1. Waking up at 5:00am to your shrieks and finding, as I nursed you in the dark, the entire upper right side of your body wet from urine. In the half chambers between sleeping and waking, trying to determine how loose your diaper was and at what bizarre angle your little penis must have been at to have achieved wetness in that location.
2. Waking at 8:00, glad to stretch and roll to my side and think at least two or three thoughts before descending into the fray.
3. The pride on Thisbe's face as she stood in her brown fleece sleeper pajamas, gesturing with outstretched hand to the three different cards she'd made for me. Spirals of flourescent glitter on one, a hand print on another, and a drawing of her "when she is old enough to go out on her own" looking fancy in flowing hair and crown.
4. A stainless steel mug filled with a Dunn Bros. latte that Daddy arrived with at 8:15. The way the latte stayed warm all morning.
5. Watching you take little butt scoots across Gak and Ampa's hardwood floor. Tracking your movement by the number of floorboards you crossed. Three.
6. Your sister, nestled into my lap (while you slept), her pointer finger (smudged with black marker) tracking below the words as she read them: "Look, Sally, look!" or "Spot can jump. Spot can jump down."
7. Daddy entering at 10:45 with roses and words of praise about uncle John's sermon (sneaking into the State Fair, something about how Jesus is the gate, how we have to be sheep that help one another)
8. Sitting at the table with Gak and Ampa and Greg and Agnes and Michael, Big Bowl take out in front of all of us, realizing that no one had actually paid for the food (Peter thought Ricki paid over the phone--she had not).
9. The taste of stolen yellow curry chicken.
10. A walk below the warm gray sky. Your coos and hums floating up, the breeze catching puffs from your stroller tray and sending them flying.
11. Gak claiming that she would NOT cook today and then setting out a fruit salad with canteloupe and pineapple and blueberries and raspberries, a coffee cake that she "just wanted" to bake three days ago, a green salad, mimosas, and bread. In addition to the stolen food from Big Bowl.
12. A beeswax candle, violets pressed to the smooth yellow side.
13. Yehwah, Agnes's friend who Gak invited to lunch because she didn't have a mother to be with.
14. Playing with you and your sister in the late afternoon at Way park. 74 degrees and sunny skies. Your father off buying sandwiches. I pushed you in the swing while Thisbe jumped off the side of the slide, then the jungle gym, then the stone wall.
15. And then Thisbe said, "I'm going to ride my bike without training wheels now" so Daddy took them off. And where, two weeks ago, she had been wobbly, certain she'd fall--today she simply got onto the bike and rode, steadily, as though something inside her had righted itself.
It is such a gift, to be a Mama to you both. This quieter truth sometimes gets drowned out by the louder truths of exhaustion and explosive poops and whining and frustration and dirty carpets and sticky refrigerators and impatient shrieks. Mamahood is a gift.
This weekend, we had a baby shower for Auntie Martha. In a little book we made for her, of lullabies and blessings, I wrote for her the lyrics to the song Dumbo's Mama sings to baby Dumbo. The song comes when the Mama has been put into elephant jail and Dumbo is feeling horribly alone. So she sneaks her trunk though the bars of the prison and rocks him against her wrinkled grey skin.
All through the summer of 2009 and again in the summer of 2013, I sang that song to your sister and to you as I walked and walked, ("Baby mine, don't you cry / Baby mine, dry your eyes") through the heat and the waiting, ("Rest your head close to my heart") so full of desire to meet you and for our time together to begin ("Never to part / Baby of mine")
 |
| September 3rd, 2009 |
 |
| July 31st, 2013 |
No comments:
Post a Comment