When left to my own devices, I can come up with some really strange things. I can imagine the way my life will be in the future, contemplate the way it was in the past, daydream about fish floating around me in the bathtub while listening to Death Cab For Cutie, and imagine swimming in a rain storm. When I’m left alone in a silent, empty house, my mind goes crazy. And sometimes, I let it get to me.
I wasn’t kidding when I said tonight I was taking a bath where I imagined fish swimming around me. For some reason, it relaxed me. Not that swimming with actual fish would, but the image of something beautifully colored gliding gracefully next to me was a nice image at the moment. After my playlist shifted, a country song came on. I still had my eyes closed from imagining my fish friends when suddenly I realized that I was touching my stretchmarks. Suddenly, I was not only listening to a country man sing about his daughter, I was touching my stretchmarks. It was as if I was suddenly amazed by them and had never seen them before. These things that I have loathed for so long, that make me so self conscious of my body…I was just….gawking at them. Just like that, it hit me. Just like that all these memories of my adorable, independent, smart, loud little toddler being a baby came back and I had the urge to cry. I remembered sitting her on top of her toy box so I could take her picture when she wasn’t even a year old. I remember the first time she rolled over. It was in the middle of the night on the bedroom floor when we both should have been asleep. I can recall the first time she stood in her walker and pushed herself backwards around five months old. She continued to walk backwards for months running into everything in her path! I recall the doctors appointment when she was a week old where we had to do a full body xray and how sad that made me. I can remember her not sleeping through the night until she was fourteen, yes count em, fourteen months old! I remember her first tipsy walk, her first word, her first wave, and the first night she ever-after 6 months-decided she didn’t want a binky anymore!
As these images came flooding through my head, the song was long over, and yet the images continued to pour in. Only this time, they were imagined. This time, the images were of her future. Things that hadn’t happened yet, but I seemingly wanted to. Hopes and dreams that I didn’t know I had for her until these visions. I imagined who she would marry, the friends she would have over in high school, whether or not she would be asking me for running shoes or high heels, the day I needed to buy her a car and trust her to drive, who she would grow up with as a father figure, the boy she would bring to her first prom, the first time she asked for a piercing or a tattoo and what a hypocrit I’m going to be when I tell her “Hell no!” I imagined both her past and her future, but in every version of her world, I’m right there beside her. I’m her cheerleader, her best friend, and occasional nemesis. I’m never going to be a cool mom, but I think I’ll be a good mom. Well, I think I am already…
Eventually, I was overwhelmed with emotion and I had to stand up and open the bathroom window. It’s a brisk thirty degrees out and the cold felt like a refreshing slap in the face. I get so tired of cliches where people say things like, “Oh, they grow up so fast.” I never realized how true it was. I vividly recall my daughters birth and every birthday ever since. I can recall minute details that have no relevance in anything, but were still somehow important to me, as every phase of her life is and will be. So, why is it that tonight it suddenly hit me that she’s growing up? When she was born I thought to myself, “Wow, I have 18 years to teach this little girl the ways of the world.” Tonight I realized that if I’m lucky, I have 15 years to go, and that’s if she isn’t rebellious like me and leaves home early…
Every day that I wake up to her hugs and kisses I realize how blessed I am. I kiss her forehead and smell her hair. I look into her beautiful hazel eyes and I hug her repeatedly. I do my best and while I’m not a perfect mother, I give my daughter everything she needs and then some. If she ever wants to outgrow my “hugging ups” or “upside downsies” I don’t know what I’ll do. The day she refuses to let me kiss her forehead or give me a hug is a day where my heart will break. I can only hope that day never comes and she is an affectionate person like her mother.
Only time will tell who my daughter is going to grow up to be. I don’t know if she’ll be like me or her father. I don’t know who she will look like or how tall she’ll be. (I’m guessing tall.) I don’t know how old she’ll be the first time she gets caught out past curfew or with a boy I don’t approve of. What I do know is that for right now, my baby is three years old. Her time is mine. She still loves my hugs and kisses, laughs when we rub noses, gets a kick out of learning somersaults, and leaps into my arms when I get home from work. Right now, I’m the coolest mom in the world. That may not always be the case, but right now…I don’t need to worry about the past or the future, because the most important time I have to give her is the present. She is my whole world. She is a part of me. She was worth all of these damn stretchmarks and a million more. She is my miracle.
