afloat

nine months old. he has now been out of my body for as long as he was in. so to speak. i mean, who knows how long he was in there really. because due dates change and i wonder sometimes if we are all just guessing when it comes to things beyond our control. things like earthquakes and fallopian tubes and the sun rising and setting. i'm a sure of one thing: time is sticky. it passes and nothing changes and then you look back and you realize everything is different and you wonder how you didn't notice all along.

our daughter is becoming a person. with these spontaneous outbursts of creativity and rage and wicked humor and i wonder how long she will let us control her environment. i think about how some parents argue that letting their child go to the park by themselves at the age of seven is a good thing because it fosters independence and that they are at greater risk of collateral damage riding in a car than they are at the hands of adults who want to take advantage of them. oh, how i wish that were true. see, car accidents are reported for the most part. adults who feed on the innocence of children are not. for the most part. this much i know is true.

i watch her in the bath, from a bit of a distance now. my relinquishing of control is measured by the angle of my peripheral vision and if i see her on the playground and she runs in and out of my eyeline, i tend to panic and circle the structure like a polar bear, sniffing. the mere fact that she can sit in a bathtub without being held up is mind boggling. the idea that she can run and jump at a pace that can be hard to keep up with is terrifying and liberating and i sit up at night and i think i will never be ready for teenagers. because i know what i was doing at that age. and if there were a program in bad decision making, i would have a phd. 

b tells me not to worry. that i managed to make it out just fine. especially considering some extenuating circumstances which he says helped fuel the fire of testing limits. he is being nice. because he knows that i will more than likely need to be sedated once my children decide they want to spend some time somewhere without my supervision. once i can no longer simply reach my arms into the water to keep them afloat.