Dear Luc,
“I don’t want an Asian-looking cake.” This was my mantra as
I embarked upon my mission to find you the perfect birthday cake. You have
taken especially to Little Baby Bum’s “The Little Blue Whale” song somewhere
around your tenth month. The short, catchy tunes lingered in my head,
especially since Daddy and I played the 59-minute YouTube sequence to calm you
from being too worked up with crying and coughing and vomiting all over
yourself and us when you caught your first flu. So when I was asked what your
first birthday theme would be—after a brief moment of panic over having to
select a theme—it naturally fell into place to pick “The Little Blue Whale.” I
put together a quick Evite as an announcement.
And then there was the matter of the cake. About 1.5 weeks
out from the party, I browsed cake pictures from various bakeries on Yelp and
contacted five to get a quote for a cake to serve 50 guests. Of course, many
businesses were closed during the holidays from Christmas to New Year. What I
had not anticipated was that many independent bakers also closed shop to go on
vacation after the holidays since they might’ve been busy baking for parties
around the holiday season. Around the chaos of our own festivities, feasts, and
family visitations, I didn’t figure to look for a cake months in advance from
the big day. I could barely find time to think with our hectic schedule for outings;
and packing up your diaper bag with the required milk, diapers, outfits; and
properly bundling you up for going out of the house in cold weather; and
getting you in and out of the car while listening to you cry during the ride
since you hated your car seat lately.
Much like when we first brought you home from the hospital,
and my quiet, orderly OCD world became topsy-turvy with a slew of visitors and
frantic trips back to the NICU and doctor’s office to draw your blood and check
your jaundice levels. Those early days when I couldn’t pack a diaper bag to
save my life, or make it anywhere on time despite my best efforts, or figure
out how to hold a baby while digging into my purse for an insurance card to
check in at the doctor’s office. Days where hours passed swiftly as I was
content to gaze at your sleeping face.
Afternoons spent scraping your head with a toothbrush and
olive oil to get rid of your cradle cap. Nights where the minutes dragged out
as I paced the hallway while you cried and cried, trying to figure out the
day-night sleep thing.
“See? This cake? I don’t like it. I don’t want to end up
with something like this,” I joked to your father as I showed him cakes that
looked way too Asian.
Hooked up to my battery-powered milk pump, I got your
feeding schedule largely worked out and had the leisure to spend my holiday
shutdown away from work trying to taper down my pumping schedule. But it wasn’t
always like this. In the early days, I was confused as to when to feed you, for
how long, from which side, and whether you were getting too much or too little.
Days of counting how many pee- and poo-diapers you passed. I
read books and got advice about putting you on a schedule so you could regulate
your appetite and your sleeping patterns. I committed a new mother’s folly and
listened to your hungry wail, thinking it was for your own good to space out
your feedings as my breasts ached and leaked in the few hours I withheld them
from you. I fought my maternal instincts and caved to the advice and experience
of others; I blamed myself for the bumps, bruises, and scrapes you got under my
care. In turn, you screamed at me, fat tears rolling down your cheeks, unable
to express your needs any other way. It seemed I couldn’t do anything right in
those early days: I put you down, and you cried. I held you, and you cried. I
sang to you, played with you, fed you, let you chill by yourself—and you cried.
But you forgave me, Luc, in your childhood innocence, flashing your gummy
smiles at me just minutes after I committed these offenses, looking for me,
calling to me, clinging onto me, dependent on my care despite my shortcomings.
And in this way, you taught me about patience and boundless
love. In this way, we blossomed and grew together as this new mother-baby team,
bumbling our way into a natural rhythm, carried along a gentler flow as the
seasons turned.
“This!” I proudly exclaimed as I stumbled upon images of the
ideal Blue Whale cake. “This is what I want.” I was sure of it.
Much like how I felt my confidence grow when I was able to take
you out by myself on walks and errands whereas before, the thought of simply
driving down the street to grab lunch with you in tow struck me with a
crippling fear. A trip to Togo’s seemed like the most daring adventure, alone
with a newborn.
Much like how I witnessed more sureness in your actions as
your own self-confidence burgeoned. From your tentative first few splashes of
water during your baths to you gleefully creating tidal waves coupled with
shrieks of laughter.
From standing idly in your activity center to discovering
shapes, colors, and music at the different play stations. Sometimes you grew
and changed so quickly that I was afraid to miss it if I blinked or slept.
