Lost scissors

My daughter is living art. I talk about my son a lot -- the squeaky wheel, and all that -- but my daughter is equally precious and unique. From the moment of her birth, six days early, half an ounce shy of seven pounds, fiercely strong and healthy and alert, she is embodied motion. As an infant, she nursed so vigorously that my nipple turned black. Despite the fact that I couldn't consume dairy or soy while breast feeding, despite her acid reflux, she grew at a rate that astonished the nurses and doctors. I'm slightly tall for a woman at 5' 6.5" (yes, I had to add that half inch), but I'm pretty sure she will tower several inches over me by her teenage years. She lives up to her middle name, Eloise, in her clutter, creativity, and curiosity. She is garrulous and boisterous but also has a keen sense of justice like Ramona Quimby. She perseverates and worries and then she recovers and charges ahead.

B is a scissor culprit. It is impossible to keep track of scissors in our house. Usually I can find a pair in her room. Sometimes they're in the garden, sometimes the fireplace. B must possess and consume every beautiful thing she finds. She cuts up blue bachelor button petals, craft feathers, grass, stuffed animal fur. She deconstructs and recreates, her freckled nose and blue eyes crinkling in concentration. And then, in flitting from place to place, she inevitably loses the scissors and glue and tape, and it is my job to gather the lost tools so she can forge on.

Tonight the third graders and their parents are invited to attend an open house at their new school. She'll be half a mile away next fall instead of a stone's throw, in a building that used to house my junior high school but now serves fourth and fifth graders. It's that classic, bittersweet parental moment, and I feel a twinge of panic.

I anticipate bumpy years in our relationship as she grows and matures. I understand I must be her mom first. But my hope is that someday, she will want to call me in companionship. I want her to know, unequivocally, that my love for her is unbreakable. I want to explore life with her; I want to hear her perspective and be awed by her deconstructed art.

Looking head-on at the love I have for my children is like staring directly into the sun. I must glance at it sideways or I will be blinded. I know it is there, I need it, but it is so bright and big and all-consuming, intangible in a way but also physically searing. It is frightening.

There's a quote from Jane Austen's Emma that goes, "If I loved you less, I might be able to talk about it more." I used to associate that sentiment with romantic love, but now I think it is a more apt description of the love I have for my children. With romantic love, I still remain myself, a separate being who chooses to love another. Parental love is a urgent, merging, all-consuming force.