It’s rather humbling how much we are our biology.
There is something terribly basic and completing about seeing my child spend time with my parents. I’m very lucky to have parents who are my friends and who I know love me beyond measure. And to be able to put that together with the little person I love more than any metaphor could ever hold slots some sort of Tab A into Slot B.
And the world turns at the right speed and very smoothly in that moment.
Much like when I put my arm around my child at the end of the day and catch a whiff of his scent: mud and grass and warmth and skin and school lunch boxes and a touch of eau de little boy.
It took me a long time – well a couple of months anyway – to feel that inside-my-marrow love for that kid.
I was so in shock and exhausted and traumatized by the whole thing.
I felt the responsibility from the first moment: that, that thing there, still slick and squid bed up from being inside me, that is for me to take care of.
The love, that took a while.
I didn’t even really understand that this baby and my pregnancy were connected – I understood it in my head of course, but I didn’t feel it until about 5 weeks later. Knew night when I was brushing my teeth. I was still in hospital as I had been except for two horrible days. In a hospital with all hanging points removed. With agitated and odd people. But there I was brushing my teeth, tasting that hot minty favour when … Aha! I got it. That sleeping bundle over there was the same one I had carried for all those months.
It wasn’t too long after that the LOVE hit. And I finally understood so many thing: I would step in front of a truck for this little thing. I would worry about him forever. I would imagine every single Worst Case Scenario for everything he ever did.
And the love I felt, the total wonder at how this piece of me had come away from my body and become a person in his own right; that’s how my parents looked at me. And felt about me.
1000 days 