Chicken And Cheese » motherhood

Maybe We’re Doing Something Right

Mrs. Chicken — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 06:16:22 +0000

We went to our favorite soda fountain this weekend, the one that fits in with my fantasy of what life in a small Midwestern town should be like.

The tin ceiling and gleaming mirrors behind the long marble counter are straight out of set design. The two women who own the shop bustle about delivering meals and smiles on a round platter.

They make all their own ice cream and candy, and that was enough of a promise to quell the momentary rise of rebellion when I announced that we’d be taking a drive to the outlet mall to get The Babyman some new shoes.The restaurant is just a mile or two from the ugly red buildings housing the Jockey outlet store, an Old Navy and the only Stride Rite for 100 miles.

After we ordered The Poo was restless. She was hungry for lunch, she whined for ice cream before her grilled cheese. She pulled on her father’s elbow and looked up at him.

“Dad?” she said.

“Yes,” replied Mr. C, exasperated.

“What’s the secret to the world?” she asked.

We glanced at each other over her head, amused. “What do you think it is?” my husband countered.

The girl muttered something and her father asked her to speak up. She cleared her throat and spoke louder this time.

“I think it is loving each other, saying please and thank you, and picking up litter,” she said, crossing her arms over her chest and leaning back in her chair, awaiting our judgment.

My husband looked away quickly, but before he did I saw the quick tears spring to his eyes. He swallowed hard and stared straight ahead, a fist pressed to his mouth.

Just then, The Babyman reached for me and pulled my face to his, offering for the very first time a kiss. He pressed his lips to mine and I looked at him and laughed, delighted and surprised. My husband looked at us and rubbed at his wet eyes.

This was a hard week for him. Or rather, this has been a hard three years for him. He often feels pulled this way and that, torn between working day and night to finish his degree so we can move on and taking the time to spend with our children and me.

He is struggling. He feels lost.

In that moment, though, I saw my girl shine like a beacon for us both. Her innocent words, delivered with the utmost sincerity, are lessons we try so hard to teach her.

Love each other above all, we tell her. We have to love; we share what we have with others, no matter how humble our gifts, to show our gratitude for the love that is bestowed upon us.

We pay it forward, we open our hearts. It isn’t always easy or comfortable to do that, but we do our very best.

Saturday in a crowded soda fountain in the middle of nowhere, we got a glimpse of our daughter’s heart, and it was the most beautiful sight we’d ever laid eyes on.

New Eyes

Mrs. Chicken — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 04:40:53 +0000

She is slight, with curly blond hair and a wide smile. She is soft-spoken and modest and has the air of a girl sheltered from the ugliness of the world.

I show her into the family room. I am embarrassed by the stains on the carpet and damp with perspiration from a frantic, last-minute attempt to tidy up before she arrives.

“Wow,” she says, turning her head slowly this way and that. “You have such a nice house! It is so big!”

I’m taken aback; I mumble my thanks and bid her sit down on the couch, wincing as she pulls a toy out from underneath her. She holds it in her hands, bones as delicate as a bird, and smiles at me.

“You are so organized!” she exclaims. “I would never know that two kids live here.”

I look around the room, puzzled by what she sees. What does she see that I don’t?

***

The streets around our home are lined with overgrown trees. Their trunks are gnarled and bent, and they look irritable, like the elderly men who shuffle out their front doors clad in slippers to fetch the mail.

When we looked for a house during a hectic three-day trip to the Midwest, I winced at the low-slung ranch homes with gravel driveways. The streets, without sidewalks, looked so ugly in comparison to the wide boulevards through which I pushed my daughter in her stroller.

Four autumns later, I walk the same streets that once made me flinch, homesick before I ever left home. My second child, a son, turns his face to catch the breeze on his tongue. My phone is tucked in my pocket, a strange reminder of a new life that requires me to be available at a moment’s notice for a far-away voice in New York City.

We walk, The Babyman and I, when he is restless. The bump-bump-bump of the wheels on the rutted road soothe us both. A man in a faded ballcap waves at us, smiling at the small boy with the blue, blue eyes.

“G’mornin!” he shouts. “Nice day for a walk!”

