Poet Vs Parent:
It took me eighteen years to get through high school and twenty-two years to get through college. Interrupted only by the birth of my daughter whom I spent time raising. However, if you do the math it only took four years longer to get a degree than my diploma; thus, I am right on track.
You may ask, “what this has to do with the blog?” The answer is this: I gave up my college career because I felt raising a family was more important. Therefore, it is with any wonder that I refused to give up my college again for any matter.
Having decided after the labor of my first child that a second was not anywhere in the future, I set off to once again find myself. No longer “so and so’s wife” or “what’s her name’s mother.” I now was going to make a name for myself!
Now as fate would have it, I met and fell in love with your Bibliothecary. Here was a match made in heaven! A partner who not only did not mind if you read in bed, but actually joined you in the task!
Needless to say it wasn’t long before the shuffling of pages set ignition to passions and sparked a fire that just couldn’t be extinguished. Common interests grew, including helping to raise the first offspring into a successful adult. Or at least one who lives in her own rented apartment, has a job and pays her own bills! Whew!
What a whirlwind of a romance. Now a year from graduation and I alas find myself planning for yet another prodigy to enter my life. So, what was a few months off from school. I could give birth a second time and still have my career. After all, I had twenty years of parenting under my belt and felt that balancing family and career would be a piece of cake! Especially since this new endeavor was really the Biliothecary’s idea. After all, I just had to support, and deliver and once in a while rock it while he sat to the task of nurturing and molding the lil' progeny to his liking.
Little did I remember how difficult and exhausting labor pains truly are and how, even with a partner as supportive as your Bibliothecary is, that all the work actually had to come from me while he sat on the side lines and coached. He even had rest periods while I labored from sun up to sundown with little rest in between.
But I am happy to say that on June 11, 2005 we gave birth to a healthy child and our friends and close aquaintances shared in our joy and celebrated this momentous occasion with us. August came and I resumed my studies and until now have only occasionally put in my “two cents” and rocking hours.
I must say to our Bibliothecary that as a poet (Robert Frost?) you seem to do ok. After all, I believe it was MY poem that actually brought us together (of course this is coming from Elizabeth Bishop). However, as a parent, you outweigh me in the balance. Perhaps it is the fine example of the “mom” that made you so good at an otherwise difficult task.
I have experienced the labor (May 30th -June 10th 2005), the arrival (June 11, 2005), the long torturing nights of little sleep from the pain and frustration of teething, and also the first “sitting up alone” ( March 26, 2005).
Today as I sat reading over the scrapbook you have created and shared with everyone here, I realize we no longer are nourishing an infant, but I now am beholding this cute little toddler. Where has the time gone?! What kind of mother have I been? Here you have taken our offspring on trips and brought back all kinds of treasures that I am just discovering today. I feel that I have missed out on so much! It was for this reason alone I never wanted a second hatch. After all, would there be as much devotion given to the younger brood as to the first spawn? My first instinct told me “no”. While I can honestly say first instincts are the best, I can also say never judge a book by its cover. You have to read it to appreciate its value. I understood this when we met and I searched your soul from cover to cover. Our nights of sententious dialogue left me desirous of a life-long commitment to your very person. Now, I find that I have been negligent of my charge, and thus make this new covenant. I do solemnly vow to cherish you and our progeniture and provide you with the necessitous consideration deserving of a sire and his offspring.
All my love,
The “sometimes too silent” Silent partner
ps. Did you give the “used treasures” I spoke of to our babe yet?
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Isn't she the cutest!
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