And now the party is over. At least for a day. Balsam fir needles shagging our carpet, scraps of wrapping paper nestled against the bottom of chair legs, new paints and glitter glue and Princess coloring books clogging the shelves-in-need-of-a-thorough-purging.
It was negative 13 degrees when we woke this morning. Chill sweeping up from the floor in the breakfast nook, your sister turning and turning the lid of her vitamin jar to release her new gummies.
You are becoming sweeter and sweeter by the day. Less frugal with your smiles, content to sit against the swell of a belly or propped within the crook of Daddy's leg. Sometimes we have competitions to see who can get you to balance the longest in a sitting position before you tip to the side, a Buddha bowling pin without the reflexes to reach out your arms to catch yourself. You can grab your toes but you're not yet quite flexible enough to bring them to your mouth. Your hips have opened and you roll easily from side to side (then you arch your back and strain your head back but can't quite seem to flip over). You are still a font of snot but now, with the help of the Nose Frida we manually suck the boogers out a few times a day. It's disgusting and deeply satisfying at the same time.
You will be five months old tomorrow and last night Daddy and I arrived unanimously at the Cry for Awhile Terminal. I don't think either of us would be capable of letting you cry for hours at this point, but all you really seem to need is about five or ten minutes of shrieking before you turn yourself off--a water spout going full force and the suddenly without warning, nothing. Silence. You fall asleep around 6:30pm and then (the last two nights at least) I feed you once, between 2:00 and 4:00. Then you wake around 6:30am and I feed you again and bring you into bed and Daddy and I prop you between us with a crinkly book and you blow bubbles at the zebra-with-the-girth-of-a-cow or the snail-with-the-snot-silver-shell and we doze in the darkness until we hear your sister's footsteps, down the ladder of her bunk bed and across the floor. She always stands in the crack of our open bedroom door, dressed in a nightgown and fleece pants, holding Dog Do, hair lifted in the odd angles of sleep, until we see her and call her into us. Then she crawls over me and nestles in between Daddy and I, facing you, and she sings and talks to you and you smile and smile.
The last week has been full of loveliness: Thisbe lumping through the snow of Lake Harriet with Gak and Ampa and Karu, making snow angels and running the length of the frozen dock; Anna and Martha walking you in a burst of warm weather, taking turns strapping you to the fronts of their bodies; Dot flipping crepe after crepe on the stove, passing us yogurt and syrup and cherry jam; John and Anna and Dot and Mark and Daddy and Mama moving down a snow-covered path in Excelsior, dark figures against a white board, night swift all around us, talking about Amy Adams' side boob and the re-making of the Self in American Hustle; your sister's joy on Christmas morning pulling princess fruit snacks out of her stocking ("He CAME, he really CAME!!!"); Thisbe squeezing drops of color into bowls of white icing; watching the Christmas eve service on a screen because our church was too full; Mama in the fall of snow on Christmas eve, shaking jingle bells in the cold porch light below Thisbe's window; Martha singing the final lyric of a song just outside the door of your room; loaves of french bread filled with artichoke and garlic and cheese, smoked turkey, pans of chicken and wild rice, almond bread, chocolate rum balls, Negronis and Manhattans, red and green M and Ms in a glass dish; your father's sniffling at the end of Frozen and your sister's peanut butter sandwich crust, crushed with sweat in the palm of her hand.
And there was the friction too, the places where we hurt one another, the smaller slights and the larger gaps in understanding. On Saturday afternoon, Daddy brought Thisbe to a McDonald's to meet Gak. The plan was that Thiz would spend a night in Minneapolis while we all spent one more night in Excelsior. But by the time Gak showed up, Thisbe was curled in Dada's lap, crying that she just wanted to go home.
All four of us, I think, are most grateful for this: to return to our home, to our routine, to the usual. Oatmeal with craisens and the familiar art table at school. To the red formica table in the coffee shop and the mobile with polar bear and crocodile and bear and whale circling predictably. To the staticky blankets and unvacuummed carpets and slightly empty, slightly sticky refrigerator shelves. To the whirr of the humidifier and the chugging of the electric train and the creak of our own floorboards.
Yesterday we got to watch John preside at the church where he's doing his internship. He was graceful and confident, raising his arms of the prayers, inviting people to sit and stand, lighting the baptismal candle. The gospel text for the day was about the slaughter of the innocents. The baby boys Herod killed out of his great fear. But I am thinking today about what this meant for Mary, to have given birth in a foreign place and then to be told she had to go immediately to Egypt, to flee to further strangeness. For her, there was no going home, no return to the routine and the regular. And I am thinking today about the people in our world who have to live like Mary. Not just the refugees, but those who are homeless or mentally ill and must move forward, always, into what is foreign, unfamiliar, uncharted; who must go, again and again, into unsafe territory. And I wonder if for Mary, faith came because she needed a home and God was one, a place to rest, finally, that was familiar and sound.
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