October 12, 2009

4:30am
Pinched face red and screaming, you are wrapped in a blanket that has velcro tabs stitched throughout for airtight swaddling. Your father holds you on the length of his left forearm, moving you up and down while he hands my two Tylenol with the other.

5:30am
You are pacified but fully alert and nestled on your white foam pad between us in bed. We are exhausted but you are wide eyed and cooing and we cannot resist you. I use my index finger to manipulate your gaze...to Daddy...then back to me...then back to Daddy. Your head moves back and forth, a slow shaking of "no."

10:35am
You scream in the car all the way to Baby Talk but quiet when I take you out into the cold air. Snowflakes on your face for the first time. Your dried tears leave a white residue at the corners of your eyes.

1:12pm
When I left the house you were snuggled close to Daddy in the Moby Wrap, screaming while he flipped through a book. Now I am at Blue Monday, eating a bagel, drinking a latte and reading "The Soul Thief" by Charles Baxter. His writing is laced with intelligence, but the kind that glitters and calls attention to itself rather than the kind that is simple and honest and rooted below the surface of things.

There is a certain quiet that falls along with snow. Everyone looks tired but also more patient. It is the season of making sure blankets are tucked under, the season of saran wrap around the doors and cardboard in the crevices. The sky is so uniformly white it erases itself. Meanwhile, I will spend the winter trying not to be erased: a new battery in the car, a freezer full of food, lime stationary with a gilt border so that I can write. "I was here, this is what happened, remember me."