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Last night Dave and I watched as Emme — 22 months — tried to put on her own shirt.
As cute as it was, it was a frustrating experience for ALL of us. Mainly because Emme kept trying to stick her head in the neck hole first, rather than go up through the big waist part of the shirt. I can see her point. She was thinking, this is where my head goes. But it doesn’t work that way. And she kept trying and trying and failing and failing.
And, she would not let us help her. Every time I reached over and tried to just show her the right way — she furrowed her brow (a trait she inherited from her father….) and frowned, jerked the shirt away, and continued to try to put her head in the wrong way. So, I sat on my hands. Finally, even Dave couldn’t take it anymore and he tried to just SHOW her the way to be successful and she actually shoved him away and said, NO ( a trait she inherited from her mother!)!
So, we both sat on our hands.
And as I sat there and watched her it struck me that we were experiencing a microcosm of parenting that we would face for the rest of our lives. It is nearly torture to watch your child try their best and fail — especially when you know… YOU KNOW… how to help them, how to reach over, turn the shirt around and just hand it back to them so they can do it! You are not trying to take over, just help, for the love of God! But she insisted on doing it herself…wrong.
And that is what we get to do over and over. We watch our kids try and refuse our help and fail. They insist that they know better than us — or that they can do it themselves — or that they don’t need us. And we have so sit there saying, “Please let me help you, I can’t stand to watch this!” But they GET to do it themselves. We GET to wait, watch, pray, and lose sleep.
Finally, Emme solved the problem. She switched to a different shirt. One that buttoned up the front. She put it on and then… and then…. asked Daddy to button up the front.
Thank God.
There is just something about your last baby.
But the last one: the baby who trails her scent like a flag of surrender through your life when there will be no more coming after–oh, that’s love by a different name. She is the babe you hold in your arms for an hour after she’s gone to sleep. If you put her down in the crib, she might wake up changed and fly away. So instead you rock by the window, drinking the light from her skin, breathing her exhaled dreams. Your heart bays to the double crescent moons of closed lashes on her cheeks. She’s the one you can’t put down.” Barbara Kingsolver from The Poisonwood Bible
I just can’t put Emme down — even when she squirms out of my arms, I am still holding her close. Maybe it is because I know what is coming — namely the hormones of a 9th grader, which I would not wish on anyone. But mostly I think I just know in my heart how fast it all goes, how even when I try to hold on to every single detail of what she looks like and what she says, that so much of it gets lost. And so each afternoon when I rock her to sleep for her nap, I put away the to-do list that threatens to rattle in my mind, and I stare into her eyes. I whisper promises of ever-lasting love. I hold her and try to memorize what it feels like to nestle her in my arms. To remember what it feels like to cuddle someone who oozes joy. And I am so thankful that at 21 months she is still so much of a baby. She only has a few words and talks in her baby babble most of the time. He hair is a mop that has never been cut, in some sort of flip, feathered, girl-mullet… and I love it. I don’t want to cut the hair that has always been there. Maybe for her 2nd birthday, but not. just. yet. I love that her kisses are outloud, spoken “mmmmmmmmmwaaahhhs” and her cheeks and legs are chubby and delicious. She can point to her nose, her ears, her belly button, and her arm pits. And will stick out her tongue on cue. I want to bathe in her cuteness, letting it flow over me with the profound love that a mother has for her child.
There will be time for hair and shoes and fashion and lots of talk…probably on the phone to, gulp, boys. There will be time to get her that cell phone or the latest music player or whatever it will be in 13 years that she “must have.” Dave and I laughed last night that by the time Emme is in high school (and the other four kids are out of the house), she will have a phone in her room and her own number and a TV and a computer and a lock on her bedroom door and probably no curfew. That we’ll text her to come down the hall to have dinner with her aging parents. And maybe that is how it will be when she is a teenager. But more than likely I will want to sneak in at night and climb into bed with her and watch her, hoping that she will sleep through the antics of her crazy mother whose heart aches a bit.
For she is the last one.
Yesterday was our first snow of the year.
I had been longing for snow since last week. I usually don’t like snow because in these parts the whole city shuts down and goes a little nuts.
This year, however, I have been looking forward to the snow. For a lot of the reasons. And ALL of them selfsih. I have just been longing for a break from “real life” — a forced work haltage (is haltage a word??), hot chocolate, spiced wine, movie day, etc. I spent the weekend stocking the fridge just in case there was snow. I made a final trip to get Jade a winter coat and Lily snow boots. I have been ready for days for snow.
