New motherhood

New motherhood (or your very young childhood) –

Sitting in a rocking chair on the second floor of our Meriden house, on a summer night, around dusk. Holding you in my lap, your chubby baby body soft, pink, fragrant from a recent bath. You are perfect and perfectly sweet and I am overcome with a swell of pride and gratitude and the purest, pure love.

Driving in my aquamarine Honda on a back road in early spring – you are so new, and you are in a car seat in the back. You will not stop crying – wailing desperately for some basic need that I cannot begin to fathom. I just want you to stop. I am terrified in that moment of how much you need me and of how inadequate I am. I pull over and rip you out of the car seat, I yell into your tiny red face. Remembering this always floods me with shame.

Rolling down the hill at Hubbard Park – nauseous, dizzy, gleeful…

Swimming at West Haven beach on a hot summer weeknight. One of the few times I say yes to an activity of your choosing. You are so happy to be in the cool, salty water, so happy to be with me. And I am so happy you are happy...

More recently

We have an awful, awful family fight. You call John to rescue you and storm out when he arrives. I cry and cry and cry. You say you hate it here. I know that you mean it and I know that you don’t.

You appear in the doorway of the living room, ten at night, waiting for dad and me to look up from the TV. “I love you guys” you say, and then, just as quickly, you have gone back to your room.

2006/07

You sit in the window of our house on Livingston Street, watching for me to come home from a meeting at the time I have promised to.  Seeing your cautious relief when I walk in the door, I feel hopeful, for both of us, about this chance at redemption.

Dinner at the arcade/restaurant in the Milford Post Mall on January 21^st, 2007. You have made me a card. The image you drew is of a wine glass encircled in red, with a red slash across suggesting: “No Wine”. Inside you wrote: “Good Job”.

From where I sit, I see the same round-faced sweet baby girl that I carried. There’s a notch in my heart, almost as big, that you carved that day in January 1997 – and into which only you fit.  When you were yet to be born, I had a terrible nightmare that I lost you. Literally misplaced you – couldn’t remember where I put you down. It was terrifying to think of losing you before I even got to meet you. But I had met you. A thousand lifetimes before and since. With that in mind, I tell you that everything is so fleeting. The fears, the insecurities, the joys, the boredom, the heartache. Everything will be fine, or it won’t. But you, my love, will always be ok, despite the way we, and the world, have chipped away at your innocence. Despite the ways we have violated your trust, and broken your heart. Remember what Eugene O’Neill said: “Man is born broken. He lives by mending. The grace of God is glue.”