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Dalai Mama Dishes

by Catherine Newman

Catherine Newman cooks for the family

Dalai Mama Dishes

Catherine Newman cooks for the family

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Growing Up

Posted September 16, 2008
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In the deep of night, I am inclined towards heartbreak. I lie awake with the muscle in my chest beating like a metronome, ticking away the rhythm of life's passing, while outside the cicadas answer with their own clicking, also like a metronome, like a bike shifting gears, like a person in Greek mythology doomed to clip their toenails forever. I regret every time I've spoken sharply to the children, every time I've answered curiosity with distractedness, met need with impatience, countered gentle trust with self-importance. In the night, these occasions spook around me like the ghosts of Bad Behavior Past, hauntingly distorted.

I'm not being hard on myself, not exactly. I don't expect perfection. I know that I have appreciated this journey: inhaled the children's hair and smiles, crouched down to listen, lay down to comfort. Every day I have gathered handfuls of my own gratitude and flung them skyward, exalted; I have knelt down in gratitude to press my humble face to its grit.

But, oh, I have taken so much for granted. I am thinking of it now because Ben and Birdy have both launched themselves into a more distant orbit of independence - each in their own style, and, really, in ways that aren't precisely mine to describe here. And it's all as it should be, of course, this stretching out and away. Friends, widely ranging interests, even a hint of rejection. All is healthy and right. But.

But there were times that I experienced the glut of their affection as something more like seeping water in the basement - a constant, mildly exasperating phenomenon - rather than the staggeringly beautiful, wild and rainbow-haloed waterfall that it was. Do you know what I'm trying to say? It's like the guy who was in love with you since fifth grade - that total sweetheart, utterly devoted, who was treated for years and years to your friendly, condescendingly tolerant disinterest. And then one day, your junior year of high school, he suddenly had his arm around some pretty, reciprocating someone, and you were like, "What? What about me?" You know?

Okay, maybe that's a bad metaphor. Neither Ben nor Birdy has turned their devotion towards a new mother. But for so long it was babies babies everywhere and not a drop to drink. They were in the bed, in the sling, in the front pack, the back pack, hanging from boobs like predatory lampreys who would never be satisfied, they were looking at me like I was a movie star crossed with an actual celestial body, they were grinning, laughing, nursing, crying, all in the world's tightest orbit.

And I sometimes sighed when they wanted to be carried. I sometimes groaned when they climbed into bed. Mostly I didn't. But often I felt like it was never going to end, like their complete attachment was this permanent fact of life, to be enjoyed or suffered, depending. Only it wasn't. The bodies extend out and away from us, and as the children grow up, so we recede a little bit. It's both beautiful and sad. Do I sound like a hideous narcissist? I'm not the center of their universe anymore, wah, wah, wah. Or even I'm still the center of their universe, but they don't turn to me like they're photosynthesizing plants and I'm the sun, or at least not quite as much as they used to. Wah wah wah.

That's not quite it. It's just this bit of grief in the night for what tenderness has passed. This bit of grief that makes me sit up when Birdy staggers in - I'm so happy to see her! - and makes me stretch my arms towards her from the bed, and say, "What is it my love?" I am attending to her with every cell of my being; I am radiating presence like it's a fire in my heart. "Well," she's saying, and I'm here! I'm listening! Oh, the weight of this small, sleepy person leaning against me in the dark! "Well, Mama, you know that kind of hard headband? Not those stretchy ones but those hard ones that kind of go, like, over the top of your head?" "I do, honey. What about them?" She's already pulling the covers tight over the small hump of her shoulder, cozying up in that proprietary way that I love. "Oh, nothing. I was just wondering if you knew." And so she's asleep again, and I am awake still, but I am whole.

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Growing Up

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About Catherine Newman

Catherine Newman is the author of the memoir, Waiting for Birdy: A Year of Frantic Tedium, Neurotic Angst, and the Wild Magic of Growing a Family, available online and in bookstores nationwide.

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