20 years ago, when Nat was a baby, we lived in a terrible little place.\u00a0 It was not terrible to anyone else but me.\u00a0 Most people would think it was s cute little “starter home” neighborhood, filled with young families and stable older ones.\u00a0 But to me it was awful.\u00a0 All I could see was the ugliness of suburbia:\u00a0 tiny vinyl-sided Capes and cars parked everywhere and luridly colored plastic toys covering perfect links-green lawns.<\/p>\n
Was everything ugly to me because I was sad about my unexpectedly self-contained baby?\u00a0 He wasn’t silent; he wasn’t placid; he wasn’t difficult; he wasn’t easy.\u00a0 He was who he was, but he was not whom I had expected.\u00a0 Something was “off” but to this day I don’t know if that was me or him.\u00a0 The years stream by and wear down my memories like a river softens rocks; days stand out polished and bright but sometimes become years.\u00a0 What was what?\u00a0 I don’t know.\u00a0 I draw on this very flawed pool of feelings and memories to explain new thoughts I have.<\/p>\n
In the bad little neighborhood, the only thing I liked to do was take my baby on long long walks.\u00a0 The neighborhood seemed endless; you could walk and turn and walk and you’d never leave it.\u00a0 The little curvy streets ran into one another, forming a large web.\u00a0 I liked that, because parts of the other streets had slightly prettier houses and gardens.\u00a0 So I would walk there and show them to Nat.<\/p>\n
I would talk to him the entire way.\u00a0 Not as a Mommy to her Baby, but just me talking to him.\u00a0 I actually wondered if this was OKAY — the first of a million moments of self-doubt around Nat.\u00a0 Or should I be talking to him like, “Oh, look Natty!\u00a0 A dog!\u00a0 What does a dog say?\u00a0 Woof, woof!”\u00a0 And on and on.\u00a0 But I hated doing that.\u00a0 I also hated myself for hating that.\u00a0 But still I just talked to him, Sue to Nat, and lived with my self-hatred.\u00a0 I talked to him about whatever was on my mind.\u00a0 I needed that.\u00a0 Ugly houses, fixing up our house, moving away, mean neighbors, people I was mad at, people I loved.\u00a0 Things I wanted to do with my life.\u00a0 I’d look down at the stroller sunshade — maybe it was back, or maybe it covered him — and at his feet sticking out in front of him.\u00a0 His feet stood at attention — until he inevitably dropped off to sleep.\u00a0 Then they would collapse, toes inward.\u00a0 I used to love seeing the difference.\u00a0 Nat was just so Nat,<\/em> even then, so definite in his various states.<\/p>\n I didn’t know it at the time, but talking like that established something between Nat and me.\u00a0 This was to become one of the cornerstones of our relationship.\u00a0 This sounds corny as I write it, but I feel it is true.\u00a0 I have always talked to him regularly.\u00a0 I have also always talked to him teacher-ly, when I have to explain things to him.\u00a0 Social-storylike, to be sure he understands.\u00a0 But there is this whole other dimension to our talk that is just plain talking, where I don’t stop and wonder if he gets it.\u00a0 He listens, either way.<\/p>\n Like just now, I went into the kitchen for more coffee, while Nat sat in the windowseat watching.\u00a0 “I just love my morning coffee, Nat,” I said quietly, holding the pale green mug carefully in my hand.\u00a0 “I love this book I’m reading,” I also said to him.\u00a0 He didn’t answer me; he knew he didn’t have to.\u00a0 It was just Mom talking to him, telling him what was on her mind, in her heart, or simply right in front of them.\u00a0 And he would probably just listen until he was tired of it.\u00a0 And indeed, he is now gone from the windowseat, into his own thing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" 20 years ago, when Nat was a baby, we lived in a terrible little place.\u00a0 It was not terrible to anyone else but me.\u00a0 Most people would think it was s cute little “starter home” neighborhood, filled with young families and stable older ones.\u00a0 But to me it was awful.\u00a0 All I could see was […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1874","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pSTth-ue","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1874","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1874"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1874\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1875,"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1874\/revisions\/1875"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1874"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1874"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1874"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}