November 12, 2009

Letters are taken one at a time. A door blows open and we pass through. Darling, we have been counted. Where you live they take the hoses off the roofs. There are always some places the fire does not reach.

I wrote those lines before you were born, in the summer of 2004, right after I'd moved into the farmhouse in Iowa City, when fires threatened Railroad Creek Valley and I prayed every night that Holden wouldn't burn. That was when everything at Iowa was new. Nam poured little glasses of Johnny Walker Black and we threw darts at the dartboard and laughed if they hit the wall instead. The wall was so scarred it didn't matter anyway. Then came a storm that knocked the swing off the porch. That night, Anjali and Nam and Zach ran out into the yard, into the grass and corn and mud, probably drunk, and I remember very vividly looking down at them from my second story bedroom window--they were calling for me to come out to join them--and laughing.

Yesterday you took four naps in your crib! Then you slept from 8pm to 7am with only one feeding in between. Hurrah! This morning I put you on your belly and you flipped over and then smiled proudly at me.

For such a long time you napped only in the Bjorn or Moby or while held close to someone's chest. Now that you can sleep in the crib I feel overwhelmingly thankful but also sad, there is a new chasm of distance between us. You are discovering how to comfort yourself and I realize each day, for the rest of your life, you will need me a little bit less, the way that still, every day, I need my own mother a little bit less. I have to believe this, at least, because otherwise her death, which I know will be devastating, would also be insurmountable. It is incredibly painful to realize that the main job of a parent is helping the child, little by little, to let go.

But I feel the distance acutely, Thisbe, from your body to mine, wherever I am and wherever you are, and I think I will feel this distance for the rest of my life. And maybe beyond.