The Woman Who Eats her Young

Tonight I ordered pizza. Maybe it's hormonal.

There are moments when I want to just absorb my children...literally suck them into me. I am sitting here and looking at 2 pairs of tiny sneakers, tongues wagging out, Velcro straps sticking up like antennae. They are lined up infront of the glass backdoor after being scrubbed inside and out, waiting to be put away. They are Loki's and now they are too small. Children outgrow things. They outgrow shoes and clothes and toys. They outgrow secret words and comforts. You have your children only to lose them over and over again for the rest of their lives.

Like I said, tonight I ordered pizza.

Becca was back today. Nate took 3 1/2 bottles. Dinner arrived in a box. Perhaps I am becoming outgrown.

This is a silly sadness given that, by definition, my children are still babies, still fully dependent mostly on me for mostly everything. And if I resent that, and there are moments - short, real moments when I do - than I also must admit that this dependence has come to shape who I am as an adult person moreso than anything else.

Maybe that has always been true for every parent. But my generation is a little odd. Most the women I know became full-fledged adults before they had babies. They romped and roamed and filed taxes and established careers and then, just when it was getting close to "too late" they signed up for prenatal pilates, registered at Pottery Barn Kids, and settled into the business of raising families with the same gusto they applied to their post-docs and MBAs.

I realize this has as much to do with where I live and my socio-economic class as it does with anything else. I mean, by no stretch am I singing "Papa Don't Preach" in the shower and wondering what style prom dress will best hide my postnatal belly flab.

*(Funny aside: Nate was a bit of a surprise. I found out I was pregnant while visiting my parents' house with Loki last spring. I snuck out to the RiteAid to take the peestick test and after 5 bewildering double-line results, still not believing it, I drove home, walked into the family room and said - I think I might be pregnant. How could you let this happen? my mom cried. And for a moment we all forgot that I was married, had a house, a stable income, oh-yeah, and was already a mother. I was sixteen and had just screwed up my whole future. Oh wait, my mom blinked, this is actually pretty exciting. Someone remember to tell Nate that story when he's fifteen. I'm sure he'll be thrilled).

There's no question, I had my children the "mature and responsible" way. But as a person, I was (am?) still pretty gooey. Gooey. You know, like that neon-coloured slime inside the plastic eggshells that you could get from the grocery store vending machine for 75 cents. I'd been thrown against a few walls, picked up some pocket lint, stamped with lots of news print but I was still trying on shapes, pouring myself into molds, trying to figure out what I was made out of.

Becoming a mom really expedites that process, mostly because there are so many ready-made patterns available and you're more or less expected to fall into one of them. You are the stroller mom, the lululemon mom, the winnie-the-poo-in-sweatpants mom, the mom who buys expensive organic babyfood, the mom who makes organic babyfood from scratch, the mom who feeds her baby pop in a bottle, the fitness class mom, the yoga mom, the drop-in centre mom, the mom who watches Oprah and distractedly rocks a cradle, the professional mom, the stay at home mom, the momtrepreneur, the mom who lunches, the mom who drinks... I could go on. I won't. (you're welcome).

I'm sorry, what does this have to do with me wanting to eat my children? The thing is they are my world and with that does come the identity-imposing trappings of what non-parents might call "the club." The cliche-momlit-bullshit of getting spitup in your hair and worrying about whether apple juice has too much sugar in it. But for me it's something else too - like we are all growing up together. Like as I figure out who they are, I am figuring out who I am too. So when they feel far away or out of reach, even when they are just asleep safe safe in their cribs upstairs, it is like being lost, marooned from myself. Of course, swallowing them whole (to quote Suzanne Vega) would solve that problem.

It sounds bizarre and twisted but I think this might just be love in its most raw form. It is what I feel when I tell Herb I miss him and he is only two feet away from me. Maybe it wouldn't have mattered how fully-formed I was when I had my babies. Maybe becoming a mother rearranges your molecules and splits them off into the universe so that you can never be whole again or, rather, your wholeness is constituted by others walking around forever outside your body, outgrowing their shoes.

Tonight's Dinner:

- Pizza from Mama's (really, no joke) topped with broccoli and black olives

- A side salad that no one ate (why do I always order it?)

- Loki and Nate, as much as osmosis would allow