The other day, I took my son, Abel, to a special breakfast at his dad’s school. He sat down and ate pancakes with me. Then, he looked at the group of kids rushing out the door to play in the lobby, and he said, “Abel play.”
He got up and left me there at the table.
This is not something he would have done before he started developmental preschool, which has done wonders for his social skills.
And it made me happy — and heartachy
After a few minutes, I wandered out to the lobby to check on my 3-year-old. He was rolling a car across the floor to a first grader. Even with his limited speech, they were smiling, laughing, communicating.
Then he caught me watching. “Bye! Bye, Mama!”
He waved, as though his hand alone could push me back to my seat in the other room.
I left, smiling, and also a little teary.
Why didn’t anyone tell me this would happen?
Why didn't someone warn me that when my son turned 3, it was the beginning of the end of his babyhood?
Don’t get me wrong: The baby years can be brutal. There were days when all I could do was lie splayed on the floor in yesterday’s pajamas, hair in a rat’s nest of a bun, while my 1-year-old sat on my head because it was the only thing that helped him stop fussing.
There were days when it felt unbearably hard and unfair that I had to get up from the table where a bunch of friends and I were eating and talking so I could nurse and change the baby’s diaper.
Don’t get me wrong, there are still hard days. Plenty of them. But there’s a new kind of hard creeping up on my life.
The letting-go kind of hard
It’s the hard that’s born of what we overworked mamas dream of, but which we also dread: growing-up hard.
Because this is how it starts. My baby used to — frustratingly, yet adorably — need me in the same room ALL THE TIME. Then, he became a toddler who ran gleefully away from me in the parking lot but screamed if I left the room. Now he is a preschooler who doesn’t want me to check on him when he’s playing with friends. All this, in the blink of an eye.
Soon, he’ll be a kindergartener who will wrinkle his nose when I kiss his soft curls before school.
A fifth grader who wiggles away from hugs.
A high schooler who always wants to head out with his friends, doing who knows what, while I fret the night away glued to my iPhone or whatever it is we’re using in another decade.
The truth is that the early years are filled with the hard work of completely attending to another person’s needs and wants, 24/7. But every time one of these vital and seemingly constant needs suddenly slips away, a treasured piece of babyhood does too.
I didn’t know that when I said goodbye to diapers, I’d also be saying goodbye to a delightful view of my kid’s fat toes. Goodbye to chunky legs attached to a puffy-diapered bottom.
That when I said goodbye to the increasingly toothy breastfeeding sessions, I said goodbye to those quiet spaces of time where time briefly stopped and we both rested and recouped for another round of living life as hard as babies and toddlers do.
Now, my preschooler doesn’t want me to hold him constantly. I miss his soft, knobby weight in my arms.
I find myself asking him to come sit with me, when just six months ago I sometimes wished he’d let me put him down so I could wash the dishes.
For the first three years, he was all mine
Now he’s finding himself and starting to leave me behind. It’s healthy and normal and natural, and it’s also heart-wrenching.
Which, I guess, just about sums up parenthood.
So, to all you parents out there watching your precious kiddos step into the world, inch by inch, know that we’re all in this achingly beautiful thing called parenthood together.
And, oh, do I ever feel your pain.
