6.21.2006

Thank you for teaching me

3 years ago today…
I woke up like it was any other day (as much as that applies when you are 3 days past your “official” due date with your first baby), ate breakfast, and started my normal Saturday task of updating our finances in Microsoft Money (yes I know, I am a geek). While entering our expenses I started paying attention to the contractions I was having, and noticed that they were uncomfortable and had some sort of consistency in their timing. I won’t reminisce about all aspects of that day, as my other website contains the full birth story, but by the end of that day I was a Mom. I remember how tiny he was, and how unprepared I felt for the new responsibility I held in my arms. I also remember just studying his little arms, legs, fingers, feet, face, and even his little ears which had little elf hairs growing on the rims. How was it possible that something so beautiful and precious had been placed in my care? As he has grown, he has only gotten better. He is burned into my heart the way nothing else ever had been, or I suspect ever will be. Obviously I love his younger sister, but that first child bond – the fact that he first made me a Mother just makes the relationship different. We learned how to be, together, and are in fact still learning how to be. Each day brings a new piece of the world into his focus, and I hope I am able to help him interpret it in a meaningful way.

He has taught me many things, but perhaps the most powerful is that I am not able to control him. He is his own person, I do my best to guide his choices and decisions, but each day he pushes back just a little more. He is separating from me more and more with each passing day. It sometimes makes me sad to think that I can go weeks without speaking to my parents, and that one day He will go weeks without talking or maybe even thinking about his. Of course I am getting way ahead of myself here, the boy is 3, and it is not like he will be going off to college tomorrow. I guess I’m just reflecting more on my 3rd anniversary as a parent, than I am on his birth. When DH and I decided to try to conceive a baby, I don’t think either of us had any idea what a ride we were in for. Yes, we wanted to be parents, but I know I had only vague ideas of what that meant. I didn’t realize that for the rest of my life, I would think first about my children. I didn’t realize that my heart could grow as big as it has. I didn’t realize that the complicated little people we created would change me so much. I didn’t realize how wonderful it is to watch your children grow and accomplish new things. I didn’t realize how awe inspiring even the smallest things can be to a child, and how fabulous it is to observe them soak everything in.

Yes, we were children at one point in time, but as we grow and learn we become hardened to new things. We just don’t look at a birthday balloon the same way a 3-year old does. If my twenties were about thinking I knew it all, my thirties are certainly about teaching me that knowing it all means nothing. To really find joy in even the most mundane tasks, to find the butterfly, to see the ladybug, to happen upon a lucky stick, these are the true pleasures in life. Our world through a child’s eye is truly a wonderful place.

Thank you my little man, for teaching me, and for trusting me to guide you through these early years of your life. I love you.

P.S. I feel like I should start singing “I Hope you Dance” after what I’ve written above, but I won’t. Just reflecting…

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