Thu 5 Apr 2012
April flowers
Posted by bon under mama-baby stuff, milestone stuff, pondering stuff
[26] Comments
it is not-quite-spring but the snow is mostly gone, reduced to salt-and-pepper-crusted mounds.
we have no cherry blossoms here to herald the end of winter, only crocuses, the modest, cheery crocuses that pop up even before the mud loses its icy cover.
when the crocuses come it is spring, for me, and i am a child again after school at my grandmother’s house and each year when they first pop through she takes me outside, deliberately, around the edge of the house to where they grow and we smile upon them. or they – bright things in the gray of the long melting season – on us.
one year i saw them first, making my way from school towards the tall yellow house and their purple and yellow-orange buds were there, popping through, and i saw them and ran in and she got her coat and i was proud, for seeing, for noticing.
they are out again. in that same garden bed at the house that is now just across the street and Dave spied them last week, out for a walk in the half-warm of the evening and i felt my face drop thirty years and i beamed and waved and pointed to show my children, Look! Crocuses!
the same damn crocuses. well, not really. but kinda.
***
last night after supper, we left the house and dug the Radio Flyer scooter and the little pedal-less run bike out from the new shed for the first time. found the helmets. still glove weather here, and matching sets were procured and we set off.
they elected to go downhill first, snaking down a sidewalk and around and over a block, then back three, the long way to the Lebanese grocery that is the neighbourhood corner store in these parts. it too is a relic of my childhood, though its owner is thinner and whiter of hair, now. he knows the names of all the teenagers who come in; accepts that i know his, though mine has long receded for him.
i introduce the children. Posey chooses chocolate milk. Oscar hands over the bill.
we are on the way back when we spy crocuses on another lawn, a few blocks from home. we stop, like pilgrims paying homage.
and then the children right their respective wheels and start off ahead of us, both still stumbling a bit, learning balance, finding their feet.
Two or three years, i said to Dave, apropos of nothing. That’s all there will be of these walks, like this. he nodded. a hockey net loomed in the middle of the street ahead and it did not look so utterly foreign as it would have even a few months back.
when you have small children, their age and size is the measure of the world.
to the parent of a tiny baby, especially the first time ’round, even older babies – those round, crawling, laughing ones – are enormous and strange. the window of parallel kinship is narrow.
i have never been able to see ahead, very well, with my kids…i’m always only barely keeping up with where we are. and so children who are older than mine, even by a couple of years, have for the longest time looked to me like mini-adults. smaller, yes, but impossibly old nonetheless. seven and eight and ten have been unimaginable worlds, for me.
do they need parents, these giant children? they stay up late. they wipe their own bums. they go places independently.
they have seemed another species, their families built on entirely different structures than my own.
’til now.
suddenly Oscar is almost six. i pick him up and stumble to adjust to the weight of him, long limbs, fifty-plus pounds of boy.
even Josephine stretches up up up, the soft baby roundness disappearing. her hand snakes up for mine on the stairs rarely now, but when it does, i grab it and marvel at the delicate bones emerging from what was once the softest, tightest grip.
we are entering a whole new phase.
suddenly those big kids we happen upon? the ones i’ve been unable to see as children? they begin to shrink like Alice in Wonderland, to look…like kids again. long, gangly ones, less cuddly perhaps, but still so very much…kids. logic and proportion.
this is what happens when your babies are gone.
***
i thought it would be sad. it is in the sense that i would like to slow things down and stay and stretch the time out in this twilight of what has been.
but there is nothing for it. we grow up, all of us. it is the way of things and the alternative is far more terrifying, yes. but there is more.
in the strange, surreal nostalgia of this return to the neighbourhood in which i was a child, i am confronted daily with the ways in which we do not leave our childhoods but we carry them within us, layers of sediment.
in my daughter, i see the last days of toddlerhood and the bright, fierce emergence of a big girl to be reckoned with, but i see more. my last baby, tiny fuzzy bird-limbs splayed against the skin of my body as she slept.
i look at my son and see the big, big boy who karate chops his way through his days and reads and does not want to hold my hand in the hall at school anymore. and still, in the tilt of his head, the same curious, open spirit we first brought home: our rainbow baby, joy after sorrow.
it would be a terrible disservice to my children to keep seeing them through these lenses as they grow.
and it would be a greater disservice to stop.
the best gift my grandmother gave me, i think, in all the years in which she was my extra parent and my caregiver, was that she continued to see in me the child i’d been.
oh, i grew older and too cool and there was that time i slouched in the front seat of her little Datsun as we drove to junior high because i did not want the ruling clique to see me with my – ack – grandmother, as if having one were some sort of mortifying embarrassment…and i was by turns surly and frustrated and enamoured by all that i wanted to rush to embrace. she saw that. she honoured some of it, critiqued my mother for some, i know. but she did not mistake that prickly, uncertain becoming-adult for the whole of who i was.
the spring i was thirteen i had big pink glasses and a Frankie Says Relax tshirt and my jean jacket collar and my shoulders were all turned up against the world most of the time. we lived there with her, that year, and it was a hard year and my mother did not know what to do with me and i did not know what to do with anything and my grandmother was nearly eighty-one and unused to having two extra people in the house.
