Day 33: My Oldest
Jesse is 12 today, and his kneecaps are bigger than mine. I noticed this at the dinner table right before he asked me a question.
“Mom, how come you had me in the hospital instead of at home like my brothers?”
“I wasn’t ready. Having you at the hospital helped me make that decision for your brothers.”
This, I think, is the relationship between a mom and her oldest. There is what I dream about doing as a mom and what I end up doing as a mom, and Jesse is my trial run for it all. Through him, I learned that birthing in hospitals wasn’t for me. Holding Jesse taught me how to hold a baby. It required me to shore up atrophied back muscles, and when those started twitching, the only place I could put him down without crying was in his bouncy seat in the kitchen. This is when I learned how to cook.
It’s a steep learning curve with my oldest and sometimes one Matt and I lead and sometimes one Jesse leads. Yesterday started with sharp words between Jess and Ez, and I set a time-out of quiet at the kitchen table, which didn’t work and didn’t work and didn’t work.
“Mom, this isn’t working,” Jesse said as I went to re-set the timer for the third time. “I have another idea. How about Ezra and I see if we can play a game of Sorry without fighting instead?”
It worked!
Jesse is 12, and I feel him pulling away from me in a way that is right, but it puts me right back in that place of unknown as his mother because he’s no longer looking to me for everything. He’s on the lookout more for Matt’s presence and Matt’s opinions. As a toddler, he would empty the pots and pans and mimic what I was doing at the stove, but now the person he wants to reflect is his father.
What do I do now?
The circumstances have changed, but the question is an old one. I asked it the first night Matt and I brought him home from the hospital.
What do we do now?
The immediate answer is to make biscuits. I’m back in the kitchen this morning because Jesse wants egg, sausage, and biscuit sandwiches for his birthday breakfast.
After that, he’s going to work and lunch with Matt, and I think I’ll start dreaming again. New phases are blank spaces. I need to ask new questions.
Who is Jesse growing into? How do I embolden him to keep stepping away from me?
How do I step back and support Matt as he steps forward?
What does mothering look like from this vantage point?
Who am I outside of my son? How do I start stepping into that person?
The ideas are coming. It’s okay that I’m taking them in today with a bit of a lump in my throat. Jesse’s birthday ice cream cake will help it to go down.
