Time and the River Flowing

When we moved from Bartlett into this house, June 1998, we were welcomed by two neighbor girls, ages 5 and 11. They brought me a plate of cookies and we chatted for a few minutes. We've watched them, and their older brother, grow through the years. We've watched all three go off to college. A few weeks ago their mother told me the boy was going off to the Marine Corps in August. He wants to be a helo pilot. The baby is on summer break from her freshman year of college. The shocker was the parents were hauling freight for their older girl, who is off to Florida to start medical school. Where does the time go?

This morning, as she does every morning when she wakes up, Pooh came downstairs and crawled up into my lap. Every time she does this I think back to the first time I came downstairs before she woke up. Before that morning I had lay in bed and waited for her to wake up and crawl in with me. But for whatever reason, this particular morning I didn't. Pooh came downstairs crying because I wasn't where she expected to find me. I held her and comforted her and said that if I wasn't in bed I would be downstairs, and that "I would never leave her or forsake her." I said the same thing every morning until she was no longer crying when she came downstairs. As long as I was where she expected to find me, she was okay.

I think about how much a child needs consistency in his or her life. A child's entire view of the world and whether or not it's a trustworthy place depends on consistency. When Pooh was a baby, I only had to hear her fuss and I was there for her. Diaper changes, bottles, getting her up from her nap, holding her on my lap all happened as soon as possible after I knew she needed them. I wanted her to be secure knowing that I was always there for her.

I'm not sure there's a point to all this, except to realize that, at least as I see it, a baby's caretaker (which I was for 10 hours a day, 5 days a week), if he or she cares at all about the child, has to be ready, even eager, to drop whatever they're doing to care for the child, especially, say, until the child is 3 or so. It's as though one has to give up everything else for the time the baby is awake. It was a real awakening for me, even though we'd raised three girls of our own. Of course, like almost every sacrifice, there's a reward. For me, it's knowing that, following closely behind her mother, I'm the epitome of her comfort zone. I don't think I could ask for more than that.