The better half said: “He said the word elbow tonight while I was changing him”
I said: “Oh, he is saying that word for couple of months now”
The better half said: “Oh, I am teaching him that word for couple of weeks now”
I said: “Didn’t you hear me? He is saying that word as well as, forearm and arm for couple of months now. I thought him that. It is the game that we play when I am changing him.”
The better half said: “Yes, but I thought him that. I started that game”
And so it begins (or shall I say it continues) the endless “hidden” competition.
Man vs. Woman
Padre vs. Madre
Him vs. Me
I look at my better half and my heart bursts with love...I love his flaws almost as much as his fortes....
I deeply belive that if you love only the good things about a person you are destined for disappointment. You have to admire some of the weirdness and not-so-lovable traits as well, otherwise you spend your life wishing the person was someone they aren't, and may never be....and that my dear blog is so not fair to that person....
So I hope he loves my flaws alomst as much as my fortes....after all I can say with all my heart and soul that he indeed is my BETTER HALF!
I look at him and I know he is missing a lot. Mostly because I am the one that is blessed to spend all day and sometimes even all nights with our little boss. But still my gracious nature and loving heart does not manifest itself into words. I do not want to loose my ground. I want to make sure that he and all the world with him knows that MY boy is MINE, first and foremost….
How silly of me? I know so well, he is his own little man and I am just there for the ride with him…
But still let everyone knows that I am the person that knew him before anyone else....that he was IN ME for 9 months….HE WAS ONE WITH ME and NO ONE ELSE!!!!
Is it out of fear? It must be.
I went to a little panic mood when we were flying back home on the weekend.
There was a cute baby boy, 9 months old, sitting behind us and my big19 months old son, was playing a peek a boo game with him: “ Hi baby, Bye baby”.
Then I noticed that the baby was not talking yet and I remembered my little boss was very chatty since very early and already had a vocabulary of a good few words by 9 months old.
But then I tried to remember more detailed memory of that month and I noticed the memories are not sharp anymore. I went to a panic mood in my heart. I do not want to forget. I do not want to EVER forget a single moment of my time with him.
I remember so well many hours before motherhood when I would feel the time is just standing still. There was some joys, some sign of responsibilities and some accumulation of subjects that had a hold on me, but nothing had the effect of quickening the passage of time. There was so many days that was just dragging along from one to the next.
Time is just flying by much too fast now. Weeks are flowing like minutes. He will be 20 months old very soon, and if I'm not careful to pay attention, I miss so many details.
More than ever I had this feeling of time is passing by and speeding up while I was pregnant. Nine months did not seem long enough for some intimate oneness between me and him.
I spent a lifetime planning who I was and who I wanted to be, only to have a 3 Kg and 490 gram baby boy show me who I really am and who I really want to be.
I did not want to loose my identity after I married and keeping my own family name always was a good way to emphasize on that. I passionatly corrected everyone that called me by my husband's last name.
My better half was always supportive of this….so much that he asked me to choose the last name for our baby. When he told me of his decision I had tears in my eyes. The last name could have been mine. I decided as a gift to him, the family name be his. No hyphen, no two names, just my better half’s name. I don't regret my decision, not for a single minute.
But still and forever I take so much pleasure to remember that during his first days on this Earth the name on his wristband was mine. For those two and a half days in the hospital at least everything about him was mine….
My friends tease me endlessly that I will be the worst mother in law. I do not protest. I might learn to love the daughter in law, I might learn to be her friend…but I never forget that "A daughter is a daughter the rest of her life, a son is a son until he takes a wife."
That is so sad…and it is so true... No matter how much we deny it. My mother is the one that denies and protest my harsh view on the subject. She is the one that would have been the best mother of a groom…she just became the best mother of the bride. I look at her relationship with my husband and see the deep closeness and love at both sides and in my heart and soul I know it is because both of them share so much in their personality. They are so similar from so many aspects.
We humans are strange creatures. We get hung up on things because they are tangible. This is why we hold on to a memory so dearly. That is why we are keeper of the memories. We hold some stuff that has such a sentimental value for us and we expect to pass it to our children.
Maybe it is my own harsh perspective of gender, but I “assume” girls become the keepers of their family's sentiment while the future wives of boys become the unwanting collectors of "junks" that has no meaning for them….
Well….I am nothing if I am not honest, both in my real life and with my blog
I know so well that it is stunningly greedy of me, yet I felt he was a part of ME; someone I knew better than anyone even if it was only for a moment in a lifetime...even if it was only for 9 very very short months….
When we left the hospital, I left the person I always thought I had been…I became a mother, HIS MOTHER… and he left with a new name on his birth certificate.
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6 comments:
Hi MH!
Strong emotions and deep passion in dripping from this post. It's so heavy on deep feelings...
But I want to be along with your dear mother to criticize you on this opinion of yours. IT ALL DEPENDS. I'm not telling this only as somebody in science who rarely allows herself to consider a 100% possibility for something. I'm telling this out of personal experience. There is no real categorization as "daughter forever" and "son, just until".
