Initially, we had thought to wait a few months before announcing it to our children, but Phillip, my little adult, sensed that something was provoking the whispered conversations with my mother and my girlfriends. Maybe he overheard me, maybe he read the title of my favorite dog-eared pregnancy handbook; either way, he turned to me one day and said: “I want a baby sister.” And so the secret was out, and I couldn’t have been happier about it.
However, I had hoped to postpone a serious discussion regarding the birds and the bees for a few more years, so I was unprepared to deal with the questions that my oldest two asked: “How did the baby get in your tummy, Mommy?” asked Ryan. Phillip, ever logical, wondered: “How is that baby going to come out?” I tried to give them the pat little answers that my mother had given me: a story about a little seed that the daddy plants, like a farmer plants a seed in the ground. Answers that Phillip did not want to accept. He wanted to know where Daddy got the seed and how he planted it, questions that delighted me with their inquisitiveness and stumped me because I did not know how much information was too much information. Finally, I decided to try and answer all questions as completely and truthfully as possible, and I found a book that contained diagrams of the male and female reproductive system, complete with pictures of the developing fetus.
This elicited a new round of questions and pretty soon became one of their favorite picture books. Phillip enjoyed the map-like diagrams and would trace the path the egg took in the fallopian tube and Ryan became absorbed in the babies’ pictures, wondering if “our” baby looked like that. Upon learning, for instance, that a baby didn’t start out with arms and feet but instead started out with a little tail, he became very alarmed at the thought that our baby might have one. He would ask me every day: “Mommy, does that baby still have a tail?” We would look at the development chart to see if it had grown legs yet. He wasn’t reassured until my eight-week sonogram clearly showed little arm and leg buds. Now he wants to know if the baby is still growing, if I can feel it moving and could he feel it moving, too? He will sometimes rush up to me and for no reason kiss my protruding abdomen or put his hand on it to feel his baby kicking. Now that he has learned that the baby has ears, he sings to the baby. Phillip, on the other hand, is much more interested in the mechanics of birth and recently announced that he wanted to go to the hospital with me and watch the baby be born! I wish I could read Adrien’s mind to see what is going on in his little head; undoubtedly, he must think that this is a lot of fuss over the fact that Mommy has much less lap room!
This pregnancy that was supposed to be so routine and ordinary appears fresh and new to me, like a lost toy suddenly found. I am experiencing impending motherhood through the eyes of my children, rediscovering things that I had forgotten, remembering the true miracle of birth, the wonder of feeling a child move within, the awe of a heartbeat, the sheer beauty of motherhood in full bloom. And my children are my teachers.
Francoise Inman
They’ll Be Fine
I am a single mother of two. When my oldest child started school, I was like all mothers: I stood, at a loss for words, when he dashed to meet his new friends, without noticing that I was standing there waiting for my bye-bye hug. I felt as if someone just snatched him from me, and I would never have his full attention and dependence again.
I had a lot of time to share with my youngest child, who is three years younger than my oldest. I had him at my side tugging at my shirt strings for three years. Where I went, he went. He was by all means “my baby.” We had a special bond, the two of us. He was my li’l man and I was so dependent on his being with me for such a long time that I dreaded the upcoming year for he would start school too. Every mother knows the hassles that come with shots for school, preschool records, little backpacks and the extra school supplies, not just for one but for two.
For a while, I was working the midnight shift. One day after seeing my oldest off to the bus, I came back into the house, and as the sitter left, Jeremy said to her, “Don’t wowwy. I be good and go back to sweep wit Mommy.” Back then, I would sleep for a few hours then get up and do the Mommy things. He would help me prepare supper since the earlier I cooked the more time I had with his brother. His brother would get off the bus, we would play for a while, then do homework, eat and bathe. By that time, it was almost time for bed and we would nestle up in our beds and retire for the evening. However I had to get up three hours later to get ready for work. By this time, the sitter would come. Jeremy heard her every time, and he would come into the living room where she would study before I went to work, and watch her or cartoons and then give the sweetest little kisses as I exited our home.
One morning I got home, changed out of uniform and slipped into the car. I figured I would try to get my errands done before retiring for a few hours sleep. I came home exhausted. I had run all over the malls for a certain crimson red T-shirt to match with Jeremy’s little shorts that I had bought for him to wear to school. I searched and searched. My last stop was at Kmart. As I headed toward the children’s department, up against the wall I noticed the perfect T-shirt. I grabbed it and started saying, “Look, Jeremy, look! Here is one and it’s perfect.” I turned around and he was gone. Knowing how children love to hide in between things, I started looking for him. I called out his name, but he never answered. Several minutes had passed, and I was panicking, screaming his name. An associate from the store approached me and asked me if I lost something. I screamed, “I can’t find my baby! Someone has stolen my baby!!!” The manager summoned a clerk to call the police as they issued a code on a missing child. I rambled hysterically through the store looking for my baby.
By this time, a policeman was asking me questions. I was telling him that my son was standing beside me while I picked out his shirt. As I reached for a picture of him in my purse, the officer asked, “Ma’am, what was he wearing?”
