Tag Archives: parenthood

The Soldiers Marched to War

Posted in Children, memories, Motherhood by

A few weeks ago, my five-year-old daughter stood for the first time on a stage, facing an audience, with a role in a play and her very own line to speak:

“And the soldiers marched to war.”

It wasn’t a real play, just a narrated reenactment of Disney’s Mulan, produced by a county summer camp program. I had watched her perform before, lined up with her nursery school friends, wearing paper bag Indian costumes, singing songs about turkeys and pilgrims.

But something about the sight of my little girl craning her neck to reach the standing microphone and then belting out her line, boldly and proudly, caused a body slam of confused emotions – pride, nostalgia, anxiety, relief, and that strange feeling of loss that parents can feel even when holding their child in their arms.

It was the same moiling brew of emotions that I have found myself tampering down at random moments ever since the summer began with full time kindergarten waiting for us at its end. So I was familiar with those feelings, but rather surprised by their force.

I can’t say exactly why that one moment of my daughter’s performance was so emotionally powerful. Perhaps it was simply the sight of her, singled out in the spotlight, so small, yet so confident and capable, on that big stage.

Perhaps it was the line itself. I tend to think in hyperbole, and it’s not too much of an exaggeration to compare our school years to war. My own memories recall that time as a series of battles of who is in and who is out; who is good enough and who is somehow lacking. It’s a never-ending game of social King of the Hill, and my baby was about to march innocently into it.

***

Going into parenthood, we already know from our own experience that growing up is hard to do. What we don’t know is that it’s even harder when it is happening to our children.

They start out so small, so squishable, with curlicue bodies and necks that seem to be made of pipe cleaners. They don’t cry; they mewl. Everything they do – every yawn, every jerky kick, every sleepy half-smile – is miraculous. To feel their weight on your chest is to be branded forever with love and possessiveness for that person in that body. And forever means that even when you are ninety, and in a nursing home, and your sixty-year-old son is holding your hand, you are longing to hold the infant you bore decades before. I have that on my grandmother’s authority.

Yes, boys and girls, this is what your mother sees every time she looks at you.

Yes, boys and girls, this is what your mother sees every time she looks at you.

Which is why hugging your five-year-old goodbye, and sending her off into an educational system that can nurture and teach, but can’t ensure that she always has a friend to sit next to at lunch, is such an overwhelmingly emotional thing for a mother to do. Not just because that world can be scary, but because entering it represents yet another step your child is taking away from you. Their independence is at the same time thrilling (and freeing!) and heartbreaking.

***

These are the feelings that have followed me throughout the past few months. They are the feelings that I know will overtake me tomorrow, when I drop my kindergartener off for her very first day of elementary school.

But over the last few days, as I have found myself thinking almost non-stop about this looming change in our lives, I have come to understand one other thing. That with every step our children take toward their own independence, they are both walking away from us, their parents, and walking toward us.

I will never hold my newly born first child in my arms again. Even though there are moments when I ache do so, that time has passed. But as my daughter becomes more independent, and as I become less necessary to her, she will become completely herself. And as she grows into the person she was created to become, I have the good fortune not only to witness her transformation, but also to meet her, as equals, at the other side of it.

So tomorrow, as I stifle my tears at the loss of this part of my baby girl’s childhood, I will be reminding myself that the only gift greater than the birth of a child is seeing that child shine in the light of her own fulfilled potential.

Apples, Revisted

It’s been a while since I have posted. This isn’t because I haven’t been thinking about lots of interesting things to write about — I have been. But all of that has been going on somewhere in the back of my brain.The front of my brain — or whatever part of it that operates the things I actually do as opposed to the things I THINK about doing — has been engaged in conversations like this with my two-year-old:

Me: Do you want an apple?
Two Year Old: NO! I ALL DONE to apples!
Then, 10 minutes later, in car, running late for big sister’s camp drop-off…
TYO: Mama, I NEED apple right now.
Me: Sorry baby, we don’t have any apples.
TYO: Screams, cries, begs for apples so persuasively that I change my plans for the day and go home to get her an apple.
Me: Here is your apple sweetheart. I want to see some BIG bites!
TYO: NOOOO! I NO WANT APPLE! I ALL DONE TO APPLES. Grabs apple and chucks it across the room.

