And a woman who held a babe against her bosom said
“Speak to us of children”
Your children are not your children
They are the sons and daughters of life’s longing for itself
They come through you but not from you
And though they are with you yet they belong not to you
You may give them your love but not your thoughts
For they have their own thoughts
You may house their bodies but not their souls
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow
Which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams
You may strive to be like them
But seek not to make them like you
For life goes not backward, nor tarries with yesterday
You are the bows from which your children
As living arrows are sent forth
The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite
And he bends you with his might
That his arrows may go swift and far
Let your bending in the archer’s hand be for gladness
For even as he loves the arrow that flies
So he loves also the bow that is stable
– Kahlil Gibran
When I was young – long before having children – I remember sitting around the dinner table when one of my aunts told me that she never found out the baby’s sex for any of her five pregnancies. Some of my cousins were aghast: how could you not find out when the information was available to you??
There are so few true surprises in life, she ruminated. The moment you meet your baby is among the best, the most beautiful. “It’s a boy!!” “It’s a girl!!” Why would you want to deprive yourself of that wonderful moment?
I was sold. I knew then that I would only find out my own child’s sex on its birthday. And because I went on to marry a (wise) man who followed my lead on all decisions related to pregnancies and preferences, this is exactly what we did.
Many people were shocked when they found out we were waiting to be surprised. “I could never do it; I’m too much of a planner,” they would often tell me. But nursery design, or baby registry supplies, or name selection, or even simply being able to better picture the life growing inside of me… none of these were compelling enough reasons for me to trade for that best, most beautiful surprise moment.
On J’s birthday (7 years ago tomorrow), I go into labor and have an infant in my arms only 7 hours later. It is fast and furious, and because it’s my first, I misunderstand and think the level of pain is going to sustain for the better part of the entire day. I certainly don’t realize that it’s so intense because I am already nearing the end by the time I’m in triage. I ask for an epidural, and the medical staff challenges me, saying that by the time it takes effect, the baby will basically already be here anyway. I insist, they relent, but then they challenge me again, saying they will not provide it unless I can stop writhing in pain during the now relentlessly frequent contractions. When my doctor arrives, I ask if it’s too late for a c-section — surely something is wrong internally that is causing this level of pain, and it feels as though organs are being ripped apart from the inside my body (spoiler: it is too late, this is standard fare for child delivery, I am having things ripped apart from the inside of my body, and ohmygoshhowhasthehumanspeciessurvivedthislong). He tells me to push, and two is all it takes.
There I am, breathless, sweaty, feeling both completely out-of-body and also desperately attuned to my body as I lay in the hospital bed. Someone places the baby on my chest. I am crying and laughing, and vaguely aware that it’s still possible the doctor miscalculated and although I did indeed deliver a baby, I am also dying of something that has clearly gone terribly wrong for me to be in that much pain.
Many months after this moment, I had a revelation. I missed the surprise! I was right there, I was a very active participant in the moment, but I fully missed the surprise.
Did the doctor shout, “it’s a boy!” as he pulled the baby from me? Did the nurse say it and smile as she placed him in my arms? Did they show Dave and have him proudly relay the news? Did I simply look at the baby and draw the connection without thinking about it??
For all the money in the world, I cannot answer this question. All I remember is thinking “oh thank God it’s over, and here’s a baby” in a state of elated shock. To be honest, had an airplane flown through the room in those moments, I’m not sure I’d have noticed even that. I somehow knew he was a boy, but I 100% missed the surprise.
In the end, I do think there’s something fitting about this “miss” in my first moments as a mother. Because though that first moment with my son was nothing like this grand, romantic vision I had concocted pre-children, it absolutely was the best and most beautiful.
O is 4.5 years and has an endearing pattern of speech. In some ways, it’s genuinely wrong, as in his use of “-ded” as a past-tense suffix to present tense verbs: “I already knowded that!” In other ways, it’s close-but-not-quite, as in “when you told me I couldn’t have ice cream, you cracked my heart, Mom.” And finally, presumably because we live in a house disproportionately overrun with Y chromosomes, it’s a little fuzzy in terms of the grasp of female pronouns: “is that sher bike?”
Recently I’ve noticed an uptick in his use of similes. I started keeping track of a few because I found them fascinating — both because these are things that are interesting enough to him that he wants to comment on them, and because the things he compares them to are so wildly unlike the subjects themselves.
- A piece of popcorn is “like a squid”
- A Cheeto is “like a star wars ship docking”
- A Cheeto (same meal) is “like a meteor”
- A cloud is “like a bear”
- He likes my hair because it’s “like a rainbow!”
