Gratitude -- Monday, June 9th 1. For a good visit with my mother yesterday. 2. For trying to weather the change that adolescence is bringing to my home. The girl is pulling away and testing out the sassy button and much more interested in what her peers think than what her father and I say. And then -- running back to us and crawling into my bed and telling me secrets and what scares her and how she feels about things. I think of those months when I was a newer mother, and when she was a toddler and first learning to walk. That transfixing period of watching her pull up on the coffee table and the couch, steadying herself, and then falling. And trying again. The first steps -- then seemingly, the day after the first steps, the gleeful toddler-charge-shriek-run down the hallway in our apartment in San Francisco. Then, the bowlegged return to me, with arms outstretched. The increasing distance with each unattended dash she enacted at the park. The wiggly release of her hand from mine when we walked together, wanting to do things all by herself. The momentary collapse into my lap, the rest of her chubby cheek on my shoulder, the comfort, the reassurance, the Mommy-get-duh-boo-boo-bunneeeee-foh-my-head -- and then the push-off, out again into the open, uncharted space of her young life. This is all the same again with an-about-to-be-thirteen year-old. Bigger stakes, greater risks, dizzying fears -- for both of us. But still the same. For my efforts at not taking it so personally. This is textbook. This is exactly what shes supposed to do. Shell come back. But first, I have to let her go. 3. For deciding to be in more of the family pictures from now on. Im the guilty-as-charged, vain photographer who stayed behind the camera, and waved my husband away when he told me to get in one with the kids. I didnt always like what I saw when the digital image appeared in the viewfinder. Hair unkempt, makeup unapplied, baggy eyes, baseball cap-attired, or double-chinned. I should have accepted myself, as they always have. I do now.
Posted on: Mon, 09 Jun 2014 13:00:04 +0000
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