Eight
Tue, Mar 5, 2013
Eight. More than eight years with you.
These years are motion and fire. They are amorphous and finite at once, molten lava coursing through time, inexplicably and unapologetically racing and slowing to form the many facets of a spirit.
You are eight and I have been infatuated and tormented by you since that first blush of pink on the plastic stick. It was in the tiny bathroom at work that I first saw it. Surrounded by cinderblock and overflowing brown, crumpled paper towels, I realized that you were inside of me, and my life changed.
It isn’t fair for me to weigh you down with the declaration that it was only after I learned about you that I truly loved myself, but it’s close to the truth. Having a baby feels like something that you do yourself, a personal best. My pregnancy with you, our pregnancy, yours and mine, suddenly made so much in life make sense; my body was strong, not big, my intensity was purposeful, not irrational. You grew inside of me along with my confidence and together we started two new lives.
I called you my Briar.
Now, as we barrel toward your ninth birthday, you are increasingly your own Briar. Relentlessly goofballish with a heart that can splinter from something as innocuous as a soft breeze ruffling a paper, a brilliant can-do attitude accented by unpredictable and crippling doubt, you are a riddle.
This year has been startling; we no longer anticipate milestones so much as we react to new phases. You back yourself into your closet and dress alone, then each morning as you leave your room you close the door securely behind you. You haven’t taken down the princess stickers or the old drawings, but you’ve obscured them slightly with Taylor Swift album art, school spirit bumper stickers, and warnings not to enter without permission. You sleep with your tattered pink blanket while Fleetwood Mac’s Landslide or Jason Mraz’ Sleeping to Dream or some equally heart wrenching song plays. The way you will lose yourself in lyrics and put your heart at risk again and again by offering it so plainly on your sleeve, unprotected and irresistible, haunts and inspires me. I rarely let my lips touch your face as I lean into kiss you because you often wake, not always gently. I am an intrusion.
I always knock.
The other night I was out for work and, as always happens, I steered the conversation to you girls. This impossibly long table of executives all softened and began talking about their kids, who ran the gamut from infant to older than I am. The man sitting next to me talked about meeting his son’s first girlfriend. He was blushing and shrugged his shoulders as he described how as a dad he didn’t know how to act or what to say. My breath caught as I realized that we are closer to you being that girlfriend than we are to you being our first baby.
See, we parents don’t have it all together. As you careen from child to young woman and as you visibly fight your instinct to shut me out with your urge to cuddle in my arms, I am struggling too. I am learning how to walk far enough behind you so that you feel free, but close enough that you know that I am there. Ready to wrap my arms around you or swing them at anyone who tries to hurt you.
Three years ago we sat together on our couch in the house we rented for the second half of your kindergarten year. You were practicing reading and you were stumbling over the syllables. A part of me wanted to scoop them up, to put the words easily in your mouth, erase the struggle. I remember not doing it, not taking over, but instead sitting and allowing you the time and space to form those perfect words—first one sentence, and then another. It was amazing and wonderful to hear the words tumble out of your mouth as your face lit up with each one.
Every day now I see you do new things, whether it’s the way that you defiantly make your hair hang over your eyes, cocking your head to make it even more so, or setting aside your game on the iPad to walk over and help Fin make a bed for her babies. You regale me with stories from school, nestled within your stories are clues. I discover who brightens a room for you, who weighs on your spirit. More and more I call upon myself to have the restraint to allow you to manage these things on your own. I would be lying if I didn’t say that I sometimes ache for the days of clutching you to my chest, of locking eyes with you for hours on end.
It all seemed so much simpler when you were a baby, but the thing that I am learning and hope that you are too is this—it isn’t the things that are simple or easy that we cherish. I don’t love you more on days when nothing goes wrong and you do everything that I ask. I don’t love you less on days that we both end up crying and I make a dinner that nobody likes. Racing on Thursday mornings to get to math club and trying on Monday afternoons to keep our shoes dry before Zumbatomics is stressful and we always make it by the skin of our teeth. It’s worth it. You are exploding with knowledge, gaining confidence in math and mastering the moves in the dance studio. I am grateful to have this time, but I am every bit as excited to begin to hear more about your days through your words.
Listening to you, whether you are singing or talking, is a thing I never imagined having when you were a baby and I love it, and you, beyond measure.
Brava, Briar. Brava!
For more from the This is Childhood series you can visit the links below.
Aidan Donnelley Rowley Age 1
Kristen Levithan Age 2
Nina Badzin Age 3
Galit Breen Age 4
Allison Slater Tate Age 5
Bethany Meyer Age 6
Tracy Morrison Age 7
Age 8 inspired by Briar
Denise Ullem Age 9
Lindsey Mead Age 10
Tags: Briar, huffington post, life, This is Childhood
This is all so true and so amazing. I loved eight. It’s a powerfully, beautiful age. So sweet yet so complicated.
