Dear Avi,
There are two things I know now to have always been true about myself. First, I have always wanted to be a mother. When I was really little it was probably social programming to some degree, since grown-ups tend to steer little girls towards nurturing tasks. Even as I grew older though, as a teenager or even in college, I found myself thinking about it as a life milestone inevitable on the horizon. I would have dreams about it, feel scared of it, but also found myself drawn towards it in my deepest thoughts, always keeping mental notes about the type of mother I wanted to be (or didn’t want to be), thinking about what my baby might look like.
The second is that I have always been an outsider, in one way or another. The older I get, the more I realize what a big force this was in shaping my identity, in ways I’m not always proud of. Being an outsider means paying attention, very close attention to how insiders behave. How they speak, sing, pronounce certain words, how they do their hair, what they eat, how they pack their lunch. This made me very observant, and probably is also why I’m also drawn to things like writing or hosting. These are both things that are involve paying mind to people around you: not just what they say but what they don’t say. I got very good at trying to read between the lines. I paid attention to what they might be thinking about me, what they’re eating, what they’re not eating, whether their cups are empty, whether they might not have liked that one dish I made, whether it was too spicy, whether I judged accurately what everyone else’s tastes and pleasures might be.
Then (the part I’m not always proud of) is calibration and adjustment. After a while, this starts to be subconscious, like muscle memory. This is a survival instinct, honed over years of having immigrant parents, growing up with different skin and hair than other kids, then being an international student and living in a country different than your own as an adult. I sometimes felt I had to fight my own instincts and edit, edit, edit. Getting good at this means losing sight of what you like and who you are. Writing helps me figure out my own voice as I get older, but I do feel sad for those years I spent trying so hard to be on the “inside”, whatever that means. I realize now that I took options away from myself because I didn’t think I would ever be noticed, so I tried to save myself the disappointment of failure by not even trying. Here’s the irony that hurts to come to terms with: if only I had been myself, brazen and unashamed, I think I would have bloomed in different ways.
Avi, you showed up in my life a year ago and you were a stranger to me. You were an outsider. I grew you from seed, in my own body, with someone I loved more than anything in the world. They told me that fetal cells live inside the mother for sometimes decades after birth, so you are mine, probably more than anything else I’ve ever grown. How could something so close feel so strange? You were half me and half your dad, but you were totally new. You were a joy, and I wanted to spend every waking moment with you, taking care of you, not wanting to miss a breath or a second, but also sometimes feeling like I didn’t know who I was. I wanted desperately to leave the house and take a walk alone, so every cell in my body could breathe air to remind itself who it was before. I think every mother knows this feeling, but we don’t admit it. We love our children with our very souls, but our children also terrify us because they are their own people.
Sometimes when I hang out with you, I have to remind myself that you are not a doll or a toy. We train ourselves as parents to respond to stimuli, as all parents do across the animal kingdom. So closely tied are we to our children’s cries, feelings, breaths that our own bodies seem to grow around the negative space they leave behind. But you are not just a bundle of cells anymore: you are your own person. Sometimes when you sit in the bath, I look at you playing with the water, quietly and so absorbed. I feel like I am floating above my own body, realizing that you are going to be a teenager, then an adult, then an elderly person once I’m long gone from the face of this earth and the only thing I can do is accompany you in these years, and try to imprint in you a sense of responsibility and joy, and teach you as much as I can about what I know. But really, I can’t know you.
You will turn one on Tuesday. Like all parents, we were so excited to celebrate your birthday with family and friends. I spent time today looking at pictures of you at the hospital, pictures of me and your dad in the days after, bleary-eyed and swollen with love. Swooning and terrified. There you were, the same eyes as you have, the same wild curls, the same plump lips and button nose.
I always thought that having a kid would make me feel like an insider: someone who gets me, loves me, wants me. Maybe this is part of the reason I wanted it, but I’m ashamed of this. What I’m really learning from you is how to find grace with being an outsider. It’s not even really about me anymore. This is so humbling and terrifying. I have to quiet my own voice to hear yours, in order to hone my instinct for being your mother, and to clear the path ahead of you. It’s my job to be on the outside, so you can be your own best self.
My father used to recite to me this passage by Kahlil Gibran (which I knew by heart long before I was your mom, just from being my father’s daughter). I now realize he was undoubtedly grappling with the same terrifying balancing act of straddling the line between being an insider and an outsider to their own kids: “Your children are not your children. They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself. They come through you but not from you, and though they are with you, they do not belong to you.”
Here is Kate Clanchy capturing this exact sentiment, in words far better than mine, one of my favorite poems about that feeling of motherhood. I read this in the early days of maternity leave whenever I was lost, and it helped me find the words to capture my love for that tiny stranger in my arms.
Love
by Kate Clanchy
I hadn’t met his kind before.
His misericord face – really,
like a joke on his father – blurred
as if from years of polish;
his hands like curled dry leaves;the profligate heat he gave
out, gave out, his shallow,
careful breaths: I thought
his filaments would blow,
I thought he was an emperor,dying on silk cushions.
I didn’t know how to keep
him wrapped, I didn’t know
how to give him suck, I had
no idea about him. At nightI tried to remember the feel
of his head on my neck, the skull
small as a cat’s, the soft spot
hot as a smelted coin,
and the hair, the down, fineas the innermost, vellum layer
of some rare snowcreature’s
aureole of fur, if you could meet
such a beast, if you could
get so near. I started there.
Thank you, my sweet Avi for the journey of a lifetime. Happy Birthday.
Love,
Mama