September 30, 2009

It is the last day of your birth month. Time already seems to be moving too fast, already we are obsessed with the person you are growing into, your many and minuscule changes, rather than with the being you are. Does that make sense? For the two days after your birth we lay in the hospital bed, a double bed, in between bars of sunlight, and we looked at you. Your father played classical music on his computer and read the paper. I ate an omelet from the hospital tray and drank coffee from a plastic maroon cup. But mostly we watched you. And we weren't obsessed with how you were changing, just with the miracle of your being. But now you have us tied to a thread and you are pulling us ever forward. I am a little embarrassed to admit that I long for the day (supposedly sometime between week 6 and 8) when you will begin to "smile socially." You have smiled since the day you were born, mostly in your sleep but sometimes at us and once or twice I am certain out of joy at seeing our faces. But I long for this to be a pattern, something I can count on, a way of knowing that you love me. And why is this embarrassing (besides the whole needing affirmation from a four-week-old part)? Because by the time you get around to smiling, this version of you will be completely gone and there will surely be some part of it that I will miss. The malleability of your neck or the way your dark hair now edges over the curl of your ear. Perhaps the way you always sleep with your mouth tucked into your shirt or the blanket in which you are swaddled. Or how at night when you wake me and I turn on the lamp I am shocked by how beautiful you are: blue eyes and red round face all soft and glowing.

Also of note today: I cut your thumbnail when I clipped your nails. Now there are tiny specks of dried blood, like ant droppings, across the front of your beige onesie. And: I will be getting my hair cut today. Right now it reaches all the way to my nipples and gets in the way during feedings. Tonight is bath night. You have not yet learned to love warm water.

September 29, 2009

Your grandparents have not arrived. Michael is sick with stones, they are pebbling his kidney and causing awful pain.

Fall is a freight train of blue sky today.

Tonight, your father will attend a talk called "The Future of Life." I will sit at home on the couch, the Guatemalan pillows pressed up against both my thighs, and nurse you. Daddy will eat at President Anderson's house. You and I will sit amongst piles of laundered clothes that I haven't had the energy to place into drawers. I will rub my thumb over your black hair while we watch Law and Order.

During the day, you are now awake for longer than you sleep. Last night, I woke up so angry at your father I could barely speak. I cried while I nursed you. He opened one blue eye and asked if I wanted to talk about it. I choked out all my complaints while he listened and then I turned out the light and we tried to sleep but you were awake and inconsolable. So Grandma Ricki took you downstairs and we slept and when she woke me at 5:30am to nurse you I wasn't angry anymore.

We talked more this morning. We get along better in sunshine with blueberry pancakes and coffee and syrup and raspberries. It's hard for him to feel as connected to you as I do when most of the time it's my breast that you want, singularly and wholeheartedly. Last night he watched as you turned from facing him to facing me. Then you lowered your head so you would be as close to the smell of my nipple as possible. And Daddy has been waiting so long for his parents to arrive...and then yesterday they didn't. He is sad and frustrated and I am exhausted with the weight of being your sole font of everything. We forget to be gentle.

But he looked handsome leaving for work today: yellow and black striped tie over a maroon shirt. A sport coat for the first time this year. Silver watch chain dangling from his pocket.

You sleep between us; sometimes we go days without really touching.

September 28, 2009

Last night we ate dinner with John, Christy, Anna, Nick (Holden garbologist), and Dawn and Mary Coffee. All of these people were at Holden this past January when Daddy and I found out that you existed and for that reason they hold a special place in our hearts. John and Christy's house is filled with beautiful art: a wooden stable for Anna's plastic horses, a bed with acorns and pine boughs carved into the headboard, a shuttle holder painted like a leaf. We ate hamburgers and pasta salad and kale with fish sauce and lemon. While I nursed you in the living room I listened to the others talk and eat ginger cookies and drink tea from small Holden-made ceramic cups. When we left, the season had changed. Fall had blown in. A skin of cold rain covered the streets and the clouds were moving quickly, the force of autumn behind them.

Today you felt wind, real wind, for the first time. Your mouth twitched to the right and left and you raised your eyebrows but you did not cry. Maybe you will love sailing.

Grandma Gail and Great Grandma Judy were supposed to arrive today but Grandpa Michael has kidney stones so Gail is staying in Baltimore for another day to be with him during the surgery.

