atomic mama

Yesterday you turned 20 months old! Mama can’t keep up. You know this, because you’ve noticed by now that I haven’t written one of my “monthly” Dear Lina posts for a few months now.

You might be wondering why your normally neurotic mother would do such a thing. Or maybe by now you’ve realized that most of my neuroses are pretty unproductive. While it’s important to me that all the q-tips are touching the bottom of the container at all times, things like grocery shopping and writing predictable posts seem to slip through my fingers. And while we’re at it, you should know that most of your father’s perfectionist tendencies are reserved for one thing only: loading the dishwasher. Consider the following exchange between your parents, which happens about once a week:

Mama: I think the dishwasher’s full. I don’t think these last dirty glasses will fit.

Papa (getting up from his chair and moving swiftly toward the kitchen): Oh, I bet they will.

Mama (drying her hands on the kitchen towel and moving swiftly toward Papa’s chair): Well, if you think so, honey. I sure couldn’t fit them in.

Papa then proceeds to completely unload and then reload the dishwasher, deftly fitting in every dirty dish in the house, including the pet bowls. They all end up facing the right way, turned perfectly toward the magical source of cleanliness that appears inside the dishwasher after one closes the door. A computer is not the only machine that your father knows his way around.

But I digress.

Let’s talk about yesterday. Yesterday! Yesterday was your first day in the “waddler” room at school. You’re now expected to eat communal meals with your comrades, sleep on a mat during your appointed naptime, and the big one: no more bottles at school. You love your bottles, so this one will be an adjustment. Slowly but surely, we’ll wean you off of formula and onto whole milk.

Your papa and I were talking about this the other day. We spent our usual five thousand dollars on formula over the weekend, and then we got the news that you’d be moving up to join the waddler clan. “Wow! That’s probably the last formula we’ll have to buy for her!” I said to Papa cheerfully, glad to have my beer money back.

I heard the words as they left my mouth. I’m sure my face fell because your papa came over to me right away and put his arms around me. “There are going to be a lot of ‘lasts’, baby” he said. “And a lot of ‘firsts’.”

Right then and there I saw it all going by in the blink of an eye: your babyhood, your toddlerhood, your childhood.

You are outgrowing your baby bathtub. You don’t fit the hats I knitted for you before I knew you. I am getting to know you better every day… falling more in love with you every day, Lina. And every day you are leaving me a little bit, even as we grow closer to one another. This is the essence of being a mama. The hard jewel in the center. The problem that has no solution but loving and letting go. Being your mama is the most beautiful and powerful experience I’ve ever had.

Thank you for your wonderful company. Thank you for expressing yourself, even when it’s hard for me to handle. Thank you for the way you say “Mama! Mama! Mama!” Thank you for walking backwards to me and plunking yourself down in my lap. And thank you for taking off again, launching yourself out into the world from my arms, not looking back. I’m watching you, sweet daughter. I’m watching every step.

Love, Mama

This entry was posted on Thursday, November 2nd, 2006 at 19:45 and is filed under stephanie. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.