{"id":125,"date":"2012-01-01T11:38:10","date_gmt":"2012-01-01T16:38:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.pamelahobson.com\/?p=125"},"modified":"2012-01-01T11:42:40","modified_gmt":"2012-01-01T16:42:40","slug":"dont-blink","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.pamelahobson.com\/?p=125","title":{"rendered":"Don’t Blink"},"content":{"rendered":"

Don\u2019t Blink<\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u201cTo my embarrassment I was born in bed with a lady.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

Wilson Mizner (1876-1933)<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a boy!\u201d<\/p>\n

Those three magical words changed my life in ways I never could have imagined.<\/p>\n

Growing up in a home with two older sisters, I assumed that when I gave birth, of course I\u2019d have a daughter\u2026after all, what on earth did I know about taking care of a boy?\u00a0 I was a girly girl who was not immune to the bribe of a new pair of pink ballet slippers or the latest outfit for my beloved Barbie doll.<\/p>\n

Upon hearing the news of my son\u2019s birth, my oldest sister (herself a new mother of a son) hastened to reassure me that, \u201cYou will just love having a boy.\u201d\u00a0 My middle sister, also an \u201cexperienced\u201d mother of a 3 year-old girl and 1 year-old boy, heartily concurred.\u00a0 As with most things I learned from my older and wiser sisters, \u201cboy<\/em>\u201d were they right!<\/p>\n

To prepare for motherhood I read all the current books by Dr. Spock, Penelope Leach, and T. Berry Brazelton.\u00a0 I spoke to new and \u201cseasoned\u201d mothers and received a wealth of information and parenting tips.\u00a0 But one piece of advice I wish I had received was, \u201cDon\u2019t blink<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n

One morning I was delighting in listening to my toddler son\u2019s chatter as we spoke on his Fisher Price telephone\u2014I blinked<\/em>\u2014and one afternoon I called home and was startled when I realized that the person with the deep voice who just said \u201cHello\u201d was my son.<\/p>\n

My preschooler often begged me to turn on Sesame Street for him\u2014I blinked<\/em>\u2014and my teenage son was the only one who could figure out how to work the rapidly multiplying number of remote controls that operate the TV\/DVD\/Cable\/Playstation\/Stereo system.<\/p>\n

Those big colorful Playskool keys I gave my son as to play with accompanied us to the grocery store, the park and the zoo\u2014I blinked<\/em>\u2014and Toyota car keys were now taking my son places to explore on his own.<\/p>\n

Wonderful hours were spent helping my son learn the alphabet\u2014I blinked<\/em>\u2014and in his junior year of high school he was learning new and frightening combinations of the letters I had taught him so long ago\u2014SAT, GPA and AP.<\/p>\n

Many a day I commiserated as my son complained that there was no one to play with outside since only the girls that lived on our street were home\u2014I blinked<\/em>\u2014and he was asking for my advice on where to find the best dozen roses to send to his sweetheart for Valentine\u2019s Day.<\/p>\n

On the first day of kindergarten I dropped him off and worried for three hours<\/em> until I could rush back to pick him up\u2014I blinked<\/em>\u2014and was I really dropping him off at college knowing I wouldn\u2019t see him for three months<\/em>?<\/p>\n

When he was in first grade, my son and I packed a bag for him to take to a sleep over two houses down\u2014I blinked<\/em>\u2014and he was packing his own luggage to spend six month\u2019s studying half-way across the world.<\/p>\n

On a spectacular spring day my determined four-year old insisted I take the training wheels off his shiny new bike\u2014I blinked<\/em>\u2014and an even more determined young man had saved enough money to buy his own shiny new car.<\/p>\n

Surely it was only last night that I was tucking my son in after a good-night story and heading for bed at 10:00 p.m.\u2014I blinked<\/em>\u2014and my bedtime now coincides with the time he\u2019s just heading out the door for a night out with his friends.<\/p>\n

I can clearly recall that adorable end-of-preschool pageant in which my son donned his paper-plate mortarboard and proudly accepted his graduation certificate\u2014I blinked<\/em>\u2014and he was striding confidently to shake hands with the University President and accept his college diploma.<\/p>\n

Even kisses and hugs have changed!\u00a0 I was always the one who needed to bend down to give my son a bear hug and smother him with kisses\u2014I blinked<\/em>\u2014and now I need to reach up so we can exchange a hug and a kiss.<\/p>\n

As a sophomore in high school, my son made an impressive case for why he absolutely had to have a cell phone\u2014I blinked<\/em>\u2014as a sophomore in college he was the first family member whose cell phone finally reached me on 9\/11 to be sure I had made it out of the World Trade Center.\u00a0 Burned in my memory of that indescribable day was my son\u2019s concerned voice asking, \u201cMom, are you okay?\u201d<\/p>\n

My sisters were right\u2026.my son has transformed my life in ways I never dreamed possible.\u00a0\u00a0 When it was time for my second child to be born, I was ecstatic when I heard those magnificent words, \u201cIt\u2019s a boy!\u201d one more time.<\/p>\n

You can keep the Barbie doll\u2026I\u2019ll take a G.I. Joe any day.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Pamela Hackett Hobson<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Don\u2019t Blink   \u201cTo my embarrassment I was born in bed with a lady.\u201d Wilson Mizner (1876-1933) \u201cIt\u2019s a boy!\u201d Those three magical words changed my life in ways I never could have imagined. Growing up in a home with … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-125","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pamelahobson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/125","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pamelahobson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pamelahobson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pamelahobson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pamelahobson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=125"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.pamelahobson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/125\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":181,"href":"https:\/\/www.pamelahobson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/125\/revisions\/181"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pamelahobson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=125"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pamelahobson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=125"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pamelahobson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=125"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}