Happy Birthday Eowyn

Loathe as I am to indulge in sentimental effusions from a public forum, it is my princess Eowyn’s third birthday, warranting -at least- some emotive disclosure.

Welcoming your first child to this earth is a most frightful experience. Never mind the agonizing, ignoble process by which my elephantine self brought Eowyn into the world, it is consuming fear that coalesces as you cradle this fragile tax write-off in your arms: Fear that you will drop them. Fainthearted with affection for them. Frightful at the prospect of harm befalling them. Foreboding knowledge of the challenges to meet them. Fretting that you will fail them. . . And yet falling all the more in love with them.

I do not have a “favorite age” as so many mothers sagely suggest exists. Rather, I have savored and treasured them all. Now those intimately acquainted with my precocious Eowyn and our decisive discharge of “Dobson discipline” (and/or sedation) might contend that such sanguine sentimentalism is a product of nostalgia or lactation hormones. Perhaps. And yet, are not the seasons of parenting bittersweet- thorns and petals peaceably coinciding- not detracting from the loveliness of the rose.

But before this blog is lost to palling poetic dribble, suffice to say that as I wrapped Eowyn’s birthday back pack, the fears resurrected. Soon these polka-dotted straps would grace her tiny shoulders as she enters a world I have not carefully “Eowyn-proofed.” It is not a hand-wringing, rosary mumbling fear- just the kind that drives one to their knees -regularly. Though it is Eowyn’s birthday- I have truly been the gift recipient. If you know her, you will heartedly agree.