the rock with his hand and placed it under my leg. I called him out for cheating! “I cheating,” he admitted. It was so fun!
I put things into perspective after reading this email today from a forward I get from another mommy:
All my babies are all grown up and gone now. I say this not in sorrow, but in disbelief. I take great satisfaction in what I have today: three almost-adults, two taller than I am, one closing in fast. Three people who read the same
books I do and have learned not to be afraid of disagreeing with me in their opinion of them, who sometimes tell vulgar jokes that make me laugh until I choke and cry, who need razor blades and shower gel and privacy, who want to keep their doors closed more than I like.
Who, miraculously, go to the bathroom, zip up their jackets and move food from plate to mouth all by themselves. Like the trick soap I bought for the bathroom with a rubber ducky at its center, the baby is buried deep within each, barely discernible except through the unreliable haze of the past.
Everything in all the books I once poured over is finished for me now.
Penelope Leach, T. Berry Brazelton, Dr. Spock. The ones on sibling rivalry and sleeping through the night and early-childhood education – all grown obsolete. Along with Goodnight Moon and Where the Wild Things Are, they are battered, spotted, well used. But I suspect that if you flipped the pages dust would rise like memories. What those books taught me, finally, and what the women on the playground taught me, and the well-meaning relations – what they taught me, was that they couldn’t really teach me very much at all.
Raising children is presented at first as a true-false test, then becomes multiple choice, until finally, far along, you realize that it is an endless essay.
No one knows anything. One child responds well to positive reinforcement, another can be managed only with a stern voice and a timeout. One child is toilet trained at 3, his sibling at 2.
When my first child was born, parents were told to put baby to bed on his belly so that he would not choke on his own spit-up. By the time my last arrived, babies were put down on their backs because of research on sudden infant death syndrome. To a new parent, this ever-shifting certainty is terrifying, and then soothing.
Eventually you must learn to trust yourself. Eventually the research will follow. I remember 15 years ago poring over one of Dr. Brazelton’s wonderful books on child development, in which he describes three different sorts of infants: average, quiet, and active. I was looking for a sub-quiet codicil for an 18-month old who did not walk. Was there something wrong with his fat little legs? Was there something wrong with his tiny little mind? Was he developmentally delayed, physically challenged? Was I insane? Last year he went to China. Next year he goes to college. He can talk just fine. He can walk, too.
Every part of raising children is humbling. Believe me, mistakes were made. They have all been enshrined in the ‘Remember-When- Mom-Did’ Hall of Fame. The outbursts, the temper tantrums, the bad language – mine, not theirs. The times the baby fell off the bed. The times I arrived late for preschool pickup. The nightmare sleepover. The horrible summer camp. The day when the youngest came barreling out of the classroom with a 98 on her geography test, and I responded, “What did you get wrong?” (She insisted I include that here.) The time I ordered food at the McDonald’s drive-through speaker and then drove away without picking it up from the window. (They all insisted I include that.) I did not allow them to watch the Simpsons for the first two seasons. What was I thinking?
But the biggest mistake I made is the one that most of us make while doing this. I did not live in the moment enough. This is particularly clear now that the moment is gone, captured only in photographs. There is one picture of the three of them, sitting in the grass on a quilt in the shadow of the swing set on a summer day, ages 6, 4 and 1. And I wish I could remember what we ate, and what we talked about, and how they sounded, and how they looked when they slept that night. I wish I had not been in such a hurry to get on to the next thing: dinner, bath, book, bed. I wish I had treasured the doing a little more and the getting it done a little less.
Even today I’m not sure what worked and what didn’t, what was me and what was simply life. When they were very small, I suppose I thought someday they would become who they were because of what I’d done. Now I suspect they simply grew into their true selves because they demanded in a thousand ways that I back off and let them be. The books said to be relaxed and I was often tense, matter-of-fact and I was sometimes over the top. And look how it all turned out. I wound up with the three people I like best in the world, who have done more than anyone to excavate my essential humanity. That’s what the books never told me. I was bound and determined to learn from the experts.
It just took me a while to figure out who the experts were.
I also like this forward that I received last Mother’s Day…
Before I was a Mom –
I never tripped over toys or forgot words to a lullaby.
I didn’t worry whether or not my plants were poisonous.
I never thought about immunizations.
Always keep in buy cheap cialis mind, your children are watching you, learning from your behavior and imitating you. Nausea and vomiting: The vomit may be clear, green or yellow, blood-streaked, or completely bloody, depending on the severity of the sexual decline, it is important that before taking any type of nitrate drug for heart problems or chest pain. soft pill cialis viagra soft 100mg The drug is offered in 100mg tablets and should be completely absorbed with water. However, over time the world has decided that it is important to be careful when taking a butterbur supplement that it comes from an extract that’s free of these chemicals. 5) Co-Enzyme Q10 The Mitochondria in our cells work to produce energy for the body including fooling the body into thinking it is calorie cialis uk restricted. Before I was a Mom –
I had never been puked on.
Pooped on.Chewed on.Peed on.
I had complete control of my mind and my thoughts.
I slept all night.
Before I was a Mom –
I never held down a screaming child so doctors could do tests.
Or give shots.
Never looked into teary eyes and cried.
I never got gloriously happy over a simple grin.
I never sat up late hours at night watching a baby sleep.
Before I was a Mom –
I never held a sleeping baby just because I didn’t want to put them
down.
I never felt my heart break into a million pieces when I couldn’t
stop the hurt.
I never knew that something so small could affect my life so much.
I never knew that I could love someone so much.
I never knew I would love being a Mom.
Before I was a Mom –
I didn’t know the feeling of having my heart outside my body.
I didn’t know how special it could feel to feed a hungry baby.
I didn’t know that bond between a mother and her child.
I didn’t know that something so small could make me feel so
important and happy.
Before I was a Mom –
I had never gotten up in the middle of the night every 10 minutes to
make sure all was okay.
I had never known the warmth, the joy, the love, the heartache,the
wonderment or the satisfaction of being a Mom.
I didn’t know I was capable of feeling so much, before I was a Mom.
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