Five babies - if you count the one with 4 legs who adores me the most and spends each day making sure I know it. All of them have spent almost every summer day here on this beautiful island on the St. Lawrence River, making memories with each other and their many, many cousins. The litte things and the big things; together. The firsts: one- ski; double-skiing; passing swim-tests so they can go life-jacket-free; 180's on wake-boards; sleepovers; 20 inch pikes on fishing trips or off the ends of islands; being old enough to drive a boat all alone and go where they wish; bikinis; breast buds (who THOUGHT of that word?!?!); under-arm hairs; shaving; tampons; and much less embarrassing, monumental little moments every day.
Last night's trip to get pizza with most of us here (4 families - 2 here but missing) wasn't monumental or life-changing. It was just my sweet in-laws wanting to spend time with their children and grandchildren and make more memories with them. It was a trip in Grandpa's "Big Boy," where the water behind the stern of the boat looks like a tropical ocean as the blue lights lend a beautiful glow. It's time spent eating together with the boys at one (very loud!) table and the girls at another; as they are at the age where heaven FORBID they actaully choose to sit nexto to one another if they are all together. Then the adults and babies at a bigger table, trying to ignore the stares of a few couples or "normal size" families at other tables; getting up to referee the fights over forks or who sits where. Then more choices - nothing life-changing: Coconut Mango or Birthday Bash or Cotton Candy. One scoop or two. Cone or dish.
Then wondering how much of the kids' good choices in life (yes, the monumental ones...) will be because of their grandparent's righteous example of goodness. Of stopping the Big Boy before we are home to share with them their testimony of beliefs; truths; convictions. To make sure that their numerous, amazing posterity know from where and from Whom their happiness comes. That the fastboats and the houses are nothing without the Bigger Picture. That the children (young and old) will be forever blessed if they learn to rely on more than just themselves, on each other and and on their parents - and how they can know Who that person is. That they would give up anything and everything if it meant their children and grandchildren could be happy and forever together.
It is humbling to wonder how much of my time spent mothering them is spent teaching them anything beyond how to clean a bathroom properly and the importance of becoming avid readers. If these four babies will look back and remember anything beyond that. If they will remember the fun times with not just their many, many cousins and their Dad, but with me. If they will resent me for the strictness, the rules, the quick-to-evaporate- patience, the high expectations, and the lack of eternal perspective. The day-to-day fogetting that they - each of them - will be gone so fast. Too fast. That the life-jackets on the kitchen floor I yell about so often will not be there again.
Ever.
I turn 40 - FOUR! Tee!!! FOUR DECADES - in a little over a month. I have been saying it often for a year, and I still can't get used to the idea. I never thought I would say that. I never thought I would type that. I feel like I am still a teenager, living in someone else's dream most days; watching some other woman raise my kids - usually wanting to correct and change what she does but unable to do so any more than I can stop the angry yelling that comes out when no one but me cares about the life-jackets. I feel too young. It is not about the number; or the wrinkles; or the extra pounds around the middle that used to be a 6 pack pre-birth. Rather, it is a reminder of how quickly life goes by. And that there is nothing anyone can do to slow it down. To slow down these quickly changing babies of mine; turning into little people before my eyes. The number 40 is just a such a reality check - (because it really is SO FREAKIN OLD!!!) and the reality is that it feels like only a few VERY QUICK years ago that I was turning 30. And that the two weeks leading up to it were 2 of the most tear-filled weeks of my life. Maybe I fear that I am going to repeat that, only with this time more mistakes and regrets and things left to do that I felt 10 years ago. (please, oh please, Lord, bless the Lexapro to work extra well so that won't happen!!!)
Ten years ago, we were here on this same island and had watched the same breathtaking sunsets and had river baths and family time for two montsh. By mid-August, I was 2 weeks away from saying good-bye to my first baby as she went off to KINDERGARTEN. Yes, she had gone to pre-school and yes, she was ready and excited. Apparently, I wasn't. It didn't matter that I had a precocious almost-3 year old (constantly in trouble!) and a nursing new baby. It didn't matter that I knew the days would be easier with just those 2 at home and that they would both get more of my attention; more of me. It was just a step; a good-bye; a finality. A closed door to the "coulda's," and "shoulda's." 10 years ago I had a five-year old who still napped, and I would try to time it here in this island home so the 3 girls would do so at the same time. I would sit down and start to read to them all and look down at Jocelyn, and TRY not to think of this as "another last nap before school starts" and the tears would come uncontrollably. (And traumatize the girls again. And again. This lasted for the last 2 weeks of the summer up here. It was like a snotty-nosed countdown to doom. It wasn't something I could explain, control, write about or wish away. It was just...a sadness at the ending. Or the new beginning. The half-empty - and half-full - glass. It was Motherhood.... challenging, unexplainable, heart-wrenching, joyous, emotional and...momumental. Where little and big run together.
I know that I will have many of those same feelings a few weeks before my 40th, as I will face almost the exact same thing. 3 days after turning 40 I get to put my last baby - and our only little man - on the bus, and move on to a different chapter in life. Hugely different. MonuMENTALLY different. Joing the club where you wonder "what does she DO with herself all day with ALL her kids in school?!?!?"
