(This article courtesy of the Arlington Catholic Herald.)
There is a history now, a history that spans more than one decade.
The teenager is no longer the unblemished “perfect” child upon which every hope and dream was pinned. Instead he is a person of his own, a mystery novel half-read. His mother sees his strengths and his weaknesses. She recognizes his gifts and his failings. The baby is infinitely lovable because, by and large, the mother is still writing his story. In her hopes and her dreams, he has no faults. We don’t dream faults. The teenager is infinitely lovable because the mother recognizes that she loves the baby he was, the child he was, the adolescent he is and the man he will become. She is his mother. Sometimes the baby reminds the mother of how much she loves the teenager.
Babies are simple and so very complex. They are a package waiting to be opened. As simple as they are, they demand a great deal from their mothers. They force us to grow and to stretch in ways we could never imagine. When there have been many babies in a family, when all that is required by a baby is still being demanded in the second decade of parenting, God offers more grace to meet the challenge. He offers the insight that comes with seeing where all this baby tending leads.
Love can be painful. When the mother spends her days and nights caring for the baby’s every need, when she pours heart and soul into the well-being of the baby and then the teenager is rude and disrespectful, the mother is profoundly saddened. Is this all there is? For this I am sacrificing several decades of my life? She resolves again to build a relationship with the baby as he grows that will weather the storms ahead. When it occurs to the mother for the first time that the teenager would rather talk to a friend about matters of importance than to her, she looks to the baby and thinks: it’s all about letting go. All this work, all this effort — from the first moment he looked at me in the birthing room, it has been about letting go. This baby, too, will leave.
Then, the teenager surprises her. He hangs around the kitchen on a rainy day when all his siblings have gone bowling and talks and talks and talks to the mother. He brings her up to date on all the details of his life. He offers the mother a glimpse of what an adult friendship with a grown child might be. The baby awakens from his nap and reaches for his teen-aged brother. The mother steps back and watches the dance between the two.
Seeing them together, the same twinkling smile lighting up their faces, the mother recognizes the rare gift she has been given. So often, when the first child was a baby, she heard, “Enjoy them when they are small; they grow up so fast.” And she tried to; she really did. She had a sense that time would go quickly. Now, she knows how quickly it goes. Once upon a time, it seems like only yesterday, the teenager wore those same overalls. He walked with his hands outstretched and lurched into her arms in the same clumsy, endearing manner. He kept her up all night and begged to nurse all day. He loved trash trucks and was scared of doctors. He was her whole life.
Now, she stays up all night with another baby. She rocks and cuddles and nurses. She wonders if she is too old for all of this. She wonders if the baby will also be rude on occasion. She wonders who his first crush will be. She wonders if he will play soccer with the same grace as his big brother, if he will draw with the same astonishing ability, if he will have the same gift for defending his faith. She wonders who this child is and how he will try her. She wonders if he will ever go to sleep.
In the morning, she creeps quietly away from the now-sleeping baby and shuffles to the kitchen. She discovers that her eldest has made her a cup of tea, fixed precisely the way she likes it. The paper is waiting on the kitchen table. He squeezes her shoulder and says, “Bad night? I’ll make breakfast.” She sighs, looks at him, her eyes filling, and whispers, “People stop having babies too soon.”
