 Ch-Ch-Changes: A Guest Entry |
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It's time for another guest entry. This one was written by my friend Maryelizabeth (whom I used to call Annie here), with whom I first bonded at a slumber party in the fifth grade because we were the only two people who realized that we were going to be wholly traumatized by the horror movie marathon and sagely tried to distract ourselves from Freddie and Jason. We've been through a lot, and this entry is the first time she's really opened up to me about what -- besides a screaming baby -- keeps her up in the middle of the night these days.
I have never adapted well to change. The first time I left home for any extended period of time I was in junior high. I went to a camp with all of my closest friends from school, which at most was a two and half hour drive from home. Rather than enjoying my early tenuous independence and carefree time with friends, I spent much of the camp session yearning to be home where everything was safe and familiar. I was the first of our group of friends to leave home for college. The night before I left, my two best friends spent the night. We never went to sleep that night because we all realized that our lives were about to change dramatically for better or worse, or maybe because we were being silly as we so often were and still are. I clearly remember though the sense of dread I felt as my parents and I pulled away from the house with my father’s pick-up truck packed to the hilt. I returned home after one semester. I think I thought in some childish way that by returning home I could stop time through sheer will. Of course, once I was home, I realized that everything had changed and that no matter how fiercely I clung to the way things were, there was no going back. My life has undergone a series of dramatic changes over the past year, and I worry about the implications this will have for my friendships with my two closest friends. The past year has not been easy for any of us. Of course, it seems like each year gets more complicated the older we get. That seems like a certainty, so this should console me given my fear of change. Despite my fear of upheaval, I made the decisions last spring to have a baby and get married in that order. The former decision has turned out to be the most wonderful and terrifying choice I have ever made, and the other decision, well, I am hopeful still that it was a good choice. I was sitting on the couch with my mother last night during a rare moment of Bean (that’s my baby girl) quiet, and I told my mom that I did not feel like a mother yet. My mom sagely asked, “Are you sure?” Without a whole lot of thought, I stated, “Yes,” emphatically and added, “Maybe I’ll feel more like a mom when she’s older.” Later that night, as I tossed and turned in bed, trying to get comfortable in my state of perpetual sleep deprivation, I thought about this. My two best friends are like family to me, and I want to believe that I will still be the same friend to them and that our relationships won’t shift and change. I don’t want to be that friend that has a baby and overnight goes from talking about books and movies and all the stuff that has held us together as friends all these years to talking about dirty diapers and car seats. Maybe this is why I want to believe that I haven’t changed. But in spite of myself, I am a different person, or maybe it’s just my heart that has changed. I love my baby girl more than I ever thought possible. I find myself staring transfixedly at her for very long periods of time. When she sleeps, with her little mouth wide open, I get a lump in my throat sometimes. (Of course all of this adoration generally takes place before 5 pm, when my precious little angel lets out bloodcurdling screams of such ferocity for two unrelenting hours every single day that I am surprised our neighbors haven’t banded together to have us evicted from our home.) Every day my daughter looks different, and I feel like she is growing so fast. Not surprisingly, I feel like all of this is happening too fast. I want my daughter to stay tiny for just a little bit longer. I want to just grab whatever force it is that makes everything happen so fast and squeeze it until it stops. (Although, if you asked me if I felt this way between the hours of 5 and 7 pm, I would likely deny all of the aforementioned.) And I guess this is how I’ve changed. I don’t think I ever realized that I could ever love anyone this much. I wonder how having this baby will change my friendships with two people who have been like family to me, with our ups and downs, periods of estrangement, and times of unimaginable joy. I don’t have any answers yet, but I would like to believe that our triumvirate will prevail. I am optimistic that when we have our annual reunions, I will get my wish, and time will cooperate for once and it will be like we were never apart, until we have to return again to our respective ever-evolving, complicated lives.
Much like with the Shelley retrospective, looking up old pictures in shoeboxes and albums is such an overwhelming task that I just picked some and went with it. To try to capture them all would be impossible.
Maryelizabeth is currently working on hatching a plot to return to the dirty South. Keep your fingers crossed.
About this time in ...
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