Planned Obsolescence

After you're pregnant, then you have a baby.

Fourteen years ago this summer I was pregnant with my oldest son. Four of my friends were also expecting their first babies that summer. When I went to visit my friend Vivian in the hospital I was floored to see that her belly had yielded up an actual...baby, with limbs and hair and a heartbreakingly beautiful fringe of black eyelashes. It's elementary biology, of course -- after you're pregnant, then you have a baby. The assiduity with which I had been reading What To Expect and The Baby Book would have led an observer to believe I was on top of the basics, but such an observer would have been wrong. Who knew? I was growing not just a bulge but a person. The intransitive "I'm expecting" had acquired a direct object: suddenly I was expecting eyelashes.

After you have a baby, then you have a toddler.

Today I met an acquaintance at the park, someone I'd last seen when Stella was a dark-haired infant sleeping peacefully in the crook of my arm. These days she has blond curls that spill across her shoulders, and the gleam in her eye coupled with the set of her jaw should serve as a caution to the observant: she is a force to be reckoned with. She has strong opinions and a favorite video and it's a bit of a stretch for me to call her "the baby" now.

Then you have a preschooler, and then it's time for school.

Tonight Petely and Stella and I took a long walk, down the bike trail and home through the neighborhood. We passed by his preschool and he got wistful. "I wish I could go there instead of kindergarten," he said. "It was a really fun place, wasn't it?" I answered. "You know, though, you've learned everything they teach kids there. I bet you'll have a lot of fun in kindergarten." Pete is on the small side, gray-eyed and sweet-tempered. His backpack, overloaded with school supplies, makes him look like an overly ambitious hermit crab. When I started this blog he was younger than Stella is now. 

Then you have a teenager.

My oldest son left the country without me last week. It's not, of course, as if he ran away from home. He's on a ten-day Scout trip, fishing on the Canadian side of the Boundary Waters. Still: I have a child who's old enough to leave the country without me. I keep butting my head up against this reality like a mama cow at the fence, complaining about being separated from her weaning calf. I know, logically, that this is the goal-- to teach them to get around in the world without my help. But it's a hard goal, a bittersweet goal.

See, I've never had a job before where my goal was to obsolesce. Always before, I wanted to offer something unique, something they'd find tough to replace. I wanted to be a little bit indispensable.

Motherhood's not like that. To be a mother is to make an openhanded offering of the best of yourself, to say, Here is most of what I know about making a way through the world. Wouldn't you like to learn it? How to wipe your nose. How to change a light bulb. How to chop an onion. How to say, "I was wrong; I'm sorry." How to pray for your enemies. How to seek God in all things.

I'm better at chopping onions. Oh, God, make me the mother they need me to be.

After you have a teenager, then you have an adult.

This post was prompted by two friends, both excited and wistful, who are sending their oldest daughters off to college tomorrow. One is coming to Gladlyville for school; the other is leaving. They will probably cross paths on the interstate. I am resolved to offer up my little-kid sufferings of the next few days, the wakeful toddler and the spilled milk, for those mothers and their daughters.

I will do so knowing it's not long until my turn: in five years my oldest son will be 18. I suspect I will look at the boy who once dazzled me with his eyelashes, and wonder when, exactly, he sprouted those wings.

Comments

[Kira]

Oh my goodness, this was so lovely. Made me cry - in the best possible way.
This line: "The intransitive "I'm expecting" had acquired a direct object: suddenly I was expecting eyelashes." Simply beautiful.
Thank you.

[Lilian]

Oh, this is beautiful! And also very sad. It's so amazing and such a joy to be a mother, but it's also so sad! Oh well...

I'd never thought of it this way, the job in which you have to become obsolete so it's a job well done. Wow. Quite strong, and very true.

[Amy F]

So well written!

I had that same gob-smacked experience when my first baby was born. Add a NICU stay in and it took me a good 6 weeks to stop wondering when this little baby's mother was going to come take him back. I was so prepared for pregnancy but the actual baby really threw me. The fact that he was a boy was extra-crazy. I hadn't tried to find out the sex, but somehow figured I'd have a girl. I got so used to not knowing the sex, I sort of thought I could wrap him up and maybe he'd be a girl when I checked again. Or maybe a boy again.

These days I look at my boys reading together on the couch sometimes and wonder when I obtained children old enough to read by themselves.

And after 4 weeks, I'm still shocked that I have a tiny baby again. He's just so small. And cute. And loud. Maybe this time the newborn days won't be a blur.

[Marcie]

Lovely.

[gina]

Our fourteen year olds :)

I keep saying to myself "roots and wings", "roots and wings"....

[Joyce]

My son is a senior in college now and there were, also, a group of us getting pregnant at the same time. In sharing our thoughts and feelings it suddenly hit us that the kids were were raising then, we were raising to be the adults we hoped and prayed would grow up to be decent, joyful people. And somewhere along the line it hit us in the face that we were training them to leave, to take care of themselves and to, well go out and enjoy life. Yes, we'll be a part of it-but I feel such pride in the man my son has become and how independant, rational person he is without me. Now I'm crying.

[KatieButler]

My four children range from 7 months up to 14 years old, and in that mix one is starting high school and another, kindergarten. This has been a bittersweet summer for me. I have also discovered that I have a love-hate relationship with change.

Your posts often, if not always, resonate with me, and this one especially. Thank you.

[Tall Kate]

Lovely. I'm so happy you're out there, putting these feelings into words for us all.

[Karen]

Who needs onions for tears when you have Jamie's posts! Very lovely.

[Amanda]

obsolescence = hard. Resisting the urge to be the overprotective mother who wants to make sure her daughter is eating and sleeping well and making friends and signing up for the freshman retreat. Also, I'm wondering IF and WHEN she just might call her mom.

[Leila]

Just lovely! Beautifully written meditation -- poetic!

[AmyinMotown]

I havent' been here in quite a awhile--I've kind of slipped away from the blog world except for those which pay me--and of course you make me SOB with your first post. I'm going to go hug my big tall first grader who is growing up so fast I feel like she'll be off to college next week sometime.

I loved this so much: "The intransitive "I'm expecting" had acquired a direct object: suddenly I was expecting eyelashes." For a lot of reasons, when I was pregnant for the second time it just seemed so, I don't know, theoretical that I was actually having a baby again. I was so consumed with the preparations I never stopped to think who I was preparing for. Then we took our daughter to a sibling preparation class, which took place on the mother-baby unit of the hospital I was delivering at in a few weeks. We got to go look in the nursery window and I remember being just transfixed by the babies. It it me like a ton of bricks I was going through all of this to get one of THOSE, and that in a few weeks we were, God willing, going to bring one of those little amazing creatures home with us...I was going to get to do this again! You'd think I would have figured that out way before 36 weeks, having done this before, but apparently I am slow.