Some thoughts.

Let me start by making this perfectly clear: I don't journal.

This is not so much a proclamation than a simple fact about my life. Don't get me wrong - I've tried. The countless diaries I own, housing 3, maybe 4 pages of attempted memoir followed by glaringly empty lines is proof positive that I do attempt to document my thoughts, activities, and emotions. But there is just no staying power, for reasons perhaps I will uncover within myself some day.

I do have one means of archiving: a "One Line A Day" memory book my mother gifted me with last spring (she knows my shortcomings all too well, given the book's title). I am comitted to jotting down simply one line every day - the Cliff's Notes version of the past 24 hours, if you will. There are five sections from top to bottom on each page, each saved for that particular date for five consecutive years. It's a neat idea, and something I can apparently manage to maintain. But true JOURNALING? The keeping of a DIARY? Nope. Can't do it.

But if I were to journal . . . .

If I were to journal, I would write about my son.

I would write about the past seven and a half months, and how the cliche of "how fast they grow up" grips me to my core; how it takes my breath away as I turn around and each time I do, he is exhibiting a new strength; a new side of his personality. How he looks like a kid. That I stop dead in my tracks as I witness myself writing things on my Baby Shopping List that I never anticipated him being ready for. Real foods. Larger clothes. I would write that he is about 5 minutes away from crawling, and our lives as we know it will again take another turn as he becomes - gulp -  mobile.

If I were to journal, I would be sure to include that over the past few months, I have noticed myself feeling a sense of pride in my abilities; especially to multi-task while being mindful of the moment. That I am experiencing an ever-increasing sense of confidence in this 'mothering' thing. Even in those moments where I am unsure...it is still under a general umbrella of "but hey... I think I know what I'm doing, here." And that's pretty cool.

I would joyfully jot down some of my very favorite things about him: the way he flails his arms and legs with something that can only be described as pure GLEE as I change him on the changing table; how, after he does something that makes me laugh, I notice the connections being made in his brain and that twinkle in his eye as he repeats it over and over so that I laugh more and more; seeing those 7 nubby teeth in his mouth every time he giggles; the way he looks after a bath, wrapped up in his lionhead-hooded towel, wet belly protruding from the terrycloth; the smell of his formula breath, stinky as it is, that is like a shot of endorphins through my system.

But more than any of that, if I were to journal, I would find myself writing about letting go. That the minute I eased up on my attempt to reign in and control things - his daily schedule, getting a certain number of ounces of food, length of naps, where to nap - was the minute he showed me what he needed; the minute he simply progressed beautifully and effortlessly, illustrating nature actively taking its course. I would write about looking at him playing in his exersaucer, sporting his car, train, and plane footie pajamas, and fully experiencing the enormous lump that forms in my throat as the tears of happiness well up in my eyes. Capture the moment like a snapshot in my heart as I feel it swell with love for this little boy of mine. How I am constantly looking forward to who he his becoming, while at the same time bidding the bittersweet goodbyes that speckle each day as he grows out of his babyhood, one cell at a time.


If I were to journal.

I love you, my Max.