Friday, May 9, 2014

For Sawyer. And all the mamas on Mother's Day. Current, future, and figurative.


Oh boy. I can't believe I'm writing this.

Putting something on paper that had I read ten years ago, even five years ago, might have made me hate the person writing it. Or at a minimum tune out and dismiss the writer as that 'crazy baby lady.' But please bear with me for a second.

I am far from 'that crazy baby lady.' I didn't even have baby dolls when I was little. The closest I got was a Cabbage Patch Kid but let's be honest - they were half groceries. I was more into horses and catching minnows and collecting stray dogs and any other animal within a mile radius of my house.

If I'm being honest babies still kind of freak me out. So why am I writing this? Because a friend came over last week who I hadn't seen in several years and while visiting with me and Sawyer reminded me I told him five years ago I didn't want kids. He wasn't lying. I probably said that to a lot of people. And meant it.

I was too cool, too busy, too free. When I thought of having kids all I saw was a Blob-like, paralyzing freeze over my entire life. I thought of friends who couldn't go anywhere after 8 at night because their baby was already in bed. I thought of the first time I saw a friend riding in the backseat of a car with her baby and thinking - wow! She's relegated to the back seat! 

But then I had Sawyer and literally had my mind blown and my heart explode over and over again like an endless string of fire crackers going off inside my chest. This was like my most favorite pet I ever owned only a thousand times better. Why didn't anyone tell me it was like giving birth to a pet? This was the high of falling in love the first time, over and over again and again multiple times a day...only they couldn't break up with you for some hussy (not for a good 13 years at least.)

Overnight I became that person I would have despised just months before. I wanted everyone I knew and loved to have a baby STAT. To feel what I was feeling.

But of course I didn't say this to anyone. One of the reasons I will never utter the words, 'Hey - go have sex and make something you'll treasure more than your nice apartment, swinging night life, adorable dog, etc.' is that we don't always know what's bubbling beneath the surface. It's never as simple as 'to have or not have' when it comes to kids.

So all I will say to anyone who thinks having a baby is the worst idea ever is what I would say to myself all those years ago.

Babies aren't a web-like freeze over your entire life - they're the opposite.

You know the Namaste closure at the end of a yoga class? 'The light that lives within me bows to and recognizes the light within you.' How it makes you feel all warm and fuzzy inside and makes you walk out of the class like you're on a cloud?

Imagine getting to hold the light in your arms. Getting to feed it, talk to it, to see it grow and change at such a rate you wish you could freeze it just the way it is until you're ready for it to grow again.

A baby is literally the best heart opener there is. And you don't have to do a downward dog to get to it.

And as for that girl relegated to the backseat next to her baby? Don't feel sorry for her. She's having the time of her life. At least until the baby pukes.