Sunday September 23rd, 2007
We took two cars to the soccer game and it began to rain as we drove home. Hope was in another car, and with a my mother’s too-big sweatshirt on her, she looked out of the window, lost in a big hood, and waved, smiled and we saw (not heard) the subsequent giggle.
My mother said, “Sometimes she looks so big, but then sometimes she looks so little.” She looks big when she wears her school uniform with the tartan jumpers and skirts, but then at other times, she is so tiny, hidden by a hooded sweatshirt slipping over her eyes.So grown-up, but then so like a baby. She towers over other small children and I wonder in my heart if she ever was a baby. But then, she cries in the middle of her game because the other team has made a goal. She isn’t mad, but she’s hurt.
I imagine she feels this dichotomy as often as she has an outburst. Like she has all of a huge adult emotion inside her tiny heart, and really doesn’t know what to do with it: anger, embarrassment, joy, disappointment. These are things I don’t even know how to express half the time.
The same is true with the baby (see, I still call her the baby, but then again, what mother doesn’t call her youngest “the baby” even when they are much older). Sometimes she is still the searching, crying infant to me, the one who wants to be held tightly. This is the one who wants the pacifier and blankie. But then, as she runs away and scrambles up the jungle gym, pacifier long forgotten, she seems old and tall and little-girl-like. One look at her bulky diaper bottom and I am reminded of how tiny she really is. She’s beginning to recognize shapes and colors and I soon forget the nursing baby with sleepy eyes.
I think that’s it…allowing them the jungle gym: the fenced-in, padded playground with the safety it provides; the small, easy slides, as well as the monkey bars representing that one more thing they need to learn. I watch, help when I am needed, and marvel at how big and little they are at the same time.
My Mom still calls me her baby!
So true about their little bodies and hearts trying to figure out what to do with all those emotions.
And a wise mother knows that her children are different from each other.
My heart nearly broke when I realized that your daughter was crying in the soccer picture. So tender.
I still call my 3 1/2 yr old ‘baby’ and I always will. He constantly reminds me that he isnt a baby and he says “I know you dont want me to grow up, but I have to”. Unfortunately, he is right.
I know exactly what your mom means… my girls usually seem like almost-grown-ups to me, but then I see them lined up for choir, or walking through the parking lot at church, or in dance class, and they look so little. It reminds me I must still be gentle. Like you said, their hearts don’t know how to deal with all the growing emotions… they are learning about the world around them with lightspeed, as well as how to live within it… and they cannot “hold all the words in,” as you said earlier. They are new to this world, still. I read your other posts, too… I too, am feeling older, the days go by faster and faster, they whirl and spin. Sometimes I feel like it’s almost over… they are almost out the door… but no, not yet. They are older and different, but still little enough to need gentleness, affection, and time. Of all the times in their lives, this would be a great time to take that seriously… after all, the way things are going, in about an hour they will be getting married!