- My water (filling from the refrigerator unit) is “like a sonic ball jumping over and then speeding away”
- While learning how to work with a partner to fold a large blanket into halves, he excitedly announced that the trick was “you have to make it like a giant squid”
From the mouths of babes, as they say. Evidently if you look hard enough, many things around you are akin to squids.
A was rifling through his bookshelf as we got ready for bed earlier this week. He self-selected one of the few Little Golden Books that I did not “lose” (…in the garbage…) years ago after deciding the others were unforgivably poorly written as narrative arcs go (sorry, Scuffy).
As we flipped through “My First Counting Book,” I read the poems, and he counted the objects. Two lambs. Six chicks. Eight fish. Easy rhymes, mostly aurally pleasing.
But then we got to ten, and it all came back to me. What is this poem?? What is the cadence? Where is the intonation? How does this belong in the same book as the fan favorite “Nine Geese”? These are not at all rhetorical questions. I challenge you to read this poem in a way that flows.
By line, the syllables are: 7 / 4 / 5 / 4 / 4 / 3 / 8 / 7. There are questions, and statements, and even an arbitrarily capitalized noun.
I would venture to say that I have read this poem at least 50 more times than all the others in the book because each time I speak it – and then re-speak it, and then try a new method, and even set a metronome recording up to try to force a rhythm – I cannot make it work.
If you can read this poem aloud and not sound absurdly clunky, please stop whatever you are doing and call me. This book is over 60 years old, meaning there are several generations of parents who have likely been equally dissatisfied by its ending, and we need to spread the word if there is an answer to this riddle.
It’s A’s 3rd birthday. It’s not yet lunchtime. So far he:
- Woke his baby brother and then woke me tell me C was awake and crying.
- Covertly ate 4 doughnuts and took a bite out of every remaining doughnut in the box we got to celebrate and share.
- Let himself outside, left the door wide open, and did not respond to me shouting asking where he was as I came downstairs from my shower and was thrust into a panic.
- Pooped on the playroom floor because he was “so busy building that long train track.”
- Somehow turned one of the stove’s burners on, which I only realized when I noticed that the second floor smelled like gas.
In lieu of gifts, please send thoughts and prayers for his parents.
Happy birthday, little monster.
Two years ago, in the first season of the COVID pandemic, with nowhere to go and no one to call for relief taking care of 3 boys (4 and under) while working full-time jobs, Dave and I invested in a way to escape: a vacation home in northern Michigan. This has always been a dream of mine, and I have to say it’s even better than I imagined. In the two years since we purchased, we’ve spent holidays, long weekends, the better part of a few months, getaways, several quarantines, a fair chunk of my maternity leave, and many happy moments “up north” (as Michiganders refer to anywhere else in the state – just so long as it’s not south).
In order to prepare the place for the boys on our first trip, my mom and I went ahead a few days and cleared up, cleaned up, and stocked up everything top-to-bottom. That meant Dave and I had to split cars, with me taking the sedan so he could load up the boys to follow in the SUV a few days later. I had everything organized, boxed, and labeled days in advance until I realized in the last day that I had made an egregious miscalculation:
My precious potted tomato plants – which could not be left without care for the several weeks we were due to be away – could not fit in my sedan. Dave would have to bring them up with the boys in the SUV.
This very long preamble is to set the stage for this picture:
Dave, the boys, and the tomatoes joined me up north ~5 hours after this was taken, including 1 potty break and 1 “I think I’m going to throw up” break as Dave discovered J becomes carsick when his vision is obstructed by giant tomato plants (who knew?).
I took last summer off of planting vegetables given the extended period up north again, and lamented the fact during August when I would have otherwise been enjoying fresh tomatoes and green beans every day.
This summer, however, with our plans for shorter stints up north, and our 4th grade neighbor who is hungry for a cash-paying side hustle, I have again planted vegetables!
This year I have pole beans, 2 types of cherry tomatoes, beefsteak tomatoes, Buttercrunch lettuce, banana peppers, and some herbs.
I am more than a little excited about my garden, so I figure I might as well make a “before” post since there will inevitably be an “after.”
In fact, my enthusiasm might be a bit misguided. We had a severe storm blow through this morning and I waited nervously by the window to see if my green bean trellises would topple. Just as I began proudly reporting about their resilience to Dave, he suggested I do a full lap of the yard before I start celebrating. Oops.
Me: *quite pleased with myself for convincing my small children to clean up their toys at the end of the day such that the living room, play room, and their bedrooms are clear of debris*
Also me: *sighing in defeat as I pass by the living room basket that was supposed to be exclusively for baby-friendly toys*
