Taking Care of You

“I can’t wait to take care of you.”

Those words filled my heart with joyful anticipation as I waddled my pregnant self through your nursery. I looked at your new changing table and my mind filled with imaginings of your arrival. Of course changing diapers is not typically the thing expectant parents think about with excitement, but for me, that day, that changing table represented clarity that had alluded me for years; I wanted to be a mom. I spent many years frozen in ambivalence about being a mother-I was uncertain about my ability to be a good mom. However, in that moment standing in the nursery you did not yet inhabit, all I could think about was feeding you, changing your diaper, nurturing you when you cry… and I knew; I couldn’t wait to take care of you.

I hate that I wasted so many years in ambivalence that I could have been living what is clear to me now as my greatest joy; taking care of you. However, I have to believe that if I had become a mother earlier in my life, it wouldn’t have been you that I was caring for, you, the perfect egg of the day. After all, it is you that I love and adore. It is you who make me smile and laugh. It is you who moves me with your thoughts and affection. It is you I want to take care of. The timing was obviously perfect for us to meet.

In those early days, taking care of you was easy. Yes, I said it, taking care of you as an infant, baby and even toddler to some degree, was easy for me (sorry new moms, not at all minimizing the difficulty of the early days!).What I found easy about caring for you as a baby was that the “how” and “what” were clear: Change your diaper, feed you, rock you to sleep, let you explore. Do it all over again.

Taking care of you now, as you are about to turn nine, is a little more complicated isn’t it? Sure, feeding you, getting you to bed, letting you play are all still the same. However, there are many gray areas around my care of you. My natural tendency and impulse to “care for you/take care of things” may inadvertently hold you back. In fact, the other day when I asked you to get your socks and shoes on and you replied, as you often do, “Can you help me?”, my mind flashed to the recent story in the news of the parents taking their 30 year old son to court to get him to move out of their home! I smirked as I imagined us before a judge someday saying: “He refuses to put on his own shoes!” <; I jest of course but doesn’t that sense of competence vs. helplessness begin with things like shoes and socks?

I am realizing more and more that my role and care of you must continue to evolve as you develop. You can do so much for yourself now and that it is important for you to build you own sense of competence and responsibility. However, even with that awareness, I find myself struggling with “care dilemmas” such as; How to help you navigate school with dyslexia? How much to push you to persevere even when it creates distress and discord?  How to find balance with chores, family time, toy guns and video games? You are so capable and I need to actively provide opportunities for you to build more competence rather than doing for you…and yet balancing that by always being your “soft place to fall.” These are some of the dilemmas of the day in my care of you.

I know there are many more dilemmas to come, times where I will long to do for you, to fix things, to make things easier, and yet I will not be able to or should hold back. I will have to push you to do for yourself,  to make choices, to cope with consequences. Building capacity while offering unconditional love.  Yes, in the end I do realize, that a big part of my early care of you-beyond the diapers-is teaching you how to care for yourself and others.

I will undoubtedly continue to struggle to find balance in my care taking,  but on this occasion of your birthday-I am mostly filled with joy and gratefulness-similar to my excitement and certainty as I waddled through your nursery nine years ago; I am so very humbled to be the one who gets to take care of you.