Gray and cool today. Lovely and soft--in the way that Gray and Cool can be only when you haven't seen them in a while. Rain fell on and on last night. I know because when I woke to feed you at 1:30 the sound sank into the air all around us while you nursed. I'm not a very graceful nurser. I know it's ridiculous to grade nursing postures, but if they did, I'd be failing. You eat best in what is currently called the "football hold" which means I clutch your body against my hip and prop your head up in front of me, like you've come to watch TV on the screen of my chest. To make matters worse you tend to suckle better if the milk comes immediately so I bend over, boob hovering like a swollen cloud. I want to be the Zen Earth Mama of Nursing but instead I look like the Hunchbacked Eighth Grader of Nursing.
You are working on your smile. Today, while Pastor Tim talked about lost sheep, about why a changing theology is necessary, you laid on the length of my thighs and gurgled and cooed and stared at your father. You blew a little nest of bubbles at your lips (on Friday, Thisbe's friend Leo said it looked like you'd been eating soap) and mewled angrily when your sister molested your cheeks or pressed her voice too tight against your head. The smile is beginning at the edges of your lips, barely perceptible shrugs upward. But it's even more evident in your eyes. I don't remember this about your sister learning to smile, but before your lips do anything your eyes get a little glassier, your pupils dart more quickly, eagerly. I'd crush a line like this if a student ever put it in a poem but it is true that your smile begins in your eyes (I did just gag a little as I wrote that). We are hungry for it, kind of pathetically so.
Last night we watched The Little Mermaid together. Your sister is obsessed with Ariel and mermaids although she'd never seen the film. She has an Ariel castle that plays alarming Caribbean music if you open a little treasure chest in the living room and she has a bath time Ariel that wiggles her tail if you wind the sea shell at her waist. Daddy recently read Thisbe the Hans Christian Andersen version of The Little Mermaid and so, as she sat on the potty after we finished the film I asked her about the differences between the book and the film.
Well, she said, there's no fish named Flounder or crab named Sebastian in the book.
True, I said.
And in the book the princess the prince loves is not the same as the Sea Witch.
That's true too, I said. What was your favorite part of the movie?
I had two favorite parts. No, three. When Ariel came out of the water in a sparkly blue dress with legs. And also the part where she first got legs and also the part where she turned back into a mermaid.
I suppose we are always awed by moments of transformation. In the book the little mermaid chooses to become human even though she knows she will feel like a sword is running through her foot each time she takes a step. She wants a different world that deeply.
I know you will transform over and over again throughout your life, little man. Little transformations and gigantic ones. From stoic to smiler, from coo-er to demander, from singleton to couple (and likely back to singleton again), from child to adult, student to teacher, cared-for to caretaker. Some of these transformations will be natural, simply the result of your body and your mind moving forward in time. Other transformations will be chosen, the result of your strong desire to live as a different kind of person in this world. My hope for you is that you desire the transformation of the world as urgently as your own development--or that somehow you can come to see your own transformations as part of and necessary to bigger and broader communal shifts. I have worked for good things in my life--but some of that good work I have let fall away. Partly this is because we live in such a wonderful town--we drink beer with good friends on Friday and do yoga in the park on Saturday and pick edamame at the farm on Monday. It is easy to be comfortable here. And so a lot of times I resist hearing the news of elsewhere; I am not willing to feel a sword entering my foot in order to make sure everyone in the world enjoys the same kind of comfort and safety that we do. And though I don't wish you pain, sweet Matteus, I wish you the capability to survive discomfort for the sake of a better elsewhere.
But mostly, today, I wish for a smile.
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