A mommy of one asked if I loved my kids equally. “C’mon, you can tell me. I won’t judge,” she insisted, before I could even respond. I laughed, because even though she attempted to make the inquiry appear nonchalant, she truly wanted to know, and I could relate. When I was pregnant with Thing 2 I asked this very question.
My love for Thing 1 was so absolute, I couldn’t imagine loving anyone as much as I love her. She was my first, and until then also my only.
Aren’t we conditioned to perceive those as the elements of big love – firsts and onlys? After all, the day she was born, I too was born again as a mother, a completely new and transformative experience.
I couldn’t imagine a second child embodying any such specialness, especially when I found out I was expecting another girl. I could see how much I could love my only son as fiercely as I loved my only daughter, but I feared another girl would have to settle for a more ordinary kind of love.
When Thing 1 was a few years old, an acquaintance of mine lost her young son in a tragic accident. I remember observing her during that time, and concluding that if my child ever died I would kill myself. I was not interested in figuring out how to survive the loss of my child. This memory came back to me when I was pregnant with Thing 2 and I found myself irrationally fretting over the fact that now that I was to be a mother of two, should Thing 1 die I would need a new plan. This disturbed me a lot. I felt a lot of love for my unborn child, but it was nothing like the love I felt for the one I already had.
Thing 2 was born and it was love at first sight. Although for the first few months she looked and behaved so much like Thing 1 that it didn’t really feel like I had a new person to love. It was like I was stuck in some maternity version of Groundhog Day.
Now she is a completely different person. For starters, she is the only extrovert in the family. We often have to venture outside the comfort of our home, grudgingly, because she has cabin fever. She is also fearless. While her sister is more careful and timid around new things, Thing 2 has yet to meet an animal she doesn’t love or a structure she thinks she cannot climb. She is a bit of a petrol head. She digs cars and bikes. Whenever a motorbike thunders past, she gleefully goes; “brrrrrrrrrrrr”. This is all very novel, since Thing 1 is the quintessential girly girl.
They are two completely different people. I wonder if this makes it easier for me to love them both so fully. I feared I’d be unable to love another child as much as I loved Thing 1. Thankfully Thing 2 created a whole new, unique space for my love to flood into.
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