Or this:
Me: TYO, I got your favorite — pumpkin bread. And it has chocolate in it!
TYO: NO! No pun’kin bread. NO CHOCOLATE! I ALL DONE TO CHOCOLATE!

Or this:
Me: On a scale of one to ten, how tired would you say you are, TYO?
TYO: NO! I NO TIRED. Ahhhhhh! ROAR! You go ‘way, mama. I lion. I scary! ROAR! You go away! Followed by approximately 3 minutes of crying, and then:
TYO: Mama! Hold you! I hold you to me right NOW!

Or the conversation we had as I was writing the previous paragraphs:
Me: TYO, do you want some of my cheesy eggs.
TYO: No. I know like cheesy eggs.
Then, as I am putting the last bite of cheesy eggs in my mouth…
TYO: Mama, I need cheesy eggs. PEAAAASE?

All I want is an apple, mama

All I want is an apple, mama


Yeah, it’s been that kind of week.

At The End of the Day

Posted in brain loss, Children, Humor by
kung-fu-panda (1024x1019)

This guy was TOTALLY real!

Here is how you know you are tired:

Your husband says, “You know, Kung-Fu Panda was based on a real story.”

Then you say, “Really? I didn’t know that.”

Then he says, “Yeah, you never heard the classic underdog story about the fighting Panda with a duck for a father?”

And only then do you realize that he was joking.

De Colores

Posted in Children, Humor, Individuality, Motherhood by

When my older daughter was about two, I spent lots of time teaching her things. Like colors — I came up with engaging, educational games that were fun for both of us. And they worked — my brilliant little miracle learned her colors. I was pretty amazed by both of us, and I stuck that achievement on the front page of my mental brag book.

Shake a butt

Who needs pants?

Then came my second daughter. As with most younger children, she got a much more faded, jaded, tired version of me. And now that she is two, most of our one-on-one time involves me chasing her around the house with a diaper and a pair of pants while she screams “no mommy! No dipey! No pants! I be naked!” She is lucky if she gets a couple of half-hearted minutes with a depleted set of her big sister’s flash cards.

So you can imagine my delight when, while she was sitting in the ball pit at our mommy and me gymnastics class, she picked up an orange ball and said, “yook, mommy! Orange!”

It was a miracle! Somehow, I had managed to teach her colors without even trying. I was better at this parenting thing than I had thought.

Then she picked up a blue ball and proudly exclaimed, “blueberry!” She not only knew her colors, but she was also associating them with fruit! The kid is a genius. I picked up a red ball and said, “Look! An apple! A red apple!”

“No, mommy,” she said. “No red. No apple. Strawberry.” Then she picked up a yellow ball and said, “And lemon. Dis one lemon.”

And then it dawned on me. Orange. Blueberry. Strawberry. Lemon. She wasn’t talking about fruit, and she had only indirectly learned her colors. She was talking about characters from the television show Strawberry Shortcake. The new one, with characters that are much less child-like, and much more Barbie-like than the quaint version we moms grew up with. The one that she watches excessively, with the obsessiveness that only a two-year-old can attain.

I have achieved no miracle of parenting. My child officially watches too much TV. She still doesn’t acknowledge the words “red” or “yellow.” But do you know what she does do? Whenever she sees something purple, she says it is “plum.” She asks for her baby doll’s blueberry dress, and calls all shades of bright pink raspberry. This is what we call vocabulary building.

So next year when she is in preschool and her teachers are holding up that yellow card my child, the poetess of the class, will raise her little hand and declare that it is “lemon.”

And I will be proud.

Hey, it works.

Hey, it works.

Y por eso los grandes amores
De muchos colores me gustan a mí.
     Y por eso los grandes amores
De muchos colores me gustan a mí.

~ De Colores