Before I had children of my own I pictured being a mommy to little boys. The scraped knees, the constant climbing of every surface, the yellow rings on the wall behind the toilets, the catching of frogs. And then we got pregnant with our first baby. I found myself secretly longing for a little girl. And we got one. But she came 6 weeks early. And she came with jaundice, breathing problems, temperature problems and feeding problems.
I spent hours as a brand new Mom, examining her in a NICU isolette. I watched the rise and fall of her small chest, sometimes covered with probes, worrying that she might never be alright. Her small, wrinkled, fingers wrapped around my index finger seemed to speak to the very most primal part of me, whispering, "Keep me safe, mommy". There were tubes and needles and tears.
When she came home there were tubes and needles and happy tears. Doctors had looked earnestly into my face, imploring me to protect her from the world of germs that surrounded her. Monthly RSV shots were administered with the warning that these shots would not prevent her from catching RSV, but only make her less likely to lose her life if she did get it. I wrapped my baby in a cocoon of safety, positioning a homey basket by our front door with a jumbo-sized bottle of hand sanitizer and doctor's masks. Visitors were (forcefully) invited to mask up and disinfect before entering the threshold of our home. I clung to this control like our preemie had clung to my finger. And the words repeated and found their way into the deepest parts of me, "Keep her safe, mommy."
As she grew I cried when she got her first black eye from falling off a folding chair. I cried the first time she tumbled down a few stairs. I cried at her first skinned knee. And each time life gave her a tumble I held her a little closer to me.
More babies came. And with each I continued what had started with the first. I created a world where they would be free of the possibility of physical harm. Before I knew it my three little girls were 7, 5, and 2 years old and we were at our neighborhood playground. I watched as Ella began to scale the outside of a tube slide and scramble onto the top, smiling proudly at the height and bravery she had attained. As my husband and I watched I panicked. "Ella! Never climb on the outside of the playground! It's dangerous! You could fall! You could get really hurt!" Her face fell. "But daddy lets me do it all the time" was her reply.
I glanced at my husband. He nodded. My mother-heart filled with panic, then anger. "What?! How could you let her do that? What if she breaks her arm?!"
His answer was kind, but clear. "That's what kids do. They climb on top of slides. They fall off. They get hurt. Didn't you do those things when you were little?"
My mind slowly crept back in time to the 1980's when children's bike helmets did not exist to my knowledge. I spent every Summer afternoon, roaming the neighborhood, without parental supervision. I remembered examining my own skinned knees, bruised shins and scabbed elbows. I remembered climbing pine trees until I reached the very top, my hands and arms sticky from sap when I returned to earth. I remember always carrying a pocket knife in my pocket and the day my best friend, Rusty, and I sliced the tips of our fingers and pressed the wounds together to become "Blood Brothers" like I had seen in a Shirley Temple movie. I thought back on my Elementary School playgrounds with their metal monkey bars rising high over a slab of concrete below.
I would not call myself a childhood tom boy. My Barbie and Ken acted out scenes from The Love Boat and I had plenty of Strawberry Shortcake dolls making my bookshelf smell like the inside of an ice cream shop (the smell of artificial strawberries and plastic still makes me smile). But I also caught snakes with my brother, played with more than my fair share of matches and was locked out of the house for being too muddy.
I glanced at Ella, her small face waiting for acceptance and permission to be a kid. I nodded my acceptance of a new rule. But I watched her, waiting for her foot to slip on the shiny and slick plastic. I imagined the slow motion fall and the rush to the ER for a cast. But it never happened.
A short time later we were headed to Boston for Spring Break to visit our good friends and their five children. My children pressed their road-trip-weary faces against the cool glass of our mini van windows when we approached and oo-ed and ahh-ed when we pulled into their driveway and saw a backyard Utopia before us.
The Call family had created a childhood paradise of a backyard. A swing set, climbing wall and sandbox were the central mainstays. But there was also a full sized hammock, a tire swing, a stream with plenty of unsuspecting craw fish and frogs to catch and two zip-lines; one for children and one for adults.
I looked at this paradisaical masterpiece and felt dread.
How could I watch my children all of the time? I couldn't. As our week came to and end my children acquired an ever-growing collection of bumps, scrapes, bruises and scabs. There was a black eye and a goose egg. There was little Bianca's first face-scrape. There was also filthy clothes and mud-stained shirts.
On our last day with our friends I watched as Bianca made her first mud pie with her new little friends. She grinned as she squished the wet mud through her fingers and carefully spread it onto the front of her clothing. And I grinned. Remembering, once again, that magical feeling of exploring the world you have yet to conquer witout rules or restraints.
As I patched scrapes and cuts that week I was proud of myself. I vowed to buy a larger pack of band aids and more ice packs for our home freezer. I vowed to let go. I vowed that, while still keeping them safe, I would also keep them children as long as I could.
