From here
Posted on | April 16, 2008 | 9 Comments
Standing at the kitchen sink this morning rinsing a glass, I was thinking about blogging. About this blog, about how I started it for one reason, and have continued it for another entirely.
The sunlight in the morning has made all the difference lately, and this morning you could see new grass on the lawn, bright green, almost transparent in the light. I made a double shot of espresso for an iced latte to-go, and thought about how my life is different now than one year ago, or two. This blog has become a record for me, of small things. I go back and look at what the weather was like two seasons ago. My mind, full with the present, is fickle in the light of the past.
When I started to write, I was a new mama and every single aspect of parenting felt like fraud to me. It took me more than a year to wrap my head around the idea of being someone’s mother. My heart on the other hand, only required a nanosecond of adjustment: when he was first there in my arms, warm and wet and wide-eyed, he was instantly mine.
Still, I started this blog because I felt some urgency to document the affect becoming a mother had on my life, as though it had been tucked precariously into the nook of a slingshot and then launched, suddenly, all of a stumbled moment. For the first year I diligently wrote letters to my small boy, a baby yet, whose miraculous feats of sitting up, crawling, and walking became also benchmarks for my own life.
Then gradually I stopped feeling that raw ‘new mama’ status. I went from being a ‘first time mom’ to just a mother. My baby was suddenly a kid who could talk and was potty trained and climbed trees. I stopped recording the little things. Each day, exponentially, the things he says astounds me: so much so that at the end I can hardly remember all the delight of talking to him about the way he sees his world. He has become someone that I want to know; someone I love to lie with in the newly growing grass on the back lawn drinking fizzy grapefruit soda and eating blue corn chips.
Now when I write it’s hardly ever about Bean, not really intentionally, but just because my focus has shifted: towards writing and work and the multifaceted inner topography of emotion I’ve been exploring this year.
But oh, he’s a love. He’s SO BIG now, you would hardly believe it. So articulate and observing and funny. It’s like his personality can no longer be contained on the page: I sit down to try to capture a few phrases that he’s said to me, and my mind is instantly crowded like a sky full fluttering parrots. One thing I do know: he still sucks at sleeping through the night.
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April 16th, 2008 @ 9:35 pm
I so know what you mean:)
I still take notes every month.. even write month-in-reviews as I have always done, though I haven’t quite polished them up or published them in a few months. It’s hard to do Pearl justice these days.
Bean is as cute as ever – what a grin! And Pearl hasn’t mastered sleeping through the night yet, either…. oy.
April 17th, 2008 @ 1:41 am
Good grief, he IS a big boy, look at that photo! You are a lucky, lucky woman.
April 17th, 2008 @ 10:54 am
Your little boy is definitely one of the cutest I have ever seen!
April 17th, 2008 @ 3:01 pm
i LOVE reading about everything you have to say!
that photo is delightfuL! your son is just precious!
and guess what? my 8 and almost 7 year olds still don’t make it through the night….almost always one of them ends up in my bed or on a makeshift bed on the floor next to me……..UGGH>
tara
April 17th, 2008 @ 4:31 pm
You have such a way with words. Those last 3 paragraphs are gold. I’m not a mother, but reading those lines made me ache to be one & all of a sudden, I understood all my mother friends who have tried to articulate those exact feelings.
Bravo!
April 17th, 2008 @ 10:57 pm
It’s so crazy – you’ve been a part of creating this little being and then you just want to soak up all their wonderfulness. I am torn between wanting my little dude to stay a baby forever and also eager to know him more and more. Bean is forever one of my favorite Internet kids, and I am sure that he’s very cool to hang out with –
And what a gift it is, to have a blog that remembers for you. I like that about mine, too.
April 18th, 2008 @ 11:21 am
oh my. it’s been years since i visited your blog…because last time i did ‘bean’ was just a bean and now, well…now he’s a beanSTALK! recently i found myself wondering how he was….how MUCH more adorable he’d become and how y’all were doing in ‘the country’. couldn’t remember your website…did some digging and ZOW! here you all are….still beautiful. i’ll need to take some time now and do some ‘reading/catching up’.
be well,
jennifer
April 18th, 2008 @ 3:52 pm
that picture is strikingly beautiful.
…as are your words.
April 24th, 2008 @ 12:56 pm
Oh my gosh! Your little one is looking so grown up. I read your blog pretty regularly and I can’t believe how your precious little one has grown! Thank you for your words. You capture it all so beautifully and write with such courage!