November 22, 2009

I am 31 years old today. You are 11 weeks and 3 days. Your father and I went out to dinner last night at a restaurant called Ginger Hop. Our booth was its own little room, with a mirror on the wall and a chandelier overhead. A red velvet curtain was roped off to the side of the doorway, ready to be unhooked and spread across the doorway if we desired further privacy. We ate duck wontons and braised pork curry; we dipped sweet potato fries into wasabi mayonaise and demolished a piece of key lime pie. I drank two glasses of pinot grigio but it was your father who teared up when we began to talk about parenting and unconditional love. By 8pm we were back at Ricki and Peter's, snuggled up in front of a fire, eating chocolate cake.

At 4:30am this morning you gave me my first birthday smile.

Today I found out that my friend Jon's daughter died yesterday. She was five months old. There is a website called caringbridge where people can go and sign a "guestbook" to offer support. I scrolled through entry after entry of the same thing: "you are in our prayers," "there are no words," "so sorry," "what a terrible loss," "your beautiful daughter." What small and flimsy and paltry things these seem to be in the face of death. But I added the same words. And now I feel in a gray goop of sadness, embarrassing because mostly it is not empathy for Jon sadness, it is fear and terror of the same thing happening to you sadness.

So I held you against my chest, your pajamaed feet pushing against my thighs, your cheek against my cheek, and I pressed my lips against the curl of your ear and whispered "I love you." And I wondered, if you did die now, if you would know that you are loved. Would that be the kind of understanding you would carry with you into death? Across a black ocean in a gray canoe? Do babies grow older in heaven? What, of earth, would you remember? What, I suppose, will any of us remember? Is there a Lethe where we are all washed clean? And afterward, are we simply naked souls, our hearts sounding against our chests like bells?

The angels make the most beautiful music from us, picking us up in their white gloved hands, striking us against the air, silencing our reverberations with a blue velvet cushion. "Silent Night" is playing. Jon's baby is ringing and ringing her one true note home.