If you’re not a regular reader, I hope you found this blog entry by Googling “high-needs baby” or “shrill cry.” This is what one of those babies can be like when she gets to be about six:
It’s a new kind of shrill, no question. But I swear I’d do labor, colic, and eight sleepless months all over again for her.
We woke up at the crack of dawn and had oatmeal from packets and played with Legos and changed the wet laundry into the dryer before playing in the car and losing the garage-door opener and before driving 20 minutes to see a friend in a triathlon, only to find that there were about one million other people trying to see a friend in a triathlon, so we decided to go out for breakfast instead but when we got to the restaurant, I noticed my wallet was missing, so we headed back home to retrieve my wallet which was lost under winter coats (which we can’t put away yet, being that it was 58 degrees in our house last night) and then drove south 15 minutes to have pancakes with chocolate chips and whipped cream, just before we came home to watch Spongebob (yes, I admit) and then play in the car some more before I put the little one down for a so-called nap which, of course, was “quiet time” but really more like kick-the-wall-and-yell-mamamamamamamama time, but so what, because after an hour we got up and went to Animart to hold puppies and kittens, which almost didn’t happen because little guy fell asleep just as we were pulling into the parking lot, but I didn’t let that stop us, because we had so much day left to kill, and at Animart we filled our free-popcorn bags for the drive to the grocery store, where we bought yogurt-covered pretzels and new toothpaste that tastes like bubblegum, but when we got home the toothpaste (which had to be sampled right away) tasted “too spicy,” but that was soon forgotten because we got out the bike and the scooter, and it rained on us, but we didn’t care because we knew that bathtime with water-crayons was about to start, which it did, and now Thomas is on TV while I cook dinner, and bedtime begins in just 15 minutes, and goddamnit, I made it!
Take that, Summer Break.
To which Summer Break replies, “No, YOU take that, stay-at-home mom. Sucka!”
I used to drive by houses like mine and cringe a little. You know the kind, right? A place with promise and pocked with plastic playthings:
I can’t count how many times I’ve complained about our place looking like a post-apocalyptic hellhole within a few hours of having been cleaned — again.
But last night, just as the sun was setting, I walked out to close the door on our shed. And when I turned back toward our house, I saw it this way:
No, it wasn’t the inkling of a sunset that caught my eye. It was this:
And this:
Do you see it?
The little tiny signs of life?
Or should I say the signs of little tiny life?
And I almost started to cry, because really, inside my head, I’m often an old woman looking back on my life. And I can sometimes get a pretty good inkling of how I’m going to feel one day when my yard is all clean and trimmed, and my deck is just so, and the house is just so, and there’s no more of this:
It’s going to make me sad.
I don’t know if it’s because my kids are nearly five years apart, but as a parent, I find myself looking back as much as I’m looking forward these days. I’ve been shattering into a million bits since the moment my daughter was born. Kids don’t destruct you, but parenting does. There’s absolutely nothing like being the parent of of a colicky baby. There’s nothing like having to take care of kids with the stomach flu when you yourself have it. There’s nothing like fearing your child has gone missing, nothing like seeing your child cry when the world has proven more cruel than you told her it would be.
I have been to the very brink so many times–motherhood can be so painfully hard in this era of isolationism posing as globalism–and only an idiot would doubt that I’m bound for many more visits to that brink. But I think I am also just reaching that point of perspective that more seasoned parents have tried to tell me would come. I’m starting to see how fleeting it all is. And, oh, how I want to hold onto these things, these beautiful signs of life:
I have spent the last 24 hours noticing how much I’m going to miss all this stuff that I thought was making me crazy:
God help me when there are no more tiny chocolate finger-smears on my walls. God, thank you for letting me hold and raise babies, no matter the costs.
The Second Magpie 