A mom can read between the lines

I am very lax at recording things a mother is supposed to record. I remember the kids’ birthdays, of course, and I know that they were both born late on Friday nights. I know that they both weighed the exact same — 8 lbs., 2 oz — at birth, despite being born a few years apart. I know, approximately, when they walked and talked, and I know that the second kid first stood up on Father’s Day 1996, at the cottage. I know all these things, and I think that I might even have written them all down at some point, and yet I can’t quite remember where I put their baby books. Baby books were still in existence when we had our boys, but these days they seem to have gone the way of the flip phone. Instead, Pinterest is full of professional-looking photo books, with scripted letters, full-colour glossy pictures, professional layouts and bound-leather covers. Ultrasound photos, which once used to be posted on the fridge, are now posted on Instagram. But even though I can’t find my kids’ baby books — I’m sure they’ll turn up — I do know for some reason where mine is and was in fact just flipping through it the other day. It’s a sort of muddy pink, with Baby’s First Diary in gold script on the cover. It’s packaged in a small, flat box, with an odd-looking cherub suspended over some balloons, or maybe they’re meant to be bubbles. It was the ’60s, so if you must know I suppose I should be glad that the cherub is not wearing go-go boots. Tucked into the pages are a few more items, including my Grade 3 report card, which proves that, in life, who we are when we are 8 can pretty much predict who we will be 40 years later. There is this comment from the teacher: “Excellent reading skills.” And then this: “Talks too much! Therefore has to stay in. . . . I do wish her lips could be zippered!” But the baby book itself is written by my mother, who has always written lists and, as long as she can hold a pen, will continue to do so. (Oddly enough, my father, who worked many years as a writer, rarely writes a list.) And although she did not record everything about me, there is a fair bit to chew on. This, for instance, about me learning to walk: “Her first six steps alone were taken in Nana’s apartment when we were there for tea on Civic Holiday/67. Just as we were about to leave she walked alone towards the door.” Or this, about me learning to talk: “As Kathryn walks along the sidewalk she points to all sorts of things and says “look, look.” When we ask her ‘Where’s your brother, where’s Daddy,’ she always answers in a high voice ‘Not know.’ ” Or my weights, from month to month and year to year: “Jan. 9/70 Almost 4 yr. 30 lb. 4 oz.” What’s not written down — probably because they were in another calendar somewhere — were all the doctors’ appointments she took me to before I had heart surgery to correct a birth defect at 12 months of age, and all the appointments she took me to for many years after that. And so it is that when I read my baby book now, all these years later as a mother myself, I can read between the lines. On that summer holiday in 1967, for instance, I was about a year and a half, and a bit late to the walking game. But I had clearly recovered, and I was walking. Or when she wrote that I spoke in a “high voice,” I know that it’s because my vocal chords were damaged during the surgery and that my voice, since then, has always been a bit scratchy, and at half-volume (although that has never shut me up). Or when she listed my heights and weights so painstakingly, year after year, I imagine that she did so in part because I was so tiny throughout my childhood, and seeing evidence that I was indeed growing up was encouraging. These days, of course, she doesn’t record my weight anymore (which is, um, probably over where it should be now). But she does still keep a calendar listing the bits and pieces of her life and my dad’s, and I know for a fact that I merit a mention now and then. All this is to say, Happy Mother’s Day, Mom. Thanks for keeping track of me. Kathryn Laskaris writes every other Monday. klaskaris@thestar.ca or twitter.com/teenagedboyzmom