My dear husband has recently posted photos of my 10.5 month old walking on Facebook. He is entirely adorable and we call him Frankenstein because he walks with his hands in the air as if pretending to be a monster. It is no doubt one of those things I will have to write in his baby book or it will be lost forever.
After watching my young son learn to walk and reading the novel "Beloved" by Toni Morrison for about the 10th time, I am contemplating the idea of possession of our children. It seems to me that from the moment of conception, our children are working to take leave of us. Motherhood is the only job I know of where being successful means that you make yourself totally unnecessary.
When you first find out that you are pregnant, you are overcome with the repercussions that all that you have done (or failed to do) can bring about. I didn't know I was pregnant with Luke (and had no plans to conceive again) so I did not take any vitamins or eat all the right foods. I had even had a few drinks before learning he was on the way! Having known every intimate detail of my other childrens conception left me totally unprepared for the feeling of this person taking root long before I realized he was on board.
The feeling of being pregnant is almost indescribable. You feel as if your body is being taken over by something that is part of you...and yet separate. First nourishment goes to the baby, it can take calcium from your bones, iron from your blood, all the nutrients it needs. It is the first lesson a Mother receives in giving to her children first and herself second.
The baby is born and takes leave of it's Mothers body--but the need for closeness (yours and theirs) is acute. A baby needs his Mother's milk almost as much as he needs the nourishment from the placenta. It is a special thing--the milk changes with the age and needs of the baby. It varies from feeding to feeding . It is something made by the Mother exclusively for this child at this time. When the character of Sethe was violated and her milk taken from her--I felt her rage--when so much had been taken from her, that this part of her mothering ability was being taken from her as well.
It seems that a baby growing into a child is a succession of leave taking from it's Mother. It begins with the fact that the need to always be held diminishes. They begin to sit up on their own, to crawl, and then to walk. I guess that is why it is with a bit of sadness that I watch my little boy walking around the house so soon. This is concrete evidence that a baby is a gift for just a little while and with each step he moves a little farther away from me. He is his own person, he never truly was mine to keep forever.
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