Sandpapered Heart

by | Jan 3, 2012 | Little Parenting, MOTHERHOOD | 3 comments

  Little Laugh

It's a vivid memory.

Luca is in his highchair and I am feeding him. He must be around seven or eight months old.

Something happens. I do something funny. Or maybe he does. Either way, it's funny and we're laughing.

He has laughed before. By this age, he must have laughed a thousand times.

But this time is different. This time, the laugh comes straight from his belly. He is really belly laughing. He really gets the joke.

And something about the way he laughs is like sandpaper on my heart. It leaves me raw, exposed.

In that laughter, I see my son. Really see him. Not just as my baby but as a person. There is something so real, so human in that laugh.

He is so very beautiful and so very real in this moment and it exposes his vulnerability and along with it, mine.

He won't always be the baby that I can protect. Every day he grows faster towards his future. And it will be necessary for me to let him do that. By letting go.

It is such a vivid memory.

And now, I have two little people (and almost three) whose smallest actions can leave me with a sandpapered heart.

It's an agony only a parent can understand. An exquisite agony that you wouldn't trade for the world but that you know has left you forever more exposed.

Our children are real and eventually they will meet the world, which is also very real.

I am forever more exposed.

 

Hello friends

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I’m Angie!  I mum. I write. I wife. My husband would say this is the correct order.  He’s so neeeedy. I live with my family in Melbourne, Australia, where I complain about the weather for 90% of the year – but I can’t imagine living anywhere else. Except maybe in Lake Como, waving to my neighbours George and Amal each morning.

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3 Comments

  1. Mrs Karen T

    I hear you!! Your post makes me think of Claire Bowditch’s song, “My walking heart”… it always makes me gulp… And I have never felt more vulnerable in my life than as a mother!

    Reply
  2. greta @gfunkified

    Oh my gosh. The thought of my kids out in the big, bad, REAL world terrifies me. But, I guess it’s the unspoken oath we take, and our jobs as mothers to protect them as best we can.

    Reply
  3. Cate Rose

    So true. So very, very true. And now even a little bit more by your precious baby girl. x

    Reply

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