I am thinking about bodies today. How quickly they become distinct and show their vulnerabilities. At Baby Talk this morning you were still the smallest baby there (although you are 3.5 weeks old and some of the other babies are only 1 week). One of the babies, Micah, has thrush on his tongue. The medication is a beautiful violet blue and it coats the inside of his cheeks and his lips. Surreal looking but also beautiful.

Your uncle Ben shot a nail into his eye this summer. Your aunt Kaarn has endometriosis; two weeks ago she slept while doctors scraped endometrial cells from areas around her uterus. We hope a baby will grow there soon.

And then there's your father and I: me with poor posture and widened hips and blistered nipples and a soft rounding of flesh where you used to be and him with a crooked spine and shadows below his eyes and a few extra pounds around his middle (now that there is no longer time for the long walks we took together during the third trimester).

Meanwhile, your body is building itself, day by day. A new chin below your old one, extra plumpness around your thighs, your cheeks spreading wider to make room for your smile. I wonder at what age bodies stop building and begin to take themselves apart. Cell by cell and bone by bone until the day when we have to remember what the thing was by the fragments that remain.

September 25, 2009

Raining like mad this morning. First heavy rain since your birth. It has been dry and hot all this month but many of the leaves have turned and fallen anyway leaving red shadows below the trees. Still, it feels odd to walk through the crunching and not to feel cold air creeping in around the neck and cuffs of a sweatshirt. It is the weather described in Keats' "Ode to Autumn"--the oozing, the fumes of poppies, and Autumn herself asleep on a granary floor. Yesterday, we walked up to campus with Ricki to show you off to the English department. When we passed the football practice fields (GO OLES #1 sprayed into the hillside) I thought of James Wright's autumn poem, the sons who grow suicidally beautiful and gallop terribly against each other's bodies.

This year, you are my autumn poem. All weather and sounds and smells are tempered or sweetened or mellowed by you. It is 11:20am and the rain has finally stopped but even from here I can see the water hanging onto the leaves. Mary Chapin Carpenter is singing about halcyon days and jubilee and you are asleep on my chest. Last night you slept more than you ever have before so today seems bright and alive with possibility in spite of the rain. With eight hours of sleep pumping below my skin I feel invincible! My brain feels capable of stupendous feats! Of course, the morning discussion then revolved around WHY you slept so well. Was it the clock radio that I turned to pure static and placed on the bed next to you? Was it the two hours of almost continuous feeding you did from 11:00-12:30? Was it the "letting off steam" (ie fussing) you did with Daddy from 10:15-11:00? Was it that I tucked you in closer to me last night, my cheek against the top of your head and my hand pressed against your double-swaddled hands to keep them from thrashing? But you are still too young for the nonsense of patterns and schedules. Pied beauty. You are a dappled thing with a God-given inscape and sometimes we are invited in and sometimes we stand outside you in the warm rain, red leaves around our feet, our mouths formed into small "o"s of wonder.

September 23, 2009

White clouds covering our small parcel of earth today. Outside, one of the neighbors is digging into the earth with a shovel but is far enough away from us that we cannot tell why, we just watch his form heaving itself up and over the blade, again and again.

I hope you will get to travel a lot in your lifetime. Daddy and I both think it's important, but it's also expensive and we are not exactly swimming in golden statues and Ming vases. On our honeymoon, your father and I went to Peru. We watched the sun rise at Macchu Picchu along with 500 other people who managed to catch a coach bus up the mountain before 6:30am. When Ricki and Peter were there, 20 years ago, there were only five or six other people poking through the mist at the same time. I wonder what the place will resemble once you are grown.

You have developed a double chin and everyday your eyes cross less and less. You are awake for up to an hour at a time now, oftentimes without fussing, and expressions cross the plain of your face like storm systems. You turn red and your mouth curdles back to scream but before you can do so your eyes open and your mouth forms a tiny "o." Then you smile and tiny bubbles form at the corners of your lips. Now that you are latching on so well (one whole week!), Daddy doesn't need to get up with us at night. I turn on the green bedside lamp and settle two pillows on my lap and pull you to my breast and then you begin to suck and I lean my head back and we move in and out of wakefulness together until you have finished.

I worry sometimes that your father does not give his full attention to you when you are awake. He often has you on his chest and a computer in his lap or a book in his hand. But maybe this worries me because it reminds me of my own father and his ability to be mentally absent while physically present...and the tricks I developed to try to pull him back to me. Your only trick right now is crying--and you do so with passion and intensity, little Thiz.

