Before I had children, I tried to imagine myself as a mother and I wondered what things would be like. I had visions of myself sitting in the grass, painting on my easel, wind blowing through my hair and sun shining on my face while my baby quietly gazed up at the clouds, smiling and listening as I sang her little tunes. I later imagined my baby, maybe just a tiny bit grown, in her apron and babushka helping me pick peas from the garden and gathering them up in her little basket. We'd bake quiche with the eggs from our chickens and fresh milk from the dairy up the road. She would fit right in to the little life that I'd imagined.
But then I'd had my baby and she was the most exquisite creature I had ever laid my eyes on and life was so, so different than I'd imagined. And when she and I finally did meet, I realized she had her own plans. She was just a tiny, tiny person but she'd surely had her own plans. So we didn't pick peas or make quiche and I don't think she ever quietly gazed up at anything. But I learned quickly that it is best not to interfere with a tiny person's plans because oftentimes those plans are actually quite bigger, and quite better, than anything you could have dreamed up, and that she is better than anything you could have ever dreamed up. And one day instead of picking peas she'll ask you to critique her new drawing or she'll want to make chocolate-chip banana cake and she won't be wearing an apron or a babushka but rather scruffy jeans and an old t-shirt and you'll wonder how anything could ever be more fantastically terrific than that.
