I haven't written on my Posterous for over three months, since Tatum was born.  It's mostly due to the fact that my sleep- deprived body is using my brain cells as fuel to complete basic, functional tasks like some sort of self-destructing zombie.  Tonight I started actually thinking again and decided to write it down.  Hopefully it's the beginning of more future posts. 

When you had a happy childhood like I did filled with things like watermellon parties with your sister (see photo), one of the most profound and jarring things you'll learn in late adolescence is that it's actually not nearly hard enough to find sadness and danger.  This realization begins when it suddenly dawns on you that your parents are just people like all the other people and not at all the seemingly flawless versions of themselves that created this bubble of joy that you used to believe wasn't a bubble at all.  It was the endless illusion of safety and love.  When the truth of it all unravels you feel alone and you might cry.  Then you might go off and try to redefine reality.   You make mistakes and you find successes.  Most of the times it's fun and exciting, but it's almost always scary.  When you learn to deal with scary in a healthy way and become self sufficient in your own well-being and happiness, that's called being an adult. 

Well, here's what's called being a parent.  I had no idea how deep down I would have to reach to create this healthy space for my daughter.  If she's at the end of her rope and we've had a long day, I need to find the happiness to smile and the strength to comfort her.  When something scares me I have to pretend like it doesn't at all and protect her at the same time.  When I rock her to sleep at night I sing her a song about boats resting in a harbor after years of being at sea.  She has no idea what it's like to be at sea.  Truth be told, she doesn't even know that's what's the song is about, but she falls asleep anyway.  Right now I'm watching her toss around in her crib on a baby monitor.  She's facing a camera she doesn't even know is there.  I'll look at the monitor about 50 times between now and 6am (fingers crossed!) when she wakes up.  According to her in this very moment, the only thing in anyone's life that could possibly go wrong is that they might be hungry for a whole 10 minutes or- by some unfortunate incident- be forced to wear a wet diaper for too long. It's my job to keep things this way for as long as it takes. 

Now that I'm trying to create an ideal environment for Tatum, I'm even more grateful for the world my parents made for me all my years of growing up.  I'm thankful that I didn't experience a real kind of fear until I was a legal adult.  Now that I fully know what to expect out of the world I find it ironic that every fear I've ever had up until three months ago pales in comparison to the fear I have surrounding my capibilities as a parent.  I'm constantly consumed with the idea of her safety, her health and her happiness.  My ultimate hope is that she never knows it and that I deliver in spades.