We left you with your grandparents to run errands in
preparation for your birthday party. I was grateful to have my hands free and
get things done quickly without having to tend to you too, but there was a time
when it killed me to leave you after having spent every moment with you. Like
when I placed you in your crib and went back to my room to catch a quick nap
while still on maternity leave, and I succinctly missed your warmth and weight
inside me and next to me. Or like when I went back to work for the first time
in five months, watching the clock, looking at your pictures while in the New
Mother’s Room pumping milk for you, eating lunch alone and reminiscing on how I
used to share every meal with you after you kicked me gentle reminders if I
went too long between meals. I measured the hours in the workday by your care
routine—your feed times, nap times, bath times. I’d hear your phantom cries and
giggles in the wind as I took walks on my break.
The weeks drew closer to your birthday, and still we could
not find a baker to do the cake of my dreams. We were so over it, of the phone
calls and email messages that went unreturned, to running errands in the cold
and rain as is the fate of parents with winter-born babies, of how “posh” the
whole endeavor of getting the ideal cake was shaping up to be. We decided to
turn to the tried and true Asian bakery, Euro Delights in Lion Plaza, for a
quick order to make sure we had dessert covered for the party. We stood around
waiting to be greeted and serviced, only to be met with less than stellar
customer service. “Make sure the icing is blue,” I mentioned, cringing at the
thought of the red icing so predominantly used by Asian bakers for cake
lettering. I didn’t see it coming that
of course they would end up using red icing for your cake after all.
Much like the predominant lesson of parenthood, I had to
learn to let go of expectations that were too high, let go of my perfectionist
nature, and try to go with the flow. From poop-splosions in cars with nowhere
to change you, to being vomited on without fair warning, to the hourly wakeups
to soothe your grouchiness in the throes of your leaps and growth spurts, to
ever banking on sleeping in on a lazy weekend, ever again.
What a feast for the eyes and stomach was your birthday
lunch, Luc, food catered from restaurants and decorations lovingly put up fit
for a wedding banquet. It is our luck and your fortune to be born and raised in
a land and during a time of peace and abundance.
I wasn’t sure how it would go with the amount of guests
invited to our cozy little home, whether your patience would wear thin after
the initial excitement and whether you would be cranky from not being able to
nap amidst the noise. I remember the adrenaline rush of nervousness when I
hurried into the bedroom to change clothes before the guests started arriving
and was caught in a brief memory of doing the same thing on the day we got the
call from the hospital for me to be induced and finally welcome you into the
world.
I had nothing to worry about. You were great throughout the
party. And family members were great too, many lending a hand to help set up
and bring us just what we needed despite me fretting over details. As you
started winding down for your first nap of the day, I gathered the guests to
sing your birthday song, around the enormous, sea-themed cake that turned out
quite Asian-looking after all.
That’s life though,
Luc—it often throws you curveballs and doles out the unexpected. But sometimes,
despite your initial resistance, it’s just what you need as you surrender to
letting go and holding in sight the more important things. On this day, exactly
one year from the date of your birth, what’s most important are the family
members whom you have brought together in the most loving and joyful way, by
just being here, and by just being you. I have watched transformations in
others when they interact with you and tend to you; I have seen a father’s
blossoming love, a grandmother’s happiness, a grandfather’s tenderness, an
aunt’s wonderment, an uncle’s awe.
When the smiling, familiar faces turned our
way and our voices lifted up in song, I felt a sense of warmth and
completeness, much akin to when you joined us earthside.
My darling boy, what a sheer pleasure it has been to witness
your growth during your first year. Like magic unfolding before my eyes, I got
to experience your first tears, first smile, first words, first roll, first
slow-paced army crawl, first rushed steps with the assistance of a cardboard
box to lean on.
I got to understand your wants and needs on an instinctual
level without the need for words, and marveled at how you found different ways
to show your love for me, from clinging on to my shirt in your sleep, to gazing
at me while you nursed, to glancing back in my direction for encouragement as
you explored. One day, you will go from grasping the concept of simple,
few-lettered words in the books that I read to you every night, to understanding
these complex sentences that I am writing to you now.
With this entry, I have
fulfilled my promise to myself and to you for capturing these monthly memories
of your first year. I’m sure we will make many more memories to come as the
years eke by. But we will always have this very first year to look back upon,
Luc, a year of learning, developing, and growing, as separate beings, but also
with hearts inexplicably intertwined like tender tendrils growing into sturdy
vines that reach ever upward toward the sun.
