Luann Tennant Coyne

Category: Children

Really Screwing Up as a Mom, and its Benefits: A Letter to my Niece

This year’s Memorial Day’s gatherings have had to be nonexistent or very small.

So, I’m remembering with extra enjoyment a large and very special Memorial Day gathering, four years ago. In May of 2016, most of the women in my extended family converged in New Hope, PA, to attend a baby shower for my niece Erica.

During that love-filled and happy weekend, I was remembering how much I had leaned on some of these women when I had my first baby. I was thinking of how we all as mothers need the advice and support of other mothers. As a gift for Erica, I wrote the following letter, trying to pass on a little of what I had learned about being a mom. (I’ve tweaked the letter just a bit for clarity.)

In Between

My granddaughter Hanah is 16 months old now, and at daycare she has been promoted out of the baby room.  She is in with the toddlers now. The toddlers get to sleep in cots on the floor (about one inch off the floor, but still, cots), and, an even bigger privilege, in the toddler room they do not take a morning nap.

So, overnight, Hanah has stopped taking a morning nap at daycare.

But physically she is still “in between”. Sometimes she needs a morning nap, and sometimes she doesn’t.

Writer-Daughter

Three years ago today, my first granddaughter, Eliana, died in Children’s Memorial Hospital in Chicago, after several painful months of life.  

 

Today I sit in the sunshine in Eliana’s mother’s house.  My daughter Elizabeth and I are both sitting on the sofa with the dog between us, quietly typing at our PCs while her one-year-old naps in the nursery.

Detritus

A row of American Girl dolls across the top of the computer desk in the guest room.  A lone girl’s sandal on the floor of my closet.  And the question that nags me. “Should I take it to Goodwill (where its mate undoubtedly is)?  Or throw it away? Have they already thrown away its mate, at Goodwill?  Or is it lounging at the bottom of some sale bin, waiting for me to do the right thing and complete the pair again so some impoverished girl can have a nice pair of sandals for the summer?”

Does Wisdom Come with Age?

People say that the older you get, the smarter you get. But sometimes I wonder…

 

Missing Mommy

At 8 months, Hanah was deeply into her “attachment-to-Mommy” phase.  I was holding her as she napped and thinking of telling her, “Hanah, I’m 64, but right now I really want my Mommy too”…

Baby Time

There are things you forget, when your years with a baby are long past. One of them is baby time, and how it differs from ordinary time…