So when the flakes waited until 7:30am to start falling I have to admit I was a little disappointed — the snow was beautiful but it came to late to halt school and offer me the respite I so longed for, and so off the teens went all bundled up. I then spent the next part of the morning trying –unsuccessfully — to get Ty to wear snow boots to kindergarten. “But, Mommy, they feel weird!” That is because they are snow boots and you only wear them about 3 days each year. You will get used to them. No luck and on went the sneakers. The outside temperature read 26 degress and so I gritted my teeth as I walked out the door to take Lily and Ty to school (by the way, Lily did wear her snowboots…). The moment we walked outside I heard a GASP.
The gasp came from Emme. In all the bustle of the morning I had forgotten that this was her first snow ever. She stopped, looked up, smiled her big authentic, “I love life” smile, and pointed at all the flakes and rattled off her paragraph of gibberish that makes perfect sense only to her. But this time it was pretty clear what she was saying: Snow is awesome. Followed by: Why have you waited this long to show me this. Then: Isn’t life amazing, mom?
As the first flake got caught in her long lashes I thought about all that she has yet to discover. And how lucky we moms are to re-discover so much through the eyes of our children. We get to see so much for the first time all over again. Watch as our children’s eye light up at their first Halloween, or eat their first tast of ice cream, or pet their first puppy. Then we get to see them make their first goals in soccer, or play their first wobbly rendition of “Go Tell Aunt Rhodie” in elementary band. We get to see them have their first dates, fall in love, read Shakespeare.
And we get to sit in horror as they cry because their friends didn’t walk home with them. Or they didn’t make the goal. We watch as they come to terms with the fact that life isn’t fair. Or Just. And that many people don’t know the meaning of mercy or compassion. And I swear that if I could I would stand in the gap for all five of my kids and take all the crap for them. Just suck it in to my body and let it destroy me in order to spare them.
But I know that is not how it works. Even though I get to watch their journey, their road to discover is all their own.
So, TODAY I will decide instead to find the patience to let them struggle with the lumpy snowboots and to marvel at the snowflakes in their eyelashes as they discover the world for themselves — and for me, all over again.
Yesterday was my favorite day of the year. And nothing holds a candle to this day. Not Christmas. Not Groundhog’s day. Not the first day of school.
It is the day we FALL back. Ahhhhhhhhhhhhh….. bring on that extra hour of sleep. I have said before how I feel about Springing ahead, but Falling back? Oh, that day makes all 364 other days worth it. I love going to bed Saturday night around 11pm and setting the clock back an hour. “Oh…is it only 10? ” and I snuggle in all proud of myself for going to bed early.
There was a time several years ago after Dave and I were first married where he woke me up early on Fall Back Day for some god-foresaken reason. I remember my incredulous reaction as I said to him, “You just RUINED my favorite day of the year!!!” Now, when you first get married there is a lot to learn about each other. But I will never forget the look on Dave’s face when he said, “THIS is your FAVORITE day of the year? Seriously?” Yes, dude, seriously. It is to his credit that he has never forgotten the lesson he learned that day.
To be fair, I could go without the dark mornings. There is something so sinister and depressing about waking up in the pitch dark. And it does signal the beginning of winter. Which means that around here we are headed for 6 months of solid rain. Rain. Every single day. Except when it snows. And then the whole area shuts down. Oh, I mean it. Those of you out there in regions where you get snow on a regular basis would be stunned at the Seattle area’s lack of snow savvy. People start to freak out. Two years ago, the schools shut down because there was a THREAT of snow. When it snows around here people don’t go to work and they call their friends and family to be sure they are surviving. We even have our own local reporter who loves to coin terms like “Storm Blast 2009.” He is usually in a hat, coat, and gloves standing on top of the Space Needle while the snow flurries around him and he — get this — HOLDS ON so as not to be blown away, I guess. Then he tells us to expect 3 inches of snow and to BEWARE of STORM BLAST 2009!!!!! Then the one snow plow that is owned by King County starts to work its way around the area. Cars pull to the side of the road and are abandoned as people claim, “I cannot drive in this stuff! Too dangerous!” (And, hec, I say pull over if you think three inches of snow is too dangerous.) When snow is predicted the stores RUN OUT of bottled water as people prepare for the worst. I wish I was exaggerating, but I’m not.
Now, RAIN we can handle around here – we don’t cancel anything for rain. But SNOW? Nope, we don’t do snow.
So, here I am today, all rested from my extra hour of sleep and ready to face Storm Blast 2010.
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