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Sparkle (0)
I was sharing a bottle of wine with a girlfriend on a recent hot summer night when the topic of expectations came up.
She was telling me about the night of her two-year old daughter’s birthday, when she attempted to lull her little girl to sleep by reading her favorite bedtime story, one that recounted the joy the world felt on the momentous occasion of her birth. A story that was as much for Mom as it was for daughter. When her tired child ripped a page and threw the book across her bedroom, my friend admitted that she was surprised at how personally she took her daughters act, as if it were to purposely hurt her. She went on to say that she realized she was frustrated because she had expected a certain response from her daughter but got something completely different. Something that fell short of her expectations.
I felt her pain.
From the get-go motherhood has -- among so many other things -- been an exercise in managing my expectations. Many times I have found myself disappointed for one reason or another because a situation or day hadn’t turned out the way I had imagined it would.
And that is the key word. Imagined.
I have come to realize something about myself these past five years which is that I spend an awful lot of time conjuring up fantasies about how my life as a wife and mother is suppose to play out. These are no B-movie fantasies either. Oh, no. My versions are the big-budget, Hollywood-blockbuster type complete with set designs, sound effects, wardrobe changes and often a musical score. In almost all of these scenarios I imagine my son neatly dressed, his beautiful blond locks perfectly coiffed and myself effortlessly camera-ready so as to chronicle the moment in a photo album filled with similar ideals of JP’s wonderful childhood. Special occasions are particularly vulnerable to these hallucinations, although a trip to the zoo or museum is just as likely to have been rehearsed in my mind. My husband will attest to the number of Christmases, Easters, birthdays and family vacations where I have, to his utter confusion, grown frustrated by seemingly small departures from my script, such as rain or a long-line at the box-office.
It started Day One. I remember meeting JP an excruciating 10 minutes after he was born because doctors had to work to vacuum mucus from his lungs while I wondered where my baby went. Like I had imagined in the MGM-version of our first meeting, it was indeed love at first sight, a waterfall of adoration unlike anything I had ever experienced before. I was giddy with joy as I stared at my 9+ pound soul mate, eager to drink in every detail of his physical appearance. However, I also remember thinking, “Huh. He looks nothing like me.”
Throughout my pregnancy I had spent so much time visualizing the little being growing inside me that I actually began assigning it physical characteristics. This was especially ambitious considering I hadn’t found out the sex of my baby. He/She would have my auburn hair and pug nose, I hoped. And Jim’s blue-green eyes, I prayed. Against all reason I even imagined the little peanut with freckles.
But when I finally met JP, I didn’t recognize him. He had a head of platinum blonde hair, alabaster skin with nary a freckle in sight and a face that looked vaguely familiar but was nothing like the one I had imagined. I knew he was mine, but I couldn’t see myself in his physical form.
The next day my mother-in-law showed up at the hospital with a picture of Jim’s older brother on the day of his baptism and I was stunned by the resemblance to my new son. The face of the baby in the picture was identical to the one I was holding and it suddenly occurred to me that this child didn’t belong just to me. He was part of a vast family tree that included people I barely knew, or never knew at all. In a strange way it also made me think of JP as unique and strong, resistant to the dominant DNA of my family that has caused more than one case of mistaken identity among siblings and cousins.
Still in the hospital, still swollen from almost two hours of pushing, I realized I had just learned my very first lesson in parenthood: to expect the unexpected. It is a lesson that keeps presenting itself to me in my journey