but when the crocuses came out she met me at the door, as ever, and her eyes were bright and they did not say you told your mother to fuck off this morning before school.
they said, simply, it’s you. it’s spring. come see the crocuses with me.
and so we did.
it is April. twelve springs this year since i’ve seen myself reflected in her eyes, and mostly – even living here – she seems like memory. time does that. my children grow and i wax wistful and i know these early days will soon feel gone and historical and…simply done.
yet there they are, the crocuses, those same damn crocuses, kinda. and they remind me that my babies remain in the long limbs of the children in front of me, as the child who once welcomed spring flowers remains in me. and i suppose my grandmother does too.
and so we wave at the flowers, and some part of me is waving to the grownups in these tiny bodies still beside me, holding my hand.
26 Responses to “ April flowers ”
Comments:
Leave a Reply
Trackbacks & Pingbacks:
-
Pingback from Five Star Friday’s 184th Edition Is Brought to You By Daisaku Ikeda | xalyzax
April 6th, 2012 at 6:10 pm[…] “April Flowers” from Crib Chronicles […]
April 5th, 2012 at 4:08 pm
this was stunning, beautiful, honest, a testament to love and motherhood and so, so many other things. i love the way your heart thinks, and because i channel in, out, under through and back again, and because my grandmother and i were close as well (and because i miss her too), this was just–just THE BEST!
April 5th, 2012 at 4:17 pm
Oh Bon. Achy beautiful words.
April 5th, 2012 at 4:42 pm
When Kate came to visit and her boys were all excited to see a teenager. Because they’d never met a real live teenager before. I thought it was so funny. Then Reiley stood in the doorway and I saw him for the first time. A tall, gangly boy-man. So that’s what a teenager looks like.
The only reason I can claim to know him at all is because I knew him as a child. He has a life disconnected from me now, where he is his own person. It’s strange and wonderful.
Beautiful post.
April 5th, 2012 at 5:11 pm
Funny you mention crocuses. I was in my backyard the other day, beginning the big clean to sell, and I realized that when I ripped out a dead tree, I must have jarred the crocus bulbs Vivian and I planted there what feels like forever ago, and only one was sprouting, only one was reaching up. And I realized that my daughters will never see this home again, not as their home after this summer. That their bigness will likely leave this house as a touchplate, as “home” in the mythspace in their minds…
and I was sad, because one is nearing womanhood at a pace that scares me, and the other holds just enough of that softness from infancy that if I squint and let my eyes water, I can still see that baby, that round thing that snored and yelled and ran through life. And that same line “just a few more years of this” hit me for different reasons.
I’m in a slightly different place, but yes Bon, yes. This is exactly it. Thank you for saying all of it out loud. Even the bit about telling your mom off :p
April 5th, 2012 at 6:09 pm
Ahh, yes, misty. I couldn’t believe he was yours. Next to mine he’s a man. How does that happen? It’s stunning.
As is this, Bon. xo
April 5th, 2012 at 6:27 pm
Utterly lovely. And now I must rush off to visit my grandmother while I can.
April 5th, 2012 at 11:14 pm
I was thinking the other day that one of the reasons people have “another” baby is that it seems to slow time down a little. If you have a baby you can’t really be getting older, can you? And when the diapers and chubby limbs are gone then you too are moving on to a new, older version of yourself. Life is fast and fleeting and cruel.
On the other hand – I remember Mountain dew and a 15c bag of chips from the Clover Mart. My grandmother was at 9 Park Terrace so the store was often in my face, taunting me with it’s treats. It is still there. My grandparents’ house is still there – not white anymore, but still a reminder of them. The huge tree that my cousins and siblings and I swung from is still at my other grandparents’ house, though they are gone.
At times like this always think of Margaret Laurence’s The Stone Angel, although I think I feel more like Morag from The Diviners at the moment.
April 5th, 2012 at 11:16 pm
Yes. So very yes.
Sometime last year I caught up with a friend whose daughter is two years older than mine, after not having seen each other for several months. Her daughter, who I have known her whole life, was suddenly no longer a little girl, but this huge giant of a six year old, who was remarkably more physically capable, and had new interests and ways of talking. She had another friend over at the time (another girl I had known for years) and I literally stood staring at them in shock for a good ten minutes, watching them play and interact. Who were these creatures? They were undeniably the girls I knew, but also undeniably not. How did it happen? When did it happen? What did it mean?
My daughter appears to have stopped growing physically, but yet she is still changing. I catch snippets of it here and there. Like in the way she looked far too mature for her old Kinder room when we popped in yesterday – it is strikingly obvious she belongs in school not Kinder now. Or in the kinds of questions that she asks. Or in the suggestions she proposes. I also see her redefining herself – trying on new ideas, identifying with some, and rejecting others. I marvel at it, wondering where she will go, who she will be. But no matter how much she changes, I hope to never lose sight of who she has been.
