I've Always Loved You Best
Each child is an adventure into a better life— an opportunity to change the old pattern and make it new.
Hubert H. Humphrey (1911–78), U.S. Democratic politician, vice president.
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'm starting this book with this entry because surely I have always loved you best. The surprise and joy of parenting is to find that your three children are very distinctly different and unique. Thus each child is loved best for who they are and what they represented to the family.
Erma Bombeck said it well, "All mothers have their favorite child. It is always the same one, the one who needs you at the moment for whatever reason--to cling to, to shout at, to hurt, to hug, to flatter, to reverse charges to, to unload on, to use--but mostly, to be there."
When I became pregnant for the first time, it was thrilling to think that the child I conceived and carried would be a little of me and a little of Scott. It was the sweetest expression of my love for your dad that we would each share our very selves to combine into another human being.
Being pregnant with Andrea was a chance for a new life, another unique portrait of us, joined and twined into one little person. Andrea fulfilled my wish to be a parent again because I loved being a parent the first time.
Paul was our surprise baby in many ways. Our plan, at the end of the college years, was to have the third member of our family arrive once we had a real life: a job and a home in California. Paul was born four months before that instance. He also surprised us by arriving so quickly; he shocked the socks off everyone with his literal bursting on the scene and the final surprise was what a hefty baby he was! We had wanted two girls first, and this little guy was the hoped for 3rd child that we wanted to be a boy. He also represented the child of the new successful life we were beginning to embark upon.
A few years later, I read an article by Erma Bombeck, a humorist I loved. Erma always made me laugh and many times the laughter was riotous because it hit so close to the mark! This time the article expressed my feelings about my three children. The following is a copy of that article entitled "I Always Loved You Best."
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t is normal for children to want assurance that they are loved. Having all the warmth of the Berlin Wall, I have always admired women who can reach out to pat their children and not have them flinch.
Feeling more comfortable on paper, I wrote this for each of my children.
You sustained us through the hamburger years: the first apartment furnished in Early Poverty ... our first mode of transportation (1955 feet) ... the 7-inch TV set we paid on for 36 months.
You wore new, had unused grandparents and more clothes than a Barbie doll. You were the original model for unsure parents trying to work the bugs out. You got the strained lamb, open pins and three-hour naps.
You were the beginning.
You cried less, had more patience, wore faded and never in your life did anything first, but it only made you more special. You are the one we relaxed with and realized a dog could kiss you and you wouldn't get sick. You could cross a street by yourself long before you were old enough to get married, and the world wouldn't come to an end if you went to bed with dirty feet.
You were the continuance.
To the baby ... I've always loved you because endings are generally sad and you were such a joy. You readily accepted milk-stained bibs. The lower bunk. The cracked baseball bat. The baby book, barren but for a recipe for graham piecrust that someone jammed between the pages.
You are the one we held on to so tightly. For, you see, you are the link with the past that gives a reason to tomorrow. you darken our hair, quicken our steps, square our shoulders, restore our vision and give us humor that security and maturity can't give us.
When your hairline takes on the shape of Lake Erie and your children tower over you, you will still be "the baby."
You were the culmination.
