The Changing Tides of Motherhood

To my son on his second birthday.

These past two years, we’ve been shipmates, you and I, traversing all manner of water. The stormy early weeks, where in my tired and recovering state, it felt like you’d be an infant forever. The milder waters, where the thought of you being forever tiny enough to fit in the fold of my arm seemed not such a terrible future after all. At some point, I started to get my sea legs, and so did you. We’ve guided each other. Me guiding you into the world, you guiding me into motherhood.

The thing is, I understood you would eventually turn 2, but I did not believe it. The way we know winter will come, yet, in the thick August heat, find it difficult to imagine it will ever arrive. Many of my happiest moments have been in your company. With you around, the most ordinary act becomes the universe. Watching a movie. Eating a piece of fruit. Going for a walk. I can’t pin down why new life brings us worn-down adults renewed joy, but it is like breath on smoldering embers. All is alive again, even the eyes of the very sad and the very old, when a child enters the room.

Now, you turn 2, and I can see your attention already diverting. You’ve spotted the secret, that there is land beyond our ship. You watch your father, male cousins, uncles, and grandfather. I can tell you already understand you have to learn things from them. I doubt that a boy in this world ever had better men to learn from, so in part, they are entrusted with your character, just as the men before entrusted theirs to the influence of their brothers and fathers. I know one day you will go out among them; among men I trust and many more who I do not, and among those men especially, there will be no guarantee that you are treated well and just and kindly.

So my prayer goes like this: That I will not only show you protection, but how to protect yourself; that I will not only show you love, but how to love; that I will not only show you beauty, but how to create it; that I will not only show you a good life, but how to cultivate one; that I will not only show you this world, but how to be in, yet not of it.