Your Mama Voice

He was sitting next to me as I ate my lunch, macaroni and cheese that he'd crafted with his own hands. It was a recipe I'd been making for years, following to the letter the instructions in the timeworn cookbook.

I'd asked him to make it for lunch today, a request that came after he'd expressed interest in learning to cook. He'd adapted the recipe, made it his own. While I'd always stuck with the tried-and-true white cheddar, he tossed in the smoked variety and added some gouda.

The difference was apparent the minute I scooped it from the earthenware baking dish into my heavy pottery bowl. I could smell the pungent smokiness, and it took me by pleasant surprise.  

When my bowl was empty, I felt compelled to hurry off, to get back to my desk and work, but I'd made a promise. He wanted to tell me about a new Playstation 3 game he'd rented the night before, and he was excited to share with me all the details. I'm not a gamer. And, even more, I'm not at all a fan of the violence and gratuitous potty-mouthery that many games promote. It's not what I wanted, to sit with empty hands and a head full of writing ideas and deadlines while he excitedly cited, scene-by-scene, this new game. But I did. 

Well, mostly. 

Now, back at my desk, I'm thinking about that conversation. I need to return to it, and I'll tell you why. But first, let me leap to a different parenting scenario. 

A young friend of mine is a first-time mother. She has long wanted a child, but had little hope for welcoming a baby of her own into her arms. Fertility issues had prevented her from conceiving until just nine months ago, after fertility counseling and treatments, she brought forth a son, and she is beside herself with joy. He is everything she'd hoped he would be and more, and her life has been hijacked by his existence, much to her delight. 

Now she has a new struggle, one of listening to the voices who offer advice versus succumbing to the ones in her own head, the ones that originate in her heart and grow and expand until they explode into her veins and take over her every action. It's called instinct, and it's every mother's boon and bane. 

During the past week, she has struggled with the well-meaning advice from others to let her newborn boy sleep in a crib in a room all alone, in spite of the fact that he has just emerged from spending nine months cradled inside the safety of her body, directly beneath her beating heart. She has agonized over taking him to his crib mid-day to allow him to "cry it out," ultimately caving to her overwhelming desire to scoop him up in her arms and hold him close when he most needs comfort. 

The arguments against co-sleeping are confusing to new moms. He needs to learn to be independent, they say. He'll be happier in his own space, they say. You'll crush him in your sleep, they warn. And yet, that internal mom-voice is so strong, it's practically impossible to kill. I want him here beside me, it says. I feel safer when he's close, it says. It's so much easier to feed him in the middle of the night, it says, offering a different kind of reasoning as old as the origin of man.  

And that voice is right. Because as infancy slips away, and it does slip away quickly, the options dwindle. The design of an newborn is self-limiting; a baby boy is only small enough to be cradled for so long, and then, his independence begins before we're ready to give it. Before you know it, he doesn't think he needs you any more. He wants to do everything on his own, without your help. Of course, you're still the most important person in his life, but in different ways. Each step, each phase, requires a new kind of attention from you. Just as we would never tell an infant that he must learn to find his own source of nourishment or his own way to cleanliness, neither should we send him the signal that he doesn't need our comfort and protection, doesn't need our beating heart and our steady breathing next to his tiny body. 

Soon enough, your kisses embarrass him, maybe even your very presence mortifies him. He will try you and break your heart. Some days, you will look right at him and not know who he is. These times of cuddling and nursing, singing and rocking will sustain you during those moments of struggle and alienation. They'll tie you to him in an unbreakable elastic bond that will stretch and twist and, eventually spring back to you, and, just when you least expect it, you'll find that giant of a boy, the one who now towers above you by a head or more, is sitting beside you and excitedly telling you about his latest video game over the macaroni and cheese lunch he made with his own hands, his own way.

And then, you might be tempted to hurry off, to get back to work, or to the dishes, or to that phone conversation or Words with Friends game, but your mama-voice will be offering some different advice, telling you to stay put and listen, because he needs you now just as much as he did when he was a newborn in your arms, but in a different way. 

Listen to it. Now and forever.