Motherhood

It’s a good thing that motherhood was specifically designed for “young” women. It’s funny because I grew up in the era when little girls dreamed primarily of getting married and having children. Occasionally we’d talk about places we wanted to travel to – places like Paris and Italy – it never included places like Nigeria and Kenya or even Columbia or Brazil. I would always say that I wanted four children, two boys and two girls. My vision never consisted of just who the father would be or where exactly we would live. So typically when someone asked what I wanted to be when I grew up – I basically had no answer. As I got a little older I would often dream of being a concert pianist or somehow involved in Broadway plays but those were merely “pipe dreams”. When I looked at those who were successful in those areas, nobody looked like me. So, I grew up, got married at 22 and had not four – but three children. I never frequented Paris or Italy. My first child – a boy, Yamil, weighed in at a whopping 5lbs and 10oz some three weeks earlier then predicted and just a day before the 4th of July. I swear it must have been 100 degrees all that week in Brooklyn, NY and there I was in a county hospital with no air conditioning.  I really think the conditions under which he was born prepared him to be the resilient person he is today. Some 22 months later, along came his sister – Maya weighing in at 4lbs and 7-1/2oz. It was about 12 days before I was able to bring her home. Nevertheless, Yamil was eager to greet her – his little sister. He became her designated body guard. I always say that Maya took so long to walk on her own because Yamil would carry her around all the time. He seemed quite curious about his baby sister and he managed to make her laugh almost at will. He was always quite the entertainer. We lived in Jamaica Queens for a couple of years when we first moved back to New York. It was a decent two bedroom apartment in an apartment building which housed about 50 – 75 families which was perfect for us at the time.

Basically I was pretty overwhelmed having two children under the age of three. Maya was colicky (as were all of the children). She would cry just about all night starting at around 12 midnight until about 5am at which time I was totally exhausted. No sooner than I shut my eyes, I would hear Yamil pulling his little blue bird string signaling that he was awake and ready to get up. We had attached this little plastic blue bird to his crib. Somewhere between 6 and 9 months, he learned to pull the string to make the bird sing. Upon waking in the mornings, he would pull the string and magically I would appear. No sense in trying to ignore him because, true to little boys’ nature, he was a climber. If I didn’t come in what he determined a reasonable time, he would proceed to climb out of the crib (at his own peril). Anybody that has boys understands that they never do things the conventional way and prove to be quite daring. Needless to say, most days I was pretty exhausted.  This particular day I decided I would take the kids to the park. I was cleaning up a bit having already fed the kids, got them ready to go out including bath, fully dressed, shoes and all, hair done. I needed just to empty the trash which was located at the end of the hall on our floor. I grabbed up the trash and proceeded down to the trash room only to realize that I failed to take the key to the apartment with me. By design once the door closed, it automatically locked behind me. As I approached the door I had no clue as to exactly how I was going to get in. Yamil was a mere two year old and barely able to reach the knob on the door. I proceeded to knock and of course he came running to the door but had no clue how to let me in.  Not only that he had been playing a game with his granddaddy some weeks before  where they would run to the door, my father would knock on the door and say “who is it?” so of course Yamil took this opportunity to repeat that game.  He ran to the door, knocked on it and said “who is it?”. – Oh brother – not now!!  This was definitely NOT A GAME! Pretty soon I could hear Maya crying in the background.  Thank God I had put her in the playpen. Yamil, being the protector, ran back to Maya. I could hear him trying to console her. I could hear him saying “no cry Maya, no cry Maya”. I kept trying to get him to come back to the door.  Each time I knocked, he would run to the door and knock on it and say “who is it?” After about 20 minutes I resigned myself to the fact that he was not going to open the door. I sat down on the floor trying to figure out what to do next. Most of my neighbors worked during the day (at least the ones I knew).  I had to wind up going to a complete stranger’s apartment and plead my need to use the phone to call their father to come home from work to open the door. After about 30 – 45 minutes he arrived to let me inside. Once I got inside I saw that Yamil had tried to climb into the playpen because it was smashed on one side.  Then I noticed that he had thrown Maya a bottle of milk, along with every toy and book he could find all in an effort to keep her from crying. By this time, she had cried herself back to sleep and there she lay looking quite peaceful. After inspecting her for bruises and determining that she was indeed OK, both Yamil and I were pretty exhausted. What a fiasco!!! I decided that the park would have to wait until another day and we fell into bed and took a nap.