Susie Michelle

A few of my childhood friends are radiating love, joy, and nervousness like never before, which could only mean one thing: they’re pregnant for the first time.

In my conversations with these friends, it’s all I can do not to get teary when they talk about how excited they are for the baby’s birth. Because, as all moms know, no matter how prepared they say they are, they have no idea what’s about to hit them.

Sure, I could tell them, but it wouldn’t make a difference. No one can put into words how profoundly your life changes when your children are born.

It’s such a common thing to say that it has become a cliché: “Your first child will change your life more than you could have ever thought possible.”

And then the second you lay eyes on that baby, you get it. The understanding is instantaneous and overwhelming. You realize that what everyone has been trying to tell you is true, times a thousand.

No longer do we live for ourselves. We live for a seven-pound, wrinkly bundle. Our world-view widens. We understand the true definition of “tired.” Bodily fluids cease to make us gag. And, suddenly, the only thing we want to do on a Saturday night is to watch the baby sleep until we drift off ourselves.

The biology of motherhood I more or less understand, but the emotion of motherhood is incomprehensible. Still, amid play groups, car pools, and endless vacuuming, even the best moms sometimes lose touch with the surge of emotion that entered our lives the same time our children did.

My little miracle is in the exasperating “no” stage. She hates the word when it is directed at her but is rather fond of saying it herself.

On a particularly frustrating day last week when she had me checking the clock every 15 minutes waiting for the little hand to reach the 6 (the hour my husband typically comes home), I finally put her in the bathtub–the one place she’s always content.

I sat on the stool near the tub and flipped through a magazine, preparing myself for the remaining hours in the day. After a few minutes, I whisked a towel around her and relied on the Teletubbies to entertain her while I rounded up her new outfit.

When I returned, Cassie was standing in the middle of the living room floor, mouth wide open, staring at the TV, her pronounced toddler belly balancing atop two bowed legs. She was playing with her belly button.

What I experienced then can only be called a parental epiphany. Perhaps it was her nakedness that made me realize that my toddler, resolute on exerting her independence, was just as vulnerable and dependent as ever. And the indescribable rush of love, responsibility, and sheer joy hit me square in the face with as much force as it had the day she was born. I would like us all to remind one another how much our babies need us—no matter how tall they have grown.

So during those inevitable days they spend attached to your left leg, or drawing on the wallpaper, or spending time in the principal’s office, we will reflect on the day of their birth, when two new spirits entered the world: a child and a mother.

It finally happened.

Since long before Cassie could talk, we’ve been trying to eke out words from her babbled syllables. Did she just say “I love you?” my husband, Ty, would ask, and we agreed that she probably did, though we both secretly suspected she was just blowing bubbles with her spit.

Now, she is 21-months old and is capable of other three-word combinations. She can say “Mommy’s going potty” in a crowded public restroom right before she opens the door on me. She can say “Cassie, be careful” right before she breaks something. She parrots just about everything we say, particularly those four-letter words that sometimes sneak into our conversations uninvited. But each time we prompt her to say “I love you,” she squints at us, her face pinched and uncharacteristically serious. And she tucks in her top lip the way I did when I was a kid and someone told me to “button it.”

It’s not that we are worried about her language abilities or about her love for us. Actions speak louder than words, especially when you’re only old enough to know and understand a handful of them. But these are the words that melt a mommy’s heart. Ty has reasoned that Cassie simply understands the emotional magnitude of these words and that she is waiting for just the right time to say them.

It got a little silly one day last month when I broke down and bought a Barney videotape. The purple dinosaur has my child securely under an eerie kind of spell, but the video affords me 30 uninterrupted minutes to blow dry my hair, clean the breakfast dishes, and make a few business calls, so I will admit, I use it when I must. At the end of each episode, Barney sends out a ringing: “And remember, I love you!” The first time Cassie watched the video, she looked right at the screen to say – plain as day, “Love you, Barney.” So much for emotional magnitude. From my place at the kitchen sink, I made a mental note to ignore that detail when filling out the baby book.

We tell her we love her about 30 times a day, not in hope that she will say it back but because both of us were raised to say the words when the mood strikes us, which, happily, is quite a lot these days. After the Barney incident, we both sort of stopped listening for the reply. But we have a little game we continue to play. It’s a silly exchange I say throughout the day because it makes her hug me.

It begins with me asking “Hey Cassie…Do you know what?”

Then I have to tell her what to say. “Say ‘what,’” I whisper.

“What?”

“I love you,” I say. Then I scoop her up and bounce her around for awhile.

It’s one of those silly sing-song things that just seems to evolve in every family. And, this morning, it must have been on Cassie’s mind. We were late for playgroup. I was weaving around Cassie in the kitchen, slapping together PB&Js for our picnic lunch. I had left the fridge door open and Cassie was sucking Hershey’s syrup out of the squeeze bottle. She was squeezing hard, and the excess bubbled out onto her chin. When I leaned down to rinse her off and move the chocolate to a higher shelf, it became obvious that she needed a diaper change. Fast. I was about to say, “Do you know what? We need to hurry up and change you and get you in the car.”
But she thought we were playing the game, and so she interrupted me right after the “Do you know what?”

“I love you,” she said. And then she grinned in a shy way, as though she had just presented me with a painting or a play-dough sculpture or some kind of special project, something she had made all by herself, something that had taken her an awfully long time. I suppose she had.