It was Sully's birthday a couple of weeks ago. I officially have a seven-year-old and a four-year-old in my house. I've been out of the baby stage for a while (we've given away the high chair, the baby gate, the crib, all that stuff) but I haven't really felt the distance from it until now. I guess, all this time, I've still been thinking of myself as a "new mom."
(I think of myself as a new mom but I also cannot imagine life without kids everywhere. I know, I only have two of them. What can I say? For some of you, "kids everywhere" is eight. Nine. Ten. Forty-five. For me, "kids everywhere" is...is two.)
I'm also well aware that seven years is nothing in the grand scheme of things, and that there are people reading this laughing to themselves and thinking, "Suzy, you are a new mom." Yeah, yeah, I know: time is weird, and old and new are super relative—not unlike "kids everywhere." But right now, in this moment, to me, I feel like I've stepped through an important doorway in motherhood, from being a new mom to being...I don't know. What is this room? What comes after New Mom, but before Seasoned Old-Hat MOM Mom? Because I'm not a MOM mom yet. I'm not fully a mother of school-aged kids, not a mother of fully-independent children, not a woman of leisure whose days are her own. And I don't do the things seasoned moms do—I don't carry Bandaids in my purse, for example. But I definitely feel more confident making decisions for these kids. I don't spend hours on Google every time they develop a weird rash or a fever. I've figured out what makes them tick and how to communicate with them and how to calm them down and how to make them laugh hysterically. To sum it up in the simplest way possible, I feel like I'm getting the hang of it.
Maybe this is a hallway? Maybe there's no name for it—but wow, I love it here. I keep saying to Sullivan that we're pausing time and he has to be seven forever, and he keeps shaking his head and telling me, "Mom. I'm going to be eighteen soon and I'm going to move out."
And I'm like, "SULLY DO NOT SAY THAT."
And he's like, "Don't worry, Mom. I'll come visit you. We visit your parents all the time."
(Which is categorically FALSE, especially in this, the year of our pandemic.)
I think the Exact Thing that marks the shift from that room to this hallway is that I have, like I said, a bit of distance. I can see the baby stage objectively from here.
The baby stage was really hard, and I spent a lot of it wishing we were past it but not feeling like I could admit that to anyone. Because when you're in that stage everyone (from the cashier at the grocery store to the woman who walks past you on the street) spends all their breath telling you that those feelings are wrong, and that you'll regret them later, and that you'll miss the baby stage intensely when it's gone. Ah, the countless lectures about cherishing and treasuring. If I had a nickel for every one I could buy the entire Jimmy Eat World discography. As though you cannot possibly love someone without also wanting them to stay exactly as they are forever and ever.
WELL GUESS WHAT.
I don't miss that stage. I'm thankful for it! I'm thankful to have experienced it, absolutely, and I'm even thankful for how hard it was. I miss a lot of specific moments from that stage. Sometimes I look at pictures and videos from a few years ago and marvel at how tiny the fingers were, how high the voices were, how long the snuggles were. From day one, I have loved these kids more than I could have ever imagined loving someone, which made the hard parts worth it, and there is, for sure, part of me that would pay billions of dollars to travel back in time for an hour to hold my sleeping newborn baby. I treasure those years in such a weird, paradoxical way. So much it hurts, but also, please don't send me back.
But this stage? With a four and a seven year old? I never want it to end. I miss it already. I'm no longer pushing through time; I'm leaning back into it with my heels dug in.
I guess I'm finally coming to understand that not being "a baby person" isn't a moral failure, it never made me a bad mom or meant that I didn't love these specific babies enough. And you're probably thinking, "Well duh," but for some of us it's not very obvious in the moment.
So anyway. Be careful what you say to the harried, sleep-deprived mothers of colicky babies, is maybe the moral of that rabbit trail.
And if you're one of those people who miss the baby stage, or are in it and loving it: I'm genuinely happy for you. That's really great. Some people are made for it, and I think that's cool. Isn't that cool?
I think it's cool.
