I'm in love and it's time I came clean with it. I am absolutely and totally in love with my daughter's body. I mean, really in love, like can't stop touching it and looking at it love. It started in Brazil where we all lived out of clothes more than in them -and it has continued into Minneapolis summer. I notice that I am looking for opportunities for the children to get naked. Wow! Look! You can't see your breath when you blow out, let's take off the jackets and while we're at it, just strip down! What? Hang out in your backyard with your children? Do you have a little plastic pool that we can fill with water that will get all grassy and disgusting and then can the kids clamber in and out, naked and covered in sunscreen?
There is something about that unselfsconscious nakedness, about those muscles and that shiny growing skin, that just does me in. They are stunning. Completely stunning. And I am in awe.
We exchange pictures among friends - all of us sending links to our websites, attached photos, sometimes versions of the same weekend trips. There are often naked pictures in them, our children holding hands and jumping into the lake, into the slimy pool, resting in the grass. I can't help but think of Sally Mann, the photographer whose photographs of her naked children have generated so much controversy. And not only Sally Mann, but the photos siezed by Scotland Yard at the Saatchi Gallery because they were of naked children, the woman I read about a few months ago who was arrested when she tried to develop photos of her naked children. Most of the time I laugh at these stories - come on, people, there is a difference between pedophelia and loving your children. Lighten up.
But when I am smack in the middle of that intensity - watching Luca running and I can't take my eyes off of her and no, I don't want to do my daughter, but there is a kind of hungry lust in watching that beauty, when I am there, I can understand why some people might be afraid. Something primal or old, something that doesn't smell like baby powder or pastel colors comes up when I watch Luca twisting and turning, limbs splayed. I grew that, my little Petrie dish. In my body, that beauty grew. But it's more than that. Something aching about how life in its purest physical sense is supposed to be, without guile or self consciousness but purely with this turning skin drenched thing.
I do get a feeling that feels kind of like hunger, but a hunger that doesn't have a food to feed it. It's not a lost longing kind of hunger, just something deeper under the skin. And it's funny, because while I can watch the beauty of the other children in my life, admiring them, enjoying them, the feeling isn't as intense as when I watch Luca. When Luca dances, naked in the sun and without pretense, in some wierd projected maybe invisible umbilical cord maybe in misguided ego way, it is also about me. And I love it.
4 comments:
It is an interesting and somewhat uncomfortable thing to think of - i have never articulated it in this way, but i do find ways of getting Joely (mostly joely now for some reason) to take off his clothes - this isn't hard because he loves to be naked - in the way that Miguel likes to be naked, not in the way that Augie likes to be naked; which would mean wearing, socks, pants, shirt (and a jacket for good measure) while the other kids run around like chickens with their heads cut off.
I know exactly what u are talking about. I am in stunning awe of my babies. I love looking at them, naked, clothed, it really doesn't matter. But I do find myself loving their little tummies and the smell of their skin. They are going to end up with permanent kiss marks because I really can't get enough of them. I am so afraid to take naked pictures of them for fear of exactly what you were writing about. Strictly innocent until some perverted fool makes something more of it. There is nothing dirty about it until someone makes it that way.
I too admire my children's bodies (as well as those of their friends). For me, it is a combination of awe inspired by their actual physical presence and their comfort with themselves and their friends. Miguel has always loved being naked and loves the touch of skin. We love that about him but have also had to teach some boundaries around it. It was necessary but also sad. As for Z, well, she seems to be following in her brother's footsteps. She loves the be naked...she strips whenever she can.
If a father posted this about his children he would be put in jail.
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