[ A little baby bliss goes a long way. ]
Swinging in this tree, in this backyard, with this little boy on my lap takes me back to a place I’ve not been in awhile.
It takes me back to my childhood, to the days I spent lounging in the sun, reading Alice In Wonderland, climbing old trees and performing front handsprings for passing cars. It takes me back to a trampoline and the poetry I wrote about lilacs, reckless dreams and young love. About why and where and how I would become a writer one day when I grew up.
I don’t know when I grew up.
Sometimes I catch myself looking in the mirror with Henry resting on my hip, our reflections bouncing back at us. His round face and his round eyes patterned after mine and Joe’s and all the family members that came before us.
I look in the mirror at this baby with the big eyebrows and the big grin telling me that I’ve grown up. And I think: what and how will you grow up to be?
Sometimes I beat myself up about things. About not achieving enough. It irritates Joe. He likes to point out that I’m the kind of person who can’t see the forest through the trees.
He’s so right.
I’m the Little Picture Girl and he’s the Big Picture Boy.
But now we’ve got this baby and he’s got us wrapped around his pinkie finger. He’s turning the big pictures and the little pictures inside out and upside down.
We created him using nothing but biology and now the world is different. Or at least it’s different for us.
The day he was born was unlike any other day of my life. I can’t explain it. Everything looked strange and beautiful. Things I had seen one million times looked as they did the first time I saw them. Businesses we passed on our way home from the birth center, places I had entered dozens of times, looked brand new. The air smelled exotic. The traffic lights glittered. The sounds of cars and birds and airplanes were louder than ever before.
You know how you feel when you move somewhere new? Or when you’re on vacation and you pass through a place you’ve never been? How your senses are heightened and your brain feels sharper than it has in months or years?
That’s how I felt in the days following Henry’s birth.
I felt like I was on drugs. The high was so beautiful and intoxicating. It felt just like floating – yet I was in some of the worst physical pain of my life.
In those early days, the very tough early days of wrapping my head around the fact that I had brought a person into this world, I did something I don’t do often.
I saw the forest through the trees.
This week, while swinging in the backyard with Henry on my lap, I saw it again.
The sun was slicing through the oak leaves. The air was cool for the first time since March. The church bells were dinging and Henry was giggling.
We swung this way for an hour. Back and forth, back and forth. Me and Henry just looking at the forest through the trees.
This made be hopeful. My newest niece was born this week, and holding her in my lap today I thought, she is going to be amazing…
Your words never cease to amaze me, reading them is like imaging every wonderful feeling I’ve had is now on paper.
This was beautiful. Reading this I thought for the first time, “I want this one day.” While I always assumed children were in the cards for me it’s not something I’ve really obsessed over and feel complete in life right now but this certainly struck a new cord with me. Thanks for writing it and I’m happy I get to share in Henry’s life too.
When you take time to enjoy the simplier things in life it is amazing what beauty emerges. We all are guilty of getting caught up in the every day bullshit and letting that consume our thoughts. That bullshit is what sucks the life out of us and we lose sense of what is really important. I am so glad you finally found that beautiful forest. I hope you visit it often, taking your loved ones along on the adventure too. You have grown into a wonderful Mother. Enjoy this chapter in your life, it is a chapter that has no ending. The story just keeps getting better and better, you and your sisters keep proving that to me. I am so glad that you too now get to experience the fulfillment children bring to your life!
Speaking of forest through the trees, I hadn’t even noticed my entire bra is out in the photo. I took it with the self-timer. Joe wasn’t around to tell me my milk jugs were exposed. 🙂
This is beautiful!!
I’m a trees person too and Donald is a forest person (I wish I’d had the foresight to read this when he wasn’t two feet away because now he’s going to use that analogy for the rest of my life, thankyouverymuch) – I think they each have their benefits. For example, a forest person remembers that a toddler needs to eat at some point in the day but as long as they aren’t fussing about it what’s the big deal? And a trees person packs three different types of snacks beforehand, just in case. On the flip side, a trees person gets so hung up in details that they might not turn in adoption paperwork for three weeks because IT HAS TO BE PERFECT, OH MY GAWD, CAN YOU BELIEVE WE ALMOST SENT THIS IN WITH A WORD MISSPELLED? And a forest person slaps a stamp on the envelope and gets it sent because crikeys, woman, they don’t judge your parental capacity by your horrific spelling.
Enjoy slowing down, all the same. I don’t think we ever learn so much or have so much fun as when we enjoy our children in the moment.
Great post. And if you hadn’t commented on the exposed milk jugs I would’ve never noticed.
Way to describe the indescribable, Heids. Perfection.
The other day I was trying to get Amelia to sleep and while I had my arms wrapped around her cute little body, I was wishing she would go to sleep so I could get some work done. Then I stopped, realized that the moment was so fleeting in the grand scheme.. and how much I loved holding her in my arms while she is still so small, and enjoyed the fact that all she wanted was to chill with mama for a bit. And we did. 🙂
kisses to you and lil’ man!!! Love your blogging words my friend.
<3
love this post, you are such a natural mom. Henry is a lucky boy. Treasure each moment you spend with him.hugs and kisses to all . nana
I often can’t decide who’s sweeter – you or Henry. Then the mothership threw me a curveball. Her comment just made it a three way tie. 😉
Beautiful.