If I say this is a post about a weaning party, you figure it was for my youngest son, right? Not so -- give us a year or two. It is my middle son who is newly weaned.
I am a quiet tandem nurser -- not closeted, but not in anybody's face about it either. Tandem nursing works well in our family. It also makes some people uneasy, even some of my friends who have nursed two-year-olds contentedly.
Shortly after I started this blog I posted about my second son, the most intensely needy of my three children. He is wired a little differently: he feels things more keenly and resists change more vigorously. He has never been a good sleeper. I used to try to be lighthearted about it -- "Well, of all the things a kid could be bad at, sleeping isn't the worst option" -- but it was tough going, those weeks when he would wake up at 2am and be unable to get back to sleep for a couple of hours.
When I write about things that Marty says, I always seem to use words like "wistfully" or "ruefully" or "reluctantly." ("I wish I wasn't your middle child," he said sadly one night. "I wish I was one of your corner children.") He is the child of mine who sees most clearly that life is hard. I have such high hopes for him; I think that from great sensitivity can arise great compassion. I hope he grows into a man determined to make his corner of the world a gentler place because he understands how overwhelming life can be.
But it is not easy being his mother. It's hard to know how much to offer straight acceptance when something knocks him flat, and how much to nudge him to get up and keep going. It is a turbulent ride some days.
I have also been put together as a person who feels things keenly. I spent too much time as a kid and a young adult pretending that I was a different kind of person, pretending that if I said, "That doesn't bother me" loudly enough it would be true. I had to learn to tell myself, "That bothers me, and this is what I can do to handle it." That's what I want to teach Marty: it's okay to be who you are. Sometimes you push yourself to be a little bit more than that, too.
I don't understand Marty quite as easily as I do his brothers. Sometimes I can listen to him with my whole self, giving him all my attention, and just not get what he's trying to tell me. In some ways this makes for a less volatile relationship: his older brother and I are so much alike that he pushes my buttons more adroitly than any other human being I have ever encountered. (I keep searching the Yellow Pages for buttonectomists, but so far surgical removal of my buttons does not appear to be an option.) Marty doesn't get under my skin very easily, but I worry that he doesn't feel heard sometimes.
These are some of the reasons why I was willing to keep nursing him for so long, because nursing was a wordless way to say, "It's going to be okay. I'm here for you." Katie Allison Granju's book on attachment parenting includes a story about a Ghanaian man in his eighties (I think; my memory is sketchy) who still remembered nursing as a young child. When my sons are old men, I hope they remember childhood as that man did, as a time when they felt safe, and loved, and at peace. If nursing helps, then hey -- let 'em nurse until they're done.
It has been three weeks since Marty said, after many, many discussions, "Hey, I could wean after all!" It has taken me until today to be ready to write about it. In the first few days I couldn't even think about it without tears pricking at my eyes (not a logical reaction, given how often I had wondered if he would ever wean; I will chalk it up to crazy pregnancy hormones). I kept praying, "Oh, God, help me to be the mother he needs me to be." I remembered times when I had been harsh and impatient with him, and I wished I had been more generous. (And I considered blogging about it, but I knew that even one uneasy comment -- "He was how old?" -- would have been more than I could handle just then.)
One night he was lying in bed and he asked me why I was a little sad about his weaning. I said, "Oh, hon, I want so much for you to have all the consolation and love and closeness that you need, and nursing made that a little easier." And he answered, "But it's okay, Mom. I've had enough milk."
So today we had a party to celebrate. A couple of people said, "A party? That's all you need right now." But I told them, "You know, a guy only weans once in his life." I baked two cakes in honor of the occasion, and invited fifteen kids to come. Fortuitously, his godparents were in town this weekend. A couple of his friends brought presents; everyone wished him well. I am writing this post happily, if sleepily, glad for the way my boys are growing up.
This post has been all about the difficult side of mothering Marty, so let me tell you quickly about some of the things I have loved: from the day when he took off crawling with a wicked grin and one leg cocked sideways, to his current fascination with being Wonga-Taw, a mysterious superhero whose superpowers seem to derive from his willingness to strip down to his underwear and run around in raggedy circles. He loves strong flavors: as a toddler he would eat whole jars of anchovy-stuffed olives and he begged for tastes of Angostura bitters. He is the blondest of my children, and the skinniest, and no matter how many children's hands I hold in my lifetime I think I will always remember the feel of his, warm and slender and strong.
During my pregnancy I was so certain Marty was a girl that we didn't even have a boy's name picked out. It was a tough birth, but I only remember the painful parts dimly. What I remember vividly is the joy, and the blessed relief, when he was finally there. And I remember what I thought when the midwife flipped him over and I saw that Maria Caroline would not be a good name for our baby after all: "Oh, I love you! You are not what I was expecting, but oh, do I love you." We had gone around and around about a boy's name without getting anywhere, but as soon as I saw his face I knew immediately what his name had to be. I've been thinking about that moment over the past couple of weeks, because it's a good metaphor for our relationship. I keep saying, "You are not what I was expecting, but oh, do I love you." And all those questions I have about the future -- I hope the answers come to me when I need them, just as it happened that first time I saw his face.
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