Life-changing? Absolutely. In a good day? Somewhat.....but again, it's the glass (mostly) half-empty because it truly came too quickly. I would much rather be nursing a chubby-legged baby or even taking a 2 year old to pre-school (and the only mom there with a hi-schooler like the past 2 years at 2 different Preschools) To have reached the stage in life that means no more babies and no more little people to add to our family means such a finality. A closed door. An ending.
I look at my friends and family with even more kids than four and deeply envy the blessings and beauty of it. Both in the present day to day sweetness of it - and the years from now when there are more to love and to know. But the busy-ness and the keeping up with the daily requirements of mothering and being organized (on time and in the right place) and CHEERFUL through it all with my own four hasn't exactly been my gift. The one that I envisioned when I was in hi-school and none of my friends talked about being a mom someday so I secretly wished for a family of 6 teenagers someday like my best friend's where I spent so much time. One filled with fighting; borrowed favorite-jeans; tardiness; un-done homework; forgotten volleyball games; a shared, dented station wagon; missing earrings; used prom dresses; never enough food and alot of laughter. And frienship. And love. And chaos? Absolutely.
But I remind myself, as my brilliant and long-suffering :) hubbie will say, "you never know what you are missing if it isnt there" common-sense that it is the end of a very special - and hard - chapter in my grown-up years. And to dwell on all the goodness. The times the kids were taught more than how to clean a kitchen floor right. The things I did right and the things I did well. And the love and laughter that is here with the six of us. And that there is always time to change the negative and make new habits. New memoires; new traditions. New noise and chaos.
This September, there will be plenty of time to edit photos and start a website for my doula and birth- photography work, but no time for weekday park lunches with just Luke in the middle of beautiful fall days. There will be long, strenuous work-outs (maybe even Pilates or Yoga?) without even checking the clock, but no more sore legs from running the near-by trails while he bike-rides and catches frogs....all the while screaming at Bella not to scare them away. No more walking Em up the hill to the bus to come home to snuggle with him in my bed after a night of him crawling in with us. No more leisurely breakfasts watching him crack the eggs and looking at the clock knowing that - yet-again! - we will be the last ones to arrive late to his school. (Just like the year before and the year before that. THREE years of preschool for the little man with the June birthday, so that he might be successful and older in the challenging school district where our kids go. And the time is almost here!!) .
There will be time. When there is no dimpled 6 month-old to cuddle and coo at, then there will be time for India with teenage daughters; seeing and serving and falling in love with some of the amazing world that is beyond our own. Time for more trips away with the guy I fell in love with back when we both had that six-packs.
I guess if I had one wish for my upcoming 40th, it would be that I could slow it down. And even relieve some (lots!!!) of the days that seemed so hard, then. But joyful, too...The ones where the most challenging part of the day was a diaper oozing out poop; healing hurt feelings after a fight between two toddlers or making them share the doll that two sisters wanted. All the little moments when I could (and often did) influence the 4 of them for better. The way I see their cousins, their good freinds, my in-laws, my parents, my sister-in-laws and their loving dad doing now. To know that something out of my mouth wouldn't sound like lecturing to a teen-age daughter who only hears that. To have back some of the tenderness, the closeness, the tears of sadness before naps for two weeks staight.
So I could relive so many of the days I can no longer recall.
The ones I took for granted.
It truly goes too fast.
Parting Song
First
it is one day without you.
Then two.
And soon,
our point: moot.
And our solution, diluted.
And our class action (if ever was)
is no longer suited.
Wherewith I give to looting through
the war chest of our past
like a wily Anne Bonny
who snatches at plunder or graft.
But the wreck of that ransack,
that strongbox, our splintering coffer,
the claptrap bastard
of the best we had to offer,
is sog-soaked and clammy,
empty but for sand.
Like the knuckle-white cup
of my urgent, ghastly hands
in which nothing but
the ghost of love is held.
Damn it to hell.
- poem from a "Mothering" Forum member
Grateful tonite for:
1) sweet memories
2) forgiveness
3) Lexapro - specifically after 3 years of it fixing my monthly tears and crazy-hormone ups and downs, it allows me to not dread the 2 weeks leading up to Luke Duke's 1st day of kindergarten. Too much :)
4) wake-boarding the 3 kids and double skiing of their cousins with them. So freakin cute.
5) last nite's sleepover with Luke's big boy cousins he adores. They make up for his lack of a brother, and it melts my heart listening him ask a 9 and 12 year old to come over and play.
6) almost-15 year old- Jocelyn being at Especially for Youth , which I attended when I was her age a few times then as a couselor. Feeling the spirit daily .....mixed with cute Mormon boys galore? Seriously, what is not to love? She was forced to go by Big Bad Mean Mom Yours Truly but I am smiling thinking of all the fun she is having, even if I only get to hear "it was ok." Sigh....
7) Billy's old laptop here working that has decent internet speed. I vow to write more...Ok, an update is that it WAS decent speed a few hours ago and now as I come back to it not only can I not get on almost anything tonite..but I dont have any idea why I can only see my posts on my blog page and I am missing everything else. Dang it all.
8) new chapters
9) hottubs in cooler weather
10) Carly tonite asking me tonite if I got some of the dinner I made and gave to them in the TV room. So caring and concerned since she was little. (and intense and passionate!..whose girl IS that??? :):)
1 comments:
beautiful message. turned 40 last month - it is not so bad :). the bad thing is facing my baby looking at colleges! one year left - did I teach him everything he needs to know?
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