One day you grow up and you decide to get married, you
decide to buy a car, you decide to buy a house, you decide to take a job. You
think you decide to have a baby.
But you really have no choice in what baby you get. The baby
they put in your arms is a total surprise. And even as you hold her, and kiss her
and know beyond any shadow of any doubt that you will love this little person
forever – until your dying breath and beyond – you still don’t even know who she
is. It is the most out of control you will ever be and it is wonderful and
scary and inspirational all at once.
Suddenly, your world shifts, or it should, and all your
thoughts are bent on this tiny person, the little girl who stares into your
eyes as she nurses. Your “world” still
exists out there somewhere – career, dream, plan. But somehow there is a fish
eye lens on the camera and the focus has shifted.
Then a strange thing happens. She begins to grow, unfurl,
leave your lap, run down the hall way and “hide” from you. You have spent years
talking to her, in the middle of the night, when you go to her in the morning
and she smiles at you – a smile that wraps your heart all up in string and
squeezes tight – you’ve talked her through her crying jags, you’ve made her
laugh by twisting your words into funny sounds complemented by tickling
fingers. And suddenly, she starts talking back to you.
Her view of the world from knee-height makes you laugh,
makes you cry, and makes you realize that she is watching everything you do.
Now, you worry not just about what you are putting in her stomach (for that has
always been in the front of your mind) but what you are putting into her heart.
A great thing happens then. Your curiosity all these years
finally has a hope of being quenched. You get to see who she is, you get to see
glimpses of who she might one day be. She startles you with interests you never
had or she might sidle up to you and want to learn everything about what you
do.
You try to find activities that fit this new person. What will
interest her? What will she want to explore next? You set her on a path, dare
to let go and whoosh! She takes off like a kite on a March morning. You know
now that you found the right thing as you watch her grow and soar. You laugh in
surprise and delight and just a bit of sorrow as the wind of her dreams and
hopes takes her up, up , up.
Now, comes the hard part. You can’t let go of the kite
string, no she needs you to hold on. Forever. But the trick is to know when to
let out the line and give her room to soar higher and higher. But no, mom. Don’t
let go.
