When I found out she was going to exist, I wasn't expecting it and I cried. It was beautiful, it was scary, it was unfair, it was poetic. It was a lot of things I didn't understand. I knew it would all fall together in a very simple joy the moment she was born.
It wasn't like that at all.
I still don't understand a lot of things about her. She turned my sister into a different person--someone a little less selfish and a lot more grown-up. She turned my mother into someone who was actually happy. The strangest thing is what she did to me.
I expected, after holding this tiny perfect little thing with *my* nose, the baby cravings would hit with the weight of a neutron star. I would be smitten with her cuteness and want to play with one of my own. Instead, she terrifies me. I'm not a person who loves easily and the intensity of my feelings for this little lump of Clay I met, literally, yesterday, fills me with an ominous dread. If this is how I feel with someone who is, by all definitions, extended family, how could I be expected to function with one of my own?
I've known this feeling before. The thought of loving someone more than I love my husband has always scared me, although that is beginning to wane a bit (not because I love him less, but because I trust us more). This just reopens that fear. I mean, I met her just over 24 hours ago, and I would not only throw myself under a bus for her, but relish the fact that *I* was the one who got to do it! I cried today because I miss her. For some stupid reason, I miss her. How would I let one of my own go to that first day of kindergarten, or, god help us all, college? Clearly, it takes someone made of tougher stuff than I to be a parent.
So maybe J. had it better by it being a (fortuitous) accident. Because who in their right mind could intentionally walk into the kind of evisceration that motherhood literally is? So welcome to the world, Baby Girl. I've already given you your first skinned knee, and you've already given me an oddly broken heart.
4 comments:
Yeah. My nephews did something to me, too, that I didn't expect. I miss them. I'm going to Fayetteville next week just to be with them, get to know them. They already had totally distinct personalities within an hour after they were born (which is when I got to the hospital). I love them so much.
And I also felt a cold terror of having my own. As Elizabeth Gilbert's sister put it, having a baby is like getting a tattoo on your face. I don't understand how anyone voluntarily enters into this. Which means I'm probably not ready for it yet. But I have a lot of friends who've one day woken up with a tattoo on their face, and mostly they adjust. I imagine some day I will, too. Just not... right... now.
Meanwhile, though... Jack and Jake! I can love them all I want with no personal responsibility. Not bad. :)
This is a sidestep from your main point, but I want you to make some babies! I believe you would be such a great mother.
What joy with this new baby girl!!
"little lump of Clay"
:)
"So maybe J. had it better by it being a (fortuitous) accident. Because who in their right mind could intentionally walk into the kind of evisceration that motherhood literally is?"
YES
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