Thursday – Falling so He can Fly
Mar. 25th, 2010 04:04 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ninanevermore.
.
.
When I first learned I was pregnant with my little Sweet Pea, I knew in my heart of hearts that my baby would be a girl. I felt it in my bones. I knew I was having a daughter because a daughter was what I wanted. This baby was a one-shot thing: an unplanned, high-risk pregnancy. Of course God, or the Universe, or Fate, or Lady Luck (what the Hell; I assumed all four of them) had no choice but to give me what I wanted. Besides, my husband already had a 15 year old son; what did he need another boy for? I grew up in a house full of boys, as the lone daughter in a family with three sons. My childhood had taught me that little boys were nothing but trouble.
Mostly I wanted a girl because it had been almost 20 years since I’d been a part of a mother-daughter relationship and I longed for that relationship back. My role would be reversed from what I had before my mother died, but having a daughter would allow me to retrieve a bit of what I’d lost when I was 15. When I was four months along, the first of two high-risk specialists I would see did an ultrasound and asked if I wanted to know the sex of my baby.
“Sure!” I said, excited to have my heart’s desire validated.
“Looks like a boy,” the doctor said.
I was crushed.
For the ext 5 months, whenever anyone asked what my baby was going to be, I answered “a boy” with a resigned tone of voice.
“Don’t say it like that!” the receptionist at my dentist’s office told me one day when I was seven months along. “I have two sons and two girls. Let me let you in on a little secret. Mothers and daughters are like this.” She put her fists together, like two heads butting. “Mothers and sons are like this.” She grasped her hands together and squeezed them tight. “Trust me on this: when he gets here, you’ll love him.”
I thanked her, and hoped it would be true. I had serious doubts. I was worried he might be like my weird kid brother, or any of my brothers, for that matter. There are things about each and every one of them that drive me nuts. I was going to do my best to love him, but I couldn’t say yet how I would react to the new arrival I was expecting. Fortunately, my husband loved him already. He was also a little disappointed in not getting a girl. He had a son, and damned sure didn’t plan any children after this (he was 45 when our Sweet Pea was born). He’d thought a little girl might be interesting, but adjusted to the idea of another boy rather quickly.
My son’s bid debut was the morning of October 8th, 2004. Jeff loved Sweet Pea on sight. I, on the other hand, thought he was kind of cute in a fuzzy-headed, beat-red, squishy sort of way, but I was a little overwhelmed by him. He was very small, and very helpless. I had a very strong instinct to take care of him, but it was not yet love. I might have felt guilty if the book What to Expect When You’re Expecting had not reassured me that I might not love my baby right away, that sometimes it took a few weeks. Everyone else loved him. My father was smitten, as was my husband and my mother-in-law. Sweet Pea and I, on the other hand, were two stranger resigned to getting to know one another.
I’d heard you’ll fall in love with him, but I always interpreted that as meaning I would just learn to love him over time. I didn’t expect to actually fall, to look at him one day and realize he meant the world to me out of the blue. But one morning when he was three months old, I tumbled headfirst a love more deep than I thought possible. I went to pick him up out of his crib and he looked up at me and smiled hello, one of those big toothless baby smiles. I gasped and my eyes widened in surprise. That was it. Game over. I was in love. I knew I would lay down my life for this child without thinking twice if it came to that. His care and survival were all that mattered.
Now that he is five, we argue about love sometimes. In his library of bed-time stories he has a copy of Guess How Much I Love You?, in which Little Nut Brown Hare debates with his father, Big Nut Brown Hare, about who loves the other more. Sweet Pea is big into one-up-manship (it’s a boy thing), so the other night he was determined to claim he loved me more.
“I love you all the way to Jupiter,” he said. Jupiter is his favorite planet.
“I love you to Jupiter and back,” I said.
“I love you all the way to Pluto.” It sounded like pweudo, but I knew what he meant.
“I love you all the way to the stars.”
“But I love you all the way to Pluto!”
“The stars are further away than Pluto.”
“They are?” This amazed him. Stars seem so little, I guess.
“Yup.”
“But I love you most of all.”
“Not as much as I love you. It’s impossible.”
“Why is it impossible?”
“It just is. You’ll understand when you have a little boy or girl of your own some day.”
He looked perplexed.
It’s an amazing and humbling moment, when you first love a child. At some point, it occurs to you that you never understood some of the silly things your parents said and did for the first time until you loved a child yourself. My son will never love me as much as I love him, but that’s okay: he’s not supposed to. His job is to grow up and move away from me, and if he loved me as much as I love him that might never happen. My job is to help him grow up and be all that he can be, and fledge my nest when he is ready. Love is a dangerous business, and when he flies away it may well break my heart. But I love him enough to want to see him grow up and fly, and to relish both the joy and the pain that day may bring.
* ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * # * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ *
.
.
When I first learned I was pregnant with my little Sweet Pea, I knew in my heart of hearts that my baby would be a girl. I felt it in my bones. I knew I was having a daughter because a daughter was what I wanted. This baby was a one-shot thing: an unplanned, high-risk pregnancy. Of course God, or the Universe, or Fate, or Lady Luck (what the Hell; I assumed all four of them) had no choice but to give me what I wanted. Besides, my husband already had a 15 year old son; what did he need another boy for? I grew up in a house full of boys, as the lone daughter in a family with three sons. My childhood had taught me that little boys were nothing but trouble.
