Pleasantly Demented

When he was born, 16 years ago today, I had no idea how to be a mother. I still don’t. I remember looking at him through the glass of his incubator. There is something euphoric about the ignorance of a 17-year-old girl looking at her newborn baby for the first time. It causes you to completely overlook the IV in your child’s forehead, the breathing tubes disappear, and all 2 pounds of baby simply look like a shriveled, wriggling little miracle. I really had no clue. I heard the doctors and nurses talking to me. Telling me things about him. Telling me what happened after I had a seizure 3 days before. I heard all those things. But I wasn’t paying attention. I was busy looking at him. I wanted to know when I could take him out and hold him. I wanted to know when I could nurse him because my boobs hurt like a son of a bitch. Things like, “he can’t maintain his own body temperature,” and, “he’s not strong enough to nurse,” meant nothing to me. Psht. He was Super Baby. He could do anything. Except cry. He sounded like a wet mouse. I think I might have actually laughed at his futile little squeaks. But scared? Nope. Concerned? Not even. Oh, bliss! Either I had an uncanny maternal sixth sense that not even I was aware of, or it was just dumb luck, because aside from being 5 weeks premature and only weighing a few cents shy of 3 bucks, he was perfectly healthy. And I mean perfectly healthy. No breathing problems. No eating problems. No reflux. No asthma or allergies. Nothing. Even 16 years later, I can count on one hand the number of times that kid has gone to the doctor for anything other than his baby shots. And I am not exaggerating.

I still have no clue how to be a mother. I guess you could say I am the antithesis of the soccer mom. I concentrated on teaching him how to learn and to love learning much more than pumping him full of facts and figures and names and dates and tedious repetition. I’ve taught him how to teach himself. And to love it. Or he has figured that out in spite of me. Not sure which. I have never really been the mom who spends ridiculous amounts of time and energy and money creating experiences for him, but simply opened the door to the world and let him experience it for himself, the way it naturally unfolds before him. I have answered his questions about life and given him my own opinions with copious grains of salt so as not to cause him to fear holding opinions that are different from mine. At least I hope I have. As he’s grown older, I’ve tried to step lower and lower on the hierarchy of authority in order to walk beside him instead of towering above him. I have never wanted my children to fear me in the name of discipline. There is a fine line between being your child’s parent and being his friend, but it exists and it can be found. And that line is worth looking for.


Really, the only thing I have ever known how to do is love him. More than the air in my lungs, I love him. And he has been so easy to love. He is still a Super Baby. Amazing, brilliant child. Everything he is and everything he knows, he has taken with his own hand. Fed it to himself instead of opening his mouth like a little baby bird waiting for those around him to fill it with regurgitated shit like so many of his generation.


He doesn’t know it, and I have never put the burden on him in spoken words, but he has been my light in so many dark tunnels. I look up to that kid. I have learned more from him than he ever has from me. But I’ve still yet to learn how to be a mother. How to be a mother in the modern definition of the word, that is. I never gave a shit about cute baby clothes or decorating his nursery. My idea of a diaper bag was shoving a diaper in the glove box of my car. I’d love to say I breastfed him because I was progressive and knowledgeable and self-righteously forward-thinking, but really I just did it because I was too lazy to fuck with bottles. I have never rushed him from one sports game to another. I have never obsessed over saturating him in curriculum, listening to Baby Einstein on the way to our fourth visit to the natural science museum. Yeah, no. Not me. I’m more like a fly-by-the-seat-of-my-pants kinda girl. If he wanted to learn about dinosaurs, I gave him a book. If he wanted to learn to read, I gave him a book. When he wanted to learn to cook, I handed him a cookbook and gave him free reign in the kitchen. I did take him to the natural science museum once. But only because They Might Be Giants was playing a concert there. Oh, well, there was that time we took them to the Smithsonian. But even that wasn’t planned. We just decided to go. It was fun. But I think they cared more about figuring out how to climb Abraham Lincoln than anything else.


So again I say. Me and that whole “mothering” thing have never seen eye to eye. I suppose I was always too busy showing him what it means to be alive to ever bother with it.
 
Today, I have never been prouder to say he is my kid. Never been prouder than when I hear him going apeshit on his guitar that he taught himself to play. After 6 years of band, I never came close to the talent and skill that child carved out of himself. Ever. Never been prouder than when I listen to him talk, deep in conversation with him, and marvel at his level of understanding, wit, cynicism, sarcasm, and awareness. He blows me away. Every single fucking day, that kid blows me away.

So with that in mind, I love you, Jake. I have loved being your mother. I have loved watching you grow and change. I have loved watching your hands and your mind take the world around you and make it better in ways that leave other kids your age with their faces in the dirt on the playground. I have tried the best that I could to be your mother. I don’t know if I have succeeded by society’s standards or not, or by anyone’s standards for that matter. But you have succeeded in continuing to be my wriggling little miracle every single day.