My daughter loves to play on the hardwood floor next to the stone hearth behind the wooden rocking chair. She is one. I keep on thinking this is an accident waiting to happen and tend to move the chair, spread the toys away from the hearth, and sit down beside her just in case. Sometimes as she plays I watch her and find the thought: “this is my life.� The thought is neither celebratory nor bitter but rather a fact that I cannot quite grasp—I am the mother of a small child. That it happened at all seems remarkable; that it can and most likely will happen again is a thought I do not have time to ponder.
Lo, children are an heritage of the Lord: and the fruit of the womb is his reward.
I look down to her toes gripping against the smooth wood and to small calves and rounded stomach. I find shallow dimples near her elbows. She plays with a focus and intensity that I rarely experience and scarcely recognize. The ball is tossed, the doll is squished, and she hesitates between the two. I wonder idly again about the process of becoming as a little child. I stack up colored blocks; she resolutely knocks them down, again, again, again.
And I am filled with charity, which is everlasting love; wherefore, all children are alike unto me; wherefore, I love little children with a perfect love; and they are all alike and partakers of salvation.
She is playing with her books again. She opens the pages of Bible Guess Who and chatters as the whale swallows Jonah. She turns the page and points: baby Jesus in his mother’s arms. I pull the yellow tab and the wise men appear. I am a bit of a book snob, but I like this book—the illustrations are soft and the text not too intrusive. My implicit approval propels her toward another book: ragged and ratty, a hand-me-down twice over, small pictures, too many words on a page. I do not like this book. None of this bothers my daughter—small squeals echo through unrestrained play.
But Jesus said, Suffer little children, and forbid them not, to come unto me: for of such is the kingdom of heaven.
She will grow and there will be others, but right now, today, I know this existence to be idyllic. Me lounging on hard floors, she standing upright and clapping. Let the little children come unto Christ, as if I am keeping Him from her. I cannot imagine forbidding her to come and know her God. But today I have said only the most perfunctory of prayers, and only at mealtime; I thought hate toward the slow men working who kept me waiting an extra forty-five minutes at the auto shop; I hesitated when about to return money that was not mine; I resented the brief time it took to make a phone call to fulfill the responsibilities of my calling; and I did not prepare for family night.
But little children are holy, being sanctified through the atonement of Jesus Christ.
As a rule, I dislike efforts to find perfection and moral lessons in children. It seems unfair to expect angelic behavior simply because they are small. And gooey innocence does not typically hold much appeal for me. But tonight I watch my daughter play and I am moved. A shiver and glimpse of our combined potential: momentary parent and fleeting child each seeking light and knowledge—lives colliding, bruising, illuminating. My daughter’s name is Lucy; tonight it fits her well.
Beautiful!
Terrific post! You’ve captured something about being a parent, and you haven’t even mentioned poop.
Lovely, Jenny.
Thank you.
Reminds me of this cartoon.
Wonderful, Jenny. You stimulated all sorts of thoughts in me.
“The thought is neither celebratory nor bitter.” Yes. The other day I was rocking my sleeping six-month-old and feeling—something—very intensely. I’m no good at describing emotion, mostly because I’m no good at feeling it, but I was pretty sure it wasn’t love; it wasn’t about the baby, it was about me. It wasn’t ecstasy or bliss or even simple pleasure; it wasn’t resignation or fatigue. The closest I could approximate was ARRIVAL. In that rocking chair, with that baby’s weight across my belly and through my arms, breathing together, I’d arrived someplace, at some center of my psyche. This is what I am for. If anybody else intimated such a thing, I’d protest, and bitterly. But I was there.
“I know this existence to be idyllic.” Oh yes! When my first child was sixteen months, sleeping through the night, still on two naps, mostly weaned, and I wasn’t yet pregnant, I realized one day that this was the easiest mothering was ever going to get. And I was so so so right. Enjoy it now, and do lots of writing and reading, because two kids and then especially three kids will be very different.
mami, Kevin, and Chad S., thank you for taking time to read!
DKL: I’m glad you noticed my studied avoidance of poop. It’s difficult with a young toddler who has learned to take off her diaper, but I think the overall effect is somewhat more graceful. And thanks for the cartoon—I spent far too much time today browsing their archives….
Rosalynde: I know what you mean—there’s a certain “mother zen state” I reach at times where everything seems to just work together and I think “this is one of those moments.” For me such moments are often about recognizing that I am (or that I exist) on some level in relation to an entirely different, distinct, and separate person. I like the image of arrival; perhaps another way to put it would be centering. And yes, I know I will not have it this good again for quite a while …
Rosalynde #6, you’re wrong. Mothering will be this easy and wonderful again but you will have to wait until they are grown. What can be more wonderful than having your children become your best friends? What can be more wonderful than feeling those same tender loving feelings as a grandmother but not having the responsibilities (and the poop, sorry, couldn’t resist)? Oh yes, mothering will be easy again, but then you will look back and know that it was all wonderful, even the hard parts. Your children will grow up and be all sorts of people but you will always be their mother.