Friday, February 8, 2008
Page 15
AT THE SIDEBAR (Column)
A Dozen Years of Surprises
By J’AMY PACHECO
You’re beautiful, Baby, from the outside in.
Chase your dreams, but always know the road that’ll lead you home again.
Go on, take on this whole world.
But to me, you know, you’ll always be my little girl.
—Tim McGraw
When I became a mother, I thought I was well prepared. I did research, asked questions, took classes, borrowed children, read articles — if there was information out there, I found it. I was ready.
At least I would have been, if my little girl hadn’t decided to surprise us by arriving a month and a half before her due date. I was so unprepared for her unexpected arrival that I stopped on the way to the hospital to proofread some work and fax in corrections. Since she arrived three days before her scheduled baby shower, I had to send my husband to the store for basics like bottles, blankets and diapers. Her arrival was so unexpected that if not for a train derailment that closed the mountain pass between my home and office, I would have been out of town when it happened.
It’s almost impossible for me to believe that it’s been 12 years since that little bundle of wonderful came to live with us. But the tiny girl who once slept in a cradle next to my bed will celebrate her 12th birthday this week.
Every birthday seems like an enormous leap into the unknown. Every age seems like the cutest, most fun age ever, and I always dread her ascension to the next phase.
The age of 12 seems like a dangerous precipice, with who-knows-what dangers lurking once she steps over the threshold toward 13 — her teenage years. I can’t help thinking this will be her last year of childhood, and just the thought of it makes me want to cry.
Although she’s my baby — she’s small enough that I still carry her down the stairs every morning — now and then I catch a flash of the teenager that she’ll too soon be. She’s quick, smart, and very funny. But she is also in that emotional ‘tween stage, and will sometimes start crying for no apparent reason. Since I’m in that emotional pre-menopausal mother stage, I sometimes find myself doing the same thing. (I suspect my husband will soon start a discreet search for alternative living quarters.)
It’s hard to believe a dozen years have passed. It’s difficult to imagine a brain (especially mine) holding 12 years of memories. But there are many, like the time she was five and it took two nurses and me to hold her down for shots while she shrieked “I don’t want to go to kindergarten!” The day she woke up with pink eye, the night she threw up at the grocery store when we picked up her birthday cake, each 102-plus fever, the time she fell head-first into the bathtub — all moments I’ll never forget.
Nor will I forget the day I came out of the shower to find my then-two-year-old struggling with one hand under her chin, the other on top of her head.
“Mom,” she complained. “I can’t get my head off.”
She was funny then, and she’s funnier now. Her interests still include Barbie, but have expanded to take in the Potter Puppet Pals, Weird Al and Monty Python. Her bizarre sense of humor sometimes worries me — until I recall having huddled around the radio with my brothers listening to late night Dr. Demento, and staying up to watch first-run episodes of Saturday Night Live. Weird humor is apparently genetic. I can live with that.
Like her mom, she’s afraid of the dark, loves to read, and finds Disneyland to be her “happy place.” Unlike her mom, she is a computer geek who has, for several years, held the title of “PowerPoint Princess” at school.
She constantly surprises me by doing things like becoming obsessed with the Holocaust, acing an algebra test, or spelling words like “obsequious.” But she still wants to hold my hand when we walk, sit on my lap, and hitch a ride in my arms every morning.
She keeps me hopping, and keeps me guessing. She also keeps me laughing and occasionally, makes me cry.
When I became a mother, I thought I was prepared. But the last 12 years have demonstrated that one can never be prepared for their children – we can only take it one day at a time, one surprise at a time, one memory at a time.
She keeps getting taller, smarter, prettier, funnier, stranger and older — but she’ll always be wonderful, and she’ll always be my little girl.
And that will continue to surprise me.
Copyright 2008, Metropolitan News Company