Summery Thoughts

Nothing is more fragile than graham. This never shows up on Mohr’s scale, but it is true. Anyone who has attempted to make summer smores knows that graham crackers are delicate, falling into graham cracker dust at the slightest hint of pressure. Yet, for me, they are a summer tradition, like swimming or barbecues, so I persist, holding on to the graham even as it perilously crumbles, falling to my feet. And, though I savor the sweetness, every bite is tinged with a bit of sadness in knowing that too soon, summer will be over.
Behind every happy moment is that feeling of sadness. At the end of this month, my baby will be 3 years old. A happy occasion, yet I can’t help but feel sad, knowing that he is growing up, that every day is another step toward independence. Now he is firmly entrenched in potty training and is taking to it better than I could have hoped for. After a week of showing little to no interest, I was getting a bit discouraged, but didn’t want to push him. He turned to me one day and said “Mama, I have to go potty.” Then, we went into the bathroom and he did. As he was washing his hands, he turned to me and beamed that smile that still melts me into a puddle on the floor (though I try not to let him know it, lest he use it against me too much) and said “I use the potty like a big boy. Now I get Bob the Builder stickers.” True enough. Bob the Builder stickers are indeed incentive for using the potty and he uses each sticker earned to decorate his little Winnie-the-Pooh potty. And I am so proud of him for handling yet another big step toward independence, but it still brings tears to my eyes sometimes when he refers to himself as a “big boy” because time is getting away from me somehow, accelerating so that the last three years seem like a blur. Of course, he is already making a list of things he wants to do when he is older. He will start a sentence with “when I get bigger” and follow it up with something he is going to do when he is able. So far, the list consists of playing a soccer game, playing tennis and buying a ladder so that he can climb up on top of people’s house, especially Mickey Donald’s “house” (every time he passes the golden arches, he reminds me that he wants to climb Mickey Donald’s house).
My brother was appalled to realize that Jude was born when Jeff and I were 30, as to him this is an ancient age to be having a child. (Thirty is, of course, the same age that he is now. Idiot.) His theory is that it is ideal to have a baby early (18 or 19) so that you can raise the child then get on with your life. This theory comes across as being really naïve and as being stated by someone who has no intention of ever having children. He has made that intention clear. Maybe the day will come when I will be relieved that my child has reached adulthood, but right now, relief is not the emotion that comes to mind. I’m looking forward to the years ahead and that is not because I have painted them rose-colored. Already, I get mad and upset sometimes at my two-year-old’s antics and have been known to ask him “What were you thinking?” when he throws spaghetti onto the floor and colors Daddy’s snow blower with sidewalk chalk, so I know that there are days when I will be pulling my hair out, wondering what his twelve-year-old mind was thinking and when he and his brother get into trouble together, I know that this frustration will double. Those moments are stressful and frustrating, but they are just a part of parenting. I can’t possibly find the words to describe how I feel when Jude takes the blankets off his bed and asks to be covered with them as he is standing up. He then resembles one of the Pac-Man ghosts as he walks around the house saying “Mama, I’m a monster bad guy.” There is something about his tiny voice, his sweet innocence and the giggle that emerges from beneath the blankets that does something to my heart that I hadn’t ever imagined possible. Although I have always been a softie center wrapped in a cynical shell, the softie in me emerges more and more often and I find myself tearing up just watching him, still amazed by him. Maybe that isn’t normal, isn’t natural, but I prefer that to the alternative, letting another set of moments rush by without appreciating them.