A Love Letter - Chapter 2

One thing I experienced immediately after learning I was pregnant is that I felt a sudden urge to Do Something.  Like, take a vitamin or go straight to the doctor or lie down or buy a crib.  It was a funny sense of urgency, excitement, nervousness and joy.  So, after leaving the restaurant with a striped pregnancy test in my purse, we headed straight to the local bookstore to Buy Something Pregnancy Related.  Not like I didn't already have a ton of books on the subject, but hey - who could be too prepared, really?

We chose yet another How-To book on having babies (how did all those poor women pre-printing press ever manage to pull it off??) and a couple of baby name guides.  Those were fun.  I must admit, it did feel cool to make these purchases knowing I was finally preggo and not just acting the part.  I will also admit that I felt a crazy urge to buy a pack of those adorable teeny tiny newborn diapers just so I could smell their baby powder yumminess.  Didn't follow through on that, though...

Next step was informing the fam.  We knew this would be gigantic news, as none of my siblings had yet meandered down the baby trail and this embryo would eventually become Grandchild the 1st (read SPOILED and doted on like no other).   Our trip in Maine was coming to a close, so Steve and I decided to drive to Massachusetts on our way home so we could share the news in person with my parents, who were camping at October Mountain in the Berkshires.  We'd gotten a few small presents for them in Maine, so I decided to wrap up a couple of the positive PG test sticks we now had and had them to the gift pile.  I figured it would be great fun to watch the realization spread across their faces.

We made it to the campsite and after settling in a bit, gave mom and dad their gifts and waited.  Steve and I were practically jumping out of our skin with anticipation.  Mom, after opening the test, started gasping and tearing up and making little sounds of joy.  Dad, with exactly the same amount of enthusiasm and gusto, waved his stick in the air and exclaimed,
"Oh, THANK you!!  A travel toothbrush!"

I don't know what was funnier - the fact that he was so excited about receiving a travel toothbrush or watching my mother smack him.  Either way, we made their day, and joyfully drove home knowing that all of our lives were already profoundly changed - and I hadn't even gone to my first prenatal appointment yet.  Such is the power of pregnancy.

Operation Cheese Puff

March 31, 7:56AM

Me (rifling through Connor's backpack and pulling out two bags of cheese puffs and a clementine):
Connor, why is your snack still in here?  This is two days worth of food.  Don't you like it?

C:  Oh, I do, but I brought it back home.

Me: You haven't been eating snack?

C:  No, I have.

Me: Um, then why is this food still in here?

C: Oh, that's easy.  I hide it in the back of my cubby.  Then Mrs. Durkin thinks I don't have any snack, and she gives me Goldfish.

Me: Connor, if you'd like Goldfish for snack, all you have to do is tell me.  I will buy some and send them in with you to school.

C:  Yeah, I know, but this way is a lot more sneaky and fun.

Sigh.

Connor

My son turned seven today.  This would not be a particularly extraordinary event if it wasn't for the fact that he was just born.

We just got the amnio results back that he would be healthy - none of the suspected chromosomal abnormalities are an issue and my almost constant bleeding has almost disappeared.
I just called the doctor in because I was ready to push.
He just practically flew off the birthing table - the doctor missed the whole thing.  Thank God for good and kind and ever-present nurses!
He just blew bubbles at me in the recovery room.
He just met his big brother for the first time.  His eyes widened in awe.
He just came home in his little carseat bucket.  Good grief, those things are heavy.
He just slept in our family's heirloom bassinet for the first time.  My mom and my 3 1/2 year old Ryan decorated for it him, weaving blue ribbon through the wicker the day before his birth.
He just nursed and slept and nursed some more.  Connor was the most placid and cuddly baby ever.  I recall using the word "blissful" to describe him to my mom when he was two weeks old.
He just smiled, and laughed, and rolled over.
He just sat up, crawled and cruised.
He just had a train cake and played drums and turned two.
I just blinked, and he went to nursery school.  Little did I know that the time warp starts now.
He just made friends he will have for the rest of his life.  So did I.
He just watched the class butterflies take wing.  He quickly followed suit.
I just registered him for kindergarten.  I filled out the paperwork with great care.  I mean, how do you adequately "describe your child and their personality traits" in less than two inches of space?  I wrote small...
He just got on the bus for the first time.
I just stopped crying.
He just graduated from kindergarten.
He just learned to swim.
He just received his teacher assignment for first grade.
I just bought him four composition notebooks.
He just lost his second tooth.
I just celebrated his seventh birthday in the classroom today.
He just watched family videos with me tonight, and laughed at how little he once was.