We smile back, my boy and I, as we take a left down Easy Street. The houses are humble and well-worn, some loved and some neglected. On the corner of Easy Street and Rainbow View, a jaunty white jeep pulls into a driveway.

The screen door creaks open and I catch a glimpse of an elderly woman, her body heavy with age, in a bright pink sweatsuit. She waits patiently as a young woman pulls a covered tray of food from the car.

Tears prick at the back of my eyes as I reach down to adjust the stroller’s canopy. “Babyman,” I murmur. “Mama loves her babyman.”

***

It’s been years since my vision was so clear. I see now, with 20/20 hindsight, how I let the past five years slip through my fingers. I mourned—deeply, legitimately—the death of my father. But the years that followed that first, terrible one are lost to me forever.

Months and days when beauty existed in the world. Months and days when my blessings mounted into great, shining hills and I turned my eyes from the riches. Months and days when my children were tender babies.

I struggled with the decsion—nay, the admission—that depression had mangled my personality to the point where I no longer recognized the woman in the mirror. Her eyes were so angry, so dead. She woke up angry and went to bed with sadness in her heart.

Morning, though it comes early, is welcome. Morning is when my children greet me with flushed cheeks and sleepy eyes. Morning is when I hold them close to my heart and breathe them in. I am in love, fully and completely and with abandon.

***

I wonder about the woman in the pink sweatsuit, the one on the corner of Easy Street. I think about the home of my youth, with its gleaming oak floors and bookcases filled with hard-back novels. I think of the journey from there to here and I hope against hope that when I am that woman, that woman in the pink sweatsuit, that I can look back over my years without regret.

In the distance I hear a siren and watch as an ambulance passes one street over. I cross myself, furtively, and whisper a prayer:

Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee …

I think of my father, speeding through dark streets to meet his final dawn.

We get home, The Babyman and I, and walk to the front porch with sunshine in our eyes. I hold his hand and help him navigate the cement steps to the door, his gleaming, upturned face so open and fearless.

His eyes lock with mine, the love so strong that I almost have to look away.

I don’t.

Instead, I usher him in the front door and drop to my knees. I hold him close to my body and feel my heart open, fully, painfully … finally.

Fiercely

Mrs. Chicken — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 04:40:11 +0000

I’m tired, so tired. But she looks at me, crazy quilt pulled up to her chin.

Just one song? Stay for one song, Mama.

I see myself in the kitchen, standing at the laptop, pounding out 300 words of drivel as she twirls around me.

Read to me, Mama?

No.

Sing with me, Mama?

No.

Can we make brownies, Mama?

No.

I’m busy.

I hate that word, Mama.

What word?

Busy.

I see her there in her bed, and I know when she wakes in the morning she will be different. That this moment will be lost. That it cannot be retrieved.

My ambitions are eating me up—my time, my attention, my focus is on the world outside my kitchen window. I peer into the computer screen and see my hopes and dreams there. I see a future made of words and phone calls and successes.

I don’t want to lose them. I don’t want them to remember me tethered to a keyboard. I don’t want them to gently mock me, when they are grown, for being too busy to play with them.

So I get into her bed.

I melt into her, my body relaxing around hers. When did she get so tall? I wasn’t looking. She asks me to rub her head, and so I do.

She sighs, turns her face to mine and fits it underneath my chin. I love you, Mama. Stay with me, Mama.

I miss her. I miss her so much when she is at school. She is the last thought in my head when I finally fall asleep. After all the noise of the day, all of the editors and the business meetings and the legal documents and the contracts.

They fall away, and she is what remains, and she is what I hold into, fiercely.

Career Killer?

Mrs. Chicken — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 05:00:34 +0000

When The Poo was born, our plan was for my mom to watch her when I went back to work.

My first day back in the office was snowy and cold. I sucked in my tummy and zipped up my trousers, pulled on knee socks. I bundled The Poo up in fleece pajamas and a blanket.

We set off on the treacherous roads to my mother’s house. She lived on the lake shore, and as we approached the flurries thickened. The windshield wipers beat a rhythmic chant: go home go home go home.

