Pi 1 Year

It was my son's first birthday. Actually, it was the night before his first birthday, and I was baking cakes. Running from the recipe on my computer screen to the cupboards to the fridge to the stove to the computer screen, now full of dusted spots of flour. A mummy baking cakes in a frenzy the night before her son's birthday. I thought to myself that there must have been millions of scenes like this in millions of mummy's kitchens before millions of little boys and girls birthdays.

The funny part is that I was baking the cakes for everyone except the birthday boy, because I don't allow the birthday boy to eat sugar. I thought I'd tease him a little (yes, I tease my little 1 year old son sometimes!) and I put these tempting things in front of him.

As you can see on his face, he was grumpy about the whole thing. He tried to reach them, climbing out of his high chair and onto the table. But I am faster than him, for now at least. 

So he gave up and decided to get interested in something attainable instead.

Here we are at the party-scene. A beach in the north of Ibiza. When I first came to Ibiza, I was living and working at this very beach. This is the first beach on this island that I laid my eyes on, a windy but very sunny day in March 2009. Little could I imagine at that moment, that I one day would call this island my home, and that I would one day give birth to Pi at 3.14 am on the 9 April 2013.

It's really hard for me to express in words how I feel about Pi. Normally, I find it very easy to write, and much harder to talk. I find talking difficult sometimes even. Pi's father, Noam, has such beautiful words to describe his feelings for Pi and his fatherhood. But I am at a loss for words. I can't describe how it makes me feel. Maybe because I am so deeply inside it, in the middle of it, surrounded by it. I am living it each moment and I have no perspective on it.

Just seeing him here on this picture, with his little baby jeans going way too high up on his chest, and his belly protruding, and the blonde hairs falling into his right eye... Makes me feel so much. But to describe in words exactly what it is that I feel, is impossible for me. Strange...

Becoming a mother has changed my world, my life, me, and how I see the world. And especially how I see other women. While travelling for three months in Southeast Asia this winter, I felt so connected to all other mothers. It's like a silent mutual knowledge that we all share. We went through that pain. For this love. And we survived it. We are still walking on this earth, even after that huge explosion of ourselves and our hearts and our wombs onto the edges of the universe. Our hearts are larger than existence, and we share that.

The only thing I can say is this: Since I met Pi for the first time, the rest of the world ceased in importance. Can you even say that? It didn't cease to be important- it ceased in the amount of importance it has to me. Many things used to be important, give me goosebumps, even a tear or two, or they used to move me, or bother me. But now all of those things seem very small and very unimportant in comparison with the amount of feelings I have for my son. They are so much larger; they run on a different level, they fly higher, they dive deeper and they rush to the core of the planet. Nothing can compare. In a way it's a loss. I lost many things, I lost amount of importance. But what I gained is so huge.

And it's only when you have your own child that you understand what your parents did for you, and felt for you, and still feel for you. But the only way to reciprocate what we received from them, is to pass it on. That's the beauty. We pass it on. Pay it forward. To the next generation. It doesn't go back- it moves onwards and forwards.

And only when you have your own child do you understand that it is so much larger to love, than to be loved. 

A blue balloon flew into the crystal clear water in the bay of Benirras, and it floated away.

I wish sometimes that I could describe my feelings in a beautiful, poetic way like Noam does. Because it would be good to try to put it into words. To try and see it in letters.

But I just can't. I'm incapable. I read what Noam writes and I'm so happy for my son that he has such a beautiful daddy who loves him so much and who can express it in such a beautiful way.

Here he is reaching out for me. ME. His mother. I am the mother of this child. Wow. Still hard to understand. Every day is such a gift. Tiring, exciting, crazy, chaotic and funny gift. With the most amount of love that a universe can hold, and much much beyond that.

And the cake was really tasty. But don't tell my son that.