Funny, because I cried.

Happy birthday, dearest Connor.
You are an old soul who knows how to laugh and spread joy like no other.
You are a gift, and I am unspeakably grateful.

Birthdays

I was tucking my 6 year and 364/365 day old into bed last night and we were talking about his impending birthday.  "You know, Mom," he said, looking up at me through the dark, "it's really like you get reborn on your birthday."  Whoa, what?  I stopped and waited.  He went on, "Last year I was reborn as a six year old.  On Wednesday, I'll get reborn as a seven year old.  Next year I'll be reborn as eight - it's like you become a new person every time." 

Leave it to a child to offer such a fresh and uplifting perspective on getting older. 
Thanks, Connor.  And happy birthday, my love.

Spring Shadows

The snow is gone.  I saw my first robin yesterday.  The long icy winter is fading into the distance at last.  Yet, despite my undeniable joy at seeing the buds swell and the crocuses emerge from their sleepy beds, a strange sense of dread is prowling about my brain, peering out from the shadows. 
For along with spring comes an enormous amount of, well, Stuff. 

Like, Stuff To Do. 

Science projects, sports schedules, an inordinately huge number of birthday parties, planning (and paying for) summer activities, vacations and camp, thinking about having to wear shorts and (gulp) bathing suits, fundraisers, tag sales, spring cleaning, plays, taxes, musicals, orthodontist/doctor/dentist appointments, concerts, field trips, practices.  I feel like I'm on a rollercoaster, inexorably being pulled to the top of the highest hill, sensing the inevitable blinding rush to follow but having no ability to being in control of it (or even enjoy it) whatsoever. 

This is an unusual feeling for me.  I have a few friends who greet spring annually with a distinct lack of excitement (which has always puzzled me), but I am usually over the moon at the first whiff of fresh dirt.  While I am thrilled to finally be done with the layers of snow and ice, spring's reality is staring me in the face.  GET BUSY, she says.  Get moving, get mulching, get going, get cleaning, get planting, get to practice, get everyone in the car - again, get the dog out, get exercising, get new accessories, get thin, get in touch, get out from under, get together, get winter clothes packed up, get closets cleaned out, get in shape, get back to everybody, get organized, get your hair done, get in control, get involved, get caught up, get with it, get over it, get A LIFE. 

Way too much pressure if you ask me. 

Perhaps the way to welcome spring is to not GET anything.  I already have so much.  Think I'll just do my best to be grateful for what is, and take some deep breaths along the way.  Before you know it, we'll be yanking on those bathing suits.  Funny how mine always shrinks during the winter.  I guess they contract in the cold...

A Love Letter - Chapter 1

Everyone talks about having a baby, becoming a mom, giving birth.  Most women I know have at least considered taking on this project at some point in their lives, and most of the ones who wanted to have achieved it.  The thing you cannot possibly realize - that is, until you become a mother - is that you don't give birth to your children.  They give birth to you.

Before I had kids, I was a professional French horn player with a Master's from Juilliard who lived and worked in New York City.  I freely accepted whatever gigs came my way, which were plentiful and enjoyable.  I was a very fortunate musician indeed - surrounded by kind and talented colleagues, traveling with a cherished woodwind quintet who was under professional management (with my clarinetist husband, no less!) and generally making a livable wage doing something I loved more than anything else in the whole wide world.  Then at some point while living uptown on Fort Washington Avenue, my clock started ticking.  No - gonging, really.  I covertly perused the pregnancy section at the Lincoln Center Barnes and Noble, buying armloads of how-to books and baby name guides and carting them home on the A train.  It hit me - I wanted a baby.  Bad.

