Dakota Wolf

Dakota Wolf is 15. I was pregnant at 19, only 4 short years from where my son is now. A lifetime from where he is, my childhood years scarred with abuse that I white knuckled through, years he did not have to. Nothing has been 'easy' for him- no mistake- I avoided pressing into him the ugly stamp of abuse passed from one family notebook to the next, but gave him a teenage mother freshly off cigarettes and clueless in the ways of the world, no father, no money, no home of our own. All I had, as they say, was love. And the smarts to search out in the phone-book a therapist who worked with problems like mine, someone willing to do a sliding scale, when at 20, I realized I was terrifyingly more fucked-up than I had known, and would surely damage my beautiful boy if I didn't get help.

The first 5 months he squalled appallingly. I breastfed exclusively and didn't know about food intolerance or allergy created colic, and so I kept gulping the milk and gluten, creating the drum tight belly and wicked gas prompting the screams. I held him, rocked him, did everything but let him lie there and scream, because after a lifetime of hurting you know one thing when you have a baby at 19: he will not be left to hurt, without help or solace. Nothing good comes of this. So I held him and cooed him and nursed him and was absolutely rocked to my core with the fire breath of righteous love. I am not religious or faithful or spiritual, but I worshipped at the alter of human love, and was never the same. I understood the appeal of martyrdom. I whispered and sang and rocked and loved without fault. Of course that could not last. He must have been about five months old when I snapped.

We woke, after a night of little sleep and constant crying, and nursed. After a good cuddle, I pulled my pajamed and baggy eyed self out of bed and held infant Dakota in my arms. We stepped outside to the chirping birds and friendly whooshing neighborhood cars to get the mail, Dakota's tiny face a minature in suffering, squished into a piteous howl, for no reason I could comprehend, with nothing I could do about it. I put one foot in front of the other and his wails filled the air. The houses around suddenly seemed like silent, disapproving judges. Why, they said, can't you just get him to stop crying?

I don't know! Shame throttled me- shame, to my family, a more dangerous and evocative emotion that any other- and I snapped. I slapped my defenseless baby right on his tiny miserable cheek.

If I had believed in God, I surely would have believed that he was delivering divine punishment at that moment, with the agony that filled me. I wanted to kill myself. Instead, I got out the phone book and called the highlighted and bolded name of every therapist in town until, weeks later, I found one who would see me at a rate I could afford. Her name was Dr. Thorpe, and she was my angel. Not only did she see me at a rate I could afford, but as I grew up with her over the next 4 years, she occasionaly saw me for free, when there was just no money. I will never forget her and I believe she will never forget me. We had a meeting of the minds, as they say.

So this is where my son began his life, in his grandmother's house, in his teenage mother's arms, no father, no money, no home of our own, and a slap on his colicky cheek. But love? Change? Growth? A mother with a fighting spirit? He had those too.

We moved through the first 5 years of his life with the guidance and light of Dr. Thorpe, the entire self-help section of Borders, AA meetings ( an entirely other story ), friends, prayers from an agnostic, child developement books and courses, and so much fucking love! And not a single nother slap. Nor spank. An occcasional scream, but rare. Raised voices, yes. But I was gentle, so very very gentle. Much more gentle than I ever have or ever will be again in my life ( sorry, kids ) because I was learning how to forgive, and trust, and heal, and love, all at the same time.

After I let go of Dr. Thorpe ( who once, completely endearingly, sent me 20$ in a Christmas card ), I had to trust myself to know. Know what? Know if my son's angry temper tantrums were normal or a sure sign of inhereted mental illness. Know if my desire to slap him was normal or a sure sign of mental illness. Know if my need to snuggle him to sleep was OK or... you can see I worried a LOT about mental illness in those years. What I remember about that time is his eyes looking at me. Those blue, blue eyes, that looked at me with total and complete and adoring- yes, adoring- trust and love. We sang ' Just the Two of Us' in the car because it was our song, and I dare anyone who knows about my childhood and my nuerotic riddled mind to deny that I earned the cheesy rights to that. We laughed all the time. We went through a period where he hit me whenever he was angry, and I went through a period of seriously wondering why I had given up drinking. We went through a period where he screamed ' shit! shit! ' whenever he was angry, and I went through a period of doubting my ' cursing is OK ' idea. After realizing he only and ever did this with me at home and nowhere else, I decided I was right, he stopped screaming 'shit', and I never heard him curse inappropriately in his life.

We loved in our way. I coslept, nursed, baby wore, gentle disciplined, and found out there was a whole movement devoted to those ideals: Attachment Parenting. I let him draw lipstick art on the wall and washed it off. His favorite color was pink until he was 6. He wore ties. He loved Michael Jackson and Beastie Boys songs. He asked for ' nurtsie night nights ' until he was 2. He was my ' nurtsie boy '. When he was 2 he asked to come to school with me because ' there is no one else I want to be with, Momma. ' When he was 4 he asked me why Darth Vadar had so much pain in his heart. When he was 2 he said 'please' and 'thank you' and 'excuse me' and knew to make eye contact when someone spoke to him. When he said his prayers he asked God to keep us together forever. He was the most patient, kind and sensitive little boy I have ever known, and I heard echoes of that from everyone we met. His faults were at home, with me, where a child can feel safe to express the scary furies of childhood.

As he has grown, so have I. We are know two different people than we were. Every seven years your bones have given their honeycomb cells away and replaced them with all new ones. I am married to Dakota's step-dad, who has been my best friend since Dakota was born, and this made a beautiful transition. We are a blended family of five. Life is busier. I am less patient than I was those wonder years. Dakota thinks I am ' ridiculous ' because of my rules, and ' micro managing ' because of my expectations, and he has had loss and struggle and rebirth in his relationship with his biological father, who did come back when Dakota was 4, and has forged a relationship with him. But these things leave their mark and their wound. Dakota is sometimes very angry. He feels life is unfair because he has parents who are on top of his shit. His friends parents are often more relaxed, and don't give consequences, and when they do, they don't follow through with them. Dakota views this as the parents having more common sense, while I view it as throwing the dice. But he never, ever looks at me with eyes that wonder ' Why don't you love me? '

Because he knows damn well I do.