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.