Mostly I wanted a girl because it had been almost 20 years since I’d been a part of a mother-daughter relationship and I longed for that relationship back. My role would be reversed from what I had before my mother died, but having a daughter would allow me to retrieve a bit of what I’d lost when I was 15. When I was four months along, the first of two high-risk specialists I would see did an ultrasound and asked if I wanted to know the sex of my baby.
“Sure!” I said, excited to have my heart’s desire validated.
“Looks like a boy,” the doctor said.
I was crushed.
For the ext 5 months, whenever anyone asked what my baby was going to be, I answered “a boy” with a resigned tone of voice.
“Don’t say it like that!” the receptionist at my dentist’s office told me one day when I was seven months along. “I have two sons and two girls. Let me let you in on a little secret. Mothers and daughters are like this.” She put her fists together, like two heads butting. “Mothers and sons are like this.” She grasped her hands together and squeezed them tight. “Trust me on this: when he gets here, you’ll love him.”
I thanked her, and hoped it would be true. I had serious doubts. I was worried he might be like my weird kid brother, or any of my brothers, for that matter. There are things about each and every one of them that drive me nuts. I was going to do my best to love him, but I couldn’t say yet how I would react to the new arrival I was expecting. Fortunately, my husband loved him already. He was also a little disappointed in not getting a girl. He had a son, and damned sure didn’t plan any children after this (he was 45 when our Sweet Pea was born). He’d thought a little girl might be interesting, but adjusted to the idea of another boy rather quickly.
My son’s bid debut was the morning of October 8th, 2004. Jeff loved Sweet Pea on sight. I, on the other hand, thought he was kind of cute in a fuzzy-headed, beat-red, squishy sort of way, but I was a little overwhelmed by him. He was very small, and very helpless. I had a very strong instinct to take care of him, but it was not yet love. I might have felt guilty if the book What to Expect When You’re Expecting had not reassured me that I might not love my baby right away, that sometimes it took a few weeks. Everyone else loved him. My father was smitten, as was my husband and my mother-in-law. Sweet Pea and I, on the other hand, were two stranger resigned to getting to know one another.
I’d heard you’ll fall in love with him, but I always interpreted that as meaning I would just learn to love him over time. I didn’t expect to actually fall, to look at him one day and realize he meant the world to me out of the blue. But one morning when he was three months old, I tumbled headfirst a love more deep than I thought possible. I went to pick him up out of his crib and he looked up at me and smiled hello, one of those big toothless baby smiles. I gasped and my eyes widened in surprise. That was it. Game over. I was in love. I knew I would lay down my life for this child without thinking twice if it came to that. His care and survival were all that mattered.
Now that he is five, we argue about love sometimes. In his library of bed-time stories he has a copy of Guess How Much I Love You?, in which Little Nut Brown Hare debates with his father, Big Nut Brown Hare, about who loves the other more. Sweet Pea is big into one-up-manship (it’s a boy thing), so the other night he was determined to claim he loved me more.
“I love you all the way to Jupiter,” he said. Jupiter is his favorite planet.
“I love you to Jupiter and back,” I said.
“I love you all the way to Pluto.” It sounded like pweudo, but I knew what he meant.
“I love you all the way to the stars.”
“But I love you all the way to Pluto!”
“The stars are further away than Pluto.”
“They are?” This amazed him. Stars seem so little, I guess.
“Yup.”
“But I love you most of all.”
“Not as much as I love you. It’s impossible.”
“Why is it impossible?”
“It just is. You’ll understand when you have a little boy or girl of your own some day.”
He looked perplexed.
It’s an amazing and humbling moment, when you first love a child. At some point, it occurs to you that you never understood some of the silly things your parents said and did for the first time until you loved a child yourself. My son will never love me as much as I love him, but that’s okay: he’s not supposed to. His job is to grow up and move away from me, and if he loved me as much as I love him that might never happen. My job is to help him grow up and be all that he can be, and fledge my nest when he is ready. Love is a dangerous business, and when he flies away it may well break my heart. But I love him enough to want to see him grow up and fly, and to relish both the joy and the pain that day may bring.
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no subject
Date: 2010-03-25 09:48 pm (UTC)BTW, you said it very very well. Children can break your heart up but yes...they also mean the world. I know what you mean with each of mine..
no subject
Date: 2010-03-26 12:16 am (UTC)He had to sleep in the NICU for one night because he was early. My husband wanted to go see him before we went to sleep. I walked down the hall in dread that I wouldn't know which baby was mine. I felt like the worst mother in the world. One of the nurses printed "EDWARD" across his beanie (still have it) and I calmly said, oh there he is.
I woke up a couple of hours later with my brain screaming WHERES MY BABY? and thought to myself....ahhh, there it is. And it never left. He'll be 22 next month.
no subject
Date: 2010-03-26 01:05 am (UTC)Thanks. Before you have kids, you think that having them will make your life different but that you, personally, will still be the same. They changes in your life, though, pail when compared to the change in your heart.
no subject
Date: 2010-03-26 01:12 am (UTC)I'm cautious with love, and it always takes me by surprise when it finds me. 12 weeks is the longest I can keep my heart at bay.
no subject
Date: 2010-03-26 03:15 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-03-26 04:17 am (UTC)These little critters DO tend to "grow on you"
no subject
Date: 2010-03-30 02:39 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-03-30 02:40 am (UTC)