Ready?
Abi is not a baby anymore.
Obvious? Yes. Profound? No. Expected and totally predictable? Yes. But that doesn't in any way lessen the emotional impact or my disbelief about it. She talks & talks and makes jokes and plays games. She asks for things and (most of the time) says please and (occasionally) thank you. She brushes her teeth. She plays hide and seek. She willingly gives up her pacifier. She helps with small tasks like bringing her juice to the table or putting her blocks back in the bin. Her little-kid-ness is making me weepy on a daily basis now. And not just about things you'd guess, like when she wakes up and says, "Noning, Mommy!" [Translation: Good morning, Mommy.] Here are some things that have made me all teary-eyed recently:
- I was putting my empty cereal bowl in the sink. Abi heard me running water into it and said, "Mommy washing hands."
- I sang the ABC song and Abi (despite only being able to identify maybe 5 letters) sang the whole song back to me with amazing accuracy. There were a few mumbled moments, but still it was eerie.
- While picking daisies at Maple View, she identified a large daisy as "mommy daisy" and a smaller one as "baby daisy".
- We wandered farther than usual from the house on one of our walks. When she realized she didn't know where we were, she grabbed my hand and said, "Back home."
There's a Jonathan Coulton song called When You Go. At first listen, it sounds like a break-up song. But I read this recently:
"I was mostly thinking about my daughter when I wrote it, imagining the far off day when she leaves for college, or the army, or a swimming pool in Hawaii. Thinking about how parenting is a supremely masochistic kind of self-sacrifice - you spend years teaching them how to be independent adults and then THEY TURN INTO INDEPENDENT ADULTS. If you are parenting correctly, you are essentially teaching your children all they need to know to one day break your heart. That’s the awful, beautiful core of parent-child love."
Now I can add that song to the lengthening list of things that make me cry.
Read the blog post and listen to the song here.
4 comments:
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.
My mom had this in her apartment when I was little and it used to make me cry. It's from The Prophet.
I don't want to downplay how hard it is to see one's child get older (I can't even begin to imagine), but after she grows up she'll always be your daughter and in your life in different ways. I miss my mom a lot and now am sad that at 18 I started living in a different country from her, but she's still the person I'm closest to. And it's nice to see the relationship transform as you both grow; though it will change it will also bring new things.
That aside, Abi is adorable! But you know that already.
PS. That was me, Sofi. Blogger wouldn't accept my request with OpenID.
That is beautiful and perfect. Thank you, Sofi!
I guess I should've made it more clear that my weepiness is not sadness exactly. There is some heartbreak in watching her grow, but it's joy too. It is thrilling and exhilarating watching her become a little person, with some traits that I can (dubiously) claim come "from me" and some traits I can only wish I possessed. I can't wait to see who she'll become, yet I miss all the Abis she's already been and moved on from.
It's not joy alongside sadness, but joy&sadness as one emotion, which happens so often in life that it's baffling we don't have a word for it...
Sadness + jOY = SOY. You are feeling soy. That's why you are a vegetarian. You *appreciate* soy. That's also why tofu makes me cry. I am forced to eat meat when I'm in public to avoid a scene.
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