I had a tiny baby today.
I was a tiny baby, I was 33. I had been wanting a Nathan since I was 22. Started trying for a Nathan around 27.
Then in Florida, surrounded by green fields and alligators, there he was. He had a big bump on his head. I was no longer a person. I was a superinflated superhero. I was just a mom.
My body got to do what it was supposed to do, feed and nurture the wee one. So I spent my days and nights with tiny diapers and tiny flailing legs and a tiny face the size of silver dollar pancake.
I was the richest person I ever met.
I got even richer of course. Because Emma demanded to be born as soon as possible, she was scratching the walls in there. And then little Bess was dozing, she was pretty content to be just where she was I had to coax her out with hot cheeto puffs but she slid out later, into last place. In fact she told me yesterday, this is the last baby talking about college when we were coming back from a killer day surfing at the beach, she said "oh yeah I signed up at the latest time possible to move in to the dorms. 4pm."
I actually love just watching how they pick things, how they run their lives, what they value, what their speed is, what they notice, how slow they are (or sometimes quick) to deem someone worthy.
This is what I've gotten out of 25 years of being someone's mom. Can I scream it with fierceness and what's the word for supreme happiness? Is it chocolate? Then I scream CHOCOLATE!! To anyone who can hear me.
For all the birthday parties and stressful cleaning beforehand, for all the little shoes, for a garage full of memories, for dogs sleeping in beds, for bunk beds, for golf carts, for car seats, for onesies, for swimming at two weeks, two years, four years old, for noticing holes in the ground and yelling into them, for knocking over blocks in kindergarten and getting a terse note home from the teacher (Nathan was right tho, Shelby was a pain in the ass, knock her blocks over!), for talent shows and following them to the piano teacher's house, for following them to bathrooms, piling on the beds, being on the toboggan in Switzerland, all the lemon drinks on Italian amtrack
All the time I have spent in the company of such wizardry has stitched me a fat life of belonging to some unprecedented people
It all started on this day, Nattan, with your tiny face and they put you on my chest and you were covered in goo and all squished up and dad was crying and you were easily the greatest gift of my life. I hope when you have kids you will see how they blow a hole through your heart and fill it with candy and unicorns and serious serious mattering. A smattering of mattering, overspread on thick.
There's no way to write it. My heart is a balloon. Like the blimp kind. Like bigger than anything, bigger than Steve Jobs. Or even bigger than the original BMW plant in Germany which is probably where you want to live or at least go to worship. Or maybe the Laker practice arena wherever that is. That seems like pretty holy ground to an Opper.
You seriously could have been an ax murderer and I would have been like but look. Look at his hair.
Thanks for yelling MERDE down to french people on the river Seine from that bridge. Thanks for locking people in that room in the Tower of London and then videoing them being confused. Thanks for always getting Waba when we can't figure out what to eat. Thanks for always saying it's okay mom.
Thanks for being our baby, huge and hairy or small and new. No one can take that from us. You started a trend that has a made a life full of tiny cars and bikes all roped together into a train that you pulled, usually naked, outside.
You made our life a fabric, and you don't even mind.