There are many cases the opposite, believe me.
And let me tell you something, because it all seems familiar to me, and it scares me. I know that you are so aware of your baby's independency in future as a character of his own. But please try to be milder and take it easier on this whole issue of ownership. All his moments and memories will be always yours, he will always be your kid, but keep in mind that there will be a day that he might want to be completely his own person. I don't think I can find the right words, but try not to send him away, by showing him your owning love. You know what I mean? This might scare the hell out of him, as it did for me, and then there will be a running away, which could hurt everyone. I know this feeling (specially so passionately in you) is very sweet and deep, but please try to soften it, for your own good...
Hi Nava,
I am also aware that nothing is 100% in life...and of course as a scientist you will be the one remind me of that!
But let me bring your attention to something:
One day if you choose to, you will understand the strong poll between the intense desire of holding to your baby from one hand and the equally strong desire of letting him/her go from the other hand...
To let him free is the path that I will always choose (as you can see that both in this post as well as the other posts), but it is very naive to think that one will come to this healthy choice because of the lack of the other emotion- equally valid and very true, because after all we are HUMANS-
One can ONLY “choose” a path, if and only if, she is aware of the existence of the other.
There is no white without a black and vice versa.
I came to learn in life that the only person that can be able to not act on the emotion of being possessive is the one that realizes and acknowledges the validity of that emotion...the one can only exist with the other to be allowed to be expressed…in my opinion to be able to fight with a demon we have to acknowledge and sometimes even embrace it.
I think there is nothing scary about it. It is real, like any other emotions. The categorization of an emotion being negative or positive, being good or bad, is very human…and not so very healthy. The only way that one can be "free" from one or the other, is to be aware of them and give validation to them.
As a scientist I am sure you agree with me that nothing does exist for no reason....not even the emotions that might scare us!
Oops, I think my comment is now as lengthy as a post:)
Your honesty is refreshing. Most of the people try to lie, even to themselves and deny these feeling.
I am a mother of two and understand your post so well.
Some people told me that when a woman has her second child, then these feeling become less. But I will not tell you that.
I think it is part of the motherhood. A mother will feel possessive toward her child forever, like a lion toward her cubs. Maybe God put that emotion there to cause protectiveness. I don’t know why but I know it is there and it is in all the mothers that I know and it is strong and I agree with you that it is healthier to not push it down and run away from it.
And as for the proverb of "A daughter is a daughter the rest of her life, a son is a son until he takes a wife."
When I only had my son, I used to say that it is just a an old foolish saying and not true. I think I was afraid that what if it will be true. It is not true for many cases but it is true for many others that I know. When I got pregnant with my second child, I secretly wished for it to be a girl and it turned out to be. I think if I was honest with myself I would have said that I want to make sure of the future, in case.
But can I tell you another proverb that interestingly my mother in law always tells me (and makes me half mad and half in joy):
“The girl will travel the earth to be as unlike her mother as she can get, but the boy will hold all women up to the light of his mother's image.”
So maybe there is some light at the end of the tunnel:)
That competitiveness between mommy and daddy is so true. My husband and I trip over each other to be the first one that witnesses the milestones. That is so funny. You have to experience it to feel it.
I like your posts very much. They make me cry sometimes. You are inspiring me to create a blog soon. I will let you know if I do.
Eve
Hi Eve,
Yes I heard about the other saying to. It is funny because I always think it is a compliment and it is not...both at the same time:):):)
Thanks for your kind words about my blog. I will look forward to read yours one day.
WOW, this post is so emotional. I felt I am the one talking about it. You are very very passionate person MH.
I am a mother of 3 boys, 13 years old and up. I do feel what you say totally, despite the fact that I had a good relation with my mother in law. But I have to say something respectfully. With all do respect, your mother can not protest to this emotions because she never really had a son to be able to see would she feel the same way about her daughter and her daughter in law?
I think it is very natural. My mother in law had only 2 sons so there was no daughter. If there will be a daughter in the picture, I don't think the d and the d-in law will be equal. It is just very very natural.
I am not sure how old are you but sometimes reading your posts makes me think you experienced so much in life, beyond your age.
These posts are so full of strong emotion; expressed so well.
I am the mother of two sons who have both married, and who have young families of their own.
I was unprepared for the feeling of being left out, wondering how I fit in--if I fit anywhere--when my one son and daughter-in-law started having babies.
I felt like I'd been caught in a riptide of emotion, taken out to sea and the only way I survived was to end up in a place different than what I had imagined. I was afraid I'd not only lost my son, was deficit in developing any kind of bond or relationship with my daughter-in-law, and feared I'd never have a relationship with my grandchildren.
Five years later, I see hope and avenues of light. But...is I really do feel like an outsider and don't know how to fix that. A lot of it, I'm sure, has to do with me and who I am which encompasses my background. But as I talk with other mothers of married sons, there is a thread of unpredicted loss that many of us have to learn to deal with. I'm writing about this phenomenon to help other women. (http://momm-mothersofmarriedmen.blogspot.com)
Thank you for your blog and for the bloggers who have shared.
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