You nailed this.
She is so lovely.
Brava indeed. xoxo
Tracy, thank you so much. Sean and I were talking about how amazing it’s been to read this series. Your post last week is both familiar with Briar and on the horizon for Ave. Thank you for sharing seven and commenting on my 8. xo
Motion and fire. Indeed. Blinding, bright. I love this. xoxo
Thank you, Lindsey. I love this life we have surrounded by these amazing people.
Oh Amanda, breath taking. Just breath taking. xo
Thank you, Galit. She has always taken my breath, so it makes sense.
I am personally biased, Galit, but I love that it is you who wrote “8″; our children are the exact same age
As I read this post (with heart thumping) I am also mentally preparing for my little guy’s entry into the world of 9 within a week. Why does it all go so fast?
This is our life, that you capture here so perfectly: “More and more I call upon myself to have the restraint to allow you to manage these things on your own.”
And this: “It all seemed so much simpler when you were a baby, but the thing that I am learning and hope that you are too is this—it isn’t the things that are simple or easy that we cherish. I don’t love you more on days when nothing goes wrong and you do everything that I ask. I don’t love you less on days that we both end up crying and I make a dinner that nobody likes. Racing on Thursday mornings to get to math club and trying on Monday afternoons to keep our shoes dry before Zumbatomics is stressful and we always make it by the skin of our teeth. It’s worth it.”
You just described our year, our ferociously fast and incredible year
Thanks for this!
Yikes, Amanda, so so sorry – I clicked here through Galit’s post and thought Galit had written it!
Loved this, and so sorry for my confusion!
No, worries. Loved your comment and I adore Galit, so it all works out
“inexplicably and unapologetically racing and slowing to form the many facets of a spirit.”
Exquisite prose. True and beautiful.
A glorious nod to Eight. An age that I’m glad I get to do one more time.
xoxo
Thank you, Denise. It will be fascinating to see how my other two wear 8, Briar’s version has been a piercing joy.
I love this series. I have four children and have been able to relate to them all. This one really hit home, because my daughter (my only girl) is eight. It’s so bittersweet, isn’t it? Even more so, because they grow up so much faster than we did! Beautiful (goose bumps) writing.
The bittersweet would undo me if it weren’t built on such joy.
The first photo captures it all – what a lovely post … my girls are almost 11 and just turned 15 … each year there is delight.
oops hit send … the time has truly flown and I have to remind myself to simply live in the moment.
It can be so hard to remember!
Wonderful, Amanda. And you are so right. When we have them as tiny, little babies, it’s so hard to imagine the people they will become – with their own words, their own thoughts, and their own opinions.
Yes!
You had me fighting back tears and struggling for breath at the first line of this piece. Incandescent.
Oh, thank you. I sometimes I associate my keyboard with tears, so often do I come to it and unlock my sorrow and joy.
This was so close to my heart. I just wrote today on my blog about letting go of our oldest, our son is 18 and just moved out. We still have three children, and each one we are in different stages of letting go.
I love the way that you write, Maggie.
Amanda,
I just love this. My oldest is 8 and a boy . . . some differences in what you wrote, but I have tell you—I see hints of my 6-year-old daughter–that independence, Taylor Swift, etc. It’s all starting now.
I would say that it goes fast, but it’s kind of amazing how the frames of these changes do slow enough that see them happening.
Briar has a lot of her mom in her.
I love you, babe.
Wonderful. Eight has been so hard for us, it;’s sweet to read of your journey through it.
xo
Love this. Love your writing, your sentiment, your girl, all of it. And I might need to just have one more girl so I can name her Briar. So so happy to get to know you and your writing through this wonderful series. xox
Thank you. Can’t wait to hear about your trip to Paris.
Before I became a mama I was a third grade teacher. In third grade most kids are 8 and it’s without a doubt a favorite age of mine. If I’d been a mom before a teacher, I certainly would’ve been a different kind of educator, but I also like to think that because I’ve taught I’m a better mom for it too. Tears usually filled my eyes at the end of each school year as I watched the kids leave the room for the last time as third graders: They overcame their fears of speaking in front of ‘just us,’ our quaint community of learners; they’d picked up on and learned to deliver sarcasm as well as constructive criticism; they’d learned math tricks, different ways to solve problems, and mastered most of their multiplication facts. They discovered the awesomeness of both fiction and non fiction and loved that nightly reading could include magazine articles. They discovered cliques and learned to adapt to personal quirks and knew it was ok to cry over the death of a pet. They are just on the cusp of still needing us so much while still wanting to set themselves free. An awesome age indeed:)
This may very well go down as one of my favorite comments of all time. I read it in the school parking lot after dropping off my two big girls. I wept. Thank you so much.