22 months
Posted on | December 17, 2006 |
Dear Bean,
As though your heartbeat were the metronome of my time passing, your growing marks my aging. You’re so big now, tousle headed and bright eyed. You stand mid-thigh to me. Two months shy of two years old, you carry rocks and cookies and other small treasures in your pockets. You are passionate about tractors and backhoes and mud and books. You take long walks with us along the muddy dirt road, stomping in puddles and pointing at birds. Recently you began speaking in sentences, stringing syllables together, like so many bright beads on the sea glass necklace of language, and it’s a wonder to hear what you have to say.
In the past two months, the trees have turned into skeletons of bark and twigs and on cold mornings you put your own boots on. You have learned to climb up onto the stools in the kitchen, and we spend many family meals there, the three of us in a circle of yellow light around the butcher block island, passing forks and trying to carry on conversations. With words, you now have the ability to express that you want specific things, right this second. Mama, more milk please. Mama, mama, mama, milk!
The past two months have been difficult though. Not because of you exactly—your beautiful smiles fill up our hearts with heady glee and wonderment—but because your presence makes our lives full to saturation. Since you, there have been few moments for downtime, and fewer moments when your Daddy and I have a chance to gather each other up in our arms and really look at each other.
Parenthood took us like a storm at sea. Together our small red boat of tenderness , we threw ourselves into the process of staying afloat, and have somehow lost track of who we are for each other. The compass of our life trued towards you; your needs so primal and huge pulled our hearts with fierce gravitational tug. But gradually over the past two months, as you’ve become less needy and more independent, we find ourselves trying to redirect the vessel of our love. Often, we find ourselves flailing about, clutching at the driftwood of who we were. So much has changed. The raw fibers of our selves have been stretched and pummeled utterly.
So the past few months have been drenched with moments where we face each other on the shore of our love and find ourselves unbalanced and hesitant at the edge of the rubble-strewn tide line that stretches out between us. Invariably, you are right there, asking for more noodles, or “Mama, read book, now” and we only manage jagged interjected sentences. Or it’s late at night, and you’re finally asleep, and we’re so exhausted that everything we say comes out slanted and biting.
It’s hard to be in this place. Here, where we can see how the routines that have grown up out of necessity, have made deep grooves across the surface of our lives and love. More than either of us would like to admit, things have become for granted. We spend days hip deep in the mud of surviving; arguing again and again about the things of daily life that accumulate with great banality and abundance day after day. The dishes, the bills, dinner, laundry.
I’m writing about this because someday you’ll be tall and you’ll be shaving, and also, because someday you’ll be in love and you’ll be trying to figure all this out for yourself. I’m also writing about this because I want you to understand how loving travels the full arc between passion and deep despair, and how a lot of the time you’ll find yourself somewhere in the middle of it, flailing like a fish, one moment in the sweetest water, and the next on the harshest sand.
Just now, as I was writing you and Daddy burst into my studio, full of morning excitement, ready to do things with the day. It’s 10:30 am, the weekend before Christmas, and there are cookies to be made, and shopping to be done, and decorations to be hung. Daddy wraps his arms around me, and right away you climb onto my lap, grabbing first at the pencils on my desk, then going for my keyboard. In the three minutes you are in my studio, you scribble in my notebook, collapse my easel, and climb onto the futon, wanting to be read Good Night Moon. You are like a sudden rip tide; when you’re present, you fill the room up and make it impossible for me to do anything but swim with the current, keeping track of the horizon in the distance.
But I’m grateful for this. For the struggle of it. I realize how easy it would be for me to succumb to simply letting life change me gradually and unintentionally, were it not for the latent urgency you bring to my life. When you woke up two mornings ago, I carried you into our room and tucked you into bed between Daddy and I. There in the dark, while both of us were trying for a few more minutes of sleep you began to sing, ever so softly. Suddenly I realized you were singing all the words to the lullaby I sing you every night.
Go to sleep, you sang and stroked my face, and goodnight, and tomorrow will come soon. You sang so sweetly and off key, but you had every word right, and I could feel my heart start thudding with sudden awe. You learned to sing over night, and here I am barely able to get around the width of my ego to say I’m sorry when I’ve hurt your daddy unintentionally, or when I’m so tired that I have nothing to say beyond the superficial.
I opened my eyes and realized you were watching me as you sang. This is what I mean about urgency. You’re watching me. Being your mama I am reminded daily, again and again, of our need and our capacity to grow, to learn, and to become.
I love you,
Mama
Comments
27 Responses to “22 months”
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December 17th, 2006 @ 4:18 pm
You are a precious woman and mother. Your honesty about the struggle of keeping a relationship together in the midst of raising a little one is what so many need to hear and know - the thing that keeps this blogosphere rotating - the fact that we’re not alone. This post is beautiful in its truth.
December 17th, 2006 @ 4:37 pm
beautiful!
that’s all i can say.
awesome words.
thank you!
tara
December 17th, 2006 @ 5:15 pm
Every word traces a trail of fire down my nerves. It’s so true it hurts. And that last photograph just kills me. That’s what it’s all about, isn’t it?
December 17th, 2006 @ 6:34 pm
I’m weeping and I’m so very grateful for what you offer the world in your authentic words…thank you. The struggle, the journey, the storm…well, I can’t see the screen to write more just know this has gone deep.
December 17th, 2006 @ 7:35 pm
Beautiful post - and how wonderful that Bean is suddenly singing!
