16 months
Posted on | June 15, 2006 |
My dear beautiful boy,
The sweetness and heartache of watching you grow is almost too intense to bear. You will understand this someday: how your growing marks my growing too; your life making mine finite and fragile each day in a myriad of small ways. But for now you are content to ponder simpler things: bumble bees, and ice cream cones, the tick tock of the clock, the orbit of the fan’s blades.
Your life is the punctuation for mine. Sometimes is it like an ellipsis, certain precious moments with you stretch out forever across my heart. Like today with your first ice cream cone after you fell on the pavement and cut your face. Sitting in the evening sunlight outside under the giant oak, you watched me first as I liked my cone. Then your tongue followed, inquisitively, and then with eager pleasure, the sweet cream running down your chin and onto your shirt.
Other times, your growing feels like a parenthesis around my life, as things begin for you, other things end for me.
We’re just on the brink of weaning, you and I. And I keep waiting for the perfect time, caught up in the warp and weft of the bond that this act of sustenance has woven between us.
I never pictured nursing you even this long, and yet I have, going off of instinct and circumstance. And the circumstances haven’t been easy. This past month your molars came in. Four of them, and two more front teeth, all jostling through your gums at once, causing you to constantly seek the solace of my breast. Then there has been the problematic fact that we moved out of our apartment, and not into anywhere at the beginning of the month. You’ve tried hard to keep up with all the places we’ve been, but the changes have had their effect. You’ve started to cry often when we leave you with one or the other grandmother, and when you’re with me, like this week, you’d love to be ON TOP OF ME all the time, if you could. So I’ve put off weaning again and again, but I think we’re both at the point where we could be ready (maybe I am more than you.)
You’ve started drinking milk from your sippy cup this week—for the first time, and often now when I put you down for a nap in your crib, you’re wide awake and you put yourself to sleep. You nestle into the corner of your crib like a puppy and wake with the imprint of sheepskin on your face, your hair smelling of sleep.
We will most likely wean this month, after my mastitis clears up and we’re home in our new house. Though I’m ready—my body is starting to feel drained, and my sleep is restless at night because of you—a small corner of my heart harbors some sharp shard of sadness. A part of me I could never have related to or understood before I became a mother. The part of me that has so often since I had you, swallowed old words of judgment, finding my heart a softer place than I had known. When you nurse for the last time, you’ll not remember it. But I will. The solace of this intimacy we’ve shared will be forever contained. Like a parenthesis, joy filling up the space between it’s beginning and it’s ending.
Watching you explore the world makes my heart spill out about me like a melting popsicle, the sweetness of my love pooling at your feet. You run now. You climb incessantly, instinctively. You have incredible balance, navigating uneven surfaces with so much confidence. I watch you and I’m struck by how YOU, you are. You are determined, sympathetic, goofy, pensive, thoughtful, and curious, often in the span of a minute. You have your own fascinations, and inclinations. The other day I watched you dig in the dirt, and then seeing that the dirt had made your pants all messy, you brushed them off. This is something you didn’t learn from either parent, I can assure you.
You’ve begun talking this month, with more frequency, and giving sweet perfect kisses. You call sun glasses “goo goo goggles” after the character in Dr. Seuss on the page for the letter “G” and you say “tick tock” and “ding dong” with the a lovely little sing song intonation. You figured out how to blow bubbles—all yourself yesterday, and now you love to blow bubbles out in the yard, watching as the drift up into the sky, and when you’re hurt or tired you run to me, arms outstretched.
My arms are always outstretched towards you in return, my sweet boy.
All my love,
Mama
Comments
15 Responses to “16 months”
Leave a Reply
June 16th, 2006 @ 2:53 am
Your relationship with your son and the way you SEE him is so wonderful. It makes me ache for the days when Martin was that age.
June 16th, 2006 @ 4:15 am
i have tears of joy and chills up and down my spine. beautiful words and i hope you feel better soon. xoxo
June 16th, 2006 @ 7:50 am
Whenever I read these letters I always feel that I understand love… I like how you used grammar as a means to define aspects of your relationship with Bean — somehow you are always finding new ways to convey your love. Feel better, mama.
June 16th, 2006 @ 9:01 am
This made me cry; you so beautifully captured what it means to be a mama and watch your child grow. It is amazing and heartbreaking simultaneously. My girl starts kindegarten this Fall, and I feel wistful when I see and hear of toddlers and babies because I know that part of my life is over. I so enjoy reading your letters to your boy, I can have a wee one vicariously through others. It goes so fast.
