Sometimes, I’m completely blindsided by something new one of my children does. Like when the 5 year old, who is going through a picky phase, voluntarily tries tuna fish and declares that she loves it. Or when the seven year old gives me an oral report on the differences between the movie version of James and the Giant Peach and the book. I seem to find myself surprised often by the things they are saying, the questions they’re asking. Their fears, their little and big steps.
Today, my big kid swam across the pool at our friends’ house. I had been giving her lessons, slowly building her confidence. But today, she just did it by herself. And kept doing it. I kept myself on the very verge of freaking the fuck out every time I caught her in the deep end without anything to hang on to. She made it to the side every time, without gasping or seeming winded at all. I, of course, was hovering nearby, ready to dive in and save her life. Yep. I’m on the paranoid side. I blame pregnancy.
But soon, Kelsey even got up the courage to jump into the deep end from the side of the pool in a float, going completely underwater.
And I wonder: was I like her when I was young? Did I have these days of courage, of bounding past milestones? It’s hard to remember being new to these experiences. I remember things like learning how to dive, how to ride a bike. There’s a fraction of a lifetime of little steps that I’ve forgotten, that I haven’t given a lot of thought to. Not until recently, when I’m trying to dig through my childhood memories to get a glimpse of the little freckled Terry and her fears, her ways of dealing with new challenges, and the ways her parents helped her. I miss that little kid. Sometimes I feel so very far away from her. And sometimes I do recall a big step. Sometimes she reminds me of what it’s like to get over that fear of the dark, of the monster under my bed. It makes me a better parent, to get into those little shoes once again.
At times, I look at my two little girls, and I see a little bit of her. Shy, sweet, happy, neat. And I see a little bit of the boy their father used to be. Cautious, brilliant, focused, quiet. It makes me wonder who this little guy kicking the hell out of my uterus is going to be. A little bit like me, a little like him?
It’s not narcissism, necessarily, to want to see yourself in your children. It’s a recognition, a familiarity. It’s comforting. It’s the statement that *I* have been through these things and lived. They didn’t break me. I am not STILL that little girl who was terribly constipated and afraid of the abominable snowman from the Rudolph movie. I finally DID learn to get over my fear of swimming in the ocean after watching Jaws.
What will they do tomorrow, these little kids who amuse me, who challenge my patience and make me a better person. I’m both anxious to find out, and EXHAUSTED with the thought that I have to keep keeping up with them and being present so that I don’t miss something, another thing, that is so amazing that I have to remember to write about it late at night, after books and goodnights, when they’ve slipped off into dreams I’ll never see.