On the day after my first Mother’s Day, I ended my nearly 11-month stint as your “stay-at-home” mama. (“Stay-at-home” because, if we’re being honest, I stayed at home rarely on account of you wouldn’t let me. The outside beckoned.) I returned to work on Monday because I had no choice. Also, I really, really wanted to.

Which isn’t to say I wouldn’t have relished a little more time together, just the two of us. We’d already had more than most people, and we’ll have more later, I know. It’ll just happen on the weekends. And, the thing is, even if we had the rest of our lives to play and laugh and cry and explore, it probably wouldn’t be enough. When it came time to say goodbye, I’d still miss you.

You won’t remember the last 11 months, and I won’t forget them.

We started taking walks together when you were five days old. Through most of New England’s sweltering hot summer and breezy fall and icy winter and rainy spring, there were only a handful of days we missed. I watched as your sleepy eyes became more alert, staring inquisitively at the trees overhead, pointing at them, waving at them, talking to them in a language that sounded like celebration…happy because brown branches turned green, happy for their shade, happy for the birds, happy for nature’s mobile. You noticed things I failed to see, and you made me see them.

Once below a heavy, gray sky, I kept walking because you kept smiling until, a half-hour’s fast-paced run from our front door, it started to rain, pour, thunder. So I covered your carriage with a rain guard, and I ran. I ran and I ran and I ran. Screaming. Soaked to my underwear. And, because you had no choice, you ran with me. Laughing. Dry except, perhaps, for your diaper.

Another time, we came upon a Parks and Rec employee trimming back the branches of a low-hanging tree along our usual route. You burst into tears as if he’d nicked you with his gardening shears. Inconsolable. I knew you knew that tree. (Maybe you didn’t recognize it, per se, but you knew it like you knew all of them.) And so, without a second thought about how crazy I must have sounded, I was hollering for him to stop from 500 feet away. “Stop, stop! Wait! Don’t cut that tree!” To which he replied, in the native Boston accent that won’t sound like much of an accent to you, “Why not?” And I answered, running toward him, “Because it’s important!” To which he retorted, “Lady, it’s a f—in’ tree!” To which I responded, “It isn’t to her.” Which is when he really looked at you and put down his gardening shears. “Oh,” he said. He promised you he wouldn’t hurt the tree anymore and he gave you a piece of it to take with you. Your tears stopped like the flick of a switch as you stared at that big red leaf. As we walked on, I looked back now and again at the befuddled man who, hands on hips before the tree, found himself unable to continue his work…or the very decent man who waited until we were out of sight to do it. When we got home, I tucked the leaf away in the pages of a law school casebook where maybe one of us will wonder someday why we kept it. It won’t be me. I already know.

The thing that pained me most about our new reality was that feeling I knew was truth: You wouldn’t spend so much time outdoors. You’d miss the trees. And I’d miss you.

But if there’s one thing I learned over the course of our approximately 332 strolls together, it’s that, kiddo, the seasons (the ones that turn the leaves colors and the ones that see us grow up) turn, turn, turn. In this season, we learn to walk alone. Literally in the sense of first steps. Figuratively in the sense of spending so much time apart from that little/big person in whose face the sun rose and set every day since the day we met.

We’re just like the trees, honey child. We’re just like the trees. We keep right on growing, right on changing, right on weathering storms and being magnificent until the day we die. So, to this season and the next one and the one after that, I trust our little family will still be something to behold. And I trust we’re going be just fine.

Love,

Mama

I usually do.

Elbee’s not to thank for my neurosis diligence. No. It started a long, long time ago. Probably, my mother has everything something to do with it.

Once, I made the Honor Roll. Strike that. I always made the Honor Roll but this one time, I made second honors and my fifth grade bff made first. Of note, “She never makes first. You always make first. What happened?” (Long division, that’s what!) And whether for want of confidence in my number-crunching or honest-to-goodness lack of numerical aptitude but not because I didn’t try, I got a ‘B’ in the second quarter of fifth grade math. She got an ‘A.’ And nobody – not least of which a shamed and disappointed me – paid any regard to the fact that I still made the Honor Roll!  Or that I got a ‘B’ (a better than average mark) in a subject I found fundamentally challenging. As a result, I never congratulated my buddy for the way her extra studying paid off. I just quietly resented her. And she probably thought I was a bitch for failing to notice her accomplishment which, in lots of ways, was spot on. At best, I was a lousy friend.

Later I’d cross-check my college acceptance letters against everyone I knew (more competitive, less competitive), practicum placement, first job (in field, out of field, big city, small town), first apartment (one bedroom = not a studio = must be in better shape than…) and on. And on. And on.

Look, over the years, I’d learn that decorum dictates even when you’re teeming with upset, it’s necessary to back-burner all of it or risk isolating people who are really far too important. Take, for example, those years we spent trying to get knocked up and watching piles of our nearest and dearest welcome first babies, first babies turned toddlers before our very eyes, and those toddlers the same age our kid would be right now had she happened when we intended. Usually, lots of times, I sucked it up and mustered a congratulations. Occasionally, I even meant it. Always I wished I did.

Then I had a kid, whose little life, by its very new nature, is punctuated by milestones of greater/lesser importance and which are accomplished on a timetable everything and nothing like other kids’. At once, my mother made an ounce of twisted sense. And like my mother, and doubtless hers before her, I clamored after best because anything else meant room for improvement meant not all right right now,  so I consulted the baby books (and your facebook feed) to determine how my kid stacked up against others’.

