You Can Grow Tomorrow
BY KATE BAILEY
Photo Courtesy: Kate Bailey
“I think I grew a lot last night!” you say almost every morning now, stretching your torso so long it almost curves back, your chin up in the air. “I think you’re right!” I reply, and though mostly I say it because it spreads a proud smile across your face, I also know that it’s true.
Happily, and kind of painfully, true.
Sometimes I stay up late looking at pictures and videos from when you were a baby. There are things you did that I swore I would never forget, and here I am, having forgotten nearly it all. Like the way you said “allsly” instead of “also” and how, every night, you used to stand in your crib and eat three grapes while your dad and I read you your bedtime stories. I’m moving from day to day, watching you like a hawk, spending nearly every minute with you . . . and yet, it almost all disappears. It really does.
But when I close my eyes and pay close attention, there are things that I don’t think will ever go away. I remember when you first started fluttering around in my belly. My eyes would grow wild, and I’d look at your dad and say, “Oh my gosh, I think I just felt something! Can you feel this?” And as we grew bigger, I remember your fingers and toes poking and flicking around my sides. I can feel it at this very moment. Even then, you’d put a show on for anyone who paid you any attention. A hand would go to my belly, and you’d start dancing around. It was no doubt my favorite party trick.
I remember your delivery – so much that it almost hurts me to remember. The pain, the primal moans, the whispering encouragement of my husband. The dark of the night, and how suddenly, you were there, and the sun had risen without me noticing. You were beautiful immediately and bigger on my chest than I imagined you would be. I can taste the granola I lived on throughout the middle of the night when you’d wake. I was ravenous, and I’d nurse you and eat, nurse you and eat, nurse you and eat.
And just as the sun rose without warning on those long, sleepless nights, suddenly, here we are. Somehow, five years have passed. I’m starting to notice the way your cheeks are slimming. Your knees are knobby now, no longer just a soft bend. New freckles appear every day, and we kiss them up and welcome them – new features that make you more you. More perfect. I try to memorize them all. In the morning, you want to know about my dreams, and you tell me about your own. In the afternoon, you ask me to tell you about my day and wonder what I had for lunch. You do puzzles and make real art. You read fluently and emphatically. You’re a kid now.
This is how it happens, I think. This is how mothers blink and their children are gone. What will it feel like when I don’t have a child giggling at my knees, holding onto my legs as I try to walk around the kitchen to cook dinner? What will it be like when you don’t want to sing me the new song you learned at school or read me a story before bed? What will it be like to not have mountains of laundry to tend to, endless snacks and meals to make? When I don’t have to explain to you why baths are important? I can barely stomach the thought.
Will you still snuggle with me on the couch when you’re 30 and your legs are as long as mine and you have kids of your own? Will you promise to tell me the dreams you have and what you had for lunch? Will you please still hug, kiss, smooch, and squeeze me? Will you tell me you love me every time we part? Do you promise?
Every single day, I am overwhelmed with gratitude that I have been blessed with you. I thank time for letting me watch you grow. I am thrilled every day you get older, more independent, more you. Tomorrow, you can keep growing up. But today, for just a moment at least, I need to know that you’ll always be mommy’s little girl.
Born and raised in a small town in Georgia, KATE BAILEY is a wife and a mother of two girls, Jane and April. She works in the field of personalized learning in secondary education. Her mission is to find the beauty in the ordinary, wonderful, and difficult moments of parenthood as a way to connect us all and validate each of our journeys.