November 18, 2009

Another day of sunshine. All the branches are bare now though so it's impossible to pretend the warm weather is anything but a gift.

I call you smile bug because every day you are cheerier, bigger grins and more of them. Chortles that almost sound like laughter.

Last night at the New Moms group we talk about our relationship with our partner. One woman talked about how she and her husband are like ships crossing in the night. Five minutes at a time together and the entire conversation revolving around when the baby had his last nap, how often he's been pooping, how much formula he should get in his bottle that night. Another woman touched her temple, explained how even if she wants sex up here, her body won't comply down there. The group leader made S'More bars (Golden Graham cereal with melted marshmallow and chocolate poured over it) and as we talked we ate the bars, most of us picking them apart, popping a square of cereal or marshmallow into our mouths between nods and smiles.

I have always been a very sexual being, Thisbe. Maybe this will be too much information for you by the time you read this. Maybe you are covering up your eyes and shrieking or wrinkling your nose in disgust, but this is the truth. Sex with my first lover was tender, but also painful and awkward. With the next lover I blossomed, for months could think of nothing else, made love in tents and meadows, on scratchy green shag carpet, the sofa, the dining room table, the kitchen counter top. With your father, too, especially at the beginning of our relationship, whole weekends in bed, sex and bad movies and pizza ordered in between. I love the intimacy of sex but also how it permits the animal self to emerge. I like sex that is slow and soft, fingers trailed lightly down the spine or the thigh, but I also love sex that is rough and raw, bites on the neck and earlobe, pinching, nails raked through hair. Sex in four o'clock sunlight, sex lit by candles, sex in the dark where I can close my eyes and pretend your father is an anonymous stranger, unknown territory, and I am crawling, clawing into him.

But now I am empty of all sexual desire. I don't think of it, don't want it, don't even want to think about wanting it. I know this is physiological, a hormonal shift beyond my control, but it is also a loss of a part of myself, and among so many losses, one that I had not thought to grieve until today.

It comes back, assured one of the moms last night, it does, I promise. But, another mom-of-two chimed in, it's never quite the same. It will never be the same.

So today I rejoice in your smiles even as I grieve the temporary loss of my own desire. I pray that when it returns, when your father and I resume old patterns and routines, that the difference we feel is not just a loss but a deepening too. It seems obvious enough, but it is profound to realize that the act of sex created you, that in the space where I've played with sparks for so long there is also the potential for fire.