September 17, 2009

Today is Constitution Day. Also Adelaide's first birthday. Downstairs, I can hear Daddy shaking the rattle in front of your face. We went to the Cow this afternoon and sat in the sun, drinking wine and beer and staring listlessly into space. You slept in your car seat. Later, Greg and Grete and Carsten joined us. Carste ate animal crackers and crawled around under the table. Then he would wander to the edge of the outdoor deck until Greg or Grete had to call him back again. He is covered with bug bites from the sandbox (one on his forehead and one below his eye) and he is testing his boundaries, seeing how far he can go before he is called back into his parents' sphere.

In the corner of the living room, the balloons Grandma Gail and Grandpa Michael bought for you are beginning to deflate, sinking down just slightly as though their worldly burden has gotten heavier. The bouquet of flowers from the St. Olaf Community is steadily losing it's members. Now just the yellow daisies are left; Grandma Ricki cleaned all of the brown petals from the tablecloth and freshened the water before she left today.

You were fussing downstairs only moments ago, but now Daddy has managed to calm you, probably by jiggling and walking and shushing or maybe just by laying you face down against his chest. You are content there and often sleep against him for hours.

We are now approaching 36 hours of successful feedings! You are latching on like a champ, though sometimes you still need a few drops of milk dribbled onto my nipple to get you started. Nevertheless, Mommy is a much happier camper.

What else? So many little details of the day that somehow seem precious: Luxy waiting outside the closed door of the nursery in her anxiousness to see you; your tiny feet with flaking white skin emerging from the cuffs of your enormous pink pants; your scrunched form and scrunched face inside the Ergo Baby carrier; the cold taste of the bread of my egg salad sandwich; the silver bangles on the gypsy scarf which Grandma Ricki draped over my shoulders. Then we turned up the "Forrest Gump" soundtrack and danced and jingled our way across the living room.

It's dark now. Downstairs you keep moving in and out of tears. There is a fresh glass of water on the nightstand and all the blankets in the house are clean.

September 16, 2009

Today is your due date. This is what Daddy mumbled at 2:30am last night as he re-swaddled your red and screaming body. Meanwhile, Mommy sat hunched in the rocking chair, the breast pump sucking at her nipples and Luxy puked and heaved and Grandma Ricki followed Luxy around on all fours, cleaning up the piles of vomit.

This morning you latched on well which made me euphoric so I left you with Grandma and came here, to Blue Monday, to drink a latte and check e-mail and eat an almond croissant.

Though it's still warm, the leaves have started their chameleon tumble down to the earth. Because there has not been any rain, they are still dry and scuttle and crunch against the pavement. Grandma says that the sound perks you up and that your eyes scan back and forth as you try to figure out what it is.

Last night Grandma Ricki asked me to take pictures of her with you, "so that if I die, Thisbe will know that I was here." Let me be clear: she has been here for you, Ms. Thisbe, since moment #1, shrieking and crying at your birth, taking you on walks in the parking lot with her finger in your mouth. She sleeps on the floor of your nursery, with Luxy curled behind her knees. Last night I brought you into her because you wouldn't settle down on my chest and I found the two of you later, you on your back and Grandma on her side, curled protectively around you. Ricki feeds Mommy and Daddy beautiful meals, she cleans our bathroom, she fetches extra syringes and feeding tubes from the hospital. She loves to put on "Wee Sing Silly Songs," a CD that Daddy cannot stand, and march you around the house. Though she does not have a perfect voice, she has no fear about singing to you. She says you are beautiful and that she will stay with us as long as we need and that she loves you. So whatever happens, know that she was one of the first people in your life to love you whole and deep and strong. I pray to God that you know her for the next thirty years of your life, but if you don't, you'll still carry her with you. And you'll be a better person because she loved you.

September 15, 2009

Dear Thisbe. Sweet Thisbe. Little love duck. Mommy had a meltdown yesterday because you wouldn't latch on and the syringe wouldn't work and you were screaming and I couldn't tell if the wet drops falling all over my belly were your tears or my tears or milk.

Today is sunny again and the cicadas are churning up their one note drone outside the screen door. You're wearing Aunt Martha's preemie sleeper gown which thankfully has little gloves to cover your fingers. Your nails are long and we need to cut them...but this terrifies us so we continue to say we'll do it tomorrow. Some morning we'll wake up and you'll have wolverine scratches tattooed across your cheeks and we'll feel very guilty.

