My son is one year old today.
There is a plethora of mom blogs out there. An abundance of people (not just moms, dads too) writing about parenting and children and the ups and downs of spawning a new generation of shit disturbers. And part of me balks at joining their ranks.
I remember pre-baby saying that I wouldn't lose my passion for all things me. My interest in science, my willingness to devour esoteric papers on human sexuality, my fascination with the brain. I will continue to write about these things, I said to myself, because I won't be another mommy blogger, another poor soul who can only talk about her life in relation to her children. Ha. Ha. Ha.
Maybe it's a backlash from the increasingly numerous un-baby-bearing people in our generation. By choice more and more are choosing not to burden themselves with poopy diapers and the kind of sleep deprivation that could rival KGB style torture methods. And really, who can blame them. They don't want to read about us stupid suckers whose lives have effectively ended. So I felt a certain amount of shame and worry that I would turn into another boring mommy blogger in a sea of sleep deprived boring mommy bloggers all bitching about the same thing, which ultimately the un-baby feel we have no true right to bitch about because we chose this of our own free will. So why, oh why, are there still so many parental blogs and why oh why is it when I sit to write, what I want to write about is my son?
Because here's the thing:
There is no other experience on earth that is at the same time so universal and yet so hauntingly personal.
Children change you. People hear that and go "yeah, yeah, we know" but they aren't hearing the meaning behind it. Children change you. We all change, gradually, accumulating experience and slowly morphing into something new and hopefully better. But children are not gradual. Nothing they do is gradual. From one instant to the next they create billions of new neurons and neural connections. They become different people in front of your eyes. And you become a different person alongside them, quickly in order to stay in step with their lightning fast movement towards becoming whoever they are becoming. It's like watching a miniature version of the Big Bang constantly happening in your living room.
Pre-baby, I could say that every day I was a new person, but I said with a kind of Zen Buddhist understanding. Today is the first day blah blah. But post-baby I am a new person. Every day I learn more watching my son for 20 minutes than I have over the past 20 years. I learn kindness, and compassion, and patience, and joy, and laughter, and frustration, and heartbreak, and wonder, and love. Then a new hour rolls by and I learn all of that again, I learn another facet of them, and a dozen more, and am amazed that my heart has not imploded under the sheer strain of loving too hard.
We parents talk incessantly about our children because not only are we are forever awed by what they do. We are forever humbled by the kind of people they help us become.
