On Maternal Bondage

When I was pregnant, I worried a great deal about "bonding." I wanted the Boy to bond to me. I wanted to bond with him. I wanted us to BOND. And so I fretted about childbirth, and I breastfed as long as I could. I read to him and rocked him and cuddled him and sang to him. I nursed him in bed and napped with him. I walked miles with him.

I have days, particularly when he's teething--which, he's still teething, cutting those two on the top that have lain just under the surface of his gums, painting them purple but not breaking the surface for a MONTH now--and it's the teething that will make you all run and cry, "SAVE YOURSELVES!!!" But I have these days where I fantasize. About a PhD, an office, with a door I can close. Bookshelves lining the walls, filled with books. People who ask what I think and then listen to what I have to say. The pervasive quiet that allows you to hear the air conditioner and the hum of a computer. The ability to read at a desk without a solid head knock knock knocking against the bottom side of the desk, sturdy hands griping fistfuls of my pants to pull himself up on my knees, his expectant little face peering up at me as if to say, "But Mama, but Mama, I am HERE."

A tiny seed of guilt forms in my heart when I have these fantasies, and I shed that guilt and drop it into a little jar that I keep in a drawer in my mind. ping ping ping go the seeds. One day when the Boy is grown, I will plant a garden with those seeds and guilt flowers will bloom to be pollinated by butterflies.

And then, at night, when the house is quiet and dark--just the whirring of the fans--I think over the day in my mind. The things accomplished, others left undone, the books read and read and read again, the games played, the ringing of his laugh in my head, his expressions of puzzlement and delight. And as tired as I am, I smile and want to hold him. Some days are just like that. I want to put a stopper in time and say, "Nope. No progress for you today. Today is mine, to keep him small and funny."

I worried about bonding with him. How little I knew the ties that would bind me. I look at his little body. He is bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh--my body made his body, fed it, nurtured it, protected it. I am bound with living ties, in blood and nerves.

I wonder sometimes about those mothers who adopt...how much stronger their ties must be. I had forty weeks. They have been searching and working for that child for years.

He will grow up. Oh he will, time is fickle and I cannot stop him. He will go out into the world and live. And that is what I want. I want him to live. I want him to experience life, even though I know that it means that he will be hurt. That is what it means to live, and I would not have him remain a child forever knock knock knocking to be let in to the world of adulthood. But I am curious. I wonder what he will see with his eyes that I have not seen with mine. I wonder what he will hear, that I chose not to hear because I so loved the quiet. I wonder who he will love and lose and what he will learn from those experiences.

I know. I know that that time is coming. But today? Today is mine.