Beating Back The Savage

Before I had children I, like most young women of my time, had many ideas on how I would raise my own. No spanking, that was number one. I would raise them with a firm, but loving hand. Of course, my children would be little carbon copies of The Gerber Baby-- they would eat their food happily, then burp twice before taking a three-hour nap. They might cry out at night once in a while, but they knew I needed my sleep, so it would only be if there was something seriously wrong-- like appendicitis. Otherwise, they would play happily at my feet, leave me alone while I worked, and never, ever do anything really bad.

Hah!

That was the pre-child fantasy, before I discovered that all the advice given in baby books had to do with having a ‘Baby.' But I was not having a Baby. I was having a child. In short, a small human being; a person.

That was the first -- and probably the most amazing -- discovery of motherhood. One does not give birth to the mythical ‘Baby'; that carbon-copy image of a new life. One gives birth to a person. And as I lay, holding my infant son (then, later, my daughter) in my arms, I was astonished to discover that this little thing was no ‘Baby', but a fully-formed Person-- one with a will and mind and soul all its own. Right from the get-go! Well, no one had prepared me for THAT! Furthermore, to my horror, I discovered that I was the only person in the whole wide world to see this. Everyone else thought I just gave birth to a textbook ‘Baby.'

I realized that all assumptions and lofty theories of motherhood had to be completely swept aside. But for what? What guidance could I look to in caring for this new person? Goodness, we hadn't even been properly introduced! But here he was and, boy, did he need stuff! He needed to be fed, changed, held, changed, fed again, changed, kept warm, changed, fed yet again (did I mention, changed?), and on and on. It never stopped nor slowed a bit. Occasionally he would sleep, but only to wake, screaming, as if he was being seared with invisible hot pokers. (I could never figure that one out!)

The worst thing of all was that people (usually older, know-it-all aunts and mothers) kept telling me this was the easy part. What?! Well, speak of the devil (and so he appears!), soon enough they were proven correct.

No sooner did my little bundle of need become mobile than I found he was a total savage. He wanted what he wanted. Period. There was no such thing as reasoning with him. If I said, no, he cried as if I was the meanest, most vile being in existence -- even when it was the hot stove or a glass jar or a sharp knife that was the subject of such debate. If I put him in his playpen so I could vaccum, he was being unfairly imprisoned. If I told him he must wear a sweater because it was 15 degrees out, he argued; yet he refused to dress himself.

Slowly, by turns (not to mention a slew of long, boring speeches), I managed to get him to see reason. I managed to get away with only giving him one spanking, when he willfully and deliberately disobeyed me. It never required another. My form of punishment was much worse: the lecture!

As he grew, he became a relatively normal teenager... with all the annoying hormonal changes that go along with that time frame. He became quiet and surly, embarrassed by me because -- heaven forbid! -- he did not spring out of the earth fully formed, but actually had a mother. He started shaving and his voice dropped a few octaves... this, I discovered only accidently, because it seemed he was determined to stop talking to me and hardly ever left his room, except to spend copious amounts of time in the bathroom (we only have one, so it's really noticeable when someone is in there for an hour and a half).

It wasn't until my daughter went to high school that I learned all the activities the school expected me to attend/participate in-- and probably thought I was a terrible person because I didn't. Meanwhile, I never knew they existed. Those little notes from the teachers magically disappeared without ever arriving home when my son went there. Even on his graduation day, he told me he had to be at school a full hour and a half before the ceremony... now, with my daughter graduating this friday, I have discovered she doesn't have to be there until 15 minutes before the ceremony. Hmmm.

Just recently, my son has begun starting conversations with me. The first time it happened, I had to subdue the urge to look around and see if there was someone else in the room. Surely, he couldn't be voluntarily initiating a conversation with me. I managed to act relatively natural and he told me about his recent experience at work. In and of itself, the talk was unremarkable... except that he started it, and it ended... without any hint of an argument.

It took me a few minutes to realize... I had finally beaten back the savage... at least, for the moment.--mo