Saturday, July 31, 2004

Motherhood I am so in love with my son tonight. It's a fascinating feeling-- the headiness of romantic love, but with the added depth of consuming responsibility for this small, complex person's sense of safety in his place in the world. I've been trying to be extra patient (I'm often so not) and extra present with Dido these last few weeks, since he starts at preschool on Monday. Every day, 9 to 12:30, others will be responsible for guiding, comforting and understanding him. It's not like we've never been separated; I was working when he was born, and never really took a maternity leave, though I worked part time, mostly from home, for the first four months of his life. But then for the next year or so, I was gone, every weekday from morning til evening, getting home just in time to feed him, bathe him and get him to bed.The H was working from home then, but mostly Dido was with his incomparable, fantastic, loving nanny, who still cares for him part time and is pretty much the only babysitter he's ever known. Dido and the H and I are all very lucky to have been able to spend so much time together. Suffice it to say that not working was an enormous, awkward, ugly adjustment for me, one I've only just gotten over, just in time for me to start working again and for him to formally enter the world. I often felt, as many moms do, that I knew how to do lots of things, but patiently raising my child wasn't necessarily among them. I try my best, and I think I mostly do ok. But these last few weeks, as I anticipate him beginning the long journey of experiences outside his family (and believe me, I'm all for him developing his independence: the amazing thing to me about being a parent has been the compelling awareness of just how separate we are, how unique from one another, in spite of our bond) I am trying to cement in my own mind how amazing a person I think he is, what a great companion and curious, kind, funny soul he is, and how intensely grateful I am that I get to call myself his mom. (Or, as I like to tell him: "My name isn't 'Mom.' It's 'Mommy'." Two and a half, almost three, is too young for him to call me simply "Mom." It breaks my heart.) I want to remember these days of the two of us hanging out, going to puppet shows, and Hollywood Bowl kids' concerts, and out to lunch because I know that now begins the long, slow weaning, the real weaning not from my breast but from my side. Monday is going to be a hard day. 10:24:03 PM     comment [] trackback []