Still, I pushed on. Turning into the driveway, my tears started and they didn’t stop until the day in April when I filed for a disability leave to deal with my post-partum depression. Leaving my precious girl every day—even with her grandmother—on top of my fresh grief, drove me to the razor’s edge that spring.

I could not stand it. In July, I made peace with that fact and signed my resgination letter with a rueful smile on my face. It was official—I was a stay-at-home mother.

***

These memories came flooding back when I read a post on Becky and Hollee’s blog yesterday morning. They reference an essay by an associate professor at the University of California, who wrestles with the question of whether or not a third child is a “career killer.”

Hollee asked me to pop over and maybe comment, and I couldn’t resist doing so. I could have written a novel over there, so I decided to take the topic up here, instead.

First of all, I think calling a child a career killer says everything about how motherhood is viewed in our society, doesn’t it?

Killer. Think about that powerful word for a minute.

*taps foot*

Now think about your kid.

See? WRONG WORD.

Children do bring change. They bring chaos and filth and imbalance. They bring a frenetic pace. They also bring joy, warmth, love and endless fascination to your day.

I love my children, and I say with confidence that most women like me love theirs, as well. I know many women who have careers they love, but I sincerely doubt that they would ever choose their work over their child if put to the test.

I chose my child over what was then just a job. My career ended four years before her birth, when I left community journalism for markeing in the interest of my personal life and my finances. I could not have a family or a normal relationship—or a positive balance in my checking account—if I continued on that path at that time.

I made a choice before I made a child.

So when the child came and it was so heartwrenching to leave her every day for eight hours of paper-pushing, the decision to abandon my hefty paycheck and soul-sucking day job made sense—it made sense for me.

Having children gave me the courage and yes, the freedom, to pursue my heart’s desire. I revived my writing career right here on this blog, the blog that was inspired mostly by my new motherhood.

My child? She breathed new life into my career.

I know my story isn’t common. Or maybe it is. I do know that if my body would bear it, I would have a third child. My heart fills up at the mere thought of my daughter and my son. When I look up from my laptop and the words dancing on the screen in front of me, I see their faces and I know my life is just as it should be.

Corporate life was a noose around my neck. My girl slipped if off me. She gave me permission to be who I am, inside my heart.

What about you? Did your kids kill your career? What conflicts do you have about motherhood in all it’s forms, WOHM, WAHM, SAHM?

Tell me. I want to know.

I’m Just Going To Put Down Some Hay And Be Done With It

Mrs. Chicken — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 01:48:24 +0000

I am convinced that when my children go to bed, they unzip their human suits and reveal their real selves—tiny, adorable, DISGUSTING PIGS.

I had an unexpectedly light work load today, and The Babyman was remarkably cooperative. He slept late and took a textbook-perfect nap. I had plenty of writing I could have done during those hours, but instead I literally got down on my hands and knees to clean.

The kitchen floor—and the family-room rug, for that matter—were filthy. Like, so filthy that the entire population of a third-world country could subsist on the food on my floors.

DISGUSTING, I tell you. PIGS.

I spent two hours washing dishes, floors and counter-tops. I vacuumed. I dusted and stowed toys in their proper places. I got behind the fence and cleaned up all of The Poo’s teeny-tiny Polly Pockets shoes.

And by the way, the person who is responsible for Polly Pockets? A firing squad is too good for that person. That person should be covered in raw meat and eaten by wild dogs.

At 3 p.m. I left the house to fetch The Poo from school. By 4 p.m., my house was wrecked. Wrecked, I tell you! Some brown substance, either chocolate or feces, was all over my sofa. And the floor?

Littered with sweaty socks, shoes, tote bags, papers, toys, and yes! Food! Where are they getting all this fucking FOOD? There are Goldfish crackers in every corner of my home.

Hey, I think I just pulled a Goldfish cracker out of my ass!

And speaking of asses, can someone please tell me why when one of my children poops, the other is compelled to poop at the exact same time, or directly thereafter? Why? WHY?

At 8 p.m. tonight I descended the stairs to see my filthy family room and dirty kitchen. I hadn’t eaten yet, but couldn’t rest or consume an ounce of food until those two rooms were clean again.

So it’s official, I am my mother. She could never rest until the house was tidy again, and I could never understand why. Now, I do. She needed order after a disorderly day, and all her days—like mine—were, by definition, disorderly.

