This Day

My rearview mirror is fixed on a beautiful sleeping 4-year-old in a car seat. It’s not the purpose of the rearview mirror, but I find myself looking back on what keeps me going these days. I’ve been driving around for an hour listening to a podcast to let her rest and have some nice quiet, *nearly* alone time in my head. This is still a new town to me, and I enjoy driving around and exploring. There’s a lot of pretty. There’s a lot of not pretty. It’s nothing wildly remarkable, it’s just kind of where we are right now. I wish I could imagine it ever feeling like home, but I know it’s serving a great purpose for us at this time in our lives. I like to daydream about where we’ll be next, though, and imagine the excitement of discovering new roads.

Thinking about Gloria’s childhood, I think about my own. I miss the ear-popping hills of where I come from. The middle of the east coast was a wonderful place to childhood. It’s not ‘too’ anything in Maryland. It’s not as drastically hot as it is here, and it’s not as drastically cold as it is in, say, Michigan. We didn’t get tornados, or any earth-shattering weather events, really. You don’t routinely see cockroaches and animal sized spiders. The seasons. All sparkly. East Coast Octobers. And nothing in my childhood could beat a snow day; sledding and building igloos until our fingers felt like they were going to fall off, then running inside to dry off our snow gear and refuel with mom’s hot chocolate. Rinse and repeat all day long. I was lucky to have the kind of stay-at-home mom who rejoiced on snow days. Mornings, waking up to the untouched snow, especially when it was the fine powdery kind that glittered in the sun, made so many memory wrinkles in my brain. When I think about snow days I feel sad that they won’t be a part of Gloria’s childhood. At least not for now.

But the pine trees here are nice. Especially when they’re planted in deliberate rows and you can drive by them around 45 MPH. And people are all kinds of musical here. Even those who don’t play music seem to still possess this innate musicality. The soulfulness is a real thing, I think it’s the fact that nobody is in a rush. They’re laid back. In all honesty, you can’t move too quickly or you’ll pass out in this heat! I do appreciate the heaviness here; the heaviness of the humidity. My body actively rejects the dry side of the country, so I’m thankful for how deeply I can drink the atmosphere in; how limber my limbs are when air drenched. The heaviness of the cooking. It’s keeping folks sick here, but boy is butter a sign of love, and you are loved here. It’s the heaviness of the history that I’m thankful to experience. It’s not a region that gets a lot of outsiders, and I think if more people saw it, it’d be a little less of a scapegoat for the ugly that exists all over our country, but gets squarely pinned here. Heavy, nonetheless. I’m thankful Gloria has two parents from different places and will have a nice mix of it all.

But it’s a weird time in the world to have views that differ from the majority around you. It’s important to get out of your bubble, I feel proud that we did. I’ve softened in many ways, and have grown stronger in others. But I do miss the sustainability and the comfort of sharing the same values as your neighbors. It’s here, I just have to seek it out a little harder. And in the meantime, it’s not so bad to simply share pleasantries, really feel love for folks you disagree with, and try to be the nice example of the outrageous liberal to the folks who’d never met one in the wild.

I pull into our garage and will sit for several minutes just listening to the sweet sound of my baby’s rest. So much has happened in her tiny world today that she needs to recuperate some brain space. I live for the music of her short, quiet breaths. Her scrunched up lips and her sweaty little head surrendered to the car seat headrest. It’s heaven to observe.

As I exit the car, I’m careful to open her door ever so gently so I can sneak some kisses before she awakes. She sleeps through about two minutes of kisses. Don’t you love the way children’s cheeks get so much doughier while sleeping? When they’re awake, they’re so firm, but asleep, they’re warm and pillowy. I unbuckle her from her car seat. I love being able to fashion her limp arms around me enough to pick her up and remember the feeling of holding and swaying a sleeping baby. But now she’s something around 40 pounds and sits upon my rapidly growing baby belly.

This is the joy of my life. 4 has been such a challenge I wasn’t prepared for. I thought we were awesome for surviving the ‘terrible 2s’ and the ‘three-nager’ phase only to be bitch-slapped with whatever 4 is. It’s hardcore. She is kicking my ass with every waking moment. I mostly feel like I’m failing. I let my frustration get the best of me more than I’d like. I take fewer deep breaths than the deep breaths I encourage her to take. All I want is to be the example of calm in the pre-school storm, and sometimes I am. Being the calm works, you just have to regulate your own nervous system when your 4-year-old turns you into a 4-year-old yourself. It’s hard.

But the beauty of this age is how affectionate she has become. Up until now, she’s been 100% motion and curiosity, and she still is, but now she comes up for air sometimes to get some love. She’s finally open to snuggling and requests it frequently. She tells me she loves me and how cute I am all day long, and who am I to tell her otherwise? What a funny thing to be called ‘cute’ by someone as cute as she- In between meltdowns that the 2s and 3s could never have competed with, of course. She finds me every single night, sometime between 2 am-4 am. I don’t mind that it’s hard to fall back to sleep because I am moved by her sleeping beauty in such a profound way that I’d rather just be tired all day than miss it.

And I wonder if this is just life now. It used to just be teaching her new words and planning life between naps and diaper changes. The problems become bigger and more real with each year. I know the pain of an 8-year-old feeling like she’s not fitting in. That is bigger and harder than not being allowed to get a cake pop at the cafe at 4. And a first heartbreak is so much worse than not fitting in at 8. The challenges compound and it scares me. All I can hope is that she comes through it with as little trauma as humanly possible, that I can somehow guide her in a way that makes her feel validated and understood. I pray that she can see herself in the mirror as she is and be ok with it. I know I’m her pathway to how she views herself, and it’s a big and terrifying responsibility for someone who isn’t fully cool with herself yet. I have to fake it ’til I make it until then.

This new girl, this unnamed person I will scream out of my body in a few months, is a fresh new start. I feel, in some way, and only because I’ve done this once before, that she will set a piece of me free. Gloria birthed me, and this one, I think, could set me on the path I’ve been hoping to collide with all my life. And also maybe I’m just full of shit, I don’t know. I just don’t want to screw them up.

The peaceful backseat baby has now come back to life and is expressing her deep need for a snack in high-pitched sounds and wants to watch Number Blocks on ‘Neckfwicks’, needs to go potty, and wants ‘Ewwa’ (her beloved elephant blanket), all in one breath. And thus my nervous system overloads, so I’m going to go into my closet and mother myself with some deep breaths. Fill your belly up like a balloon, Marion, very good.