I started telling him, little bitty white tennis shoes, blue jean shorts and a yellow T-shirt with . . . “Oh, my gosh!” I turned red with embarrassment.
The officer said, “Ma’am?”
I started to cry.
He asked, “Ma’am, what is it?”
I exclaimed, “I am so sorry!”
“What, Ma’am, what is it?”
I exclaimed, “He started kindergarten today!”
Honestly, I was so embarrassed that I paid for his shirt and went straight to the school and stood behind the glass of his new classroom. As I watched him playing with his new friends, I realized I was all by myself now, no one to call my name thirty times a day, ask questions of why and how come! I stood there remembering the time I first held him and his brother, and I started to cry.
The next day, I stood at their school doors and watched until the principal walked up to me, grabbed my hand and said, “Ma’am, I promise they will be fine!”
Patsy Hughes
Rhymes and Reasons
Ahousehold of children certainly makes other forms of success and achievement lose their importance by comparison.
Theodore Roosevelt
As I sang to my newborn son, I contemplated my decision. The tune soothed us both.
When I think about Patrick, my firstborn, I remember how difficult those first few months were. Whenever he got restless, I’d draw from my teaching days and sing a rhyme or two.
Patrick’s first cry had been in late August—and so was the first day of school for my former students. I missed the cheerful faces of the schoolchildren and the musty smell of a classroom that had been closed up all summer. Had I made the right choice? Should I have continued teaching after having the baby? Would I lose contact with my teaching peers and fade into lost volumes of aging yearbooks?
As conflicted as I was, I knew seeing my young baby mature into a toddler and then a little boy was something I did not want to miss. On snowy mornings past, I’d be scraping my windshield before work. Now I was cuddling my son under warm blankets and watching the snow fall. An afternoon at the museum, or a
visit to the library story hour, or a walk around the block was very special for both of us. While most of my focus was on mother-child activities, I also found time to sew and read, luxuries that were virtually nonexistent before. I enjoyed making Patrick’s pumpkin costume for Halloween and felt proud of his Christmas stocking, with the sequins I had worked so hard to apply, hanging on the fireplace mantel.
Unfortunately, we at-home moms are often misunderstood. I am asked, “Why are you wasting your life and career staying at home?” My reply is simple: “I can always go back to teaching, but never to those wonderful days of motherhood.” What a sad commentary on society when the most important job in the world must be defended. It has been six years since I made this decision. It is just as special to see two more stockings above our fireplace (yes, with sequins, too!) and the costume gallery I have created since that first October.
I walked near my sons’ room last night and listened to Anthony corral his imaginary puppies and Dominic wail for attention. I started to enter to comfort my little one, only to be pleasantly surprised by my oldest son singing those same rhymes from my teaching days to calm his littlest brother.
As I leaned against the door, a new song filled my heart. It was then I realized I hadn’t given up teaching at all!
Antionette Ishmael
The Beholder’s Eye
Shoving the vacuum into its home in the hall closet, I stifled a groan. A half-day of housework behind me and I still wasn’t ready for the out-of-state company expected any minute. My four small children whirled through, leaving a wake of toys, crumbs and stray shoes scattered across the recently trackless carpet. And then I saw it: the sliding doors of the family room. The ones I had washed and scrubbed earlier that morning. Generous finger streaks and tiny nose prints mottled the freshly polished glass panes. And that looks like . . . Frowning, I stepped nearer and bent for a closer inspection. Why, it is! Peanut butter and Oreo cookies smudged all over. Those kids! Near tears, I plopped onto the couch and grabbed the jangling phone. “Hello?” I growled.
“Hello, dear,” answered my mother from her own couch a state away. “Are you busy?”
“Oh, you have no idea!” I said, exasperated. “We’re expecting guests and I just can’t seem to get all the housework caught up around here and the kids . . .”
“That reminds me,” she interrupted. “I should do some of my own. Housework, that is. The mirror above the couch is smeared. But, you know, every time I look at the sweet baby prints your little ones left there last month, I can’t bring myself to wipe them away. After all, I’m still showing them off to my friends as ‘priceless artwork!’” My gaze ping-ponged around the room. A half-eaten cracker here, wadded socks there, tilting towers of picture books in the corner. I grinned. Crowning it all was a hand-painted masterpiece on the patio doors. Unnumbered. One-of-a-kind. My own piece of priceless artwork.
Carol McAdoo Rehme
The Hug
The best thing to hold onto in life is each other.
Anonymous
It had been a long day already. And it was only three in the afternoon. My fourteen-month-old daughter, Lucy, was teething and we’d both been up all night—and all day. Nothing I did seemed to comfort her and I was getting more frustrated, closer to my wit’s end. To top it off, my husband was out of town and the late August sun was making Lucy hot and sweaty, both of us more cranky. At the same time my heart ached for her, my head ached for aspirin.
By four o’clock, Lucy was whimpering about losing Barney under the couch and Elmo under the chair. Having rescued her stuffed animals, I hugged and rocked her. I carried her with one arm and went back to sponging mashed peas up off the tile kitchen floor, brown bananas from the crevices in her high chair. I thought about the graduate school classes I had left when she was born.
