Hard to believe, but one year ago I started this blog. At the time I was 34 weeks pregnant (a measurement that makes sense only to the initiated) and I was hoping that by week 40 I would have a baby. I did, and the rest, as they say, is history.
When I look back at those early postings and the euphoria of bringing Elisa home from the hospital, I remember how easy that first month felt. We were surrounded by family and survived the sleepless nights on adrenaline and the excitement of seeing what would happen next. By months two and three, the real shock of becoming "mom and dad" had started to set in and the feeling of having to navigate this on our own was weighing heavy on my heart. I had to learn to surrender my life as I knew it. This wasn't easy for someone who really liked her work and her life and her marriage. But like the saying goes, sometimes we have to destroy in order to create.
Once the pieces started to build back into a reasonable semblance of a life (about month 4), I felt infinitely better. This was manageable. This I could handle. Sleeping - eating - playing. It was all coming together and Elisa was starting to communicate with us in new and intriguing ways. She was smiling and laughing and becoming something more than a receptacle for all my fears. By six months, she was exactly the kind of predictable, pleasant baby I had dreamed of and I found my own confidence as a parent growing. I was--and am--so grateful to be her mom.
But the journey doesn't stop there. With each new milestone of sitting, crawling, walking, I am ever more aware of my own goals and milestones in life. I know sometimes it's hard to feel that I can achieve the things I want in life when I am so caught up in all that I want for Elisa. I want the world for her. And yet, I also want to nurture my own inner life, to remember to take time to do the things that bring me joy. It's a balancing act that only mothers know which seems both unfair and perfectly right. Letting this blog unfold and allow me to share my life and my daughter with our friends and family has helped me understand my role even more. I have thought of a poem turned to song that I sang a lot in college. It's words clearer to me now:
Your children are not your children. They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself. They come through you but not from you, And though they are with you, yet they belong not to you. You may give them your love but not your thoughts. For they have their own thoughts. You may house their bodies but not their souls, For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams. You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you. For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday. You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth. The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite, and He bends you with His might that His arrows may go swift and far. Let your bending in the archer's hand be for gladness; For even as he loves the arrow that flies, so He loves also the bow that is stable.
-- Khalil Gibran
1 comment:
It is hard to imagine that we were (im)patiently waiting for that little girl's arrival this time last year. Your entries about motherhood are so good...REALLY good. You express my exact senitments so poignantly. I love that poem & that poet... Keep blogging!
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