Sometimes I feel like the worst person in the world for my serious lack of—Eleanor Kathleen record keeping. Not the worst mother, but the worst person. I mean, what mother doesn’t melt at her child’s record-breaking sweetness and her obvious genius that will certainly get her a full scholarship to Havard or any other university of her choice? Melting mothers happen all over the world. What mother doesn’t tear up when she catches a glimpse of her gorgeous daughter who is standing in silent awe watching the waves of her ocean (Lake Michigan) with one holding her little yellow sand pail and the other on her round little girl tummy, sweet little swimsuit giving her tiny bottom a perfect hug? Along with motherhood comes a bias that sways any evidence of perfection. No, I’m not the worst mother there ever was, instead I am the worst person because any person, mother or not, could be arrested on charges of insanity for keeping this burst of sunshine from the majority of humanity.
If you can be quiet long enough, if you can clear your mind from your grocery list, your plans for the night, your worries about work, school papers that are never completed, the weight you don’t want to put on, that phone call you meant to make yesterday, the plumber that needs to be called, the fact that you haven’t seen a dentist in over a year, the on-again/off-again nausea that was supposed to be done in the first trimester, the disaster you call your bedroom, the piles of clean laundry that are taking on a mount Everest shape and screaming at you, ‘fold me now or iron for the rest of your life!’. If you can just give all that up, just for a while, and be still, and be with Eleanor, you will be awarded with pure Grace.
Even when she is trying to keep up with society’s expectations regarding the “terrible two’s,” (or is it three’s?), even then the sunshine wins out: at a department store, Ellie is piling just about everything she can get her hands on into the cart saying, “I want to take this home. I want to take this home. PLEEEEASE Mommy?” Frustrated Mommy answers with, “Honey, not today. We can get a toy another day.” “PLEASE PLEASE Mommy? I want it. I want it really, really bad!” Mommy: “Ellie, no. We are not buying any extra stuff today.” There develops an uncomfortable silence… and then, “Ok Mommy, it’s ok” and only a few minutes later we are laughing as she tries on gigantic mommy-sized shoes with me. Who I am to be so lucky to call her daughter?
In an effort to shorten my likely impending purgatory punishment, here are a few bursts of sunshine, a few glimpses of Grace:
**Ellie has started taking showers; most of her gets mostly clean in these attempts. In the shower I tell her she needs to get into the water enough to rinse off her “bottom.” So she bends over and does her “downward dog” yoga pose as the water falls over her. (downward dog: bending at the waste so your hands and feet are firmly on the ground but your knees are not bent at all).
**Going through a drive-thru to get Ellie an ice cream cone I say to the intercom guy, “but please make it small, it’s for a child.” Ellie yells out the back window, “BIG!” Intercom guy: “Big or small mam?” Mommy: “Small.” Ellie: “BIG!!!”
**Running up to a child at a park, any child, any park, taking their hand saying, “You wanna be my friend? You wanna play with me? Come on!”
**I had to take Ellie to a doctor appointment with me and I also had to get blood taken. The nurse asked me to have Ellie sit off to the side while she took my blood for safety reasons. Ellie obliged at first but when the needle went in to my arm she couldn’t take it. My sweet Ellie jumped off that chair and came over to me, took my free hand and gently rubbing it she said, “It’s ok Mommy, I’m here, it’s ok.” Then when we were leaving the lab area she yelled out, “Ok, thanks doctor!”
I could share hundreds of these, every day. But, with a tired pregnant body, a house I can’t keep up with and schoolwork forever weighing on my mind, I just can’t. Maybe living with this sunshine is one of the gifts granted to those who are brave enough to risk or endure the tragic pitfalls of parenthood (Things I know no more: good music, bars or parties, sleep, free time, journaling, long adult conversations, sleep. Things I didn’t know I never wanted to know: theme song to Dora the Explorer, chicken nuggets shaped like dinosaurs, reward stickers, diapers, potty training/poopy training, important life-altering decisions like which car seat, what kind of bedding, disposable or cloth, to go to preschool or not, which preschool, how many days a week, how many hours a day, counting to ten five thousand times a day, singing the ABC’s five thousand times a day, etc, etc, etc). With all of that also comes the Grace and sunshine of my Eleanor—her sweet hugs, wet kisses, unconditional loyalty, quiet snuggles, spectacular creativity, contagious giggles and “I love you sooo much Mommy.”
