What is your "age-to-remember"?
A simple question with an endless variety of answer. Mine would be when I was 4 years old. The last year before my little brother arrived. This is not to say that his arrival changed things in a bad way, it's just an easier mark of time.
I remember the routines and special moments I shared with my parents. Especially my mom. I remember my German Nanny and the rose bed sheet she would put me to nap on. I remember the cold chilly mornings being all bundled up walking to school with my mom. I remember the basement with a cash-register toy and a pretend post-office stall. I remember the spring barbecues in the backyard and decorating trees with snow balls during the winter. The daily dose of sesame street with my head on my mom's lap, and the list continues....
As years go by, things didn't stay all that rosy. The memories often serve as a refuge for my mind that gives me new strength and fresh smile.
When parenthood became something real, so did the pressure to create the "Perfect" childhood for my kids.
With a baby dancing inside of me, I imagined a crisp white room and our special quiet moments of the two of us looking into each other's eyes. Big smiles on my face and a happy coo from the baby.
Alas, the days after the baby is out, I was hardly ever awake enough to enjoy the crisp white room and the special quiet moments? The scene was more like the two of us cuddling with tears in our eyes. And that was as far as you can get from being peaceful or in a state of bliss.
I can swear that every time my baby cried with the full extension of her lung, I literally could see my picture perfect dream fell apart like a broken puzzle. I felt like a failure and was haunted by horror pictures of what this would mean for her future.
Desperate situations call for desperate measures!
I wrote a diary full of apologies with a vision of my daughter as a young adult reading it and hopefully understanding my failure.
I read a bookstore full of books about child developments and fill my head with even more scary things that resulted from failed parenthood.
I glanced in the mirror and scared myself. My eyes are bulging out from lack of sleep. My hair is a huge frizz ball. My skin was dull and I can hardly even keep myself awake long enough to examine the rest of me. But down on my chest, a little girl is on my breast with a totally content look.
I smiled.
She looked very peaceful. My skin might be dull but hers is pink and rosy and flawless. my eyes might be bulging out, but hers is closed in peace. My hair might be a huge frizz ball but hers is a beautiful tangled mess of soft brown curls.
For the first time, I didn't think I was such a failure after all.
But I know this moment of content is a fleeting one and so the need for ‘desperate measures’ are still as urgent as before.
I looked around the crisp white room and its content and tried to make an assessment:
- The $600 stroller: We never had any SINGLE moment that slightly resembles the pictures it came with. (You know, the one with the mother in outdoor clothes on her morning jog with the baby smiling in the stroller).
- The cute teddy bear sitting next to her bed.
- The baby cot with cute bumpers around it
All had never lived up to the promises they have in their tags. So, they will have to go.
I did a mental stock-take on what makes us happy. She likes to be carried. I love carrying her. But I have the need to also do other things. I decided on a sling as a compromise.
She likes to feel me next to her when she sleeps. I need my space on the bed (and some sleep, thank you!) So the co-sleeper cot seemed like a nice compromise.
She hates car seats. Simple and straight forward. She would cry bloody murder at any attempt to put her on her car seat. I think this is pretty reasonable considering that it defies everything she wants or needs in life. The touches, the sight of her mom, and the readily available breasts and constant entertainment. So, I decided to go to most places by foot and have her on the sling.
These little compromises don’t seem much but it worked for us. I realized that this little blob wanted to please me almost as much as I wanted to please her. The more I understand her, the more she seemed to understand me as well.
The crying aside, we managed to develop really strong bonds and have a great time together. All the walking and the carrying had helped me lose the baby weight faster. The abundance of hug and touch dosage had helped ease her anxiety when I do need to leave her on the bed for a few minutes. The constant companion and chatters had helped me vent out my thoughts to some willing ears and in return, her chatter and coos turned into words very soon.
When she was 7 days old, my husband announced that he doesn't think he could handle a lifetime of the crying fits and sleepless nights. I nodded in agreement with tears in my eyes.
But now that she is 7 years old, we can look back and smile.
Her baby brother was very different. Unlike her, he found the constant cuddles suffocating. Not that he didn’t enjoy them but he just liked having his own ‘space’. He loved the car seat as it gave him exactly this. He loved the stroller and responded well to the baby cot idea.
All in all, I guess this taught me how different each kids can be and they each come with their own needs and wants.
When my daughter was 2 years old, my husband and her got me this beautiful ring I have enjoyed looking at for some time. The gift came as a nice surprise but the note it came with meant more than they could have imagined. It says: Thank you mommy for making me a happy 2 year old.
My 9 year old, recently wrote in her note to me:
“Seriously mommy? You think I’d like the book with dogs that have wings better than the one that just have normal dogs? I’m 9. My sister is 7. Don’t you think you should have given HER the dogs with wings? “
See?
In the world of white picket fences, the ideal mom would CERTAINLY know all this. The ideal mom would smile and pick the right books with the right dogs for the right kids. The ideal mom would also be an ideal wife accompanied by an ideal husband who amongst the splattered kids’ vomit on the ground and the messy kitchen can look at each other with a loving smile.
Well, what can I say…I don’t have a white picket fence and dream as I may that bloody brown wooden-fence wouldn’t change to white. (well, at least not without some paint and effort). And my husband and I? Our relationship was never one like that.
The realization that the only thing my life seems to have in common with the life behind the white-picket-fence is the level of messiness in the kitchen used to frustrate me. And the idea of picking up my kids at school and meet the impeccably gorgeous mothers used to make me want to hide in the toilet.
I still do now. But instead of running away or indulging in the self-pity party, I’d feel the ring on my finger. Somebody is happy to have me as their mommy. Maybe not for much longer before they embark on their rebellious teenage years. But by then, I hope I’d be over my white-picket-fence obsessions.
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