Mia is wearing pigtails in her wisps of hair for the second day ever right now. They shoot off her head like palm trees and I am caught up in the crazy feeling of being so proud that she has finally gotten ANY hair and terribly sad because it means that she’s growing up.
I was looking through old pictures of Mia for Christmas presents when I realized that the baldness is really rather off-putting. The puzzling thing to me is that people stopped me all the time with her and said she was a beautiful baby. At the time, I agreed! In retrospect, however, I feel like she looks like she was just released from the cancer ward after a round of chemotherapy with that bald pate gleaming. What were we all thinking?!
Regardless, she has pigtails today; and I thought you would enjoy the photo.
Earlier this week I had a meeting that I attended, sans children. It was running a little late to start and I had a few minutes where I sat in absolute stillness and drank a cup of coffee. I relished the knowledge that, though the girls were well taken care of, they were not my immediate responsibility. I was without obligation.
It was in that stillness that I became aware of a serious hoax to which I have fallen victim. Here we are, thrown into motherhood with our only prerequisite of experience being working ovaries and a man ready to rumble. All of the sudden we are thrust into what everyone says is the greatest job of society – the responsibility for future national success, not to mention economic, spiritual, success, etc., rests in the hands of these little terrors and their mothers who are supposed to guide tantrums into intentional movement, childish passions into rewarding life careers, and guard their future health with nutritious meals and vitamins and balanced activities to fight an overwhelming threat of obesity.
I have no experience for this, only on-the-job training.
I think back to a few weeks ago when I had put Maggie beside me in bed because of her upset tummy and gone to sleep. I woke up to the sounds of her retching and, before I could move, she vomited all over and even up my nose and into my mouth. The words, “I HATE YOU!” came out of my mouth without any thought at all… will Maggie’s little consciousness remember that sleep-deprived, utterly disgusted initial response or the fact that I gently cleaned her up, comforted her and loved her afterward, rather than hanging her out the window by her toenails? Will Mia remember that we played Frogger across the living room or that I spanked her for adorning the interior of my kitchen cabinets with green crayon?
Every parenting article adds advice to the pot… and as my dad says, “Anyone who has raised a child to adulthood has an opinion about how to raise a child.” Along with all of those opinions, I discover that I have added an incredible sense of guilt and fear of failed expectations to my own parenting skill set. No matter how much I *do*, I am haunted by what remains *undone* and whether it will hopelessly destroy the fragile psyche’s of my daughters.
But the other morning in that stillness, sipping my coffee, I think that I came to grips with the knowledge I’m not doing everything I can. I’m not doing everything right. And, in many cases, that’s OK. It doesn’t require that I carry the U-haul of guilty baggage throughout their childhoods and lives.
And that is all I have to say about that. J
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