November 20, 2009

10:06am. Blue Monday Coffee Shop. A male and female college student stand, he with two mugs, she with two plates, scanning the coffee shop for a place to sit. He wears a Norwegian ski hat--although it is 45 degrees outside--and the little pom-poms at the end of each tie sway sadly below his chin. He has the exact same build as his girlfriend who wears a light cardigan that drifts around her nonexistent hips. She has pale skin and no real chin to speak of and this makes their simultaneous scanning even sadder somehow.

You slept 8 hours again last night, then woke at 4am to feed, then slept another three. But I couldn't get back to sleep after feeding you. Just lay in the dark and tried to distinguish between the three sets of breath sounds in the room: yours, your father's, and Luxy's. Snores and licks and sniffles.

When I got up at 8am you were already awake, shifting a little side to side in your Moses basket, blinking your eyes, sniffing impatiently. At night we swaddle you in a special wrap with little velcro tabs designed to help keep you thoroughly contained. Over the swaddle goes a blue fleece sleep sack that zips from chin to toe rather than toe to chin. The sleep sack has arm holes on the side but, because of the swaddle, you have no arms, so you always look a little pathetic, wriggling side to side, not quite awake yet, but mewing your way into the quiet of our dreams.

When I hear you I get out of bed and strip off my gray sweatpants and yellow Quad Cities Marathon shirt. I take off my watch and lay it beside the sink. I turn on the shower and peel back the blue bathmat and set the white scale on the white linoleum floor. I'm neither proud nor ashamed of the number that rises there. Sometimes 123.6, sometimes 122.4 and once 121.8. I'm still 5 pounds above where I was before I got pregnant and it seems appropriate that perhaps I will never make it back to that weight, the way that I will never make it back to that old self.

Today my breasts began to leak as soon as I stood up, both nipples at once, and so as I stood, waiting for the shower to heat up, I watched the drops fall onto my hips and belly. Little butter-colored tears.

Then I got into the shower and washed them away.