Just A Man

Genevieve's father has been on my mind a lot recently. There is more than one reason why this might be. Certainly another failed attempt at a relationship will call him to mind, but I think that it's rather this incident:

Genevieve likes to play in "Mama's room." We go up to the attic, I sit on my bed with a book or a magazine or a newspaper and play music on the BlackBerry, and she runs around, pulling things out of drawers and off of shelves and hangers. Sometimes I don't read like I'm supposed to; sometimes I watch her frenetic activity, driven to fever pitch by the sheer delight of playing around in "Mama's tings."

I keep a picture of Jim in my nightstand. It used to be on the nightstand, but when he disappeared, I moved it into the drawer and there it has stayed. I hadn't actually thought about it in quite some time.

Last week, my little girl found the picture. It was buried amongst the accumulated detritus of a year and a half, but she found it. She is nothing if not tenacious. I was actually reading, this day, so when she held up the picture and announced loudly, "Picture of man!" I had to look up to see what she was talking about.

My breath caught. I literally could not breath in for a full five seconds. She brought the picture back down, so she could study it again. She did so for a good length of time. Then she looked back up at me and said, "Just a man."

And then she tossed the picture to the side.

I burst into tears. I couldn't help it. Genevieve was incredibly startled; she climbed up on the bed, leaned against my back, and stroked my hair and exhorted me "No sad, Mama. No cry."

I'm the mother-of-the-year. Letting my not-yet-two-year-old comfort me.

I did pull myself together pretty quickly (for me, anyway) but he's definitely been on my mind since.

Something I've never really told anyone: I'm not actually sure I know anything about the man. I was deeply, completely, hopelessly, helplessly in love with him, and I realize now that I might not even know his real name. That's the real reason I've not made any serious attempts to find him. I did quite a bit of investigating on my own, a year and a half ago, and what I discovered rocked the foundations of my world.

His house, might not be his house. His name, might not be his name. I may know nothing true about the man whose DNA composes half the genetic material of my child.

I may have been quite thoroughly duped. He may be sitting somewhere, laughing to himself about how easy that dumb American girl was. It is a possibility I can no longer fully ignore. I'd like to think that if he is out there somewhere, he feels some pang of regret for what he did. To that end, I do still email him once a month (or, maybe once every other month) with a few pictures and some choice anecdotes.

This unbroken stream of unreturned communication has turned him into something of a priest, or a god, for me. I confess my sins to him. It's something I always did; he always did know all my secrets. But this is different. I have no expectation of ever hearing from him again. He is a non-entity, but one I still feel immeasurably close to. I tell him everything now without hesitation, without remorse, without anything at all except relief. Knowing that he can never, never pass judgment on me because of what he's done, I feel absolved after each of these missives.

I imagine this is how people feel when they talk to God. Or go to confession. I do neither, these days, but I do email my daughter's father.

A Mini Me.

While I may still be a little apprehensive of this whole motherhood thing, I must confess: I love my baby.



She's not really a baby anymore, which might account for the outpouring of affection I feel for her at this particular juncture. She's a toddler now, a tiny little person, with enough personality for something 10 or 15 times her size. And it's a personality I like.



My baby is brash and assertive and fearless. She runs, she jumps, she climbs, she recites at the top of her lungs without the least hint of timidity or caution.



My father is the one that spends the most time with her, and he took her to the playground last week. The weather is finally getting warm enough for that to be a pleasant experience again. Thank god. This child needs about the same amount of space a wild horse needs to be truly happy.

Anyway, they're at the park, and she's on the swings, swingingswingingswinging and giggling with delight. When, all of a sudden, her giggles give way to spontaneous recitation. At the top of her lungs, while her grandpa continues to push her in rhythm, my not-yet-two-year-old (apparently) recited her alphabet (only missing three or four letters) and the first two verses of "Rock-a-bye Baby In A Treetop" (without missing a word).

What. The. Hell.

According to my father, other parents within earshot stood agape. I don't blame them; I would have, too. (I have since had the pleasure of hearing her recite "Rock-a-bye Baby In A Treetop." It is a thing to be hold, I'll have you know.)


