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.