There are moments in time I’d like to just pause as my children are growing up so fast. One tells me I’m the mayor of Crazy Town (in our household it’s a real place) the other ask me such interesting questions about the Mir space station and will Steve Harvey ever host a Miss America pageant again. My answer would be a resounding no to that one.
[bctt tweet=”There are moments in time I’d like to freeze as my children are growing up so fast.”]
I still remember when they were babies and the circumstances that led up to me bringing them into the world. My oldest two days late; long, skinny, and as purple as Barney the dinosaur. The cord was wrapped around his neck and his head was too wide to engage into the birth canal. When he was born he looked up at me with the brightest eyes and watched my every move. He was just as fascinated with me as I was with him.
Oh! how I loved him at first sight as I knew he was waiting for me all along. He was so strong and I would finish feeding him and he’d push himself away from my body and roll over and look at me. He was lean muscle at two days old and blew every vision I had out of the water about how a baby was supposed to look and behave. He wasn’t a helpless newborn or looked like a “Michelin baby” covered with rolls of adorableness. I marveled at his strength and loved him with a fierceness of a thousand suns.
I have to pause that moment when he squeezed my finger and looked into my eyes; it was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen.
Now he’s 4’8 at nine years old and will soon be towering over the top of me! He builds amazing Minecraft and Robolux worlds that keep me in awe and fascination of his marvelous mind.
On the other end of the spectrum, his little brother made his scary and rapid appearance at thirty-six weeks, before I had the chance to prepare for it. I knew nothing about early onset labor and all that would follow having a premature baby.
This is a time in which I have to press play on my memory bank. Those two weeks of having my baby in the hospital NICU are a blur of emotions. He didn’t appreciate being awakened by the OBGYN as he removed him via c-section. He was like a little loaf of bread that hadn’t finished baking. He was all curled up in a baby yoga pose and he had this meowing sound and I burst out laughing. I looked at my husband and said, “did our baby just meow?” The whole OR staff started laughing as my husband stroked my hair, and it broke the tension of the moment.
He was such a mystery to me and didn’t open up his eyes for five days. Then when he did I felt like I could see all the wonders of the world. My baby had an old soul. He would look at me as if to say, “It’s ok Mom I’ve done this before.”
The love I had in that moment enveloped me and I was lost in the swirling rainbow of emotions. I have to pause that moment in time. It was a difficult time, as my mother had just died weeks before the baby was born. While I grieved, I was captured by this baby boy, who seemed wise beyond his years. When we brought him home that day from the hospital he completed our family with his gentleness. I t took him two more weeks to find his voice as he was so quiet and serious. It was like he was taking every moment in of his new world and didn’t want to miss a minute of it to sleep.
We settled into our family of four way of life and I grieved for my mother. I want to pause the last moment I had with her as I whispered into her ear that we were expecting again. The warmth of her hands as she squeezed mine in acknowledgment and the glow in her eyes was my most cherished moment with her.
I know she watches over my children and wants our greatest gift to be our love and happiness.
That moment reminds me of Kahlil Gibran’s The Prophet (one of my favorite books – I read it through both of my pregnancies!) as I realized I was responsible for loving and nurturing two precious souls on earth.
Your children are not your children. They are the son’s and daughter’s of life’s longing for itself. They come through you but not of you. And though they are with you yet they belong not to you. You may give them your love but not your thoughts. You may house their bodies but not their souls. For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams. You may strive to be like them but seek not to make them like you. For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.
~ Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet