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.
No comments:
Post a Comment