*kendraspondence*

My baby turns nine months today which means that she has lived outside of me for the general ogling, snuggling, and worrying over just as long as she was in my belly for the general ogling, snuggling and worrying over en utero. Sometimes I still catch a look at her, particularly when she does something so…human?…and which demonstrates character, like this morning when we went to Itsy Bitsy Yoga and the teacher wasn’t there and she sort of looked up at me like, you interrupted my nap for this? and I wonder, How did you get this way? How did your little downy newborn head slip out of my Texas quarterback grip and roll nine months away from me? That is what the visceral experience of having a nine month-old is like. She is nine months away from me. In nine years she will be nine years away from me. I feel the tug because, as Rachel Cusk writes in the book quoted yesterday, she was in my consciousness for nine whole months and therefore she will forever be in my consciousness. I feel strange, skinned when she is not with me, and yet I feel a mournfulness for my old, untethered life when she is with me.

She is developing her own personality, her own set of likes (banana slices, chucking pacifiers into the pacifier junkyard behind her crib) and dislikes (green beans, having her diaper changed) and these are outside the realm of my control. They exist in a sphere that is all Madigan, penetrable by countless influences, of which her father and I will be competing all day and all night for the rest of her life. This is the best and hardest part of being a parent. We can and will mightily love her enough that she will know that she can always return to us; we are her place of origin. We can and will mightily train her enough that she will know that she is not meant to remain forever with us in this place of origin. But knowing our responsibilities and executing them accordingly does not mean they are any easier.

One thing that has gotten a bit easier, though, in light of this responsibility is contending with other afflictions and dilemmas. I used to completely crumble at insensitivity, used to obsess Carrie Bradshaw-style about conversations I would never have, about e-mails i would never send, about people that really should not have pulled such weight in my decision-making. Now those pestilences are but pesky little gnats at the corner of my consciousness. I squint to see them, swat randomly at them, and get on with the business of developing a sound and godly character in my daughter. Who has, at times, been known to give me the most joy I have ever experienced in this life.

***

Can’t you just hear her? “Dad! You’re doing it wrong. Can I drive?”

Red Bull, a fascinating and totally ergo can for the holding.

The baby books don’t tell you this: By nine months, child will totally pose for pictures with face mashed up against mesh pack n’ play netting because child will know it is funny.

“When I think of my child I am seized by the desire to make good all my former powerlessness, to love as I would like to be loved: mercifully, completely, unambiguously. [My daughter's] experience of this love is for the moment rather shady and unclear. I want to write it down and put it in a drawer for her, like the title deeds to something so that she will have some proof, some inheritance, should something happen to me before I get a chance to explain it to her.”

- Rachel Cusk,
A Life’s Work: On Becoming a Mother

What is the difference between contentment and complacency? Where does content end and blur into complacent? Am I generally content, or am I deceiving myself and if you listen closely to all of my pep talks, you’ll hear the sound of a silly woman who is just complacent?

Hard business this conte-mplacent…

I want to be content with what I have, I don’t want to be complacent with what I do with what I have. In theory. But take our car. Beloved Green Bus. I love this car. I love to drive it, sitting up high, stomping through the puddles that the byzantine drainage system in this city leaves in the wake of rain. I love that it’s old, a gift from my in-laws, and that I know where each scratch derives.

But I dream of new wheels, what will be our next car, like we’re riding this continuum of vehicular ownership, one to which we’re entitled. So I’m really not content, am I? I’m embarrassed by the damage Loverpants did to both sides of it. I am embarrassed that this damage was never properly fixed or even an attempt made to paint over it, which is evidence of my own complacency, my own resortings to “That’s just how it’s going to be.”

I’ve been so blessed in this life, way way beyond any measure of deserving, and yet, I have a strong faith in something better. A place of flourish and blessing so much more profoundly amazing than this world can hope to offer. Which is why I don’t want to stay content or complacent. I want to be faithful in what I believe and hopeful for what is to come. Where a perfect contentment might be known. Where no one is complacent, for they live as angels.

***

But now they desire a better country, that is, an heavenly: why God is not ashamed to be called their God: for he has prepared for them a city. ~ Hebrews 11:16

Santa Baby,

Being that there are roughly (merely!) only 70 sleeps away from Christmakkuh and the consumerist parade apres and post, I wanted to offer my humble suggestion as to a proper gift with which you may send my way. Presumptuous as it may be, I just thought it might be helpful to you, given the heady list of tasks you and your elfin non-profit organization have to accomplish in said 70 nights henceforth, if I would specify my wish this holiday season in very concrete terms. And it looks like this:

Oh, sweet Santa, think me not a material girl. It’s just that I could use a little sparkle in my life, and yes, the wee one you sent me a little late last year (like a whole week and 44 hours past the date of expectation, but anyway) does lend a certain immeasurable glint to my days. But I would like some new, patently impractical footwear, you see, Santa, since my better half is a firm believer in gifting me with technology, like a wireless mouse, for instance, which, be assured, does make me sentimental every time I point and click, but Santa? Is there room on your list this year for pretty pretty bubblegum rainbows hearts stars and a pair of SHIZ-NINE-Y BALLET SLIPPERS?

I suppose you’ve heard the one about how I’ve been a good girl all year, washed 133,535,352,359,757.46 dishes with a cheerful heart, and have only taken 2 showers over the last 9 months that have been without the audience of a wee sucktopus and haven’t complained once. At least not to the internet. Until now.

So, Santa, if you’ve got some extra space in that big arctic-proof sack of yours this year? I’d like these kicks very much. Please and thank you and milk and cookies.

Love,
Kendra

It occurred to me recently that I write awfully much on here about the experience of being a mama, but I rarely write about the person whom I’m a mama to, her spirit, her physical character. I think I hesitate because as soon as I begin to talk about Baby Girl, Wanda One-Upper strides on up and pitches a gush grenade into the convo, “Well MY Baby Girl could do a triple toe loop in figure skates by eight months!” But I realize it’s really not right. I should tell you all more about this VIP in my life. If I don’t, it’s like being President of the Fab Morvan Fan Club and just always talking about the club and never telling you how fab is Fab!

So this is how fab is Baby Girl. She’s a very emotional character. Her face can go from Walter Matthau to Abby Cadabby in the flash of a moment. She really allows herself to feel what she is feeling and while I know this is every baby, it really impresses me and I hope it continues as a theme in her life, except for when the cops pull her over for speeding. I’m not raising a girl who cries her way out of tickets. She is also extremely conscious of who is in the room. When my parents visited, my dad would be in the other room and my stepmom said she kept a lookey-loo eye out for him. She gets this keen observation skill from her father who will be walking out of a restaurant and say, That woman with the big dreads behind us had a twisted bra strap that was really bothering me, and I will be all, There were other people in the restaurant? She is also very very strong, and I have no idea what I am going to do with her when she cannot be thrown potato sack-style over my shoulder and ushered off to bed. Sometimes she grips her spoon and the Herculean strength that it takes me to pry it out of her little gummy bear hand is amazing. I fear the day when that spoon is a Coach bag in a store and ALL OF THE OTHER GIRLS HAVE THEM MY LIFE IS SO SAD WHY DO I EVEN BOTHER ASKING YOU YOU JUST WANT ME TO SUFFER.

***

This one, she’s got spirit, yes she does.