The First Motherhood One (is barely about motherhood)

It's September 10th.  Clara, my beautiful, perfect speck of a daughter is sleeping now, though God only knows how long that will last.  In eight days, she will be 4 months old.  Babies are time machine magicians, somehow turning your longest days into your shortest weeks.  I'll have to ask her when she's older how she manages to do that.

  I am in Denver now, house and dog sitting for a friend until we close on our own house.  The sun is out today, and it means business.  An early September heat wave is here, taking its toll on the green bits still holding onto their Spring youth.

 Yeah, well, me, too.  Not much to be helped there, I'm afraid.

  I've given myself permission to sit in the sun until she wakes up.  It's been a long time since I've sat in the sun.  That would be unusual for pre-baby Jamie, but seems to be par for the course now.  Some things in life change every other thing.
 
    I miss the sun- that has not changed.  But nothing puts into perspective how reckless we are with our own bodies like being tasked with the well-being of someone else's brand new one.  I check my blind spot twice now, and chasing those tan lines is far less important than making sure she doesn't have any.

Motherhood, man.  You lose yourself if you're careful and if you're not.

A few years ago, I wrote about ambition.  I'd have to read it again to get the details straight, but if I was being truthful, I probably outlined how little ambition I actually had.  I had been climbing the ladder but pining for the ground, and didn't know what that could amount to, really.  How do you win a rat race that you'd be happier losing?  Regardless, there I was.  Successful by most people's definitions.  Even by my own, though I felt lost in it.  All the while, wondering if the top had a good view of the versions of myself that I had loved better.

  And now.

I'll spare the details of this progression, though it should be noted that plenty details exist.  But give me two years in the Pacific, and I'll show you how to turn into someone no one recognizes.  What a magic trick to place a round-peg girl into a square-hole life and see upon her removal how her shape has changed.

    There is more to be said, here.  Pages to be written about the abrupt loss of freedom- financial and otherwise- that accompanies a quick-change into the privileged title of “Stay at home mom.” Pages about the struggle of holding onto yourself when your world is no longer about you.  Pages about how I have been under-qualified for every job I've ever had, this one included (maybe most of all).  And, to be obvious, there are chapters and volumes and libraries to be written about motherhood.  What it is.  What it isn't.  How it changes you, and how it doesn't.  The mind bend of knowing what's coming, and still being entirely unprepared. The gravity of being this in love with someone, even if she is biologically obligated to love me back. 

  But today, the best way to end this aimless ramble might be just the way I started it.  It is now September 14th.  My beautiful, perfect speck of a daughter is asleep upstairs.  In four days, she will be four months old.  And I am in the sun.