My sweet, physical, fierce, tender kid turned 10 two weeks ago.
One decade of him.
Ten years of:
Late nights—oh no, he’s up too late; why won’t he sleep?; reading books x 1 zillion; “come on kid, let’s get those teeth brushed!”
Middle-of-the-nights—feedings; diaper changes; bad dreams; rocking rocking rocking; “I don’t know why I’m awake mama I just am;” phone scrolling; wondering if we’re doing it right/doing enough
Early mornings—sweet baby smell; bright eyes; new words that weren’t there the night before; quiet playtime; exhaustion; Special Time x 1 zillion; rushing rushing rushing to daycare/preschool/school/bus
… and so much time in between full of H, the way he is, the way he has always been.
Sometimes when I hear parents say “he was like this from the beginning” I remember my son in utero—kicking, rolling, elbowing, pushing his little butt out—and I think yep, he was like this from the beginning.
At six months he figured out how to do raspberries on my arm. Almost ten years later fart noises (and actual farts) are still his favorite thing.
At two he used to charge down the hall to leap on his dad while he was exercising, sending him to the ground with one swift punch between the shoulderblades. He still asks for wrestling matches almost every night.
At three, we left late at night one night to drive up to the snow. I thought he’d sleep. He talked for the entire four-hour drive. At 10 (when the tablet is nowhere in sight), he still has so much to say. Some of it’s true, some of it’s invented—just like always.
Someone asked me this week why I started supporting parents.
The simple answer is, because of him.
Because he cried so much. Because I didn’t know how to help him. Because he scared me. Because I was so angry—that I didn’t understand, that I couldn’t help him, that I felt so afraid.
I started (and kept going) because he helped me remember that we’re so much alike. He’s like me. And I’m like so many other parents, trying to figure it out. I knew that was true, even in my most confused moments.
If I needed help figuring out this person I loved so much, so did other people.
He’s still the reason. He still scares me and confuses me—if not every day, then every week. This week I’m scared he won’t make friends. That they won’t see how great he is. That he’ll be lonely. I’m confused about what is stopping him.
He keeps teaching me how NOT to do things for him. Because I keep making mistakes, getting it wrong, and forgetting that what he often needs is not my answers or my opinions but my presence and my listening.
I’ve got a decade on me, too, it turns out. I’m a 10-year-old parent. I wonder if I’m prepubescent the way he is—if soon I’ll be in my awkward stage, unsure how to use my arms or what to say.
I hope not. But probably.
The main thing I feel is, how is he so beautiful?
(And also, was I this beautiful once?)
So lit up from the inside, on the precipice of becoming a grown person, just about to get all the rest of his adult teeth and muscles and face that turn him into how he’ll look for the rest of his life?
And when he gets those things, will he still look so lit from within?
What if he doesn’t? That would be such a tragedy.
Years before he was born, an old friend told me that her five-year-old son asked her one night, “who was I before I was your baby?”
I never stopped thinking about that, because, who indeed? Was he the lit-up thing that is still visible, even as we inch ever closer to the dark, brooding teenage years?
And if so, is there anything we can do to keep that part of him here with us, forever, so that when he’s on his deathbed in 100 years, whoever is holding his hand will say, “he was the brightest light I ever knew”?
The night he turned one, I came down from putting him to bed in tears. When my husband came to comfort me and asked what was wrong, I said, “he’s one now, and he’ll walk soon… and then he’ll run, and then he’ll keep running, and…”
“No,” he said. “Don’t worry. He’ll keep letting you hold him in your arms. He’s still your baby.”
And now, he’s 10! He’s a preteen. Soon he’ll be a teenager, and he’ll move away from us, little by little… and then more and more.
I know it’s right, and good, just like it was when he was one. It’s what we’re all working toward, isn’t it? That someday they’ll walk, and then run, and then move away from us, into their own life?
Yes.
And, and, and. I wish he would stay.
