Everyone talks about the cloying songs that are force fed to parents in the first years of parenting. You begin to to think that you’re destined for a lifetime of sing-songy saccharine. The shift happens without warning; one day you realize that the soundtrack is really more ballad than nursery rhyme. Lullabies stretch over pop numbers, lyrics intended for summer crushes melt to fit parent-child chapters, and the melancholy strains of 70s music from your own childhood haunt elevators that you travel with your kids, reflections in the glass and memories in the ether.
One Saturday in December I wrote a piece at the request of Brain, Child Magazine. I found myself unexpectedly present in the music as it soaked in the marrow of this time, my girls and my life dancing for an endless moment.
Finding our rhythm and our song.
Amanda, I know we all talk about the guilt that attaches itself to us when we express the need to just step back from our littles, our people and take a breath separate from them, but it’s always comforting to read it from a different perspective. I’m just beginning to learn that sometimes my absence allows my children room to open up, to bloom (for lack of a better word) in ways they might not in my presence, what with the vying for my attention and all. This thoughtful piece has helped to reaffirm that. Thank you. xx