Getting under the fence is just the beginning!

Ever since I entered my third trimester, J and I have been reading to Dash at night. But what initially began as something we thought we should do for our child (if for no other reason than to further familiarize him with our voices), for me at least has evolved into a revisiting of my own youth (and a little bit of psychosis).

It all began with Frog and Toad Are Friends, which was followed by a series of baby books gifted to us by a colleague of J’s and then, happily, Oh, The Places You’ll Go. Though the longer books take us a few nights to read (in part because J loses interest and secondarily because I run out of breath after about three pages), the morals are always the same. Be good to your friends. Clean your room. A is for Apple… you get the idea. None of them has made me cry… or think about anything deeper than iambic pentameter.

Or at least that was the case… until last night’s foray into Beatrix Potter.

Being that my favorite bedtime stories as a child were those of Hans Christian Anderson, I was aware that children’s tales could have a darker side, but with all the paint by numbers vanilla entertainment that dominates our culture (let’s face it, I live around the corner from The Grove), I think I’d blocked out just how complex they could be. Indeed, while I don’t exactly remember The Tinder Box (or the original, non-Disney version of The Ugly Duckling), I knew that they weren’t sweet stories. Still, that wasn’t enough to prepare me for The Tale of Peter, that poor little bunny, who loses his blue jacket (with the button!) and is forced to hide in a watering can half filled with water, all the while fearing for his very life. Admittedly, we got only about half way through before my lungs ceased function, but from where I left off, I was unable to tell whether Peter’s was a cautionary tale or an adventure. Really, it was a little bit of both… just like life.

Which is a lot for a volatile pregnant woman (or at least this volatile pregnant woman) to handle. Keep in mind that on my last two visits to the doctor, I’ve taken to nuzzling pictures of babies dressed up for Halloween in the waiting room magazines.

So I admit it. I’m sensitive. I’m reading into things. I’m seeing meaning where there is none… unless, in fact, that’s actually the point. I’ve underestimated this whole experience of pregnancy and parenthood and Peter Rabbit may have just been the turning point in my perspective. As December approaches (and little Petey runs for his life), I’m realizing just how big this thing is I’m getting into…. And what a game changer it is.

Up until now it’s been easy to think of Dash as a helpless infant… what I haven’t thought about is the little man that he’ll grow into and how quickly that transformation will happen. Before I know it, he’ll cease being the object of all my hopes (or, as I intend him to be at first, my personal billboard) and instead become a living breathing little being, capable of critical thinking. My desire to protect him will be forced to compromise with reality and he’ll have to make choices of his own. Though I suspect he’ll never have to fear that he’s actually going to be eaten (unless The Road is an actual prediction of the future – or he’s really freaked out by my proclivity for biting), he will have hopes and dreams and dilemmas and fears and scariest of all, free will! And there will be nothing I can do to stop any of it!

Here I thought reading was for him. Instead, it’s clearly been for me. A career-driven A-type by nature, there were many things I expected to have a huge impact on my life. None of them – not any of my few accomplishments or many failures – has even compared to this.