As I Lay Here

As parents of the modern age, we are to hold space for our children’s big feelings. We are to allow them, to enforce boundaries around them, to teach logical consequences when they lead to smashed vases or hitting. We are to be unruffled, inscrutable, calm, and wise. We are never to shame or strike our child. We cannot break their spirit.

I can’t help but wonder, as I lay here on my daughter’s bed after she swatted my arm and told me she’ll never be my friend, after she screamed and slammed a door in my face, after she wrestled the toothbrush out of her mouth, after she refused to put on Pull-ups following two straight nights of bedwetting in a home without its own washer/dryer and all but one broken machine in the community laundry room—I can’t help but wonder, what about a mother’s spirit?

As I lay here, exhausted, confused, unsure how to counter all of these big feelings and tested boundaries, unsure how to remain unruffled, I feel my own spirit hurting.

Toddlers abuse you, and then they pull your arm around their little body as they try to fall asleep and tell you that they love you and you swell with gratitude, and that’s kind of abusive too. Manipulated by raw emotion, like being subject to a storm, and in the middle of the storm is your own heart. Abused, but the storm is innocent.

As I lay here, I remind myself that raising a toddler is about more than preserving the precious spirit of a child. Sometimes you have to let them spit out the toothbrush, because you have a spirit worth protecting, too.

Disappearing Magic

I have seen the pinks fade to greens and blues and purples. For kids in double digits, an assortment of colors––however bright––is more acceptable than the homogeny (and hegemony) of pink. I know this, but the rooms are darker. The toys are slowly removed, assigned to their next lives whether that be with a new child or in a dumpster. In their places are now magazines, homework, computer screens, and makeup.

I loved the kid stuff. When I babysat your kids, I loved being around that unique set of items created for a tiny population of new people. Like living in a house that is also secretly a doll house but doesn’t want the grownups to know; there are special utensils and creatively spouted cups. There are frills and tiny vehicles, wooden stepping stools, and mediums of art that for some silly reason adults reject. What becomes so uncouth about a crayon in art school when it’s perfectly acceptable for an artist of five or six?

I used to marvel at those things when I watched your children. I wanted a mixed house like that, with boring toothbrushes for grownups and a Spider-Man toothbrush for the small person placed side by side next to the faucet. Sprinklings of magic among the mundane. I wanted cause to lower my easel to the shortest setting. I wanted beds full of stuffed animals and toy chests full of innocence right next to the closet where I would keep the vacuum.

I have that now, and I don’t take a single moment of it for granted. Not even when it appears a tornado full of technicolor toddler toys and goldfish crackers has blown through my living room. Not when I can’t open the closet without a children’s trampoline crashing down on me, or when I’m listening to Show Yourself for the hundredth time in one day. Not even then.

I have purchased a canvas backpack for my lady. It is patterned with pink-haired mermaids, and I am itching for the moment when together we will fill it with the accoutrements of her preschool adventure. Sparkly pencil boxes filled with safe scissors and sticky glue. A soft friend for company, and a snack. Oh, the snacks. How they endear me.

But already she has rejected a crib. That is now wood for fire. She prefers Barbies over lovies, and Anna over Elmo. It wasn’t so hard to depart with the “baby stuff” but is that because I’m growing with her? Or because I don’t, and never did, love baby stuff? I don’t know. I suppose I’ll find out when she tells me that pink is no longer her favorite color. We’ll see how much my heart breaks.  

I see your, more or less, grown children that I used to help care for from time to time, and though they are magnificent humans, the magic has changed. It has forced me to confront a truth I haven’t yet had to confront, because up until now everything felt slow. The sleepless nights, the colic, and the terrible twos were all, frankly, rather slow. I couldn’t wait until she developed some reason, and now she has. She has a reason to speak and a reason she likes the things she likes. There’s a method to her magic and it’s wondrous to behold, and it has also sped the clock beyond what I’m comfortable with.

You’re telling me that she won’t want this forever. I know that. But does it have to be so brief? I don’t want sequined pillows and talking dolls in perpetuity, but maybe a bit longer than what I’m seeing. Out, out brief candle? No. No, no. I don’t think so. Put on some tea. Make a setting for Winnie the Pooh. Poor a cup of lukewarm chamomile in your father’s tiny blue cup, and some peppermint in mine. Sneak more of the honey than you’re allowed. Say “cheers,” take a sip. Stay as long you like, but at least a moment more.