The smallest of moments

Mommy, your eyes wet?
Oh, it's OK, honey, I'm just happy.
Your eyes wet?
Yeah, sometimes when people are really happy they cry. But I'm not really crying, my eyes are just a little wet because I'm happy.
HA!! THAT SILLY! YOU NO CRY YOU HAPPY... YOU CRY SAD! HAAAA!! SILLY MOMMY!


Silly Mommy.

I've never been one to be particularly moved by the big events in life.  I love them, and they're special, but they don't rattle my heart the way the little moments do.

I loved marrying your daddy, but it felt very normal and fun to do so. I feel the weight of his devotion at times with less fanfare. Like last spring when he knew (without a conversation) that life and motherhood had been frustrating and unhappy for me, so he surprised me (on a particularly horrific day, nonetheless) with the announcement that he had been spending weeks planning a kid-free get away to see my friends in Brooklyn.

Or when your brother was born... I didn't cry. I can't process such a life altering moment in a flash, I need space. So when he was a few weeks old and I looked deep into his eyes and told him how much we all loved him, and that whoever he wanted to become in this life was fine by me, and that I would make it my goal as his mother to help make that happen, and he gave me his first smile that nearly exploded his little cheeks, I wept the happiest most perfect tears possible.

So the other day when I was in the kitchen and I looked into the living room and couldn't find you, I decided to walk upstairs and see what you had gotten yourself into. I found you in the bathroom, with your navy blue flower jammies down around your ankles, half of your diaper off, and holding your little toddler tummy out of the way with one hand while you undid the tab on the other side of the diaper. I asked what you were doing.

And it was oh so nonchalantly that you told me that you had to pee... so you were gonna pee. And this is mind-blowing because I have done absolutely nothing to potty train you. Nothing. You've watched your friends at school use the potty and then decided that you wanted to do that too. So you have been.

But you've always asked me first, and you've never been able to unzip your jammies, and you've always wanted me to take off your diaper for you. But this is what you do, what you've always done.

It's been evident from Day 1 who you are. I had more than one nurse comment that they had never seen a newborn who was this aware and alert. You know exactly who you are and what you want and how you're going to get it. You have the ferocity of the lion that is your astrological sign.

Every single day you make it clear to me how self-reliant you are. In need of no one. Over and over and over I get little nods to the reality that "though they are with you, yet they belong not to you." I heard this quote long before I ever became a mother, but I never knew how many times I would have to repeat it to myself.

We are together, almost all the time, yet you have no desire to belong to anyone. It's so easy for me to picture you at 16, 24, 30, etc. All opinions and power and drive and hysterical and wild-hearted, because you're all of those things now. You came into our lives a fully formed soul and every day I hear the adult you whispering to the adult me, let go mom.