Growing Pains

The past two weeks have been eye-opening—or more accurately, soul-opening.

Yesterday was a long day, even with four hours of babysitting under my belt. I had a lot to do, both professionally and around the house, and so The Babyman was trapped inside with me most of the day.

Then, when we finally ventured out to fetch The Poo, she poured out all of her hurt feelings from a tiff with an alpha girl at her school. The child, whose name I won’t mention, has figured prominently in The Poo’s school tales ever since the first day.

She loves this girl, looks up to her as a Big Kindergartner. The child in question told The Poo that she “wasn’t her best friend anymore.”

My girl, her heart was broken.

That set the tone for our late afternoon, always a time of insanity. Both my children call the hours between 4 and 6 p.m. the witching hour. They always have, since birth.

The Babyman bounced around the kitchen like a pinball, pulling pots and pans out at my feet as I struggled to make an edible dinner. The Poo moaned and complained and refused to undertake any task required of her—including emptying her bladder.

By 8 p.m, when both were tucked into their beds, Mr. C and I were wiped out.

As we are wont to do, we couldn’t help talking about our lovies, even though we were both relieved to see them off to Dreamland.

As we marveled over our creations, I had an epiphany.

Ever since The Babyman was born, and in fact well before that, I have been closed down. Hunkered into a small, tight ball, my heart rigid with fear and worry. There is so much to fear: joblessness, The Babyman’s early health problems, the sibling rivalry that I fretted about and which has since come to pass.

I started a new gig just after the boy was born, perhaps pushing myself to work harder than I should have at that stressful time.

All of these concerns—some concocted, some real—left me numb.

Lately, since I’ve owned up to my brain chemistry and admitted both privately and publicly that I was struggling, I feel a flowering of love inside my heart.

I am falling in love with The Babyman the way I wanted to when he was an infant. I am so full of affection for him that he squirms in my embrace when I squeeze him a little too often. I want to kiss him all day long, I laugh at his antics, feeling the rock inside me shatter as he breaks every barrier we set before him.

He is magnificent, my son is.

And my girl, oh! My little baby, the child who made us a family, she is so beautiful and smart. Today she told me that two plus five is seven as she swung her lunch box in front of her knees. She is just like me in so many ways, so sensitive and so fearful of the new.

But she is an open book, her emotions—good, bad and ugly—all right there on her face for the world to see. I want her to be that way forever, I want to show her that there is a better, brighter path than the one I trod for so many years, my eyes trained on the ground instead of the big, blue sky.

“Mom,” she said, this morning. “Last night I had growing pains.”

Oh, my girl, I thought as I hugged her tight. Me, too.

***

By the way, welcome to my new site. Eternal thanks and a pint raised to my English friend and biggest fan, Jon Beckett. He worked into the wee hours of the night last night, all out of the goodness of his heart, to make my site as clean and flexible as my soul feels right now.

I am on the verge of a sea change. Won’t you come with me?

Photo courtesy of urimland