December 18th, 2006 @ 12:25 am
I’m reading this from the other side of childhood, as my children are grown and gone. You write with such perception and angst. It’s a high wire you navigate while trying to find the balance between being mama, wife, and self. One pulls more at one time and then another pulls. It takes time, compromise and communication. You will find the right balance for yourself.
December 18th, 2006 @ 12:27 am
Beautiful.
December 18th, 2006 @ 12:30 am
That last picture is amazing….
December 18th, 2006 @ 12:35 am
What beautiful, heartfelt words. I just love the honesty, how you don’t feel the need to sugarcoat over all the difficult moments and emotions. It gives these letters to Bean such integrity and genuineness. Bean is adorable, getting so big, and he is so lucky to have such a talented mama.
December 18th, 2006 @ 12:40 am
I love to peek in on your site because of posts like this one. I felt like I was reading a mirrored reflection of my own thoughts and feelings. We are all so different yet at the same time tied together by this same common thread.
December 18th, 2006 @ 2:56 am
Oh what you write is so true and honest and raw. I feel so many of these things in my relationship with my son and my husband.
You write so beautifully and express emotions and feelings I sometimes struggle with writing out on paper-mostly from sheer exhaustion.
Thank you for sharing this with us.
December 18th, 2006 @ 3:16 am
There are so many of these moments, raw and tinged with sorrow, that I so often don’t know what to do with them. And then I come here and read this and I think, of course. Of course. And something unknots, just a little bit. Thanks for (once again) giving me a taste of understanding. I really, really needed it.
December 18th, 2006 @ 3:20 am
so beautiful…so good that you can capture these moments for wee bean to read one day…and that you can identify/isolate the feelings. because one day you might forget! i know i did, until i read this tonight.
December 18th, 2006 @ 8:37 am
Beautiful. It brought a tear to my eyes.
December 18th, 2006 @ 11:21 am
lovely. thanks.
December 18th, 2006 @ 11:43 am
Awww. I’ve said it before and I’m going to say it again, Bean is so lucky to have you as his mama. Hope you have a somewhat mellow countdown to Christmas.
December 18th, 2006 @ 12:22 pm
That was the most intensely beautiful thing I have read in a long time, in a way that I feel like a better person for having read it. My daughter is six.
December 18th, 2006 @ 1:22 pm
thank you for this beautiful piece. here i am, 9 years into parenting 3 of my own (9,8,&6) and i feel exactly as you describe. i keep thinking it will slow down soon, but i am worried that it won’t until the kids are in college. wouldn’t that be sad. thanks for your wise words. i am sending the link to my hubby…what could be more important for us to talk about during our down time during the holidays. peace. melissa
December 18th, 2006 @ 8:30 pm
I’m reading this yet from another side, feeling something in between being a child and being a mother, sometime … your writing touches me deeply. Your words travel beyond time.
*
December 19th, 2006 @ 1:19 am
I love TIME’s cover: http://www.time.com/time/covers/0,16641,20061225,00.html
To everyone who creates and uses the WWW.
Excerpt from http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1569514,00.html?aid=434&from=o&to=http%3A//www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0%2C9171%2C1569514%2C00.html
“Seriously, who actually sits down after a long day at work and says, I’m not going to watch Lost tonight… I’m going to blog about my state of mind or the state of the nation or the steak-frites at the new bistro down the street? Who has that time and that energy and that passion?
The answer is, you do.” I am glad we all find th energy to post a little about ourselves and what is important in our lives, and work endlessly to build a community and support group.
December 19th, 2006 @ 2:28 am
This just made me tear up. Aren’t we lucky to have these little beautiful things in our lives, Christina? I mean, really…aren’t we just so damn blessed?
December 19th, 2006 @ 6:45 am
You
are
amazing.
amazing.
ck
December 19th, 2006 @ 10:45 am
As I read your words, I am filled with the knowing that all will be okay for you. You will come through the dark spots in tact — perhaps sometimes bruised — perhaps sometimes stronger — but always meaningfully changed. You’ll be okay because you GET IT. You get the fact that none of us are guaranteed an easy path. You get that there are challenges that are meant to be dissected, pondered, and appreciated, even though they may never be fully understood. You get the connections between things; how Bean has been the catalyst for an evolution in the way that you and your husband love each other.
They say that with age comes wisdom — and perhaps that is sometimes true… but I think that wisdom comes from experience — and I feel priviledged to have the opportunity to experience a part of life that I have never known (having children) through your blog — and even more than that, to be reminded, through your incredibly beautiful use of language, that we all have a choice. Every day, we choose whether to remain as we are… or grow.
December 19th, 2006 @ 11:32 am
Wow, I just have to comment as a fellow early childhood teacher (although sans children of my own) how it is both comforting and renewing to read your observations and tender words regarding your son. Toddlers are a force to be reckoned with and I love how you describe his sense of wonder and immediacy as “a sudden riptide”. Your ability to see the little and joyous moments in childhood and wrap them up in a delicious box for all of us to enjoy with you is so wonderful. Take care and keep it coming!
December 19th, 2006 @ 4:34 pm
wow. i love your ability to put your whole self onto the page. what a beautiful gift.
December 19th, 2006 @ 9:54 pm
thank you for this.
December 29th, 2006 @ 4:57 am
hope you don’t mind me dropping in here - i stopped off via debacherous and dishevelled and had to say that this post is possibly the most meaningful and powerful thing i can remember reading. i’m not usually one for gushy comments but i so appreciated this. thanks for sharing it.