Tomorrow after school Madeleine is going to Girl Scout camp for one night. She is fretting over missing me. Truth is, I will miss her too, but I encourage her by reminding her that it's only one night. Still, we have arranged a "comfort" package: a washcloth sprayed with my perfume and her teddy bear.
Not surprisingly, when Maddie was a baby I was enthralled with every single thing about her. I was amazed at how well she worked - how she knew to sleep, eat, smile. From me had come this perfect little package of miracle and delight and I spent a lot of time processing the whole experience over and over again. In her first weeks, we lay together on the couch, she on her stomach on my chest, her little diapered butt jutting into the air, breath even as she slept. The cold winter day would darken around us, my stomach would begin to growl, but she slept for hours and I never thought to wake her, my peaceful, sleeping baby. When David came home from work the lights would come on, and the evening bustle would begin. But those wondrous days have never left me; ten years later I can still smell her fine, dark hair, feel the soft skin of her back, remember the sense that my world was just beginning along with that of my child's.
I think back to before she came to us and I remember clearly my previous life. There was fun, there were meaningful moments, many of them, and people came and went and stayed. I had love and blessings galore. But the arrival of my daughter has put all of that into a perspective that I never would have had, had I not had her. I remember what it was like before, but I know now that all that had happened was preparation for the day I would become Madeleine's mother.
Now she is ten and sings the words to songs I've never heard, has her own social life, learns her spelling words on her own. I am slowly but surely outgrowing my usefulness to her and I know that this is a good thing, though I sometimes long to feed her again with that tiny rubber-tipped spoon and dress her in the morning. Tomorrow she is going to overnight camp and in a few short years she will go to college, then to her own place, her own family, life. That is surely a blessing, to her and us, and I will know that I have done my job. I am her mom the best way I know how to be. And every minute of it, every single second, is carried out with love.
Not surprisingly, when Maddie was a baby I was enthralled with every single thing about her. I was amazed at how well she worked - how she knew to sleep, eat, smile. From me had come this perfect little package of miracle and delight and I spent a lot of time processing the whole experience over and over again. In her first weeks, we lay together on the couch, she on her stomach on my chest, her little diapered butt jutting into the air, breath even as she slept. The cold winter day would darken around us, my stomach would begin to growl, but she slept for hours and I never thought to wake her, my peaceful, sleeping baby. When David came home from work the lights would come on, and the evening bustle would begin. But those wondrous days have never left me; ten years later I can still smell her fine, dark hair, feel the soft skin of her back, remember the sense that my world was just beginning along with that of my child's.
I think back to before she came to us and I remember clearly my previous life. There was fun, there were meaningful moments, many of them, and people came and went and stayed. I had love and blessings galore. But the arrival of my daughter has put all of that into a perspective that I never would have had, had I not had her. I remember what it was like before, but I know now that all that had happened was preparation for the day I would become Madeleine's mother.
Now she is ten and sings the words to songs I've never heard, has her own social life, learns her spelling words on her own. I am slowly but surely outgrowing my usefulness to her and I know that this is a good thing, though I sometimes long to feed her again with that tiny rubber-tipped spoon and dress her in the morning. Tomorrow she is going to overnight camp and in a few short years she will go to college, then to her own place, her own family, life. That is surely a blessing, to her and us, and I will know that I have done my job. I am her mom the best way I know how to be. And every minute of it, every single second, is carried out with love.
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