offspring

Some mornings I wake up, and momentarily I forget where and when I am. On those mornings, it comes as such a shock to have my children walk up and call me "mom." I have one of those split second panics, as in "oh my god, someone thought I should be raising children?" It's the same panic I felt holding Katie in the hospital, and wondering how they could possibly just let me walk out with this innocent life. She didn't even come with directions. I can't make toast without burning it; how was I supposed to ever keep her safe?

But I brought her home, lived through that first afternoon. Set her down in the crib, and thought, "what now?" But she and I lived through it together, and we taught each other what to do next. I taught her how to blow spit bubbles, she taught me how to make it through a week on 2 hours of sleep and do it with a smile. All because I was so glad to be her mother, so completely in awe of this unbelievably special person I had out on loan.

It must have been a pretty good first 18 months, because that's when I found out I was pregnant with my second child. Katie started Mother's Day Out, right about the time I started growing daughter number two. By that point I was feeling pretty good about my ability to take care of one child and, well, I never did like to pass up a challenge. Child number two came home without incident, for about 8 months. Then I learned two new words - sibling rivalry. But all-in-all, it's been a great ride these last 11 years, 2 months, and 21 days.

Today I realized that I'm right back on that shaky ground again. I've spent 4100 days getting to know this person who grew inside of me, only to find a stranger staring back this morning. This gawky girl wearing a Twilight t-shirt, Converse tennis shoes with no socks, hands on hips, eyebrows raised, saying, "you're not going to wear that are you?" All the time I have invested, the books we've read, the songs we used to sing, the nights I rocked her to sleep, played Candyland...none of it means a thing to this stranger in my daughter's room. Suddenly I'm just wrong, like, all the time, you know? We're having to do the same dance we did the day I brought my baby home - at the time my dance revolved around, "do I pick her up right away, or let her start to fuss?" Now it's more like a tango with a porcupine, but the principle remains the same. "Do I step in and try to help, or let her work it out on her own?" She doesn't care. She's too busy texting all her friends to even notice.

Oh, I have no doubt that we'll find some middle ground and get another comfortable routine. But I'm scared of the stranger who will show up next, and oh god, I guess that one will probably want keys to my car. All I can do now is hope that enough of the invested time sinks in that the eye-rolling teenager in my immediate future makes some half-way decent decisions. While I'm waiting, I guess I'll practice taking out the spark plugs - just in case.