My daughter has recently found her feet – a discovery that seems to both delight and overwhelm her. She sticks her milk white legs in the air and stares at them, focused, amazed. The same marble-eyed stare she had when she first discovered her hands.
That, of course, was ages ago when measured against the length of her life. A stage that left as quickly as it came – lost somewhere in the haze of sleepless nights and pumping. One of many things we knew barely long enough to grieve its passing, and yet, we did, we do.
It must be such a strange experience to find your hands for the first time. To discover a part of yourself you never knew you had. To wonder at its purpose, its utility, and, apparently, its taste.
I don’t know at what age a baby’s eyes settle into their color but hers still haven’t. I hoped, and still do, that she’d get her dad’s eyes. His are an almost unsettling shade of blue. For all they’ve seen, they’ve stayed generous and soft. I want her to see that way, to be seen that way, to unsettle this harsh world with her softness.
For now, their color remains elusive, masked in gloss and camouflage, shifting with the light or the color of her jammies. Too busy taking in the trees out her window or the shimmer off my wedding ring or the hands she finds at the end of her pillow arms to pick just one color to be.
She’s started to learn how to use them. She grabs at things, places them against me when I hold her, puts one in her mouth when she’s fighting sleep. I think they might be old news now, replaced by the surprise and novelty of her feet. And yet, to me, they’re still so worthy of wonder. Tiny hands I warm with my own when we sit on the back deck and wait for dad to get home from work. Tiny hands made within me. An everyday, oft forgotten miracle.
In a way, I know some of what she must be feeling. This year I found a part of myself I never knew. I like to think the tenderness was always there – sometimes buried beneath layers of disillusionment and cynicism – but there, nonetheless. I know the anxiety was. So too, the abusive relationship with time.
But the mix of those things – the tenderness, the anxiety, the pain of time – have formed some kind of new muscle that sits tightly somewhere in my chest. It strains from the shameless desire to hold so much love at one time. It’s knotted with this ache to make the days slow down and the nights to pass more quickly. It’s sore from hoping so severely that life might always be this sweet, my purpose might always feel this certain, her hands might always stay this small.
I suppose you might call that muscle motherhood. But its more than that. It’s not just being her mom, it’s being a parent with my husband. It’s being a daughter to her grandmother. It’s being best friends with her godmother. It’s being her advocate with her doctors. It’s being a woman within the collective whole of mothers everywhere.
It’s as if my very axis has changed, and as the spinning fades a bit from that initial shift, I find myself wondering where to go next.
I’ve done just about every version of new year planning that you can do. I’ve made the resolutions, then called them goals instead because it sounded smarter, then chose a word for the year, then a verse, and so on. I’ve made bucket lists and vision boards. Kept notes on my phone with little checkboxes next to each line. I even went so far as to try bullet journaling once – a hobby I envy but am undoubtedly not artistic enough to maintain.
This year is no different. I may even share my list of goals-resolutions-to-dos-visions-what-have-you at some point.
But right now, I’m much less inclined to look forward than in years past. I find myself instead grasping at this deep-seated need to be present, to be here.
To be aware of my own hands and feet, in this space and time and season. To feel the strength of this new muscle as my lungs mark their contented rhythm. To deepen the roots beneath this new axis of my life.
I want the richness of this day, each day, to be enough. Because it is. It is more than enough. And soon, much too soon, it will be gone. I’ll have forgotten this new taste of tenderness within me. Without warning, her feet will be old news too.
So while I’m sure this new year will have plenty of goodness and grief to offer us, I will empty my hands of the weight of what’s to come and simply hold space instead for this morning, this daily bread, this version of each of us as we are right now – a little tired, a lot happy, and one of us with our feet in the air.