April 5th, 2012 at 11:37 pm
I was feeling very similar to this while I was putting Bronwyn’s shoes that she’s outgrown away and noticing just how much she’s grown. How long her legs are now, and her hair…my baby is gone but I now have a most amazing little person to take her place. Your words still moved me to tears yet again.
Also B and I were admiring the crocus’ on our walk home this week.
April 5th, 2012 at 11:48 pm
So beautiful. So true. Made my eyes sting. Made me sigh.
When I walk now, through the paths where I went with my little ones, their little ghosts walk beside me sometimes. I welcome them.
Bon, my grand daughter will turn nine this spring. The last baby that will ever be ‘mine’.
April 6th, 2012 at 4:57 am
You write so beatifully about parenthood, it gives me goosebumps every time. you’ve made me cry before. I’ve been lurking for a while, but now I felt the need to tell you how much I love your words, your writing.
April 6th, 2012 at 11:15 am
i love the stories i get from you all in response to my stories.
thank you. thank you for sharing in this growth.
April 6th, 2012 at 11:49 am
I have such strong memories of that time, that neighbourhood, even that convenience store. And with children of what must be very similar ages, I so feel that tugging too – ahead, behind and back again. Thanks for such a beautiful post.
April 6th, 2012 at 3:01 pm
This post, Bon, it’s magic. I love the way you write about your children, and about your grandmother, and how you tie everything together with crocuses.
They are coming up here, too, the crocuses. It’s the first year Dot is really old enough to be interested in them, but she doesn’t understand that some of the flower beds in the neighborhood don’t belong to us. Next year, I think, she will.
April 6th, 2012 at 9:00 pm
Our kids are close in age to yours–within a year of both. C, who’s 5 now speeds down a kid’s size zip-line at the local park. M, who’s 3 is speaking well and both are assertively promoting their independence. Baby-fat going and limbs getting longer and stronger. In a way I mourn the passing of baby-hood, but at the same time am proud and in awe of the people they’re growing into. Nice post, Bonnie.
April 7th, 2012 at 8:23 am
I, too, have these glimpses. My son, 6 and my daughter, 3 (counting days ’til she’s 4 and has been for the last 6 months).
I use spring as well as a time to reflect growth. It’s amazing to see what they can do that they couldn’t do last year. I think forward to the beach -and some times look forward to the extra independence that comes with growth (and maybe I can read on the beach like she used to?) yet I still experience heart break for the days to inevitably come where they don’t want to explore the sand and the pools in the high tide…
Well, these were my thoughts as of late.. and then to read this and know I’m not alone. Only difference is how beautifully you express it.
I appreciate and adore your writing. Thank you for sharing it to us that don’t know you ‘in flesh’.
Happy Easter.
April 7th, 2012 at 10:04 am
As is usually the case after I come here, I now find myself a little bit aching, a little bit awed, and more or less at a loss for words.
Wow.
April 8th, 2012 at 12:30 am
I love this post!
And yes, you made me smile. I remember how impossibly big and old 6 year olds were when mine were babies…and now I have 3 teens and 6 year olds are babies yet.
April 8th, 2012 at 11:10 am
You always make me smile, almost cry and revel in my goosebumps. Thanks. Do you make any other media? You are a master at text, but I would love to see this vision in other media.
April 8th, 2012 at 11:07 pm
i wanted to write all of you those lovely personal notes people who *really* do blogging right send to commenters to share and connect because all of these comments made me…happy. grateful. curious for more of your side of the story.
but it’s Easter weekend and my kids have been home for three days and i am hosting two family dinners and yeh…sorry.
my loss, i think. thanks, all.
April 11th, 2012 at 10:36 am
Thank you for this Bon. I love the way you write about parenthood, you beautifully capture the tension between cheering your babies on as they grow and mourning the loss of their babyhood while it happens.
I love crocuses too. I saw my first daffodils yesterday, there is hope that spring will come!
April 11th, 2012 at 5:21 pm
My little boy will turn 3 in June and while I love seeing the little boy he is becoming, I do feel a pang for the baby he no longer is. Sometimes, though, if the angle is just right and I turn quickly enough, I can see it, if only for a moment. Beautiful post.
April 18th, 2012 at 4:08 pm
*runs sleeve under streaming eyes*
beautiful. beautiful. beautiful.
April 29th, 2012 at 12:30 pm
When I try to articulate these things, I feel like I’m running in circles, blindfolded, holding a hammer and whacking at my own elbow more often than not.
But you. You nail the ethereal so elegantly. Maybe you don’t even nail..maybe it’s more like pinning. But not in a pinterest way. A real pin. Anyway, this post made me catch my breath and tear up and smile. Classic. I’m so glad I found it today.
November 23rd, 2013 at 1:15 pm
How touching, warm and loving! I must share this. I lived with my Grandmother from 3 to age 10. She always kept pussy willows in a vase on top of our grand piano. I remember them to the day. We always were in each others company and was such a positive role model! Today our daughter and grandchildren are living with us until she can get back on her feet. (Babies are 3 and 1.) It takes me back to the days of Bliss where I was surrounded with love, and now return that with our grandbabies. Thank you.