I wrote this many years ago, when my son turned ten years old. It was his twenty fifth birthday this week:
Thoughts Upon Turning Ten
I was not a happy pregnant woman.
Even when my limp hair grew thick and curly, my skinny, angular frame became round and voluptuous, I wasn't happy. Like everything I have ever done in my life, I leapt into pregnancy and wrestled with the consequences when they became inevitable. I was depressed, I worried, and I felt intensely alone, even though my husband awaited the birth of our newborn intently.
Would I love my child? Would I bond with him? How would I figure out what to do with this mysterious creature? My life would be forever altered and would I ever be able to adjust?
When my baby was born, I shared a room with three of the saddest women that maternity has chosen: birth defects, spousal abuse, abandonment, there I had it. I thanked the heavens for my stable marriage, my loving family, my comfortable home in a middle class neighbourhood.
My baby was beautiful, with a rebellious head of black hair that stood defiantly straight up. Nobody in my family was dark, and I had produced an original. He tormented me and challenged me like no statistics or physics course ever had, but he was gorgeous.
I waited for the bonding to happen, like the books said it ought to. We argued constantly, like we do to this day. Finally, one night, as I fed him, he looked up and with a stare from his beady little dark eyes, stopped the motion of the rocking chair.
I wept. Here was this completely helpless infant demanding, with his gaze, what he needed from me, hooking me completely into his primitive little soul. How could anyone ever deny someone so tiny, yet so strong?
While I was unlocking the mysteries of breastfeeding and bowel movements, there was a story on the news that was gripping many Montrealers. It was the story of baby Aldo, who had been neglected, abused and starved to death by his own damaged parents.
I looked at my baby that night and cried and cried. I was angry, I was confused and I knew that this baby had to be the most important thing that I have ever accomplished in my life. There was no way that I would ever intentionally let him down.
There were thirteen little boys in my yard this afternoon, celebrating my baby's tenth birthday. I watched them playing soccer, pushing, yelling, laughing. There was the boy with the angelic ringlets, desperately playing for attention, the dark boy with the chip on his shoulder that everyone picked on, the shy kid with no athletic skills playing goalie, the natural athlete who scored on a breakaway and turned perfect cartwheels to celebrate. Some of these kids are neglected by career obsessed parents, by parents who have burnt out and lost interest, by parents who are now single, trapped and bitter. Little Aldo is missing, but little Aldo never had the chance to get this far.
I watered the trampled lawn, staked the mangled plants after they left and I found myself weeping again for little Aldo, for all the kids in my yard who have made it this far, but have a huge battle ahead of them to grow up to be worthwhile human beings who don't have their own Aldos.
I may not be a perfect parent, but this is my biggest challenge. I am going to hug my son tonight and tell him how important he is to me. I am going to hope that Aldo's parents have salvaged their own lives and I am going to say a prayer in my heart for little Aldo, who would have been ten years old this year.