And I believe the alphabet bit of the story, too, after this weekend. We get home from grocery shopping, we're putting the groceries away. My mom is having a medical test done this week and she's going to be on a broth-and-jello diet for few days, so we bought lots of Jell-o. Lots. We never have Jell-o in the house.

Genevieve has never seen a box of jello before. But she picked one up and announced to me (again, at the top of her lungs- we're still working on the "inside voice" concept) that is was "jelly."

I think my jaw actually dropped.

Yeah, she got it wrong, but she was damn close. SHE'S NOT TWO YET.

What. The. Hell.

My baby is brash and fearless. My baby takes no prisoners, asks for what she wants (ok, she demands it, but we're working on needs first, manners second), likes to be read to, dances, and has begun to try to sing along with me when I sing nursery rhymes at her. This is a child that I can get into.

And she's sweet. Despite the brashness and the boldness and the demanding, she's so incredibly loving. We've been dog-sitting for a friend's black lab; her and the dog have become fast friends. She has spent the last 24 hours announcing that "Moonpie needs a hug" and then proceeding to walk up the dog, wrap her arms around whatever part she can get to, and lay her had on Moonpie's back. She does it with particular alacrity whenever Moonpie cries, which is frequently, since she's been dumped in this strange house for the weekend.

Her empathy takes my breath away.

She knows when I need a hug, too. And she usually brings tears to my eyes when she wraps both her little arms and her little legs around me and squeezes and tells me "Don't be sad, Mama."

Indeed. What on earth do I have to be sad about? I have the best little girl in the world.

Work-in-Progress

I am a work-in-progress. There's nothing at all complete or finished or polished about me. I say the wrong things at the wrong times, I stay out too late, I don't get enough sleep, I can be unbelievably crass and at other times inexcusably thoughtless. I let go too easily, or else I hang on too long.

Most notably, I make the same mistakes, over and over and over again. Each time, it feels like a new mistake. But it's not. It's the same one, dressed up in new packaging so my poor pathetic and remarkably insecure head can fool itself into thinking that it's not about to do a real number on my long-suffering heart, who always seems to bear the brunt of these mistakes I make.

(If my body parts were relationship archetypes, my head would be the wife beater and my heart the battered wife. Right down to my head always telling my heart, "This is your fault. You deserve this." No joke. Ha.)

But I do. I make the same mistake, time and time again. I think that if I care enough, someone will care about me. I think that if I can just give enough, I'll get something back. In a far less positive light, you might say that I have a tendency to attach to anyone that shows me the least affection. God knows why, but I seem to be starved for attention. I just want someone to notice me, care, and continue to do so in perpetuity.

Isn't that what love is?

But this is not about love. I don't want to talk about love. Talking about love is like dancing about architecture.

This is about my eager-puppy syndrome, the one that keeps coming back after it's been kicked. This is about my attention-whorish bids for attention when I'm feeling down. This is about the fact that I seem to have no boundaries. I will give anyone whatever they ask of me, if they just hint that they might, at some point, maybe, in the future, reciprocate.

That's just bad business sense, right there. Can you believe I work in accounting? I can't. It's a good thing I don't set policy, just balance accounts. We'd be bankrupt.

I am bankrupt. I've given away so much for nothing but IOU's that turned out to be not worth the ink they were written with. I've given away huge chunks of my heart, of my self-respect, of my energy. And I don't really have enough left any more to cover my responsibilities. I am emotionally bankrupt. Also exhausted.

But how does one unlearn the behavior patterns of a lifetime? I don't even know where they come from; I got plenty of love and affection and attention as a child. I was not an abused youth.

How do I unlearn this impulse to give and give and give and hope that someday it'll come back to me? How do I forget everything I believe about karma and do unto others? And do I really want to?

No.

Why don't the rest of you join my world. Because, while I may be occasionally needy and while I may be occasionally childish and while I may occasionally display a level of immaturity that shocks the senses, we would all be much better off if we all gave instead of taking, if we all sometimes or even often did things without having a firm expectation of reciprocation in mind.

A little naivete goes a long way towards making the world better.