Palm Sunday

Today is the second day of spring break. Today is sunny and breezy. Today we will be given palm fronds at church and we will wave them in the air or you will try to chew on them and in this way we will remember Jesus' entrance to Jerusalem. For Jesus, today marks the beginning of the end--or perhaps the beginning of the beginning.

The mood in our house is similar, Thisbe. You woke three different times last night, crying and crying. We are trying to be good parents by not going in to touch you or feed you or comfort you. We are leaving you by the side of the road. This makes for odd remembrances of the night; I am never quite sure which cries were real and which were the ones that echo in my ears even after you have fallen asleep.

And in so many ways we seem to be between good tidings and sad tidings and tidings that have not yet...um...revealed their tiding-ness to us yet. We are trying, as much as possible, to do things that usher goodness and life in. Yesterday, a trip to the zoo. Today, our first jaunt in a (used) jogging stroller. Tomorrow, a trip to see grandparents and great grandparents and a lovely aunt and other friends.

Last night I dressed you in a striped, short-pants onesie and a floppy pink and white striped sun hat. I took you downstairs to where Daddy was gluing a tiny lamppost (not much bigger than a Q-tip) to the side of his model granary. In the dark cavern of the basement we laughed with you and tickled you and bounced you. Summer isn't here yet, and spring just barely, but we are reaching out with good faith and bare arms, we are laying down the branches so that we can get to the end of the story, so at this time next week we can begin all over again.

Balloon

My dear darling Thisbe,

Alas, life has taken over more and more and, between the teaching and the grading and the book clubs and the writers' groups and the walks in early spring sunshine, I have not been nearly as diligent about keeping up with the blog. Know that this does not reflect a lack of diligence to you, just a lack of diligence to your recorded self.

You are sitting up now, entirely on your own. This began just days after your six month check-up, but at first you resembled a buoy in the midst of a tumultuous sea, only unlike a buoy, you lacked the ability to right yourself, so each imaginary gust of wind sent you toppling. But over the course of two weeks, your stomach muscles tightened and now you sit on your own, a bucket of toys in front of you, pulling out first a stuffed lion and then a magenta plastic ball and then a wind up caterpillar. When the basket is empty, I replace the toys and you begin again.

And you are a new you, somehow, too. Maybe it is something about the six month mark or maybe it is learning to sit up on your own, but you are, the majority of the time, a bright and glowing thing now. When I come down the stairs, when Daddy returns from walking Luxy, when Grandma Ricki appears to unhook you from your car seat: you smile, and your smiles are easy now, no work, light doves flitting easily from your lips.

Last weekend, Grandma Dorothy and Grandpa Mark came to visit you and oh how they piled on heaps and heaps of love. Grandpa spooned carrots into your extended tongue and Grandma sent you into fits of giggles by kissing your bare toes on the changing table. Grandma Dot's mother, Momo, is dying and Grandpa Mark is exhausted from waking up at 4:30am and ironing out the creases of a university, but still they drove 18 hours in a single weekend just to see you and to cuddle you and to catch your easy smiles.

The day they left you got sick, very sick, for the first time. By "very sick" I mean 103.7 degree fever, I mean choking on your own vomit, I mean unable to sleep no matter in what position I held your warm body. I tried rocking you, I tried nursing you to sleep next to me in bed, I tried bouncing you in the eerie green Vicks night light glow of the nursery, but to no avail. By 3am I was close to taking you to the hospital--and then, suddenly, I thought of your car seat, a perfect upright yet comfortable position for your congested nose. You feel asleep almost immediately that way. I lay awake, wondering why I hadn't thought "car seat" at 10:30pm instead of 3am.

But the final story to tell, this moment of shiny green bliss we had today, is this:
Upon the publication of Grandma Ricki's new novel, her neighbor bought her helium Mylar balloons. Upon encountering said balloons, you were entranced. So Grandma gave you one to call your own, shiny and green and in the shape of a star. We have spent a lot of time in the last week in fast admiration of this balloon. You like to suck on it and gaze at your distorted reflection in its skin. Today, after feeding you, I let you stand on my lap, facing me, so that I could check your snot-faucet of a nose. "Balloon?" I said. And your eyes immediately turned to where the balloon was hovering, specter-like, it's wrinkling back pressed to the ceiling. Daddy raised his eyebrows. You looked at Daddy. "Balloon?" he said. And immediately your eyes turned ceiling-ward again, your throat open and exposed, so that you could look at the balloon.

We squealed with delight! Well, I squealed and Daddy just raised his eyebrows again and said "wow." Then he said "she is starting to connect signifier and signified" which is just the academic way of saying you are learning MEANING, Thisbe! You are taking words in and digesting them, you are storing them in your bones, you are getting LANGUAGE.

For a Mama who's a poet, that's a pretty big deal. I hope I am able to muster equal enthusiasm when you learn how to do differential equations.

Beginnings

March and rain. The snow huddling and shrinking into gray heaps, grit between its teeth. You are now on a schedule that does not involve a middle of the night feeding for your Mama! Hurrah! But sometimes this means you wake up at 6am. This is not so much fun. But then I bring you into bed and I lay on my side and you lay on your side, facing me, in the crook of my arm, and you nurse and I sleep and sometimes you sleep. Until finally you open your eyes and gaze at the blinds where the light is coming through, just tiny drips before the white rush of the morning, and then finally, after many moments, you make your first sound of the day. And because it has been so quiet in the room so long, so sleepy and content, so full of warmth and night, the sound always emerges like an object. Like a brown pebble slippery with rain, or a tulip with petal-lips still pursed together. This world is full of cancer and infertility and eighth-grade bullies and adoption hassles and unemployment and skin blemishes and cruelty.

And then you make this sound, Thisbe, and the day begins, and everything seems possible.

Six Months

14 pounds, 5 ounces.
25 1/4 inches.
5 needle pokes in your thighs.

Carrot puree at your temple.
Carrot puree soaked into the lapels of your sleeper.

Doctor Ripley pronounced you to be in perfect health.

Now, it's 9:15 pm and you are asleep.
Your father and I are watching Anne Boleyn say to Henry VIII, "now my love, let me conceive a son."

The sidewalks are clearing. Many are dry. Snow is slumping its way back into the ground, leaving forearms of open earth on either side of the paths.

"Mr. Wyatt," says Anne Boleyn, "I have a curious hankering for apples."

Peaches, pears, prunes: fruits we are to feed you if your face grows too red with a certain kind of effort.

Last week, a killer whale pulled a trainer to the bottom of a pool during the middle of a Sea World show. He grabbed her by the ponytail.

Across the top of your head, your hair is growing lighter. The undersides of the hairs are golden, the tops are brown. Is this even possible?

You are most likely to roll over when no one is looking.

"As long as I live," says Catherine of Aragon, "I will call myself the Queen of England."

Tomorrow your grandmother will read from "City of Cannibals" at the Red Balloon Bookshop. We will bounce you, somewhere, near the back. We will sign your name on a card. We will say the bag of lemon drops was your idea.