OmegaMom

SpaceMom asked:

Has the experience of being a mother changed you in any profound ways? Or are you still Omega woman just with another section added to your life?

When I was a non-mom, there were some particular emails that got forwarded on and on, over and over.  One was “practice for parents-to-be“, always good for a guffaw or two.  Another was “Motherhood–it will change your life“, which was always good for either a tear or two or a screech of annoyance accompanied by a full-scale meltdown, depending on where I was emotionally with respect to infertility.

Really.  When you’re in the midst of a harrowing attempt to just get pregnant, you don’t want those reminders of just how your life changes.  And, to top it all off, you just don’t know how your life will change.  Oh, you can imagine it.  You can come up with all sorts of rosy scenarios.  And, as any childless person will tell you, it’s grating to have parents tell you, “You just don’t know what it’s like.”

Um.

I hate to say it, but…well, you just don’t know what it’s like.

Paradoxically, the profoundest change has been that I’ve become more patient and I’ve become more impatient.

I never realized just how much patience it takes to tell or show a small person, for the umpteenth time, how to do something.  These days, I am able to achieve a zen-like stage in some areas of interaction with the dotter–either I’m aware that this is something that just takes lots of repetition to sink in, or else blowing a fuse about it is way down the “battles I want to start” list.

On the other hand, sometimes that zen-like stage just goes “whoosh!” and I am a veritable volcano of impatience.

Who’d've thunk it?

Having a small child around takes time…lots of time.  And, I admit, I resent it sometimes.  Before Dotter, I would spend an hour or two a day hiking around the woods surrounding Hippy Dippy Enclave in the Woods.  I’d get home, grab the dawg’s leash and the dawg, we’d pile into the car, drive ten minutes or less to one of my favorite trails, and be off.  I’d be able to spend the time to look, to listen, to breathe in the fragrance of the woods.  I loved it.  It nourished my soul.

For a very short time after we brought OmegaDotter home, I was/we were able to do hiking–we’d stuff her into a baby-backpack and head on out.  But only a few short months after she came home, she became a toddler.  A very stubborn toddler, who Did Not Want the baby backpack.  And my hikes suddenly came to a screeching halt.

We are at the point where I can now take her out with me for short hikes.  What, to me, are very short hikes.  Slowly, slowly, she is increasing her stamina and interest.  But even so, while at times it’s grand to have her along, dancing and running and peering and chattering away, I still miss–extremely–those hours of peace and relaxation spent among the trees.

(The dawg, too, misses this.  The dawg has become fat.  Very fat.  Sigh.)

I’ve become more empathetic and compassionate, and, paradoxically, less so.  I find news stories about little girls being kidnapped and raped, or just lost, or dying, to be excruciating.  I can’t read them any more; while I felt it intellectually before, now…now I put a little girl’s face to that faceless news story, my breath catches in my throat and my heart skips a beat.  My liberal “oh, he must have had a bad life!” intellectual reasoning about the perpetrator gets buried deep underneath a very primal desire to rip his jugular out.

I didn’t know how your heart could fill with all-out pride at some very simple things–like a child who only weeks before couldn’t take a step out onto the ice rink suddenly being able to fly around on the skates.

I didn’t realize just how hard capabilities that adults take for granted are to learn.  Lost in the mists of time are my own feeble first attempts at buttoning buttons, tying knots, or reading.  Now, when the dotter tries something new, I can see just how hard it is to learn the basics, have the ability to stick with it and practice, and then, suddenly one day, it becomes easy.

I didn’t know how just looking at a sleeping child could take your breath away.

I didn’t know that you could look at that sleeping child and see the teenager-to-be, and have your heart fill with worry about some faceless unknown pimply teenage boy.

Oh, yeah, it changes everything.  Honestly.  But, at heart, I’m the same OmegaMom, with additional depth.

Technorati: Motherhood, parenting