Rising Without a Net: An Excerpt

[Following is an excerpt from a memoir-in-progress. The working title of the book-being-born is: Rising Without a Net.]

My daughter was more awake at birth than my son had been and since I’d already gone through the learning curve of being a new mother, holding her, nursing her, bathing her, and all of the other essentials were things I knew and were comfortable with this time. In many ways, it was easier to incorporate her into our world — as I’m sure it is with most families. I sort of have a theory about children though: No matter what order they’re born in they’re all screwed.

With the first child, everything is new. Everything is an experiment. And by the time you figure out what you’re doing in one stage of development, they shift gears and move on to the next. They’re never NOT breaking new ground for everyone in the family. It’s gotta be as tough on them as much as it is on parents.

After that though, kids are still screwed. With the next child, it’s all already been done. Parents know before the child does that the temper tantrum is coming, that the next phase is coming, that what-ever-it-is is coming and are prepared for it. So while the first has it tough because they’re going through the learning curve with the parents, the second has it tough because they can’t get away with shit. Having not had more than two, I can’t speak for what it might be like for additional children thereafter, but that’s my theory anyway.

For example, I’ll never forget the first time my son said “no” to me. He wasn’t even quite two yet. We were in the living room and I asked him to help me clean up. He ran across the room away from me to the front door, turned to face me, arms crossed, feet firmly planted about shoulder-width apart and yelled a very defiant, “No!”.

My first thought was, “Well shit. Now what?” I knew it was a developmental stage. I knew I had to change my parenting instantly. And I knew I had no prior experience to base anything on. It was a very long 30 seconds of simply staring at each other. Me spinning through all of the potential possibilities and options I could think of, and him daring me to respond.

With my daughter? Night and day difference. In fact, I sorta wonder if I inadvertently caused a fundamental issue for her in the process. But then, what are parents for if not to give our children something to talk about with their therapists?

She waited until she was almost three. In fact, I started wondering if she was every going to get to the “No” phase. I knew she needed to, but given our son had started so early, I had figured she’d follow suit. Nope. Just like her birth, she had her own timeline.

It finally happened while she was playing with her toys in the living room. It was time to pick them up so I asked her to start putting them away. She looked at me and said, “But mom, I’m the princess!” And without skipping a beat I responded, “Well that makes me the queen. Now go pick up your toys.” She stared at me for a moment, looked a bit disappointed, and then did what she was told.

After that I noticed two things. First, she referred to me as the queen, her dad as the king, and her brother as the knight — not the prince, mind you, but the knight (I’m sure Caroline Myss would have a hay-day with that!) — for the next year or more. Second, she rarely defied us, ever. When she did, it was obvious it was difficult for her. In fact, as she got older, I actually had to start encouraging her to say “No” and speak up for herself. When I last saw her, this was still something she was struggling with, in my opinion. Now, whether that’s because of how I responded in that first defining instant, or whether it’s because of her personality and desire to please, or whether it’s for 101 other possible reasons — or a combination of things — I’ll never know. But I do wonder.

Bringing our daughter home from the hospital was a very different experience from our son as well. With him, he’d been asleep. We’d had to be shown how to put him into the car seat properly and were so worried about his floppy little head that I was constantly turning around to try to make sure he was alright. With her, we had our son to watch over her.

She was a bit fussy when we brought her home. It worried our son a bit. I tried to reassure him that she was fine but he was genuinely concerned. I’m not sure who’s idea it was — if I suggested it or if he just decided to do so on his own — but at some point our son started to sing to her. She instantly calmed down. He kept singing and I could tell that he felt pretty darn good about his ability to sooth her.

It was mutual though. When she started attending the same day care he did, if he was having a bad day, they’d allow him to go sit with her for a bit and he’d be an entirely different kid almost immediately. He protected her. He loved her. He wanted so much to be a good big brother for her. I have often wished that sweet, innocent bond had never been broken, but it was. Eroded by misunderstandings, an inability to integrate social queues, and a parent who showed preferential treatment combined with emotional abuse.

My heart breaks for my children. I wish I could have provided something more, something else, something that better matched my vision of possibilities rather than my childhood. I failed at that. And yet, maybe it is exactly what is has needed to be.

The person I am today is not the same person I was when I married their dad. There are days when I see that girl in the mirror and I am full of regrets, shame, and wishes that I could go back and change just one critical decision. After this past year however, there are more and more days when I look in the mirror and recognize that the woman I was deserves my love. Without her, I wouldn’t have gone through all the things I did, and if I hadn’t gone through all those things, I wouldn’t be who I am today. I like who I am today, so how can I not appreciate who she was that got me here?

Over the year that it took for my children to fully pull away, I stared at myself in the mirror a LOT. Multiple times each day, in fact. I asked myself again and again: What’s the right and best choice here? What do I want to say about myself when I look back at how I made this choice and how I walked through these times? Who am I choosing to be?

What I finally came to was this: for better or worse, like it or not, there is only one person on this planet or in this life to whom I am responsible. One. Me. Everyone else, no matter what the relationship, no matter how I might know them, the only person I will ever have to live with every moment of every day for the entirety of my life is me. And on my death bed, when I look back at my life, I know I won’t be wondering if I succeeded at making everyone else happy. I’ll be wondering if I lived the best life I could have lived. I’ll be wondering if I lived MY life and my purpose or if I’ll be dying with my own unique gift to this world — whatever it may be — left ungiven.

And yet, there has remained a level of guilt. Could I have done better as a parent? Been different? Done more? Is there something I could have done differently to have created a different result?

Then, I was talking with a friend who told me, “Don’t ever take from your children the opportunity to walk their path, learn their own soul’s lesson, and discover for themselves who’re they’re meant to be.” As parents, we want to take away our children’s pain. We want to see them happy. We want to protect them. And yet, we also want to see them building their own lives. This path, my friend pointed out, is a path my children need to walk. If they didn’t, they would have made different choices as well. All I can do, she shared with me, is continue to live my best possible life, continue to honor my own path, and continue to live as an example. They may not see it yet, but they will one day….