06.01.06
Somewhere, some-when, Dr. Seuss wrote, “Oh! The Places you’ll go!” and I have to admit there’s an awful lot of stuff about being a parent that I never expected. For one thing, I thought I’d be really good at this parenting thing, but the truth is I’m flying by the seat of my pants every single day. Some of this my readers have heard before: How much TV is too much? How can she grow when she doesn’t eat anything? And how come Dad is so great, anyway?
So here’s a partial list so far of the unexpected joys and trials of Mommyhood.
I never expected being unable to sleep for staring at her that first night she was home.
I never expected the wonder and awe and sense of surprise that I was allowed to take her home without supervision.
I never expected to wake in the night so often those first few months, terrified that somehow she’d stopped breathing, fear like acid in the back of my throat. I certainly never expected to find that same fear to creeping up on me still when she’s almost 3 years old.
I never expected to actually believe my kid is cuter, funnier, and brighter than anyone else’s kid.
I never expected the crap-shoot of genetic chance to keep the best of both of us and toss the rest away. She’s got my looks, and his skin, my love of language, and his love of taking things apart fixing things.
Whoa, here’s something… I don’t think I ever expected the utter horror of seeing a dog chew on my child like a piece of meat; the true time of ten or fifteen seconds (at most) stretched nightmarishly in perception into what felt like agonizing minutes as she screamed terror and betrayal. I’d been working on my novel a foot and a half away, and I will never read the scene I was writing that moment without feeling waves of nausea. I also never expected to find a place in myself that could, without second thought, send an animal that had been so beloved to the vet and gently beyond this world without even a goodbye.
I’ll come up with a few more because ending the column with a bummer is just not my style.
I never expected a kid who’s totally obsessed with picking“sock fuzzies” out from between her toes to be grossed out by the contents of the lint trap in the dryer.
I never expected to raise a “pony-tail flicker” who teases and plays tricks on me all the time. I should have expected it, being that she’s her father’s daughter, but I didn’t. I’m afraid that all my life I’m doomed to be the original blonde who says, “Hey now, wait a minute!”
Here’s something else again… I never expected to catch baby vomit in my mouth and not throw up myself. Oh, yes, I’d seen that portion of <?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags" />America’s Funniest Home Videos, and there was NO WAY I would ever survive that without adding the contents of my own stomach to the mess. But guess what? Been there, lived to laugh about it.
You hear people say that children who are naughty little monsters when awake look like angelic cherubs while they are sleeping, right? I mean, we’ve all heard such tales. Well, I’m so accustomed to my Little Miss looking like a mischievous “little girl” that I was stilled into silent watching this morning because, sleeping, she looked just exactly like the baby she was months and months and months ago. Huh, imagine that.
Sometimes the scary decisions turn out scary. Sometimes theyturn out to be the most enlightened moments of your life.
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