The Relapse
About a month ago, Zelda started putting her hands up in the air. It signalled that she wanted me to pick her up. The first and second and third time it happened, whatever small natural mothering I have inside me crashed against my ribcage and exploded with joy. It was so human and adorable, and also explicit: I knew just what she wanted of me. I leaned down instantly, scooping her tiny, mushy body into my arms and squeezed, smelling her hair and kissing her cheeks. By day two or three, the warm feeling was starting to melt into a cooler, more logical argument. “Zelda,” I laughed to my nearly thirty-pound darling, “I can’t pick you up again! My back hurts a little!”
Zelda’s “up up,” as I call her imploring, waving arms, is often accompanied by a sort of rhythmic scootching on her butt and a sound. Where the arms are charming in context, the sound, which is roughly “ehhhh! ehhhh! ehhhh!” is not. It is insistent and grating, and its intensity and volume increases as the seconds wear on, until her emotional well-being dissolves into actual crying a moment later. The only solution that I have found is to pick her up.
In fact, since she’s turned one, Zelda has gotten a little more… clingy. This is new for her: She’s always been so easy going and independent. We’ve always happily and without guilt spent time apart. Now, more often than not, each time I put her down, surrounded by her beloved toys and chairs and walkers, up go the arms. “Ehhhh! ehhhh! ehhhh!” she whines, so I swoosh in and pick her up, simply to quiet her down.
This is a vicious, tedious, and backbreaking cycle, and I know that. Each morning I tell myself, “It’s for her own good. I’ll simply let her fuss a bit and in a few hours or days, she’ll get it. I’ll tell her, “Mama is busy, but I’m right here.” This kind of bargaining worked just a month ago; she was happy to sit on the floor as I boiled water or folded clothes, or played on the floor with her blocks beside her. She understood the concept of waiting. Now, as she approaches real childhood, she suddenly desires regression. She wants to be near me, and, I suspect, if she could fit, she might crawl into my mouth and cuddle there for a moment.
Around the time of a baby’s first birthday, they start piling on new skills. In just the past two months, Zelda has perfected clapping her hands in time with music, snapping her fingers, and pointing at objects she wants me to hand her or increasingly, I think, to name (“dog,” “box,” “toilet”). What all of these things have in common is that they are communicative behaviors, part of her struggle towards being human. The clingyness around this age is, in fact, typical — another sign of my daughter’s glorious normalcy, I tell myself. It’s a phase that goes hand in hand with new vistas: On the cusp of becoming a walking, talking child, she seems to want to desperately, if only for a moment, to hold back. To return to the days before she could feed herself with her own spoon. Now, these days, she often hands it to me to do the feeding for her.
Each morning after steeling myself, I break down almost instantly. I want to pick her up, or need to, or simply want her to cease her ehhhh! ehhhh! ehhhhing. I fold, bend down to lift her, and heave her into my arms. Then I half-ass various tasks: I brush my teeth and pull on my socks one-handed; I set her down and step away to change my shirt. “Up! Up! Up!” she whines. I hoist her back up and we leave the master bedroom for hers. I set her down and turn on music. She stands up and dances as I sit in front of her, before collapsing back to a sitting position. “Up! Up! Up!” “Zelda, I’m sitting! How can I up! up! up! you?” She climbs into my lap, sighing heavily.
It’s flattering, but stifling and overwhelming. It’s also terrifically non-productive. Where did my little pioneer go? Where is my tiny adventurer? Ever since she hit the rolling over landmark — months and months ago — she couldn’t get away from me fast enough. I was merely a secondary mode of transportation, with occasional returns to my lap or my side for a quick hug. Until a month or two ago, if I was carrying her and let my go even slightly she would have toppled to the ground. Now, she clings to her father and I for dear life. You let go, she’s hanging there, all by herself. Where is that other little girl? She’s here, at the foot of my chair, just now, whining to be picked up.
I should enjoy these last gasps of babydom, I know it. Though I have laundry to do and essays to write, emails to send and phone calls to make, I should slow down for a minute and enjoy being needed. It’s endearing and wholly new: no one has ever wanted and needed me so fully. I’m almost certain I’m going to need her for years longer than she’ll need me.
But the day is coming, little one. One morning, maybe not tomorrow, maybe not the next day, I’m going to show you that it’s okay to be on the floor for longer than two minutes. I’m going to show you — well, unless you show me first and decide you’re through with me again. That’s the normal course of events these days, around here, isn’t it? Just when we think we know you, you up up up and change.
The Parent Rap is an endearing column about the fucked up and cruel world of parenting.