Who Do We Appreciate

My Dad was the first person to show me how to skip stones across water.  At six years old, I watched him bend his wrist back at a weird angle and flick a small, flat stone from one bank of Big Rock Creek to the other. He was great at it; I’ve never seen anyone better. I’d count the bounces: two, four, six, eight. In his youth he may have played a sport, but I don’t recall ever seeing him pick up a ball or bat. Dad’s arms were of the slim, professorial variety, as white as the chalk he used at the blackboard. Who knew they could emerge from poly-cotton sleeves and make rocks waltz?

A conversation with a friend last week kicked up my memory of skipping rocks. My friend has two young children, including a ten-month old. She was feeling dizzy that day and couldn’t tend to her family’s needs. She was like a rock hitting the waters of physical limitation. New parents without local support can strike the surface again and again with no choice but to bounce back up immediately. Complicating factors such as a move, job change or health issue can bend the angle of approach enough to dip a family below the water. Meanwhile, the crowds who gathered on the bank when the baby was born have long-since dispersed.

Sleep deprivation and Mother Nature conspire to make us forget the grinding marathon of having a baby. My friend’s struggle with vertigo reminded me of the time I almost collapsed when my second child was eight months old. I was hugging my husband goodbye as he departed for a business trip. Just before, I’d received a call that my father was ill. My whole body shook like a sewing machine and my husband caught me on my way down. Dehydration certainly played a role; I’d been up all hours and couldn’t say when I’d last eaten or had a drink of water.  Ahead of me stretched four days alone with the children. My husband had to make a quick decision about whether to stay or go on his trip. He went at my urging, but called our friends from the airport to solicit meals and visits for me.

Out in public, infants command so much attention that it’s easy to overlook the parents holding them up.  I try to remember that behind smiley babies are loving mothers and fathers, many of whom are stretched to their limit. New families need more than one wave of support. They need two, four, six, eight.