Sawyer's birthday

As of today, I've been a mother for 12 years.

What a funny thing this motherhood is, you know?

I was so disappointed when I found out Sawyer was a boy. I'd grown up in house with my mom and four girls. Girls were all I knew. Boys were loud, obnoxious, liked sports and cars and hated poetry and writing. And they hated arts and crafts and all of the things I loved to do.

I mean, I loved my husband, and he was a boy, but still. Boys were aggressive. They were bullies. They would never let me hug them in public.

And the worst part is that boys grow up and leave. I wanted someone to cook Thanksgiving dinner with when I turned 70. I wanted a friend, someone who would be like me, not the unknown, stinky, truck-loving boy I was getting.

And then I met Sawyer, and the world was new again, and I had to unlearn everything I knew and start over.

Talking about Sawyer is like talking about my hands.

How can I describe my hands? They're so much a part of me, so much of who I am and what I do, that I don't even think about them, or show gratitude for them, or appreciate them for the miracle that they are.

I don't want to tempt the gods by crowing about how wonderful he is. I don't want to, in essence, hold up my solid gold coin for the world to see, flipping it back and forth to catch the light, and then wondering why it's gone.

For the first five years Mark and I were married, I was convinced we'd be divorced or he'd die. I had been so sure for so long that it was my destiny to have good things taken away that I would say to myself, "Well, at least I've been married for a month, and it was good one. I'll always have that." 

 When I found myself saying, "I've been married two years, and they were happy, and at least I've had that in my life, and that was more than I ever expected," then it began to sink in.

Maybe, just maybe, even I was allowed to be happy. Perhaps I was going to be allowed to be  the one in my family that escaped. Maybe there was no big hand waiting to snatch me back to my past, to all of the bad things, to take Mark away from me. Maybe I could relax.

And then I had Sawyer.

And the realization that having a child was so much worse, and so much better. I would always be happier than I had been. I would always have more of a capacity to love, and know more joy.

It was as if I was threading a needle in dim light, and I couldn't understand why it was damned hard, and then someone turned a light on and it became easy.

But when there's more light, and you see more clearly, you can't un-see the things that had been in shadow before.

There would never be any relaxation. There would never be another time, even for a minute, where I wasn't mentally keeping track of another human being.

 Every second of every minute, even when I'm sleeping for the last 12 years, I have been aware of Sawyer. I know where he is, who's watching him, what he's doing. The day he was born, a small part of my brain activated, the Sawyer-GPS section, that keeps tabs at all times.

See the picture above? One night last year, Sawyer couldn't sleep and asked to get in my bed. When I went in to move him, that's how I found him -- he was holding Scout's hand.

There should be a whole new dictionary for parents with different names for pain, right next to the dictionary for people falling in love for the first time.

Because with the new way of seeing the world comes the realization that this can all end. That the light can go back out and leave you in the dark again, struggling to see. That this really is the most wonderful, amazing, painful, miserable thing in the world, and why didn't anyone ever tell you that it's awful, too?

And then, as he grew, his personality started to reveal itself. Clearly, genetics is everything. There is no nature vs. nurture debate for me anymore: You can screw up a kid, sure. You can enhance a good set of genes. But you have no more control over what that kid's personality is like than you do over turning a Golden Retriever into a Pit Bull.

Sawyer is nothing like the boy I had anticipated. He's more Christopher Robin than Heathcliff; much more Harry than Draco. I was expecting aggression and Hot Wheels and Legos and trains; I got stories and affection and a tiny hand to hold. Sawyer loved to rub my arm to fall asleep at night, but it had to be just the right spot on my arm. His father and I adored him, to the point of idiocy. He was never out of our sight, never with a babysitter, he never cried. It was the three of us, a trio, and he went where we did. We took him to Italy when he was nine months old, and I went to New York with him when he was a toddler.

He rode on his dad's shoulders to see the Macy's Thanksgiving parade when he was three, and when Sander was born, he was four and he took it in stride, just like everything else. 

He's even-tempered, calm, eager to learn, and wants to know everything. He reads more than I do. I didn't think it was possible. He reads MORE than I read as a child. The one recurring argument we have is that I need him to function during the day. He has to stop reading to eat. He has to stop reading to get dressed and go out. He has to stop reading to do other schoolwork, like math.

He has to stop reading when he's crossing the street to get the mail, or he's going to be hit by a car.

He's not easy, though, this child who is more like me than I imagined. He wants to do things the easy way, the quick way, and he's bright enough to figure out shortcuts. I used to hold the thermometer up to the lightbulb to avoid school. Sawyer has a headache and stomachache whenever the dishwasher needs to be emptied.

But he is insightful, honest with his praise, desperately eager to measure up, funny, infinitely patient, kind and always ready to help.

I'm amazed when people tell me their kids don't do any chores. On a normal day, Sawyer empties the dishwasher, feeds the chickens, dogs and cats, changes the cat box, helps prepare breakfast, entertains his sister while I work with Sander on schoolwork, does a load of laundry and takes the garbage out.

It's not farm work, obviously, and it's not hours of manual labor, but he helps keep the house running. He does about half the laundry for the whole house with lots of prompting, and about half the dishes. And he changes diapers, too. 

I can’t imagine him growing up and leaving -- I imagine him growing up and cooking Thanksgiving dinner right alongside me, proud to be home with his family. He’s really a great kid.

Happy Birthday, Sawyer. 

Comments

[Alaina]

Beautiful! Happy Birthday, Sawyer!

[Andy]

What a beautiful and heart warming post! Happy Birthday to Sawyer and congrats to a wonderful Mom and Dad!