On Being a Mom

by Molly Macy

Suddenly I'm a mom and I'm chasing down my baby before he makes it to the electrical socket.. before the 4 year old trips over him... before he touches the newborn on the face. I'm chasing him down on my hands and knees.. only people with babies feel completely normal about crawling around on their hands and knees in public. I'm closing in on him and he crawls even faster, squealing and laughing. A guy hands my baby a book. It's like he is offering to help me out without giving the verbal acknowledgment that I am not able to control my kid. It's a nice gesture, unfortunately Sebastian doesn't feel like reading. A song starts up and Sebastian lets me bounce him up and down for a while. The commotion stops and he no longer wants to be held.. "Mmmm!!" he cries, searching the room for food. I'm sure someone is shaking up a bottle somewhere or opening up a Ziploc of Cheerios.. he's heard it. He begins to squeak and panic. That's my cue to let him crawl. And he crawls.. faster and farther.. approaching more strangers and children.. completely naive to any type of danger... feeling trusting and loving of anyone who comes in his path. He is the sweetest thing in the world. He makes it to the bookshelf at the front of the room and starts taking out all the books.. tossing them on the floor, one by one.. in front of the entire room of children and parents who are trying to sit quietly and listen to the woman reading the story. Again, I'm dashing across the room to get him.. hunched over and slightly jogging.. as if that will cause people to stare any less. He squeals and cries, not wanting to be captured. I throw him onto my left hip (it comes naturally) and hold him with my left hand, while using my right hand to put all the books back on the shelf. I bring him back to our seat. I know the crying will stop if I let him go. Everything starts up again from there. It's an exhausting cycle. He crawls up to a woman, grabs her shoe and says "hiii!".. she says hello back & smiles.. and then completely ignores him. He looks over at me proudly and smiles, while continuing to sit a foot in front of her.. patiently waiting for her to pay attention to him. Again my cue to go get him, bring him back, and set him down, only to witness his next great adventure. It's just a 30 minute story time, but that was the longest 30 minutes of the day for me today. I'm pretty sure it's not even a story time to him anymore. I think he's convinced it's a 30 minute marathon of trying to outrun mommy.

I'm not sure when it happened, but somehow suddenly, I'm a mom. Today I knew it for sure.