mommy

When Lukas was first born I didn’t exactly feel like his mommy. I didn’t feel like anyone’s “mommy”. I didn’t know what it meant to be a mommy. I only knew what I had imagined of other moms, including my own. Besides, he didn’t seem to know the difference between my holding him or a random stranger. I felt like the food source. I felt responsible. But I didn’t feel like a mom how I had imagined. When I thought of becoming a parent I thought of school games and plays, apple picking, helping with homework, playing outside. I didn’t think of continual breast feeding and no sleep. I didn’t think of child care and being house bound.

I haven’t been house bound these days. I live in Vermont and it is summer and therefore I must be out enjoying it….that is the rule. If there was anything that my mother taught me it was to get out and enjoy the sun. But summer is flying by. Lukas is 9 months old now. He has now been born into this world for a longer time than he spent in my belly. Maybe he even feels a bit more at home here in this hot, cold, wet, dry ever changing world of opposites. In this place that must feel like continual riddles to him.
All Lukas wants to do these days is walk around…walk around and investigate these riddles. I hold his hands and he walks and my back aches more each day. But I like to watch him discover the small things…a coaster, a piece of string, a discarded can. All of it is exciting to him and I want to be a part of that excitement. I don’t want to miss a moment. I love watching his likes and dislikes appear as he encounters the same objects each day….the knobs on the cupboard, the sink, the recycling box. Magically he begins to unfold as an individual with his own wants. And as he appears as this separate little person I start to see the mommy in me. Me, the one packing him crackers and carrot sticks. The mommy making him baby food or carrying him up to bed from the car, his body soft and surrendered to sleep. And he seems to see me as his mommy too. He begins to help me define this role as he watches me come into the room and beams at me. Or when he reaches for me in his late night exhaustion or nuzzles into my shoulder as we meet a stranger. He seems to know me as safety and I so want to be that for him.
I wouldn’t say that I know what it is to be a mom or that I even totally feel like a “mom”. I still have major moments of immaturity, moments where I only want to care about me. But I would say that I am beginning to understand. As Lukas slowly unfolds and opens into this world, I feel my own unfurling. As I watch and witness him emerge, helping him to discover who he is in this world, he too takes my hands and through his need and recognition helps me to uncover the mother inside me. Thus we begin the dance.

Anita's Sky

It’s been a long time. The in-laws are long gone and much missed. I was back at work full time for a week and cannot imagine how other full time moms do it. It was awful. I came home exhausted at 3:30 and Lukas was just entering his fussy period and had already taken both his daily naps and I didn’t get a break until he went to bed at 8. I was totally worn down and was sick all last week as I recovered from it. I still have a weird sore throat which has inspired fears of an incurable illness that would cause me to be sick and weak for the rest of my life. How do those full time mommies do it?

Life with Lukas has been pretty full time. All he wants to do now is walk around with me attached and supporting him. His lack of fear is inspiring and terrifying as he leans and reaches for things. He doesn’t see the corner of the table above him, the book about to fall on his head, the door handle he could scrape himself on. He just reaches. And when he falls, I am there and I catch him. I am the little guardian angel behind him.

When I was in my early 20’s I traveled around Europe a lot. For a few months I lived in Switzerland in this amazing woman’s attic while I worked on an experimental theatre piece. It was all a bit of a fairy tale. Let me digress a bit. The woman’s name was Anita. She was a seamstress who only worked at night. She lived on cappuccino and espresso and only liked to eat things that were orange like apricots and carrots. She had two children named Pablo and Meret. Meret rode a unicycle in the garden and Pablo was prone to sudden bursts of crying. I lived on the third floor with a window with shutters that opened out to a view of the town plaza, a fountain and bakery and the distant wine fields with a castle at the top. A dreamy place for a dreamy American girl. There was a cluttered room nearby filled with nick knacks and a bathroom with a map of the world on the wall. Anita was recently divorced and was trying to make sense of things. At the time she seemed so much older but now I realize that she is not much older than I am today. After she put the kids to bed we would sit up and talk while she worked. One night she told me how her life had changed since she lost her “sky”. When I asked what this meant she explained that when she was younger she felt as if she was supported from above. Things often fell into place easily. Decisions were almost made for her. She was led. As she grew older, towards the end of her 20’s she felt as if she was losing her sky. She felt that she had to make decisions alone now and the consequences were so much greater. I remember how sad that sounded to me at the time. When I left her I drew a picture of a sky and gave it to her…so that she could have a piece of mine.
As I am now almost as old as Anita was then, I begin to understand more what she was speaking of. I too have felt my sky move away. I have landed on the earth now. I am more responsible for things.
As I stand behind my son for hours with my arms extended, ready to catch him in all directions, as I hold his hands lightly and shuffle along behind him, as I guide him quietly away from danger, I feel that I am acting as his sky for the moment. That is my job. Maybe my sky has moved further away than it was as I will one day be further away from Lukas but it is still there. I like to imagine those invisible hands behind me….guiding me….steering me away from danger and towards beautiful new discoveries.