I've been so busy.
And I'm too busy to explain why so busy.
So why that pic above? Oh. Well while being insanely busy, my boy had a birthday.
His 1st Birthday, so they say, but what about his birth day?
You know, the day that he wasn't born, really, so much as emergency airlifted out of me. The day I met the love of my life, a stranger. The day my husband became my family, and later my hero. The day that caused me to spike fevers and shoot pus from my guts clear across the room. The day that made me crazy, if only for a little while. The day that I added "mommy" to my resume. The day that a floppy thing without a reasoning cortex made me move heaven and earth to have my work, work for my life. The day... you get the picture.
Now, here's more pictures of this "1st" birthday (the Chinese count it differently, but no better). Of all I have accomplished, making my baby's cupcakes -- beating the cream cheese, measuring the vanilla and plopping the batter in the cups -- was one of the best moments of my life, satisfying me on a primal level. Sad. True!
When my husband saw how stressed I was the day before and suggested I "just buy" the cupcakes, I went feral. My lip curled and I reacted as if he suggested we swing with the still-warm corpse of Joey Bishop. He looked, understandably terrified. Sometimes, just sometimes, I feel sorry for men. But then, I put the cap back on the glue.
My love for the bambino is so startlingly great, sometimes I wonder, why didn't we have him earlier? But then I realize he wouldn't be
him, and I slam up against the near impossible probabilities that were involved in the making of "him" and I get dizzy and so I know why people just cop out and say "miracle" instead. Or as I like to think of babies now: a consolation prize for death. "Sorry you are going to rot slowly from the inside out, and see your loved ones disappear likes leaves from a tree, but here's a baaaaaaaby! A babybabybabybaby!"
Why the death talk? I can't help it. I guess because my father died in October. It was my favorite month until he went and ruined it for me. When I see the tombstones and the ghosts on your lawn, I no longer think "Yay, Halloween!" I think, "Aint it the truth."
My baby was born in October, which doesn't cancel out the death, it just makes the month the cruelest and the most beautiful all at once. I wish my father had seen "the Bam" as we call him. I am forever looking for my father, like a dog whose dumb stares are frozen in the direction his owner left him.
But I gave the babe my father's ridiculous first name for a middle, and instead of crying (which I am tempted to do often this month) I man up and see I just have to honor him via my life. By continuing, enduring, loving, working. I don't think my father can "see" me now. Wish I did. But I do believe how he raised me -- with love and good sense -- is a flame that can not be extinguished within me. And if I can pass that torch to my baby, I can touch immortality and my father never died. They talk about how abused children become abusers. Well, shouldn't it work the other way round? I think it does.
Anywho, it's been quite a year for me. It has been terribly hard. And the hardest bits were not even things I can or ever will talk about on this blog. Shooting pus is dramatic, but in retrospect, almost braggably cool. Although I and the others who witnessed it thought I was going to die -- it was nothing compared to my worry over my [redacted] and dealing with [seriously redacted] and [redacted to infinity]. But all my friends, family and co-workers (yes, evil corporations? Not always evil, people) who truly helped me and loved me, their names are bedazzled on my heart, etched with glitter pen on the heavens.
Wait, it's my boy's birthday, why is this about me? Well it's
my blog. When he gets his own blog he can whine about his life, and his awful mom. And he will. Oh you know he will.
OK, here's the big dismount...
Although it was, sing it with me --
very very, ohmigawd, so very hard for me -- and although if the manifold horrors of X, Y and Z hadn't happened, or if my baby had simply been kind enough to come out the clearly marked exit, I'd have been much better off; here's the horrible truth:
It's really hard for all new moms. Really really hard. Maybe you knew that? I didn't. I was of the "oh get over yourself you had a baby, you didn't cure cancer" school. So I think the fates bitch-smacked me harder for that. And that's OK. I deserved it.
But even with all the problems, I overcame. I appreciate everything more, most days, in between feeling guilty and anxious -- a heady cocktail no mom avoids; or being horrified and shocked -- when the untalented succeed, women get a raw deal or jealous when the rich float above earthly concerns.
Point is, even though life isn't perfect, it's good. And good, is huge. And I wouldn't trade my imperfect life for anyone's, and that's the Thor's honest truth. Life is harder than ever, but I'm going to keep having my cake and eat it too. Just watch me. Trying to work harder, run faster, and know that the impossible is possible. And grace is there for the taking. Yeah, being a mom is like being severely handicapped. Suddenly you can't do 1/1000 of what you did before, but you're like one of those annoying enlightened handicapped people who are like, "Sure, ever since the accident I've no legs and half an eye and incurable halitosis -- but I appreciate life so much more now!"
Yeah, I called some handicapped people annoying. I'm asking the fates to get me right? No! No more, fates! I get it! Get lost!
Speaking of cake (above: me testing yesterday's cupcake icing for the king), maybe I'm just happy that I'M CURRENTLY MORE THAN TEN POUNDS THINNER THAN BEFORE THE BAMBINO WAS CONCEIVED.
All the baby weight, is on the baby. That's probably more interesting to y'all than my kooky year one swansong. So here ya go... and here I go.
HOO HA! Cue: dancing, butt waggling, supersusiebowl shuffle
