Dear Bug, Sweet Pea, Boogie Bear, Littles:
It’s a cliche, but as passionate as I am, as whole-heartedly (and sometimes codependently) as I’ve loved, nothing compares to the kind of love I feel for you, my sweet babe. It’s been six months since you were born and, again a cliche, you amaze me. It’s true, having a child is like having your heart walk around outside your body. Or in your case, roll around on the bed grabbing their ankles and farting.
I was so afraid of what it would mean to parent you and didn’t feel prepared at all. I had no idea that I would find you so much more beautiful and fascinating than any and every plan I so carefully made. I thought my problem would be finding ways to fit you into my life– to find ways to split responsibility for your care equally with your father, to have help watching you during the day so I could keep working full time, to pursue my Ph.D. I didn’t realize I would love caring for you above everything else, that my problem would be finding ways to keep you with me all the time, and that everything else would play second fiddle. So far, because I work for an amazing kid-centered non-profit, I can bring you to work with me every day and work from home with you in the afternoons. I have you with me nearly 24/7. I wear you and keep you in arm’s reach. We started co-sleeping and that, plus tons of supplements, has enabled me to finally breastfeed you exclusively. As I write this, you are sleeping in the Ergo against my chest, eyes fluttering and cheeks twitching in dreamland.
I thought I’d care more about sleep, and less about being close to you. What is most strange to me is that you don’t feel strange. You feel like you have always been here.
I can’t believe what a gift you are. It terrifies and inspires me like nothing ever has. Every mother is me, every child is you now. Every story I’ve heard about babies being hurt is a story about you and me. I’m haunted by them, from my past work with abused kids, from my past as an abused kid. I’m haunted by all the ways girls and women are hurt by this culture and this world. I love how innocently confident you are in yourself, everyone else, the world around you. You have no idea the kinds of things people project onto children, onto those they see as girls. You have no idea what terrible things the world holds. You will know, one day, through experience or relationship with people with experience, and that breaks my heart. As I love you and delight in your innocence, so I grieve for its impending loss. I am trying with all my might to translate that helpless feeling into resolve.
I will teach you everything I can, so you can protect yourself as well as possible, so you won’t blame yourself. I will create a safe haven for you, stability and unconditional love that you can always return to. And I will try to change the conditions that hurt children in the ways that I can. You will benefit from the white supremacy that must grieve other mothers as deeply as the violence of patriarchy grieves me. I will try to help you avoid learning it, role model work against it. I will try to teach you to stand up for yourself and others, to be a loud girl, and also to listen and support and respect others, to be a thoughtful person. I will teach you to listen to the wisdom of your body, to trust your body, to trust your gut. I will protect and respect your boundaries and tender heart, so you know how that feels, so you expect it, so you know right away when someone or something is off.
I bought a book called “Trauma-Proofing Your Kids” by Peter Levine and Maggie Kline. It has a poem in it that I really like:
How Fast Can You Run?
Charlie Coyote is ready for lunch
Being quite clever, he follows a hunch
He crouches down quietly in the tall grass
Then patiently waits for a rabbit to pass.
Rapid T. Rabbit bounds down the trail
She stops to eat clover, then washes her tail
Up jumps coyote, he makes a great leap
Hoping to catch Rapid Rabbit asleep.
Rapid moves quickly, with a jig and a jog
With a zig and a zag, then she hides in a log.
Coyote is clever, Coyote is tough
Coyote is fast, but not fast enough.
Have YOU ever had to run fast and escape?
Can you feel your LEGS, their strength and their shape?
You have a body that’s healthy and strong.
You can jump high and you can jump long.
Feel the power in your arms, they swing as you run
Feel the b-e-a-t of your HEART and the warmth of the sun.
Feel the breeze on your face; does it tickle your hair?
Feel your HANDS and your KNEES as you fly through the air.
Now you have come to a safe hiding place
Take a deep breath because you won the race!
How does it feel in your TUMMY and CHEST
Now that you’ve found a safe place to rest?
Pay attention to all the movement within
How does it feel right after you win?
Be aware of your breath, it comes in then goes out,
When you feel great, you might even shout!
Do you feel the tingling and the warm energy?
Where do you feel it… can you show it to me?
When you feel glad, you’re full of happiness
Can you tell me, inside you, where your happiness is?
I will teach you this poem, sing it over and over, until you know it by heart. I hope it will come to you when you need it.
Being a parent is so different than I thought it would be. It is bigger love than I could imagine, overwhelming, a tsunami of devotion; it makes me feel fierce and helpless, perfectly content and terrified, joyful and grief-stricken. Loving you has helped me love myself! I weigh more now than I ever have. My stomach is big, my legs and arms thick. Like most girls, I have struggled with body hate from a young age. And I love my body now, because it made you. It housed you. It created the greatest love I will ever know! It can be nothing but dear to me. And what a gift that is, to love what made you. What a gift, to love you. And what a calling to heal so many, many things in order to give you everything I can.
Bildungsroman/ parenting as coming of age 