Even on those days when I’m met with an overwhelming loss of control thoughts, the ones that tell me that I’m in the wrong role and playing it out so improperly, that I should have run away when I had the chance, I have a sense of calm. Those fleeting moments, (which used to come a lot more often than they do now) when I feel as if Isobel calling me Mama is like she’s breathing a tiny little lie out of her perfect little pouty mouth don’t seem to matter or stab me as deeply as they used to.
Because, finally, now that she’s nearing three, now that I’ve gotten a handle on what my own boundaries are, and what her personality entails and how the two can clash and how I can allow them to intermingle, now I feel some confidence. I may have some piss-poor days, when food is whatever can be quickly cut, slathered or poured, and she walks around with a milk mustache, naked for most of her lucid hours, but I’m still actually feeling like a good parent.
See, I used to walk around with a metaphoric ruler.
Her progress in all areas – speech, motor skills, sociability, violence – those all got held up against others her age. Worse, they were compared to children younger than her, which in some cases gave me a sense of mommy-fail; or children older than her, which often would give me a feeling of vindication.
~ My kid started playing independantly, imagining scenarios with stuffed animals, before she was two. Hers required her mommy to sit and hold her toys for her and make up pretendisms while the little girl laughed at the silly voices.
~ My kid doesn’t know her ABCs and she can’t count. That one knows up to 20 in English and Spanish and watches a lot less Dora, for it.
~ My kid walked four days after turning nine months old. That’s kid’s 15 months and still wants mommy to carry her everywhere. Or crawls.
~ My kid gave me a black eye. That little girl tells her dad she loves him, without coaching.
It was a vicious, evil thing to do to myself, and, on some level, Isobel. This constant measuring uppedness.
But that kind of went away and became less important a few months ago. If I’m being completely honest, it’s likely half because she started excelling at the unspoken mental aptitude tests more often than not; half because I ran out of energy to continue feeling like a lackluster maternal figure.
But through it all, before I heard the first person comment on her year-old personality as ‘not a very happy’ and before she became a half-insanely-happy-half-moody teenager in the body of a two year old with the age of an almost three year old, there’s been one area that I’ve never doubted that I did good at.
Books.
She loves them. Always has. Could lie there at six months, curled in while nursing and I expressively tomed out Good Night, Moon (I memorized that one and The Going to Bed Book quite early on – soon we didn’t even need the book).
Because…
When I was pregnant, two months before her birth, I got to celebrate an early Mother’s Day. The Ex gave me a gift card, because it was what I asked for, to a bookstore. And I promptly bought those two books.
I started after she was born, buying her a new book every month. At least one. When she was old enough to choose for herself, she started picking between two or three. When she neared the terrible twos, a trip to the bookstore became a fun afternoon, when she would grab 12 or so different soft, hard, fabric and bath books, nudging to be read to.
Now, we go to the bookstore a lot more often – one has moved only two blocks away from us – and she nearly always marches out with a new book. Proud. Happy. Excited.
I don’t read to her as often as I used to – there’s no more one mo’ book, Mama before bedtimes. In fact, I have often resorted to using no book as a consequence for naughtiness (not that I call it that). She started doing something about that.
She started reading to herself. To anyone who will listen.
Of course, a two year old who doesn’t know her ABCs would have an impossible time reading. What she does is gather a bunch of books, a few friends of the stuffed or plastic persuasion (unless there’s an actual warm-blooded volunteer around without a laptop perched on their legs. Ahem.), and she will go through the pages systematically, telling them the story by the pictures. If it’s one we’ve read often, she’ll pull out some memorized lines, but for the most part, this new telling is a hushed version of Isobelese.
This is how she puts herself to sleep each night. I tuck her in, we cuddle and talk about the day we’re ending and what tolls in the one that’s coming, and then I say good night, which is her cue to hop out of bed and grab two arms-full of books and read to her dollies and doggies until she falls asleep.
When I crawl into bed, much, much, dear god, so much later, I rearrange her form perpendicular to the way she’s just lain. I stack the books from under her on the nearest flat surface. And I tuck her back in knowing that she’s likely dreaming about all of the things she was just story-telling.
That’s when I can sigh contentedly and think that maybe I’m not doing such a bad job, after all.
Even if she does watch more movies than Siskel and Roper.
