hree look-backs this morning.
After we’ve hugged on the sidewalk, Audrey usually glances back once or twice on her 20-yard trot to the school door. Today, though, it was three times, the last after she’d crossed the threshold. As I watched her pink pom-pom hat bounce out of view, my throat caught.
What if that was the last time I saw her?
My prayers are with the parents of Sandy Hook. I don’t know how they can endure it.
- The letter “T” brought to you by Daily Drop Cap.
Like mother, like daughter, they say.
And it sure feels true today. Mine got glasses.
Daughter, 2012
At the age of four, the same age I was when I joined the spectacled ranks. So it wasn’t exactly a surprise when the optometrist pronounced her nearsighted a week ago. And certainly there’s far worse hardships in life than wearing glasses.
Still, I’m finding this development rather emotionally affecting. I remember how
Mother, circa 1977
self-conscious I was about my glasses, especially around the age or 11 or 12. She’s already got red hair. Now glasses. If heredity holds, she’s bound for braces, too.
So, sitting there in the optical shop, I was thinking about the teasing I’ve doomed my daughter to. And that got me thinking, this is not how I want to be thinking about her future.
Watching her try on the purple frames that only enhance how uniquely wonderful she is, I decided. It’s time to push back against the pessimism and pissed-off ism that I’ve felt creeping into my life lately. Make the lemonade, polish the silver lining, yadda yadda.
Thus this post, where in addition to my nearsightedness and buck teeth, I bequeath to my daughter the following traits I’ve proudly cultivated my entire life:
Like mother, like daughter? I can only hope to be so lucky that one day, Audrey, you’ll read this, smile, and nod.
Like mother, like daughter
Scud missile skies broke this morning, a fitting way to commemorate the day I entered into motherhood seven years ago.
Daybreak, 9/25/12
Pre-Real Thing, I had a kind of pastel-hued, soft-focus vision of what motherhood would be like. Not quite Precious Moments, but no clouds marred my clear blue horizon.
Twenty-seven hours of labor later, scud clouds were gathering. Doctors thought the long labor put our son at risk of infection and prescribed a weeklong stay in the NICU so he could receive precautionary IV antibiotics.
“He just got here, and now he’s gone,” I remember my husband saying in dismay, after
Owen and dad get acquainted in the NICU. 9/25/05
they took him away, down the hall to the neonatal intensive care unit. My words, I no longer remember. But I remember my tone. Mama Bear at her grizzliest. He’s not going anywhere. I did not go through the hell of that labor only to have something happen now. He will come home. He will be fine.
He was fine, as far as the birth went. No infection showed up. He did come home after that week. The fantasy didn’t, its pastel blue shards swept into some wastebasket, where they belonged.
I didn’t come home, either. Oh, my body did. I slept in my same old bed, parked the car on the right side of the garage, went through the kitchen motions. But that week inflicted permanent changes to my psyche. I learned what will and determination really meant that week.
Until he was four and a half and diagnosed with autism. The scuds returned then, gathering, thickening, blocking out the light completely for a while. Then, as we plunged into the world of special education and therapy that’s not covered by insurance and behaviors that make lots of people uncomfortable, I learned what will and determination really meant.
Until this summer, when all the therapies and medications and techniques and school routines that had helped us to make fairly steady progress suddenly seemed to stop working. When I’d go into the garage and shut the doors and scream to the walls to release my frustration. And then open the doors and make myself go back inside the house that seemed trapped under now-leaden skies, where my six-year-old with the atypical brain was struggling to cope with the regular world. That’s when I learned what will and determination meant.
Owen scaling a rock of his choosing, Mackinaw City, July 2012
Until three weeks ago, when the school year we’d so anticipated got off to a rocky start. And then some rocks became boulders. And then we realized that those boulders were too big for our son to navigate, we reached in – boosted by others — and hauled him out to a place where the rocks are stepping stones. That’s when I learned what will and determination meant.
Until I learn it anew some date in the future. For now, the scuds appear to be clearing again. But now can be as fleeting as those puffy, smoky clouds.
Motherhood is unique. Maybe for others the experience really is pastel and soft-focus. Today I celebrate the anniversary of mine: Every shade of gray. Loud. Messy. Urgent. Scary. Exhausting.
But also profoundly touching. Humbling. Revelatory. Enriching. Ferociously amplifying of every emotion from guilt to protector, from duty to love.
Thank you, Owen. Happy birthday.