Order is necessary. And so, I clean. While the children sleep their piggy sleep in their neat beds.

Or, I could just cover the floors with hay and be done with it.

Yeah. You know what? I am totally going to do that.

Growing Pains

Mrs. Chicken — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 16:01:56 +0000

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

Which Comes First, The Parents or The Kids?

Mrs. Chicken — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 14:58:19 +0000

I’m still resting up, or at least as much as I can considering that The Babyman is handing me the car keys and begging me to “Go! Go!” So I asked my newest blog friend, Hollee Schwartz Temple, to guest post for me.

Hollee is another wonderful woman brought into my life by my friend and partner in The BIG BIG Project. I thought I was too old and too strange and, frankly, too weary to make new friends at this late stage in my life, but I keep meeting these kindred souls who make me feel so much less alone in the world. Hollee is a fantastic writer and an even better person. Please read this and then go visit her at Becky And Hollee.

***

I’m sitting in a line of parents waiting to register my kids for swimming lessons. I got here an hour and a half early. With only 14 slots for the coveted 6 p.m. class, I wasn’t risking it. So I’ve parked myself in a blue and gold folding chair to ponder a recent Wall Street Journal article on “The Myth of the Overscheduled Child.”

Ahh … the irony of it all. While I’m waiting, my younger son is attending a shofar-building activity; my older one is at a football scrimmage for 7-year-olds. A team of four adults is criss-crossing Morgantown to support these critical after-school endeavors.

But the Journal says I shouldn’t worry that I’m pushing my kids into early Xanax use because “only 6% of children spend more than 20 hours a week on extracurricular activities,” and even those kids are doing fine.

Twenty hours a week — that’s the threshold for overscheduled? It’s hard to believe that any kid would thrive on that many hours of activity, but what about the parents? If I had to schlep my boys to more than 20 hours of extracurriculars, it wouldn’t be long before I’d be steering my Honda toward the closest bridge.

Our summer’s activity list was long, varied, and bordering on crazy … two baseball camps, two basketball camps, thrice-weekly allergy shots, twice-a-week tae kwon do, family yoga on Mondays, kids’ bowling league on Fridays. I tag-teamed with our incredibly energetic 22-year-old babysitter, and the kids loved it.

I, on the other hand, felt completely exhausted by sunset.

So we started this new semester by setting some limits. G is 7, and he is just doing yoga, swimming, and football. H is almost 5, so only yoga and swimming for him.

We’re nowhere close to 20 hours, so I guess by the Journal’s standards we’re in the clear.

And yet this evening’s schedule felt like one of those LSAT analysis problems that I couldn’t conquer — there were simply too many moving parts.

You know what? I’m just not that concerned about this tipping point that the Journal mentioned, this netherworld where some small percentage of kids do too much and get sucked into the anxiety vortex.

Honestly, I’m much more worried about the parents. We’re the ones who coordinate and orchestrate and collapse after our yoga/football/swimming-weary kiddos are tucked in and tuckered out. We’re the ones who need to glue on our smiles after a crappy day at work, or feed them something halfway nutritious (even if, like today for me, we never managed to fit eating into our personal schedules).

Part of me longs for the time when I was one of those 20-plus hour kids who reveled in a jam-packed day planner. I’d get up at 4 a.m. to study before school and fill my evenings with a relay of singing and dancing classes until it was time to do it all again.

But can anyone keep up that kind of pace over the long haul? By cramming activities into every spare minute, are we asking too much of our children, and much more importantly, of ourselves?

Oops … the swimming gods are finally letting me fork over my $150 for another semester of activity. And then it’s off to pick up H, while hubby swings by to get G.

Sigh. This will have to be good enough for today, but I’m vowing to put the focus back on me tomorrow. I know all four of us will be better for it. –Hollee

***
Hollee Schwartz Temple directs the legal writing program at West Virginia University College of Law. Holding both undergraduate and graduate degrees from Northwestern University’s journalism school and a J.D. from Duke University School of Law, Hollee writes a bi-monthly national column on work/life balance issues for the ABA Journal, read by half of the country’s one million lawyers. She is currently working with former Chicago Sun-Times journalist Becky Beaupre Gillespie on a nonfiction book that will chronicle how the mothers of her generation are redefining success and feminism by refusing to settle for lives they don’t want.

