Open and Close and Open and Close

My mom use to say, "You can tell Christy's home. All the cabinet doors are wide open." I think I drive Nick a little crazy with my habit of opening zip pockets to find something and not zipping them shut. I cant tell you how many times strangers have approached me to tell me my backpack is open or something is falling out of my hockey bag. If you were to walk into my bedroom on any given day, chances are my dresser drawers will be open.

I pretty much suck at closure.

When my parents moved from my childhood home in Connecticut to Cape Cod in my early twenties, I called the Fitzgerald family in tears on Christmas Eve during my first holiday on the Cape. As far as I could remember we'd spent Christmas Eve together, as far back as performing plays that resembled Annie to the groans of our parents in the living room.

As much as I jump into new situations without first checking the landing, I'm always hoping everything I've known will follow me.

And not change.

And this is what is hard about Elias entering preschool. It is not the time away from him. I've been forced to separate from him since the moment he was born. Discharged from the hospital without him. Not allowed to hold him. Not allowed to sleep next to his glass box.

No, what is hard is that we can never go back. He will just keep growing and changing and disengaging from his dependence on me. As Amy said in her comment: "When we were in the NICU, all I wanted was for my son to grow, get bigger, gain weight, so that we could go. Now that he is home, I just want to slow time down and keep him tiny forever."

I now understand why mothers are always so surprised that their children are teenagers. Or parents themselves. Weren't they just crawling into bed with us in the middle of the night? Wasn't it only yesterday that he entered preschool and I sat on his "big boy" bed and cried?

I now understand how the elders in my writing group can write vivid descriptions about their 4th grade crushes. Their sibling fights. Their own children's first day of school. Wasn't it just yesterday?

I found the following line in my notebook, written in this class when there was only enough time to give the group two words to complete a sentence:

The past piggybacks on the present, yelling, "Slow down, slow down," I don't want to fall.

And as Elias said this morning, as he sat on the bottom step so I could put his "funky cool" braces on his feet for preschool, "I don't know where tomorrow is?"

Either do I.

But I know we'll find it.

Comments

[linda]

Kids can say and do things that really make you think. That's a good one, Elias! We're all looking for tomorrow and never quite grasping it, but the search is the thing, I guess. It's hard to let go of the past, whether it was a difficult time or a good one, and leap into the unknown.

[Sara]

What a most excellent Elias insight - much of life is spent pondering where tomorrow is, eh???

[Glyn]

How did our little micro-preemies get to be these more independent 3-year-olds? I totally understand - on one hand, I want him to grow up and know he'll be ok, but on the other hand I want him to stay small. Right now is fun for the most part (except the "I don't wanna go to bed!" and the I'm ignoring you stages).

But as everything else, we'll get through it and learn from it, admiring our miracles along the way.

[Mae Ann]

Christy, I can't believe how much creative, novel language he generates......must be because he's your son! Anyway, reading this made me think even more about YOUR TALENT......You could publish all of these blogs without changing much, into a "mom's journal...."from NICU to preschool" and make money. I'll be the first on line for your book signing. And I'm so glad that he likes preschool...I like how you write how he says his words.....makes me miss him even more.
You are a super mom!
mae ann

[mary]

Yes, yes, I know what you mean about the growning up painfulness. My oldest is set for kindergarten this fall and it seems so boggling.
I know that whoever they will be as teenagers and adults will be wonderful and I am excited to meet them . .. . but it breaks my heart to think these little people will just be gone, forever. How I'll miss them.

[Heather]

I still get the feeling that tommorrow is already past and I'm still lost in yesterday. Things go so quickly at times and then at others the minutes drag into hours. I want to keep my little guy a baby and yet he wants to potty train so he is like his big brother. Of course, I think his big brother should still be in diapers too! Time either stretches on endlessly (hospitilizations, NICU, PICU, MD appointments) or slides by so fast (phases, holidays, vacations, special times). Christy, I truly admire the way you capture your feelings and express them so vividly.

[Christy]

Mary captured it in her thoughts, "but it breaks my heart to think these little people will just be gone, forever. How I'll miss them."

And Mae Ann, I hope some day, when i finish school and have a bit more free time, to make your words come true.

Thanks all....