Without sleep, the world is alternately beautiful and unforgiving. Even when you're not hungry, you love to suck, especially on my finger. You open your blue eyes wide and take in the ceiling fan or the bedside lamp or our faces. There are tiny bits of dry, white skin around your eyes that keep peeling off and your belly button is a round nub of scab.

September 14, 2009

You are asleep on my chest on the couch. The living room is dark and cool and outside it is still too warm for mid-September. The coffee table is currently a dumping ground for all things Thisbe: pacifiers, an old and battered "Dr. Spock" book, a Moby Wrap instruction manual, a rattle, the camera.

I took you to Baby Talk at the Community Center today. I had just nursed you and figured you would sleep through the entire meeting quite peacefully, but you had other plans. Eyes wide open and sucking my finger the whole time, I had to bounce and jiggle you through a community educator's extended swaddling metaphor. She wrapped a baby doll in five different blankets, each one representing some form of motherly protection; then she unwrapped each layer, giving examples of ways she failed at different times to nurture her baby in the most positive manner. All I could think about was how quietly the baby doll laid there for all that swaddling and also that a baby would certainly overheat with that many blankets around its little body. Does this mean that sleep deprived me has no room for metaphor?

Two nights ago you were a lamb, waking at 4 or 5 hour intervals and nursing quietly. It felt like the peaceable kingdom in our bedroom and I was so proud not to have to wake your Daddy for help. Last night you were possessed by an altogether different spirit, screwing up your face and wailing until the screams became choked gasps from the back of your throat. Even after feeding (my pinky in your mouth, Daddy sliding in the syringe beside) you did not want to sleep. Only if you were laying belly down on my chest, my pinky in your mouth, would you calm enough to snooze.

So much of our time is devoted to trying to find a pattern in all of this. Should I wake you to feed? How long should I keep you at the breast before giving into syringe feeding? Are you getting enough food? Too much? Were you over stimulated during the day or did you get too much sleep? We are academics looking for a pattern where there is none, searching for a way to understand you when you have yet to understand yourself. God grant us patience.

But I will say this. My dear friend and poet, Kiki Petrosino, gave a reading in Minneapolis on Saturday. It was a reading I thought I'd be able to attend and a part of me was very sad to miss it. Kiki was one of the best poets at the Workshop, and she was one of the first to have a book published. I will read you the poems in it because they are hilarious and filled with foods you will someday eat but the point is this: I have been quite horribly jealous of Kiki and her accomplishments (horribly proud too--the two can go hand in hand). But on Saturday I looked at you and I thought: this is what I created these last nine months (excuse the hubris) and Thisbe, you are so much better than a book with a glossy cover. You shudder in your sleep and smile and blink and make gasping tiny breaths when you eat. Thisbe, your howl is so much louder than all those words, laid down together in a book--and though I haven't found the meaning in them yet, it will come and maybe I will miss these days, when your sounds were still a foreign tongue.

September 13, 2009

Today you are ten days old. You are wrapped in a flannel receiving blanket, snuggled into a boppy pillow between us. Your father is watching football and baseball (he says the Twins are finished for the year and that he's refusing to root for the Vikings). We took you to church this morning and you slept through the entire experience: hymns, sermon, communion, prayers, well wishes, walk home. The Gospel reading was from Mark. The one where Jesus keeps asking the disciples: "Who do you think I am?" And I can't help wondering how much of who WE think you are will affect who you become. A book review in Newsweek this week entitled "Pink Brain, Blue Brain" argued that the majority of gender differences are rooted in nurture rather than nature. Adults were put through a series of tests, told that newborn girls were boys and vice versa. The way the adults interacted with and perceived the babies was entirely different based on the gender of the child (or the assumed gender of the child). Do I speak to you more softly than I would if you were a boy? Do I swaddle you more gently? Grandma Ricki bought tiny headbands with bows affixed and we giggled as we wrapped them around your head yesterday. Are you absorbing these silly gender stereotypes already?

Joy, Grete's aunt, wrote a Charles Dickens quote in a card for you: "It is no small thing when those who are so fresh from God love us." You are so tiny and so perfect but I do not know who you are yet. I hope that my thoughts and desires for who I want you to be do not get in the way of you becoming the person that you are meant to be. For now, I think who you are is fresh from God. Every day you open your eyes and you come a little nearer to us. For now, I am simply glad that you are.