Which is when I learned that usually she had yours beat. Smiling at four weeks, sitting at four months, responding to her name at four-and-a-half, peek-a-booing at five, standing at six, clapping, crawling and cruising at seven, waving at eight, pointing at nine. She dances in step with music, crosses her arms in displeasure, understands a couple of handfuls of words and can’t keep her mouth shut. She anticipates her favorite parts in favorite books and manipulates big kid toys. She engages with complete strangers, calling to them from across crowded rooms and holding out her arms to be picked up. “Scary bright,” notes her pediatrician. “Baby genius bright.”

Except for this one time when she didn’t because she lagged far, far behind. When your kid was self-feeding pasta fasul, mine was consuming nearly 100 percent of her 26oz. daily intake of hypoallergenic formula through a rubber nipple, unable to tolerate even the most delicious purees, gagging on the tiniest morsels of whole foods and screaming in the face of spoons until, at long last, it was apparent that we hadn’t neglected to serve her favorite food or cock the utensil at an appropriate angle to make her comfy. It had nothing to do with us or something we hadn’t tried and we were tiring at the suggestion. It wasn’t a case of retrograde picky eating, either. It was a pediatric feeding disorder.

Which is when I learned that cross-checking my kid alongside some textbook kid, or a real life kid who isn’t her, is totally futile. With each meal, Elbee drove home the point: She isn’t like other kids. At least not entirely. She is like herself. She hates bananas and gags on “puffs.” And, with each meal, I cared less and less about what your baby had for lunch. I cared what Elbee didn’t.

Which is when I learned there’s a difference between “best” and “best for.”  Best is an ‘A’. It’s textbook perfect…achieving milestones prescribed by some expert somewhere who knows a lot about babies but never met my kid. Or yours. “Best for”  takes into account that no two people are alike. Some of them find math challenging. And some of them need medical intervention and occupational therapy to master mealtime.

Which is when I decided to be ok with good enough. Whether as a condition of those long-suffering early months plagued by GERD and allergic colitis, a stress response to the trauma of choking – like, actually choking – on her first foods, because of a physical obstruction, lately-contracted c-diff or because she’s wired as differently (wonderfully) as G-d intended, our yardstick for what constitutes a nice family meal is different now. (Sometimes it’s a battle-weary mom nibbling from a fruit cup in a hospital cafeteria while the baby on her lap sips fitfully from a bottle. Which isn’t an NG tube. Which thank you, G-d.  Seriously.) I absolve my kid (and, while we’re at it, her parents) of the pressure to be best, aspire to what’s best for and vow to be content with good enough.

“Good enough.” That’s today for “f’ing epic.”

Author, Wendy Mogel, prepared me for just such a scenario in her book, “The Blessing of a Skinned Knee: Using Jewish Teachings to Raise Self-Reliant Children.” (Aside: Tremendous read and I somewhat suspect you don’t need to be a Jewish parent, or a parent at all, to appreciate it, but you tell me.) Anyway, the goal, she points out, is to raise the sort of kids who can function without you, who leave you someday feeling relatively ok about it and who ultimately trust themselves to do what’s right because you (and the mistakes you let them make) taught them invaluable life lessons. Also, our kids are on loan. Get ready. Get set.

For most folks, it goes a little something like this.

One day, your kid will be desperate for you to chauffeur her from the nursery to the living room in your arms, delight at your dramatic recitation of Sandra Boynton’s Belly Button Book, clap for you while you play with her toys and cling to the 2013 version of your apron strings. (Probably, she wants to taste your iPhone.)  The next day, forget you. Just unleash her. She has an entertainment center to reorganize anyway. And, by “reorganize,” I really just mean mess that ish up. If you’re lucky, she’ll turn her head in your general direction because she recognizes the sound of that voice muttering the word she’s probably beginning to think is her first name: No. And if seeing her cruise the coffee table takes your breath away, tough. Someday she’s going to ask for your car keys.

Now consider the fact that when our Elbee was three weeks old and newly-diagnosed with the trifecta of food allergies/allergic colitis/GERD, she aspirated on some combination of fresh breast milk and her own vomit. I’m not talking about a little oops-it-went-down-the-wrong-pipe, cough-cough, all-better scenario either. I’m talking she couldn’t breathe. At all. She turned purple. And I actually got to use some of what I learned in that Infant/Child CPR class. It was an experience that served the twofold purpose of heightening my anxiety and driving home the feeling that every second we’re blessed with our children is precious. Whereas I know things can get much worse, if my kid is still breathing, I have to believe I’m in relatively good shape here. Better get to livin’, as my girl Dolly Parton says. Better indeed.

I don’t want to be to thank for an emotionally crippled, neurotic, needlessly dependent human, after all. I want her to explore her world and test her limits. And better still if she can do so sans blood loss. Also, I hate wimps.

With this in mind, I enrolled her in swim lessons though I’m quietly terrified of drowning. I encouraged her to fraternize with that kid blowing snot bubbles and tugging at his little ears at play group last week. And I let her attempt to stand on her own two feet this afternoon, clapping emphatically when she fell flat on her baby face.  She wears her first black eye like a badge of courage which, in many respects, it is.

Maybe I could have caught her. Maybe. And maybe she wouldn’t look like such the Million Dollar Baby if I had. The point is, I didn’t.

Because I hope she likes water. (And, if not, I hope she at least learns to swim.) I hope she never fails to overlook opportunities to meet people who might become her best friends even if they are oozing from their orifices. And I hope she fails a lot in her quest to stand on her own two feet (metaphorically, actually, whatever)  because this means she’ll have really tried something. Chances are pretty good, too, that, occasionally, she’ll find she’s not that bad at it.

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