Long ago, during my firstborn's first year, we were visiting longtime friends in Baltimore. We were seated at a tiny Fells Point cafe, having stowed the diaper bag and settled Cooper into a highchair, when Gretchen asked, "Has parenting changed you?"
I answered "yes" before she finished the question. Then I stumbled through explaining how this nascent parenting adventure had changed me, how all decisions were made from a new point of view, how the weight of being responsible for another human altered everything.
I've never stopped considering the question, and it feels especially relevant as Cooper prepares to launch his own new journey.
One big change? Vocabulary. Though it's been years since a child in my home watched an episode of Dora the Explorer, I will forever call tape "sticky tape." (I'm not sure why Dora feels the need to modify a noun that is, by definition, sticky, but I've learned to embrace it.)
If anyone says, "We're going on a trip," I can't help but finish the sentence (almost always in my head, not aloud) with a singsong "in our favorite rocket ship, zooming through the sky, Little Einsteins!"
And, like all mothers of a certain age, the only way to finish "to infinity" is with "and beyond!"
Our children's obsessions become our own, especially when they're young and require constant supervision. I can still recite every word from The Going to Bed Book by Sandra Boynton and Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak. I can decipher the mysteries of a Lego instruction manual. I know my way around the paper, washi tape, paint and clay aisles of three major arts-and-crafts stores. I can sing most every word of the Hamilton soundtrack.
Our children's experiences and memories are entangled with our own.
When summer began, the three of us wrote a wish list to conquer before Cooper leaves for college. We included restaurants and museums to revisit, board games to play and movies to watch again. We can't possibly fit in all of our favorites from Cooper's 18 years and Katie's 14, but we're willing to try.
Our list of Disney favorites is long, and last week we settled in for Toy Story 2 and Toy Story 3 at home. (We all agree that the original Toy Story is good but the least charming of the franchise. Plus, we're a little traumatized by Sid.)
We can reenact the entirety of Toy Story 2, a video on constant repeat in our family room for many years. By the time Toy Story 3 was released, though, we'd mostly moved beyond the watch-a-movie-100-times phase. I'd somehow forgotten that the movie's premise is now-teenage Andy packing his room as he prepares to leave for college.
Could I endure watching a fictional mirror of my own current experience?
I chose courage and watched it from beginning to end for the first time since 2010. The three of us laughed at jokes we had forgotten — or hadn't noticed the first time. We cheered for strengthened toy relationships and held our breath as those toys held hands on the path to a fiery doom.
I wept when Andy's mom, standing in his empty room, says, "I wish I could always be with you." Amen, Andy's mom!
Yet the truth about parenthood is that these children who we swaddle, cuddle, bathe, feed, correct, shelter, entertain, teach, guide, shoo, support, discipline, push and, above all, love, are always with us. We carry their entire childhoods in our hearts. We don't see only a 17-year-old on the way to college or a 13-year-old on the way to high school. We also see in one fell swoop a tiny infant and a stubborn toddler, a precocious preschooler and a rambunctious kindergartner. We hear rap lyrics mixed with The Wiggles and lines from The Office jumbled up with giggling Elmo.
Parenting continues to challenge me and change me, and the journey's far from over. My roles may change, but this mom business (and miles of memories) lasts a lifetime.
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| Cooper, on the eve of Camp War Eagle, looking like a college student |
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