Steve, to his credit, was a good sport about the whole thing.  I mean, considering the fact that we were freelancing with no regular jobs or assets or even guaranteed health insurance, he took it all in stride.  In retrospect, ignorance probably had a lot to do with our nonchalance about this monumental decision.  I distinctly remember discussing a possible baby with our (childless) accountant, and her wide-eyed response - "It's a total lifestyle change."  Of course, she also knew our pathetic financial situation, so that probably had something to do with her rather candidly concerned reply.

I suspected something was up while playing at Bard with the American Symphony Orchestra during the summer of 1999.  My concentration was nil, I was constantly exhausted, and was inhaling chickpeas at the salad bar for every meal (found out later they are chock full of folic acid).  We bought a pregnancy test, which felt for some reason like we were doing something wrong or even strangely illegal (Yikes - the high school clerk knows we had sex!!!!!).  All three tests I took were negative.  We gave it a break, finished our gig, and drove up to Maine.  Our honeymoon, three years earlier, was in a lovely little town called Damariscotta, and we had decided to return there for a short vacation before returning to the city.

I still had no answers, so our first stop was the local drugstore.  Fortuitously enough, they had the store-brand PG tests on sale for $1.99!!!  You ladies out there know what a good deal that is, so we bought 10, and one expensive pee stick, just in case the cheapos were expired or something.  I stuffed the goods in my purse and we crossed the street to have lunch.

The service was slow.  REALLY slow.  We ordered beer, and I told myself that it was ok, since apparently I was not yet pregnant despite my instincts.  I quickly realized that I had the tools that would determine the course of my entire life sitting next to me.   There was no way I could possibly make it through what might (at this rate) be a three-hour lunch without knowing, at least not without trying to know.  Excusing myself without explanation, I headed to the ladies room, which was just a one-toilet deal (for you locals, like Strawberry Place has).  I knew I had to work fast.  Whipping out a test, I did my thing as fast as I could and put the cap on.  That's when I heard someone knock on the door.  Cursing under my breath, I shoved the stick into my bag and walked back to our table.

Sat down.  Tried not to look Steve in the eye.  He was raving about the clam chowder when..."Are you ok?"  I assured him in my most casual voice that of course I was, and tried to shovel a spoonful of chowder down my quickly closing throat.  Shit, he was on to me.  Staring now.  "Um, you didn't, you know, open...a...um...didn't do, you know...".  He couldn't even spit the words out.  I knew by now the test had a result, and all I had to do was look down in my bag next to me to see it.  I couldn't speak.  "You did, didn't you?"

I looked down.  Two lines - one in each window, one blue, one pink.  I frantically tried to remember what the little diagram looked like - two was positive, yes??  I mean, why would they have a line appear in both if you weren't pregnant?  Yes, two was good.  Oh, so very good.  I looked across the table through my tears into my husband's coffee brown eyes, wondering if our baby's would match.  He leaped out of the booth and threw his arms around me, then suddenly backed off and wrapped me in a tender embrace, as if I had in that moment become something precious and fragile and needing to be protected.  

And, of course, I had.

The Jacket

I was making my way around the house tonight, sifting through the remnants of the day, grumbling inside my head. Why does he always leave his shoes in the middle of the living room, the towel on the floor, the binder on the table? As my arms filled with my son’s belongings waiting to be returned to their rightful places, I was suddenly struck by how small they were. Matthew’s jacket was no longer than my shinbone, his sock could fit a doll. Connor’s writing journal was left opened to a fresh page of delightfully childish scrawl. One of his gloves fit inside my palm. I was shocked by just how little my children still really are.

Turning 42 was a joyous occasion, actually, but one which involved looking at what is to come (my oldest going to middle school, my youngest going to kindergarten, career possibilities, etc) and what would never be again (pregnancy, childbirth, nursing, having a small child home with me all day, etc).The clarity that slammed into me as I stared at my son’s tiny blue and yellow Carter’s jacket was stunning. Look at what IS, it said. This IS. LIVE it NOW and be present with every fiber of your being, for THIS is the gift. Yes, time is fleeting and the determined years flow by, but we are here now and here now is all that really matters.

I hugged the jacket close and cried with gratitude for that reminder.
Sometimes, the most mundane, mindless tasks offer up unexpected gifts, so be ready…just in case.