June 16th, 2006 @ 10:06 am
Lovely words - I know just how you feel about weaning, thinking about it makes me so sad. I will miss nursing Pearl so much when we are through.
Hope the mastitis clears up for you soon, no fun there at all…
June 16th, 2006 @ 10:30 am
sweet sweet words…
for a sweet sweet boy…
June 16th, 2006 @ 1:46 pm
Oh this one made me cry … not just the small tears I usually get from your Bean letters, but the all out, snotty nosed, red faced cry. I cried the last time I nursed Porter - he was a year and 3 days old. I think the worst part was that he never missed it the next day, or the day after … I think it is harder for the mamas to let go. We walked in the park together, hand in hand, for the first time today. These little men are growing so quickly. Thanks again, Christina, for sharing your words and images.
June 16th, 2006 @ 3:11 pm
You know what I love about your view on parenthood? Not only that you’re so tender and loving and can express it so devastatingly well for your little boy-o-BOY, but that you have managed to not lose yourself. I too love the metaphor of Bean being the punctuation of your life - and to me that means that he isn’t the narrative, isn’t the purpose - he is what gives pause and stops and starts and all those grammarly things. It’s good to know you can hang on to yourself while giving of yourself so deeply. He will always, always appreciate you for that.
June 16th, 2006 @ 3:14 pm
“A part of me I could never have related to or understood before I became a mother. The part of me that has so often since I had you, swallowed old words of judgment, finding my heart a softer place than I had known.” Before I had my daughter, my mother mentioned one day that she thought that having children made one “softer,” and I remember thinking, “I don’t want to get softer.” Now I understand that (as expected) softness toward one’s own child just happens, and I think (less expected) that I would like to be able to maintain this softness in all of my relationships and interactions. As you noted once in an earlier post, everyone has a mother. And everyone was once a child trying very hard to figure out how to live in the world.
I hope you are feeling better already; Bean is beautiful; and your house is going to be YOURS in a way that very few people can feel about the place that they live.
June 16th, 2006 @ 4:23 pm
I often read your blog and am so overwhelmed that I am (uncharacteristically) without words. I feel like I should tell you how much I love what you’ve written, but nothing I could write would compare to your words. So I lurk.
Today I decided to come out of hiding, if only to say that these five words: your hair smelling of sleep made me want to cry. Every night when the boys are here, long after they’ve dozed off, I sneak into their room, quietly kiss their cheeks, and smell their hair. It’s one of the few comforting reminders that deep down inside they are still the little boys I once cuddled and carried.
Even though I love each minute of each day with them, I do miss those early days every now and then.
June 16th, 2006 @ 11:14 pm
Such wonderful words.
Thank you for sharing motherhood in a way I have never seen before.
June 17th, 2006 @ 11:14 pm
Yes, yes! You’ve made me weep again. Thank you!
Blessings on the weaning. The nursing relationship is sacred to me too, and an emotional roller coaster. In the beginning, to imagine a day when I didn’t nurse her made me cry instantly, whereas now I can picture that day without crying - but then I cry over the loss of that overwhelming attachment. It is all so intense.
Thanks for writing, Christina. Your stories and art are beautifully authentic and you are such a bright star.
xo
Wishing you so much love.
June 19th, 2006 @ 11:16 pm
That was really lovely. You captured the intimacy of nursing so well. My boy is getting close to moving on too, and I have such mixed feelings.
June 20th, 2006 @ 5:20 pm
Beautiful. I have chills. I wish I could articulate the love for my children like you do.
June 27th, 2006 @ 1:17 am
Wow- this is just wonderful and has left me with tears swelled up in my eyes and a big lump in my throat. My little Henry turned 13 months last week… I can’t believe how fast the time has gone. You love your little ones so much, you think there is no one who could love their baby as much as I love you. And they do- they all do and it’s wonderful. We are still nursing. I never thought about how long I would nurse or have definate thoughts about Henry sleeping in bed with us. We only bought him a crib when he was about 8 months old..but I love snuggling up to him. And these are things that I’m just taking day by day.. who knows when he’ll sleep through the night for the first time…or be done nursing. I love nursing him to sleep.. he goes down in his crib, but around midnight when he’s ready to nurse again he’s back in bed with us for the night. It’s wonderful. Thanks for all the wonderful words, it really is a gift you have and so inspiring…