10:54 a.m.||||2004-03-11
I am so irritable I might die.
IN other news.
Alan, I don't have your phone number anymore - mine's under S ______ My mom's first initial and my last...) in P-burg, ok? I really really miss talking to you. could stand to, really. A lot.
This that follows I wrote yesterday before I was inflamed by madness.
It's going to be my birthday on Saturday. Ack.
Oh man.
I keep trying to scootch into line to type this out and the phone it just keeps on RINGING! The phone sits to the right of my console and I have to sliiiiiddddee back and forth between tasks.
You’d think I do this for a living or something.
Anyway. Some of you might remember my earliest ramblings about motherhood – back in the day when I first started writing this when Josh was six months old. (almost three- holy crap). I certainly went through the greatest variance of emotions in my life in the period of his infancy and very early toddlerhood…I remember trying to get a grip on rage, his and mine….trying to comprehend a wordless epic love that could be balance so turbulently against constant feelings of mediocracy and inferiority.
I knew right away that it was profound love but it didn’t always feel that way. As far as he was concerned, had we interviewed him as an infant, I think he would have returned something like “love? I don’t know about love. I think it’s more about need. You know. Deeply affectionate but severe and unrelenting need…” Infants are cute so we don’t murder them. They smell terrific, and they balance all that mind bending squalling with constant newness and softness. Do they cognitively love us? Of course not.
So, after all that up and down uncertainty of I think I love him but I can’t really stand him sometimes; and I would throw down my life for him right after I kill myself over him; and my life can never really fully contain this kind of love without me going completely insane – when all that subsides…it’s a miracle truly when, one day, quite simply, they love you back.
And the love affair, in my opinion, really begins.
People. Mothers. Fathers. All talk about the love affair they have with their children. In baby books, baby articles, baby magazines….and often it’s the immediate love affair they refer to. Or the post infancy love affair. Or some other love affair in between. And it is an affair of love all the way through, but in this case, we are talking about passion.. That skinful, devastating and deep feeling of betrothal that normally one associates with romantic love.
For me and Josh, the full on love affair started about six months – I mean, reciprocal, you know – and it’s blossomed into this