Holding My Breath
It has been a minute or two since large crowds made visions of the very worst nightmares dance through my head. "Come here, Alexis," I would say. "You have to hold my hand when it's busy like this."
And she would work her way through a sea of people to oblige, but begrudgingly.
The girl has an independent streak a mile wide, even as she spends her every waking moment trying to crawl back in my uterus. Heck, she spends a lot of her sleeping moments doing exactly that. Still, she wants to explore the world and she wants to do it a few feet behind or ahead of me. She clings and she clings and she clings, but she also puts more and more distance between herself and me.
There is no doubt that she doesn't need me to guide her through her every day.
She walks to her bus stop alone. If I peak out the door as she skips down the sidewalk, she'll yell back, "Mom! Go to work!"
Alexis closes the door to her bedroom every morning and acts as if I have committed a horrible sin if I walk into her room. "Mom! I'm getting dressed!" she'll say. She doesn't need my help. She doesn't want my help.
"Why are you here?" she'll ask between dance classes. She wants me to drop her off and leave so that she can be her own person for two hours as she dances and tumbles with her friends.
Yet as we walk through a crowded store, she slips her still chubby-knuckled hand into mine. Old habits die hard and she has spent all of her walking days being forced to hold my hand in a crowd.
But still.
Each time we're in a crowded place and I reach out my hand to grab hers, I hold my breath. The day is nearing when she won't slip her hand into mine and the day is nearing when I won't be able to say that she HAS to.
The day is nearing that she will be able to navigate a crowd without me, and that is when I will know she isn't a baby any more.
I hold my breath. I'm grateful every time those chubby little fingers intertwine with mine.
Wednesday, December 12, 2012
Reader Comments (5)
have to confess all of mine still hold my hand when we are in a crowded scene. They think they are holding my hand because crowds make me nervous. I don't explain how it is the crowds make me nervous though. The way I see it is that they don't really need to know.
My mom will still reach fory hand and I am 37!
She will always be your baby. I know I am my mother's and I will be 49 in a few months. And when the time comes that she pulls away, she will want to still hold your hand. Its security. Its love. Its a solid foundation. She will aways be your baby.
As an only child myself, I went through the stage your holding your breath for too. But once I went away to college I became best friends again with my mom and talk to her almost every day. I'm about to turn 30 and still love hugs and comfort from my mom whenever I get to see her :)
Lovely post.
This is exactly the reason that I never refuse my 4 yr old's request to hold my hand, even if it means contorting my shoulder nearly out of socket to reach her hand in the backseat, while I'm in the front passenger seat. Because I know that way-before-I-am-ready, she won't be holding my hand anymore.