Homecoming, Part 2

When you are a child, you later realize that there was much your mother never told you about being a girl and later a woman. She never told you that hair would mysteriously appear around your nipples in your 20s, that sleeping on your side would cause a deeper crease to appear on your face on that side, that during childbirth many women defecate, that you will undoubtedly get your heart deeply and painfully broken at least once and feel like there is no recovery but there always will be. There are so many facts my mother could have shared that may have helped me appear younger, stronger and more hair free.

I feel that other mothers have let me down as well. Not one of my dear friends — mothers just like me — told me about just how intense sibling rivalry can be and how the target of all the fury, the frustration and the unending rage is not the new sibling but YOU, MAMA, the person who brought the competitor into the nest. No, I heard stories about how the older sibling helped bring diapers, liked to hold the bottle and proudly proclaimed to anyone who would listen...I'M A BIG BROTHER NOW, AND THIS IS MY BABY. Like the pain of child birth and the accompanying defecation, perhaps you need to catch someone right after New Child Introduction before the memory-blocking hormones kick in and while they can still tell you about the pain, the rage and the unexpected violence that are part of becoming a larger family.

So far, I have had corn thrown at my head, hands and glasses pounded on tables, CD players knocked off bookshelves, seen SJ smack himself repeatedly on the leg hard enough to raise welts, been screamed at least a dozen times in one night about unrelated and nonsensical subjects (I WANT MY BLANKET NOW - I KNOW I HAVE IT! I STILL WANT IT NOW!) and had two children scream at me because the other was in my orbit and in need of affection. They are not sure how they feel about each other; each one tentatively touches the other one on the back of the hand or head, tries to kiss and then ducks and dodges at the last minute. Shawn Joaquin has passed on time alone with me and would prefer that Madelena join us, but has no qualms about then screaming, hitting or crying about an imagined slight during any trip or playtime that includes Madelena. He has lost the ability to walk multiple times in public places, on stairs and in our driveway, as well as his ability to speak and share his feelings through more than a primal scream and an accompanying smack to the back of the nearest head.

Don't get me wrong. I am so happy to have both of my children here and able to smack me or each other rather than having to imagine that scenario. It is a long-anticipated homecoming that I would never have delayed. But perhaps with a little more information from other moms and perhaps a nice fat suit to pad me from the blows, I might have been a bit more prepared.

To be continued...