Leo's class had to do a timeline of their lives to date last month and it was something he took very seriously because, well, you know, he's been around forever and has done a LOT of stuff! It meant a lot to him that each event he deemed important enough to be included in the timeline have an accompanying photograph; that was where I came in. So all that last week, while he was taking it easy in school, I was pouring over almost eight years of Leo...and I loved every second! The only bad was once again being slapped in the face with the reality that is my baby's gone from a chubby-faced baldy to a tall drink of water with LOTS of hair and deep thoughts.
That's the funny thing about the passage of time, I think...well, not funny "ha ha". No, far from that kind of funny! Funny that you don't feel it moving until you're reminded. Like when you've been on a boat for a long afternoon and when you get off onto the secure, solid dock, you get all wobbly until you find your balance. "Oh, that's right, I've been walking on water all afternoon!" When Cathy was born, 15 months after Leo arrived, Leo was still my little baby whose peach fuzz-covered head I'd nuzzle while he sat in my huge lap reading books with me (at that point I was doing most of the reading). But the second I saw him in the hospital being carried into the room in his Aunt Amy's arms, he looked huge!! He looked like a little boy, not like the baby I'd seen the day before at home playing with his Thomas Trains and watching Baby Mozart!! The baby was gone...poof...just like that!! I'm sure the hormones didn't help, but I started to cry at the sight of him (don't worry, I sucked it up before I freaked him out). That was my first real slap in the face from Father Time and it hurt...bad!
After trying and trying and praying and praying and thermometers and chemical drugs and holistic drugs and disappointment after disappointment finally leading to surrendering defeat, I was viewed worthy enough to be his mother. He was known as the Miracle Baby...that is until my oven started cooking another bun only five months later. Then he became known as the Pipe Cleaner! Whatever his aliases, to me he's the one that started it all; the one who after over 12 years of DINKhood, turned a couple into a family, the one who made all my dreams come true.
He'll be eight years old this month; my Spring Equinox baby. I get statements from him like, "Look, those two pillars are congruent" to "Moby Dick ate people...I learned that from a video game" alluding that if he learned it from a video game then it MUST be true, no questions asked! If it weren't for the latter comments revealing his sweet naivety, I'd be sure the next thing out of his mouth would be "can I borrow the car so I'm not late for Physics class?" He goes from snuggling with me and whispering "my mommy" under his breath to matter-of-fact statements like "yes, yes, I think that's a Cumulus Nimbus cloud so we should be safe from rain today". This is the age when I'm either begging for more time to keep him young or screaming for him to be a responsible big boy; it's no wonder the poor kid's not walking around in a confused, mother-induced stupor half the time.
Well, actually he is walking around in a stupor half the time but I'm not falling on that sword!
~Eileen Cassidy Bishop
