An extra-early drop-off for my eldest and a week so packed with classes and other activities that I’d not been able to squeeze in a visit to the grocery store meant that today my Diet Coke supply was tragically depleted and without a trip to the drive-through, someone — or possibly two someones — would have faced my uncaffeinated wrath. It felt very much, I thought while pulling away, like five years ago when each day I deposited a second-grader at school before heading home for a long hours alone with nine-month and two-year-old babies, hours which I could survive only after fortification from the kind of caffeination available in a big plasticky cup.
In those days their favorite thing was discovered quite by accident: I seated straw into cup in preparation for the day’s first healing gulp and it made an amusing noise. They were enchanted. “Again,” demanded the older baby, while the younger baby chortled. Of course I did it again (and again and again and again). Anything that kept them amused and marginally out of trouble for five minutes was worth the trouble, and so it became our routine to drive home to the sounds of rhythmic soda straw squeaks and little people’s laughter.
Do you remember when you used to love this sound, I asked today, demonstrating on my cup as we waited for the light to change. Neither the just-turned-seven-year-old nor her almost-six brother claimed to, although they both politely chuckled when I pointed out that it used to send them into gales of hysterics.
“I don’t remember being a baby,” said the girl.
“I don’t either,” said the boy.
I do, I said. You both pooped a lot. Poop is pretty much the ne plus ultra of humor topics these days.
“I did not!” said the boy, aghast.
“You still do,” said the girl.
“I wish I could be a baby again,” said the boy, and I’d have to agree with him. Even for a day — even for an hour! — I’d like to be mother to their baby-selves, in no small part because I’d like to believe I’d do it better a second time. I’d be more patient with carrot-colored walls and elbows that smell like bacon. I’d appreciate more that I could fight by proxy, that the sun brought on laughter, that the beloved wank-couch still lived. If I could do it again I would endeavor to yearn less.
And I’m certain I could succeed.
We can all look back and see things in retrospect that we might have, or maybe even should have, done differently, But that isn’t a choice, is it?
I have been following your blog for about a year now, and I can state unequivocally that you are doing the right things. You are a good mom.
I wish sometimes i could go back in time. And then I realize i can still make up my own future.