An active scholar, speaker, and blogger, Hollee has been published in newspapers (including the Miami Herald, Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, and Michigan City News-Dispatch), national law reviews and legal writing publications. She is married to nonfiction author John Temple, and is the mother of Gideon, 7, and Henry, 4.

Nap Attack

Mrs. Chicken — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 17:54:12 +0000

I talk about The Babyman’s sleep habits a lot. Specifically, his naps.

With his health issues and terrible reflux as an infant, his sleep was always hard-won and therefore, very precious. The first five weeks of his life were miserable for everyone—especially The Babyman. His undiagnosed laryngomalacia and resulting reflux combined to make him scream bloody murder every time he was placed on his back.

After a scary hospitalization and some medications, all was well.

Execpt for the fact that I was unable to let him cry it out. I knew in my head that he was fine, but my mother-gut couldn’t listen to his misery. I rushed to him, cuddled him, released him from his crib.

The result? Tired baby, tired mama … basically, chaos.

In December we Ferberized him, on the heels of a stressful holiday trip that saw our Babyman awake and screaming in three different states.

It took just a few days to teach him how to sleep on his own, and it was glorious. Glorious! We all got a full night’s sleep, and all was right with the world.

Until, that is, he started to boycott his naps.

If you follow me on Twitter, you know that I am obsessed with making sure The Babyman naps. I can’t help it. His erractic daytime sleep habits make me crazy. He needs that nap. His little body is busy every minute, running and climbing and generally scaring me to death with his dare-devilry.

Even when he takes two solid naps a day, I am a wreck by the time he goes to bed. The house is destroyed, with all my energy poured into watching him to ensure he lives to maraud on a new day.

We’re in a bad period for naps right now—I think he’s going from two naps to one and the transition is messing us both up. We don’t know when to wake up, we don’t know when to sleep … do I put him down in the morning? Do I wait for the afternoon? What if I have to wake him to go pick up his sister?

It may seem histrionic to you, but man, I need him to nap. I do.

I need that two hours or so to collect myself, to tidy up the mess he leaves in his wake, to manage my own personal hygiene.

I need that two hours or so for my mental health.

The Poo stopped napping at 27 months and it nearly broke us both. That winter—our first here on the prairie—was the longest, darkest winter of my motherhood. She and I fought each other like tigers, until I gave in and learned how to negotiate a day that was all toddler, all the time.

That was when I hired a babysitter.

Right now we’re in between sitters, and the days are still long. The sun rises early and sets late, and we struggle to find our footing on a new schedule. The Poo is gone at school all day, leaving me alone to occupy the brother she plays with so well.

I love my son with all my heart. Each day sees me more in love with him than the last. I fall asleep with his fluttery black eyelashes and impish smile curled in the palm of my hands.

But if he doesn’t start napping again soon, I am going to have to run away from home. Does that make me a bad mother? Do you feel the same way, or am I being selfish?

Ballad Of A Babyman

Mrs. Chicken — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 17:17:14 +0000

Two weeks ago I surrendered my Nikon D80 to the fine folks at BestBuy. The auto-focus wasn’t working.

Now, if you know anything about the D80, you know that this is a camera meant to be used on manual. Any photographer worth her salt could cope with using the manual focus. So why didn’t I just soldier on?

One—I’m not a very good photographer. I just happen to have a wonderful camera that makes my snapshots look better than they do when I use my iPhone.

Two—The Babyman.

Oh, The Babyman.

The Babyman begs to be photographed. His blue eyes and his ripe-peach cheeks are a siren song for the lens. He grows and changes so quickly that I often grab my camera to capture that one moment when he is 12 months and two days old, because he will never, ever look that way again—not the way he looks at that moment.

But The Babyman? He never stops moving.

For the past three days, he’s been in full nap-boycott mode, rising before dawn and refusing to close his eyes for more than 15 minutes during the day. I kid you not—yesterday the child woke at 6 a.m. and napped for exactly 21 minutes.

