Today marks one year that I've been at this.
I'm going to stop doing this every day. Yes, I did manage to write almost every day for a year (with the exception of four or five days when life became especially hectic/chaotic and I simply forgot); but lately I've been sitting at the computer each night thinking, "Damn I have no idea of what to say, oh well, better spit out something" rather than, "Rats there are three or four things I want to write about, I'll have to choose." Once a day is too much--not for other forms of writing, but for this one.
I'll make it once a week from now on. That way, during the week, something will build up inside me--I'll have a bewildered-aging-Mommy moment or some little facet of life here in San Francisco will strike me as worth repeating online, and I'll mentally store it away for a while; by the end of a week the event will have marinated long enough in my thoughts to become something worth writing (and reading) about. At least, that's the hope.
I've enjoyed doing this every day--the regularity of it, while stifling at times, also becomes a kind of meditation.
Where do I stand, as a mother and a person, compared to a year ago? A year ago, I was grimly entering my sixth month of sleep deprivation, as my son would not start sleeping through the night regularly until sometime in late September/early October of last year; I was still overjoyed at becoming a new mother--so very late in life; I was still in a state of disbelief about the magnificence of this new being. I was delighting in our long walks together (with stroller) through various unknown parts of San Francisco.
So--mostly delight, with a dash of desperation and depression.
Now--I'm still amazed by my son, in a different way; the fact of him is not as overwhelming, but his personality--already strong at six months, but so much stronger now--bowls me over. I'm also feeling a new form of exhaustion--not as all-consuming as the constant fatigue I felt last August, but I could call it a sort of ever-present weariness, which perhaps only mothers of very active toddlers can understand. Seventeen months (almost) after he was born, I'm looking ahead at the next thirteen months (the period of time during which he'll still remain at home around the clock--by September of next year he'll probably begin some form of half-day preschool) with some measure of trepidation, but also with the sense that I will always treasure this time, even with all its complications and headaches, because he has already changed so much and will change enormously once again by the time another year rolls by.
I look at myself in the mirror and realize that I've aged quite a bit in one year...many more gray hairs, and a more pinched, worried expression on my face...sometimes I catch myself in the rearview mirror of my car with an absolutely distraught look in my eyes and I suddenly realize it's something trivial, like "Oh no, I forgot his shoes" or "What was that other item I absolutely had to buy at the store, something he needed urgently?" All those thousand and one thoughts that occupy a mother's mind and age her so quickly...I need to let go of some of that--most of that--at least, I need to learn not to beat myself up because I forget my son's shoes once in a while.
As it so happens, this morning, during a quick trip to the grocery store, I forgot my son's shoes. And I did not, this time, stress about it (because I had his carrier and it was just a quick trip--soon, I won't be able to fit him in the carrier with any degree of comfort for either of us, he's gotten that huge). For the ten minutes we were there, he was perfectly content in my arms, reaching out for the tomatoes and bananas and baguettes as he usually does (getting him back into the carseat was another story, but we'll pass over that). At the checkout, one of the baggers, who had been standing outside, perhaps taking a break, suddenly poked her head inside the store and shouted to the checkout clerk, "Hey, John, I just saw fifty parents flying overhead!"
"What?" the clerk asked. She repeated it twice before either of us understood what she had been saying: "parrots," not "parents." We laughed, and he said to me, "I kept wondering, 'If it was an airplane, how would she know they were all parents inside?'"
I was actually picturing parents flying overhead like parrots. Maybe that's the image I'd like to retain foremost in my mind, for the coming year.
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