Day 30: The complicated truth about parenting

02/06/18

Task—Write about innocence

Because Beck needed a short five-hour stay in the NICU and I needed a little extra time to get my temperature back up after surgery, I didn’t get a chance to really study him and memorize his face until a few hours after he was born. When I finally held him in my arms, I remember letting him lie on his back in my lap and trying to savor every part of his little face. He was so perfect, even his nose was completely clean and clear. I felt a tremendous need to shelter him, to keep him just this way without any marks, scratches, bumps, or bruises. He was the most innocent and pure little being my eyes had ever absorbed.

About 10 days after he was born, he woke up one morning with a gunky eye. I found a washcloth, and I wiped it clean, and the gunk came back within a few minutes. I was horrified. How on earth was I going to explain to anyone that I had my baby 10 days, and I’d already marred him beyond repair? Because I had never seen pink eye, I had a sinking feeling I was looking at it. Did we have a dirty house? Had I not been clean and careful when I changed his diaper? I had been washing my hands every time, right? I was pretty sure whatever was going on with his eye meant I was a terrible mom and now, everyone would know. Desperate to find out what was going on, I did the only thing I knew to do, I went to Google. I probably searched something like “10-day-old eye gunk” and then went from there. To my surprise, I didn’t find much about pinkeye, but I found quite a bit about clogged tear ducts. There were a few at-home remedies we could try. Both cleaning his eye with breastmilk and keeping the crud clear with a warm washcloth seemed to get equal reports of success.

We happened to have some friends visiting that day, and I kept working at the eye without noticing any real progress. I remember the activity of friendship fun spinning around me, and I couldn’t process any of it. My mind felt like a rocket ship speeding through thoughts of fear for Beck’s eye and the distress of achieving unfit parenthood so early in the game.

At the end of the day when the company cleared out, I had a major breakdown with Wes. Something about ruining our son right out of the gate and how it was all my fault he would never be perfect again. Wes hadn’t been too worried about the eye, but he could see from the tears rolling down my cheeks it was time to take it seriously. He told me to go for a walk and calm down and to leave Beck with him. He grabbed a washcloth and a Q-tip and got cozy with Beck on the couch. I remember stopping to look at the two of them before I walked out the door. I felt like I was watching Wes in the middle of one of his chemistry experiments. Under the soft glow of our living room lamp, Beck lay on a pillow in Wes’s lap while Wes scientifically studied Beck’s tiny baby face, the cloth and Q-tip at the ready for tear-duct-clearing. To this day, it’s one of the most beautiful images my mind can conceive. In that moment, as I reached for the door handle to walk out into the night and breathe, I believed, “Ok, between the two of us, we’ll get him through this world unharmed.”

Beck is nearly two and a half, and I feel like I am only starting to get a glimpse at understanding the beautifully complicated job of parenting. Right now, we’re navigating playing well with others, sharing snacks and toys without having a fit, sitting down in the grocery cart while Mom shops, showing frustration without hitting and biting (I feel like our house needs a sign like the ones you see posted in warehouses, saying we are four months bite-free). And though he’s hit me and sunken his teeth in my bicep as if it were a turkey leg, when another child does that to him, my heart breaks. It’s all I can do to hold my composure together and show him reassurance and care and find the words to explain those are not okay things to do and not okay things to be done to you. But the scary part is somewhere in the back of my mind when we are going through those moments, I think we start with these kinds of frazzling experiences because they give our patience a challenging work out, but truly, this is the easy part. As he gets older, how will I shield him from cyberbullying, and how will I teach him kindness, so he doesn’t become a cyberbully? How will I keep him from abusing whatever substance is hot when he’s in middle school, high school, and college? How will I teach him to be respectful of women? How do I keep his little heart from ever be broken? And what boggles my mind is I already have the answer lying underneath this myriad of questions because I know these questions are the same ones my parents had about me. I can teach him the virtues of someone with good character. I can raise him in the ways of my faith and pray he takes it personally and uses it to guide his decisions. I can present solid loving consequences when he makes poor decisions, and I can be realistic, honest, and welcoming, so he feels comfortable sharing his hardships with me. But, the hard truth is that trials will come Beck’s way; I can’t shield him from pain.

We come into this world so pure and innocent. So perfect. For the luckiest of us, our innocence chips away slowly, naturally. We get to start with eye gunk and work up to hearing the word no and navigating sharing with our friends and the heartbreak of teenage love. Some are not so lucky and never have their innocence from the start. For all of us, there is hope because in the midst of the pain there is so much beauty. I see God in those glimpses, and I see him reaching out to hold us wherever we are. I think he’d probably like to shield us, too, but He knows if he did save us from every hardship, our lives here wouldn’t mean much. It wasn’t long that I got to save the belief Wes and I would keep Beck forever unharmed. He got over the eye gunk, and we trimmed his fingernails the next night and drew blood. His index finger told the tale of his hacker parents for a week. I have come to accept I cannot shield Beck any more than my parents could shield me, but I can pray for him, walk beside him, and do my best to show him strength and love. Always unconditional love. Always.