Operating Instructions

I’ve finally gotten around to reading Anne Lamott’s book about the first year of her son’s life, a book I think Andi recommended to me before Django was even out of my belly. If you ask me, it should be required reading for new moms. Especially new single moms. Especially new single moms with chequered pasts. I’ve completely dog-eared my copy, and my copy actually belongs to the public library, a temptation I usually resist out of respect for the next reader who might not share my taste in memorable passages. But I can’t help it. She tells it so much like it is – the good, the bad, the ugly, and the uglier still. In these last precious days before I return to work full-time, this is the paragraph I find myself reading again and again, and again:

“I feel like my mind becomes a lake full of ugly fish and big clumps of algae and coral, of feelings and unhappy memories and rehearsals for future difficulties and failures. I paddle around in it like some crazy old dog, and then I remember that there’s a float in the middle of the lake and I can swim out to it and lie down in the sun. That float is about being loved, by my friends and by God and even sort of by me. And so Iie there and get warm and dry off, and I guess I get bored or else it is human nature because after a while I jump back into the lake, and into all that crap. I guess the solution is just to keep trying to get back to the float.”

I keep getting caught between the urge to batten the hatches, hunker down in preparation for a big storm, and the impulse to throw open all the windows, let the weather pass right on through. So, I’ve given up nightime socializing in favor of an early bedtime routine, but I’ve also starting romping in the baby food aisle for fun little jars of pureed vegetables for Django to try, even though the authorities say we should wait another month.

What I wish I could do is cry. I think I’m in need of a really good cry. Maybe even one a day. But there’s no time for that. And I’m not yet ready to let Django see how terribly alone, overwhelmed and afraid his mama sometimes feels.( We can cover that ground once he hits middle school.)

I sure hope I don’t miss too much during the 6 weeks I’m only getting to see him a few wakeful hours a day. He’s already sitting up on his own for little stretches of time, and pushing his torso so high with his strong arms. I just know, any minute now, he’s going to figure out how to creep or roll. And I want to be there to shriek and clap and kiss, kiss, kiss when it happens.

I simply want to be there. All the time. Always.