Seymore moms

I was lying in bed next to my daughter just now, and her arm was flailed out to her side. It has gotten so long, and I was struck by how beautiful I think she is. It seems now I start to see glimpses of the woman she'll become, in body and personality.

Her crib is set up abutting our bed, with one side missing, so that although she sleeps in her own space, it melds into ours and she can crawl back and forth freely. Sometimes I'm glad for the division, but tonight I missed having her sleep right beside me or on top of me. I wanted to touch her, pull her back close. It got me thinking about this weird desire I have to know her inside out, so I got out of bed to write about it.

I love my husband a lot, I think more than I love anybody else in the world, and yet I'm very comfortable with the distance there is between us. I don't fully understand him. I don't anticipate any but his most obvious wants and needs. It takes a lot of effort to think up the right birthday present or Christmas gift for him. And then there is my immediate family who I know more intimately than anyone, yet I don't always want to.

And now I have my daughter, who seems to have a little veil pulled around her soul...and it vexes me. Shouldn't I understand her intuitively? Shouldn't I just get her? I keep reminding myself that it takes time to get to know anybody, and that they have to want to reveal themselves to you. Shit, this is getting too abstract, isn't it? I just don't feel I understand my daughter, and it bothers me. I want to. Like, I wish I could climb inside her head and live there for a day and see things the way she does. I want this a lot and I want it pretty much all day, every day. It's an insistent background drone to my life. I'm a little disturbed by this want. I wanted and needed space from my mother. I have to assume that Anonybabe wants and needs it too. At the very least I know she doesn't share my desire to be joined at the brain stem.

Is this what it means to be a mother? To have a voracious, disturbing appetite for your child? Is it my duty to resist this appetite, give my baby her space? Is it every good mother's lot to feel a little like a lover scorned?

I just...I love this girl so much and I have no idea what it means.