After that? He was awake until he went to bed at 7:15, despite three attempts to lay him in his crib for at least some quiet time.

But no. He wailed and flailed and cried for me so pathetically that after an hour of listening to him plead for his freedom, I caved and fetched him from his maple-and-blue-blanket prison.

He climbed the sofa. He tried to get inside the dryer. He opened every cupboard containing dangerous chemicals. He got into the sippy-cup drawer and industriously emptied it. Later, I found a princess cup tucked inside the food processor, it’s matching lid snuggled inside a sauce pan.

He bumped his head, bit his tongue, stubbed his toe. He ate two Goldfish crackers, a raspberry and a handful of peas for dinner, turning up his nose at any source of protein offered to him.

He tore off his bib, did an authentic Houdini impression during a diaper change, and threw an actual baseball with such force that I felt compelled to duck when the sphere hurtled toward my torso.

Finally, during his bath, he stood up and strode across the tub, slipping on the plastic and his wet sister, bashing his head into the faucet—which, thankfully, is encased in sleeve made to look like a grinning rubber duck.

He turned to me—Mama! Mama!—bleating like a lamb. He rubbed his enormous eyes and reached for me. “All done!” he said, opening and closing his hands in his toddler wave. “All done!”

All done, indeed.

Wrapped in a towel with a hood, he looked like a baby again. I kissed him vigorously on the mouth, getting a wiggle and a wail for my trouble.

Lotion, powder, diaper, pajamas. Hair brush, hugs and kisses. A bottle and a soft, brown monkey with a blanket for body.

Lights out.

The Babyman is on his way to becoming a boy, walking the plank every day as he gets bolder and bolder. As the captain of his ship, I hold my breath each time he gets to the edge, peering down into the deep blue sea. I want to reach out, grab the tail of his shirt, haul him back to safety.

My little pirate is so brave, so fearless. And I am a-swoon with admiration. He is everything I am not, but I can say with some authority that despite our differences, I made him.

But with every passing moment, and with every blurry photograph, he becomes ever more himself.

The Babyman.

Year One

Mrs. Chicken — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 05:00:20 +0000

My darling boy,

You are my sweetheart, my love, my Babyman. You are the moon to your sister’s sun, your gravitational pull keeps me grounded. You wake up every morning with a Cheshire cat grin on your small face, and you raise up your arms to me, pointing to the door.

Today, my son, you are one.

Twelve months ago this morning, I sat, ripe and impatient, on a doctor’s table. You rolled and kicked inside me as I waited to be sent home for another day of pushing your foot out of my ribcage.

Instead, she sat down and flipped open our chart, frowning at the results of my ultrasound. She saw something she didn’t like, and she told me you needed to come out.

We made our calls and packed my bag, and set off for a new world. Five hours later, a masked woman pushed and pulled and let out a surprised chuckle: He’s a big boy!

They held you up for me to see, and whisked you away. Your daddy took your picture while the doctors put me back together again, and finally, he laid your cheek against mine for a kiss.

The day you were born, Henry, hundreds of strangers welcomed you with love and well wishes. A woman I’ve never laid eyes on sent us a flower in the hospital. You—and I—were supported from all corners of the world. It moved me to tears, that love from afar.

Now, each day, I wake to your rosy cheeks, your beaming smile, your contagious laugh. You are precocious, anxious to catch up with your pirouetting sister. You walked well before you should have, and you climb the furniture with the determination of a Tibetan Sherpa.

You love blueberries and bananas, spaghetti and meatballs. Your first word was cookie, and you enunciate “Daddy” with the diction of true love.

You rarely say Mama. But when you do, it is with your head tucked inside the space between my neck and my ear. I open my arms to you, legs a wide V, and invite you in.

“Hug?” I ask.

Your face lights with a smile and you toddle to me, arms thrown up in the air. You approach me so slowly, so shyly. You put your arms around my neck, bury your face in me. Hmmmmmmmm, you say.

In that moment, I know.

I know you know that I am yours. And I am, my sweetheart. I am your mama, now and forever. And never was a mama more blessed. This past year with you brought more love into my heart than I ever thought possible.

Happy first birthday, Henry. Mama loves you.

Chicken And Cheese » motherhood

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