“Don’t worry, I’m being careful!” my five-year-old said as he tried to pick up a piece of broken glass off the kitchen floor with his bare hands.
Twitching a few times before getting the words out, I said, “No, stop, don’t pick it up! With some things it doesn’t matter how careful you are – they aren’t safe.”
I wouldn’t recommend anyone pick up broken glass with their bare hands. But his comment made me stop and think.
“That is a noise a guitar should never make.” I wince as my five-year-old scratches the strings of my acoustic guitar again. “Seriously, knock it off.”
He switches to strumming. The out-of-tune notes combine together in a way that’s the opposite of harmonic.
“It sounds beautiful!” he proclaims.
“Uh, it really doesn’t,” I respond. “It really needs to be tuned.”
My two-year-old squeaks, “Tune!” and grabs the knobs on the top of the guitar’s neck, turning them wildly. So much for getting it more, rather than less, in tune.
As much as this entire process pains me, I keep getting the guitar out.
I never thought I’d be so happy about having a bookshelf with actual books on it. I haven’t seen this sight for more than four years.
These books have been in hiding – shoved under my nightstand, stacked up on the bottom shelf of an end table. There’s nothing wrong with these exact books. It’s the very act of placing them on a bookshelf and trusting that they’ll stay there that’s revelatory.
While books don’t jump off shelves, they do end up on the floor when a toddler pulls them down with his sticky, wet little fingers.
I never thought the image of defeated motherhood would have two wheels. But many things surprise you as a mom.
My beloved bicycle has accompanied me over thousands of miles of riding. Currently, its back wheel is decidedly non-functional. If I pumped it up to its full pressure or God forbid, rode on it, the whole thing would burst like an overinflated balloon. Even more importantly, the bike’s chain is twisted to heck. I would crash with the first push of the pedal.
My bike isn’t normally in this state. In fact, it’s like this because of a promise I made. A few weeks ago, I promised my five-year-old that we would go for his first “big kid bike ride.” While he’s biked endless loops around the playground, this would be the first time we’d go on a multi-use trail together, both of us on our individual bikes.
But something blocked my way.
“What was your favorite thing today?” I asked my then four-year-old at bedtime. Earlier that day, we had our monthly “special afternoon” together, where we went to an indoor playspace with a giant artificial mountain and stopped at Starbucks afterwards for hot chocolate.
“Getting my journal!” he exclaimed. After hot chocolate, we had picked out a journal for him decorated with smiling sloths. Although he can’t write more than his name yet, he had been telling us stories and asking us to write them down. Instead of pieces of folded paper scattered all over the house, we thought it would be better to write them down in one place.
Hearing this answer warmed my writer’s soul to the core. It was completely unexpected and completely genuine.
Peeling the stem of a dandelion in half and rubbing it between my fingers, I say to my older son, “I used to do this when I was a little girl.” I let the stem curl up in my hand, then hand him the green spiral. “I used to pretend they were magic.”
He touches the slick interior, rolling and unrolling the piece of flower. Plucking another dandelion, he says, “It feels like Jasper, like fur.” It’s true – the dandelion fluff does feel a little like my sister-in-law’s little terrier.
As I rub another stem between my fingers, I drift back to childhood.
To my beloved older son,
You turned five the other day. This happens all the time, all over the world, but this was special because you are my child.
Holding the hand of a little girl with my fiancé holding her other hand, I thought, “Perhaps this is what having kids is like.”
That’s because the little girl was not our daughter. She was one of the three girls that were part of the summer camp where my fiancé, Chris, and I were volunteering. To be honest, those three girls were the entire summer camp. But they were more than enough. Besides being the first kids to break my heart, they gave me a peek into what my fiancé would be like as a father.
“Let’s start school in a year or two. Clearly you’re not ready and you’re not coming back until you are. You think you can do these things, but you just can’t, Nemo!” said a puppeteer holding a cartoon fish. I immediately burst into tears. Heavy weeping wracked my body as I tried to stay quiet.
“Are you okay?” my husband leaned over and asked.
“Noooo,” I whispered between tears. I absolutely was not okay. Because that cartoon fish dad was me and I was him and we were both utterly unprepared for our kids to be starting school.
I did not expect to have a parenting epiphany at Animal Kingdom in Disney World, but there we were. (Although maybe I should have, considering I had one last time we were at Disney World.)
Rocking in the big, yellow chair in my two-year-old’s room, the sweet folk melodies of the Fleet Foxes fill the room. The nightlight shines in the corner, throwing light and shadows on the beige walls.
My son’s little head nuzzles into my shoulder as his eyes close. I rest my lips on the top of his head, feeling his fine hair tickle them. I feel his warm weight leaning into me. Shifting, he climbs up onto my lap facing me, curling his legs under him. Then he’s back to sitting on my lap, his head leaning onto my chest. Every once in a while, he unceremoniously squirms and kicks the arm of the chair, trying to get comfortable. Eventually, he drifts off, his breathing becomes steady and his arms limp. I wrap my arms around him, cradling him as I place him in his crib.