Bodies

The heat has become fairly unbearable.  Yesterday the heat index reached 102 and today and tomorrow promise to be worse.  So we've been hunkering down inside which feels a little odd since the view through the window shows sunshine, green grass, blooming flowers, and the neighbor cat, Piggy, prancing through the yard with a green stalk of something between his teeth.

Your acne is waning a little and your skin is flaking mostly around your temples and hairline.  Last night you woke at 1:00 and 4:30.  The 1:00am waking included a lovely diaper blow out that resulted in me peeling wet clothing off your red, writhing body while you shrieked.  When you woke at 6:00, I handed you to Daddy and went to the guest bedroom to sleep a while longer.

Last night, because it was too hot to go to the park, we watched the movie Brave and ate frozen pizza instead.  The mother/queen in Brave is turned into a bear by her rebellious daughter.  The two then spend the rest of the movie trying to undo the spell so that the mother/queen doesn't remain a bear forever.  Your sister sat on the edge of the couch, entranced, licking the icing slowly off the top of one of her leftover birthday cupcakes (we celebrated early with Grandma Gail, Grandpa Michael, and Great Grandma Judy). 

I feel tired and bleary.  My brain, my clear thinking, is just around the corner.  I can see its shadow.  In an hour I will take you to Baby Talk where the nurse will weigh you and the lactation consultant will tell us the best time of day to pump breast milk.  Other Mamas who also look bleary but who have applied eyeliner and mascara defiantly anyway will ask questions about heat rash and sleep cycles and gas and tummy time.  A few Mamas will stand to bounce their babies and a few will nurse and some will hold a pacifier snugly between baby's lips and stare off blankly into space.  Life is an insistent drum that beats and beats and beats.

Meanwhile, this has been a summer filled with death and the reminders of death and the closeness of death.  Cancer, mostly.  In the liver, breast, blood, and brain of people I love.  And though, as your father lovingly reminds me, we are all one day closer to our own deaths with each day that passes, these illnesses feel so unfair, so early, so entirely not OK. 

And I know I am supposed to recognize that life and death come together, that mostly we live suspended somewhere in between.  And I know I am supposed to be grateful for your insistent suck as a reminder of the cycle of life.  But sometimes I feel numb.  Not grateful or horrified enough.  Just a slow melancholy simmering.  I suppose because much of life and death is actually mundane.  It is wiping bottoms, getting a person fed, bringing the person to the doctor, checking her body daily for signs of change, searching his eyes for understanding, waking in the night and touching the pillow beside you to see if she is still there. 

Of course all of these acts have a completely different kind of resonance depending on whether they are edged with joy or loss.  But I wonder if many new mothers get depressed because when other people meet the baby they are overwhelmed by the Joy of Life on a Grand Scale while most of the time, a new Mama doesn't live there.  She is caring for a body. 

We are caring for bodies.  We are awaiting the care of our own.