Quinn's nascent vocabulary gives me small glimpses at what is going on in her growing world. Hi! Wow. Woof woof woof. Moo. More? Beeee (baby)! Baba (her name for the dogs). Pea (the beginning of please). 'Tank (the start of tatanka, the buffalo photographed and framed on our wall).
Within the past month, she has become excited about books. She waddles to her shelves all day, choosing new ones and carrying them back across the room to hand to a reader. She grunts her wordless plea for you to sit where she can climb or be lifted into your lap. She reclines against you with a thud, waiting for you to read. She listens. She points. Occasionally, she offers an "Oh!" When you go too slowly, she turns the pages for you--impatiently.
While she is occupied with her books, I can squeeze her as much as I want, trying, admittedly with some desperation, to imprint her tinyness, her smell, her soft skin into my memory. How soon will she be grown?
Your children are not your children...
At school other people's daughters are also in our care. Daily they impress and inspire me, as well as leave me sick with worry. How to protect them all from this world? From each other and from themselves?
They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself.
Watching my baby grow into a toddler, so much like a kid already, I imagine so many victories for her. I imagine her to be kind and thoughtful. And yet, already, she shows signs of mischief, squinting her eyes at me menacingly when I attempt to prevent her from feeding her food to the dogs. She is cunning. She'll put something halfway in her mouth, look at me sweetly, as if to say, "Thank you. This is delicious." And then she'll turn a shoulder to me, believing herself to be out of my sight. She withdraws the food, walks quietly to the dogs' bed, looks back over her shoulder once more--victorious and threatening.
They come through you but not from you...
This is not the type of victory I imagine. I imagine she has nice friends. I imagine that people like her without fearing her; they admire her for her kindness, her intelligence, her athleticism, her artistry. As the first-time mother, I am in awe of her great potential, enjoying this time that predates whatever reality she turns out to be.
And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.
Somehow, I have great faith that she will live a good and healthy life. That she will be happy and will make others happy. I have this faith despite the fact that she screams when she's frustrated, or bites me in a rage now and then, or looks me in the eye when she is throwing her dinner on the floor, or doesn't look me in the eye at all when I'm trying to extract some form, any form, of love.
Somehow I imagine Quinn growing into the woman I would like to be. And yet, I have no desire to dictate her course. I am eager to find out whom she wants to be...what she wants to do.
You may give them your love but not your thoughts,
For they have their own thoughts.
You may strive to be like them,
but seek not to make them like you.
And I'm sure the mothers of all of the borrowed daughters had these feelings too. That life would be good to their babies.
But, sometimes, life has not been good to them. They have been tested by worries, and cancers, and self-doubt. They have been left motherless. And fatherless. In some cases the babies themselves have been stolen away altogether. My heart aches for these mothers who must have all begun, as I have, in this place of confidence and hope and faith. This place with a view to a bright and cloudless future.
You may house their bodies
but not their souls,
For their souls dwell
in the house of tomorrow,
which you cannot visit,
not even in your dreams.
And so with these borrowed daughters, I do my best to bolster them. I do my best to help them be strong. I do my best to hide my own worries and weakness in hopes they will believe it's possible to believe in themselves…In hopes I will have practiced enough times to be convincing when it's my time to model these things for Quinn.
You are the bows
from which your children
as living arrows
are sent forth.
I want them all to have a clear path.
