Bébé
How is the anxiety level in parents when kids start to sleep on their own beds? How do they go for the first couple of nights? Their effort there is in pieces, not quick-ones or one-offs. The event has its gradual pace. But isn’t it a big deal though? Or not so much to throw a ruckus? Isn’t it worth a conversation? — this milestone of mixed feelings on which, parent’s minds are set to ponder and cherish for months to come? Isn’t it a rehearsal for the offspring’s eventual move-out? — a prelude to the main event? — a pantomime of chaos? — a realization of departure? Put it simply, isn’t it an acknowledgment of the brief woe to come?
Surely the same set of emotions are not felt across the board and not all of us feel the same. A subset of those at most. Each parent has their specific set of touchpoints - some mimic the most and others, unique. One can only live to talk about and cope with one’s own and therefore, here I am, writing about it, doing my bit of the dance.
For our sweetest thing since the day she was born, I wished to be courageous and am truly awestruck to realize how much she has taken up to it. I have prayed my own prayers that she would one day take on all things incoming with a bold embrace. I set my heart for her spirit to grow, so she would listen to it when the time comes & let it fire up in the heart to make her own path in life. Moments are brilliantly joyful when I stand by to witness the same manifestations in her - as if we’re aligned in the celestial sense and I’m just full of nothing but unbounded pride. An unadulterated sense of delight inundates me followed by a combination of goosebumps and shivers through the back…
As parents, every time our fledglings face up to a remarkable challenge of sorts, we want them to figure out their own way and we crave for it to be bold. Would they come out to the other side, all figured out by themselves? — we keep on wondering full-time. While they face such tests, we brace ourselves, stand aside we hold our breath in the hope of glory. We pray in our own way and we feel a strange sensation sweetly kicking in.
I perhaps, like others, witness the past flashing by my eyes at moments like these. In a Proustian reaction, I reminisce on the fleeting moments from my long-gone childhood, the way of my own Becoming. Many moons later, in a state of quiet bliss, I re-live it somehow by observing silently my baby’s process.
Isn’t life at its best for us parents? When by the tiny hands, we are shown to a place of utter calm and assurance? As if the roles get reversed and we become the children and them, parents.