Before we had Lucy, I had sworn I’d never become one of those mothers who cleaned and cooked all day in their housecoats, their hair a mess, their feet in terrycloth slippers. But there I was, my hair looking like it had gone through the heavy heat cycle of the clothes dryer, my eyes bloodshot and puffy. I indeed was still in my bathrobe, and I hadn’t showered.
Carrying Lucy, because she cried at my feet if I didn’t, I sang to her as I cleaned up the kitchen, beginning with “Somewhere over the Rainbow” and resorting to “A Hundred Bottles of Beer on the Wall.” Singing seemed to work. Lucy was calm until I got to bottle eighty-eight and then she let out a small whimper, which soon developed into tears. I gave up cleaning and patted her back. She was not to be consoled and let out a wail I was sure was going to alert the police.
I took Lucy for a walk, read her Runaway Bunny and tried tickling and playing our favorite games. Nothing was working. I tried singing again. Nothing. If ever I needed her to sleep, it was then. But every time I brought her near the crib in her room, she cried real tears, clutching at me, screaming “Nooooo.”
As much as I longed to leave her there, as much as my body told me to do so, I couldn’t. I stared at blue eyes rimmed with red as I brought her back into the kitchen and knew all she needed was rest. Sleep, darn it, a voice screamed in my head, something I would never reveal to my friends who have children.
By five o’clock, I stooped to Barney videos and chocolate ice cream. This brought me some reprieve. I collapsed on the couch beside her and wondered if I was doing something wrong, somehow falling short as a new mother.
Darkness came with me hardly noticing. I told myself that it was not a terrible thing to put my daughter to bed just a little early that night. We climbed the stairs together, Lucy and I, small petal fingers holding onto both of my hands high above her head. She let out a sigh at the top of the steps by her bedroom. “Me too, Lucy,” I said softly, picking her up.
I lifted her onto the changing table, feeling more tired than I ever knew possible. I missed the wonderful glow, the bigger-than-life, stronger-than-any-words kind of love I felt for my daughter. I wasn’t used to being so irritated and overwhelmed.
Both of us quiet, I put Lucy’s Mickey Mouse pajamas on her. Silent and somewhat still, she stood on the changing table as I held her close to zip her up. I breathed in the clean smell of her hair, feeling blonde curls tickle my chin. A certain sadness tugged at me. This isn’t what I thought motherhood to be.
Suddenly, Lucy reached her arms around my neck, holding the back of my head tight between her arms. Little hands, little everything, pulled me to her, and she pressed her cheek to mine. It took only a moment to realize what was happening. “She’s hugging me, she’s hugging me,” I wanted to shout. “She’s hugging me for the very first time.” I wanted to yell for my husband, a neighbor, anyone to come see what my daughter was doing for the first time.
We held each other for a few seconds, my daughter standing on the changing table dressed in her fuzzy red sleeper, her arms around my neck, her cheek pressed to my left shoulder. “Oh, Lucy,” I whispered, my words tight with tears. I never wanted to let go.
Lucy let go first and was onto her next discovery, ready to bed down with Piglet, Pooh and her favorite soft blanket. I stood next to the crib, looking down at her. She was so beautiful lying there, holding Pooh, blinking blue jewels at me. I stroked her forehead as I do each night and pulled the blanket up to her chin.
As I left her room, my time now all to myself, precious solitude didn’t seem quite as important, the fatigue drifting from my shoulders. I was preoccupied with her very first hug and how lucky I was to have gotten it.
Martine Ehrenclou
Alone Time for Mom
All I needed this morning was a half-hour alone, thirty minutes of peace and quiet to help preserve my sanity. No “Mom, do this,” “Mom, I need that,” “Mom, he hit me,” “Mom, I spilled juice on the couch.”
Just me, a hot Calgon bath, and nothingness.
I shouldn’t dream so big. After getting the two oldest off to school, I settled the youngest in front of the television to watch Barney and Friends and said, “Honey, listen closely.
Your mommy is going to crack. She’s losing her marbles. She’s teetering on the edge of permanent personality damage. This is because she has children. Are you following me so far?”
He nodded absently while singing, “Barney is a dinosaur from our imagination . . .”
“Good. Now, if you want to be a good little boy, you’ll sit right here and watch Barney while Mommy takes a nice, hot, quiet, peaceful, take-me-away bath. I don’t want you to bother me. I want you to leave me alone. For thirty minutes, I don’t want to see you or hear you. Got it?”
Nod.
“Good morning boys and girls! . . .” I heard the purple wonder say.
I headed to the bathroom with my fingers crossed.
I watched the water fill the tub. I watched the mirror and window steam up. I watched the water turn blue from my bath beads. I got in.
I heard a knock on the door.
“Mom? Mom? Are you in there, Mom?”
I learned long ago that ignoring my children does not make them go away.
“Yes, I’m in here. What do you want?”
There was a long pause while the child tried to decide what he wanted.
“Um . . . can I have a snack?”
“You just had breakfast! Can’t you wait a few minutes?”
“No, I’m dying! I need a snack right now!”
“Fine. You can have a box of raisins.”