Eavesdropping
It's always a strange experience to watch your firstborn interact and converse with kids like real peers; more than just the hugs and kisses of a demanded performance, more than playing alongside other toddlers, but actual relating and conversing.
Two examples:
1) We were in McDonalds and there was a little girl up in the tunnels with Evan. It was time to go so I called his name from the bottom of the slide repeatedly and got no response. Then, this conversation that echoed back down to me:
"Your mom's calling you.... Is that your mom?"
Evan said to her casually, "Mm-hm. Yeah, that's my mom."
2) We were in the library and a boy of about 7 years was doing a puzzle at the table next to us and loudly lamenting to anyone who would listen about a missing piece:
"There's a piece missing! I can't find this piece..."
"Why is it missing?" Evan asked him.
Instead of looking down his nose at Evan, as I expected, the kid found the question perfectly appropriate and replied "I don't know. Somebody probably stole it."
Evan recognized that this kid was the kind to immediately assume the worst and offered, "Maybe it got vacuumed up?"
My jaw must have literally plopped down onto my necklace in shock.
These overheard conversations amaze me, the first reason being that I had no idea he was brave enough to respond to older kids as their equal. (I mean he's kind of a scaredy cat, God love him.) For instance, today when he waited in the grocery cart for me to strap Madalyn in the car the wind blew it a few feet and he was rubbing his eyes and whimpering. I assumed his allergies were bothering him and asked him as much.
"I drived," he told me desperately, as though he'd accidentally shifted a car into gear.
The other thing that amazes me, though- about these overheard conversations- is how he adapts to the child he's talking with. For the little girl in the tunnel, he played it cool- (he never calls me mom!!!) Although I have to say, he also sounded proud that I was his mom. Kind of like yeah, she belongs to me, I know- be impressed.
And with the boy at the library he played it smart (and almost seemed to be coaxing the older child out of a panic- the child who outweighed him by about twice his body weight and was half his height over again.)
In addition to the above instances, I've also seen him invite a child to play in one way or another and watched the child refuse him.
"You don't want to? Okay!" he'll say.
(I'll refrain from describing my internal reaction when this happens- as tempted as I am- I'm resisting...)
But I can only imagine how this whole process is going to intensify over the years... this process of watching him find his place in this world. Pretty soon he'll be saying to some girl, Who? Her? Yeah, that's just my mom.
And when that happens, you'll be able to locate me on the floor of the nearest bathroom stall, curled up in the fetal position and rocking myself.
At least I hope you would find me that way, because the other plausibility is me grabbing him by his precious little earlobe and walking him away from the girl saying, JUST YOUR MOTHER? Just your mother! It took me an hour and half to push you out, and another six months just to recover- we've gone through temper-tantrums, potty-messes, eating-battles- just your mother...
But who knows. Maybe that day won't come. He's actually shown himself to be a pretty tender-hearted kid and wears a heavy conscience, so maybe- just maybe- those words will never leave his lips.
Either way, I am learning one thing with certainty over and over again; that as exhausting and sometimes painful as pregnancy and labor can be, that's only the beginning. Birthing a child is like cracking open your chest and tossing your heart onto a freeway. Your breastbone splitting is only the beginning, and at that point your heart's still a safe distance from the racing whimsy of the traffic...
When I was little and we went for night swims in our pool I would copy the safety technique I'd seen in a textbook for surviving a shipwreck at sea. I'd float vertically with just my chin tipped out of the water, expending no energy by keeping air in my lungs while staring far into the starry sky. I'd imagine all of the depth, all of those miles below my dangling feet, and really put myself there, you know, in the middle of that vast ocean until it was so real and my hanging legs felt so vulnerable that I couldn't take it anymore; when my imagination won out and overpowered me I'd swim to the edge as fast as I could and hop out with the kind of giddy laughter that stirs around scary campfire stories.
That was also my rehearsed answer to the "what do you most fear" question; the deepest parts of the ocean were what frightened me- not the sharks or the other predators even- but just feeling that vulnerable.
That was before I was a mother.
