Sophie B. Hawkins's Blog: Nurturing My Son's Sustainable Heart
Please welcome our newest celeb blogger, Sophie B. Hawkins!
The singer/songwriter, who is best known for her hits “Damn, I Wish I Was Your Lover” and “As I Lay Me Down,” has also starred in Room 105 and on Community.
Already mom to 6-year-old son Dashiell, Hawkins, 50, is pregnant with her second child — a girl! — after being implanted with her own frozen embryo.
You can find her on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter @therealsophieb.
Courtesy Sophie B. Hawkins
As I write, uncomfortably squishing my 6-month-pregnant belly into my old Manhattan window sill, the colossus of dirty snow is finally being swished beneath car tires by a precocious spring rain.
Six years and three months ago, I was pregnant with my son, Dashiell, playing a show in the desert of Cerritos, California, with Janis Ian.
I was very focused on my work, my relationship, my animals — and a little too concerned with the presidential election. I was, in most respects, an ardent passenger who never slept, just in case the driver veered off the road. I loved how my songs affected so many people in a real way, but my life was still no bigger than me.
Then, my son was born, and the big bang happened in my heart.
Now there are galaxies of love I’ve yet to experience, and bound to explore.
Courtesy Sophie B. Hawkins
How do I, as an artist, a pragmatist and a mother, sustain a love so big and fit into this world, so my children can thrive? By using all of what I’ve got, and only what I’ve got, plus ingenuity. A sustainable attitude keeps us buoyant in the highest water. It’s more of a responsive approach than a controlling one, and often, our children are sustaining themselves way before we are aware, or even ready, to let go of our tethers.
After a year and a half here in New York, my son has found his sea legs in his new life, and this happened seemingly overnight.
Recently, I traveled out to Los Angeles for a week of work, so I did what I always do: book four round-trip tickets on the plane for myself, Dashiell and our two mini dachshunds. Dash grew up in Venice, California, until he was 4½. He loves it, and I don’t mind cheating on an East Coast winter and tapping into new resources (like a tutor) for a work trip in the sun. I asked his teachers in New York to give us study plans in advance, so we were all set!
Courtesy Sophie B. Hawkins
When I told Dashiell at breakfast that we were spending a week in L.A., I thought he would be ecstatic — I thought these trips back to his homeland kept continuity. But this time there was a long pause, and then he said, “Will I be back on Thursday? I’m the door holder in Ms. Werner’s class.”
I let it go for over a week and as the trip loomed nearer I brought it up again at breakfast: “So, Dash, you know I have to go to L.A. next week to work, and of course I’m planning on taking you and the dogs … “
Ponderous silence.
“But then I’ll miss painting in art class,” he said.
“Yes, if you come with me you’ll miss five days of school, but you won’t fall behind and you can do all your California stuff while I’m working.”
“But if I stay … “
“You won’t miss anything,” I said.
“I’ll miss one thing,” he said. “You.”
“This is a big decision,” I said.
“Yup.” The 6-year-old leaned his chair back like a cowboy, “I’m staying.”
Courtesy Sophie B. Hawkins
Dashiell can pull the threads of his life together and keep himself up, I thought, and the details of making sure he’s taken care of in every nanosecond are boring compared to his being at the helm of his own existence.
I wonder if my being pregnant with his sister pushed this development? While I was fretting there wouldn’t be enough of me, Dashiell was busy inventing ways to care for himself. When he cooks, he finds the discarded, non-coveted ingredients, and he makes his own things. He makes really good things.
Last night he mixed flour and water in a big pot then rolled out the silky dough. Next, he threw the dregs of bruschetta from a jar, kalamata olives I was going to throw out, old rosemary, and garlic into a bowl with olive oil, cheddar cheese and salt, and spread it over his geometric pies. He cut the shapes like Picasso.
All I did was preheat the oven, put it in and take it out. He will never make the same thing twice because what’s around for him to use changes constantly.
Courtesy Sophie B. Hawkins
Dashiell doesn’t look for what isn’t there; he sees the old, used, and new as equally vital. He has a sustainable creativity, which is natural for a child, and necessary for a child to employ.
I was worried Dashiell would resent his sister, whom he named Bubble Gum, and yet they are already communicating on their own terms. This morning he “found her finger” in my tummy and sucked on it. It was at that moment, I realized that my fears have nothing to do with their progress. They are born with sustainable hearts — we all are — we just have to relax and remember how to use them.
Courtesy Sophie B. Hawkins
— Sophie B. Hawkins
