Hello, Tooth!

Along your bottom gum, just a touch to the right of center, a tooth is poking through. Just a tip, just the barest nub, but it's there, it's coming. The sensation is new to you and you want to touch the tender spot, constantly, with your tongue. Usually, however, you overshoot the gum and the tip of your tongue emerges from your lips and you lick, cautiously, all around the outer right side of your mouth. This makes it look like you are thinking very hard about something--like algebra or how to rob a bank.

Also coming is your ability to crawl. From your belly you can now get up onto your hands and knees but you haven't yet figured out how to manipulate your limbs from that position. So instead you collapse back onto your belly, or back into the cobra position and scream at me until I come and hoist you up, onto your feet, where you can pretend you are already an expert at all things.

Stillness is no longer something you aspire to. When I hold you in my arms, you burrow your head into my chest and then use your head as leverage, throwing your butt into the air and wriggling side to side so that it is impossible to rock you gently before laying you down into your crib. Instead I am forced to hold you in a steel death grip, not something that lends itself to relaxation for either one of us--though "Steel Death Grip" would be an awesome title for a going to sleep board book. I would replace "Snuggle Puppy" and "Where is the Green Sheep" with "Steel Death Grip" any day.

Today is Grandma Ricki's birthday. She and Grandpa Peter and Michael are in China right now, Bejing to be exact. Here in Northfield, we are trying to master "hello" and "good-bye," two words we pretend are easy--just a flapping of fingers at the crease of the wrist--and so whenever Daddy or Mommy or Grandma or Luxy or the odd woman at Blue Monday with the page-boy haircut and overweight child say "good-bye," I maneuver your hand to imitate the gesture. In another month or two, you'll be able to master the gesture--and in another 50 years or so, you'll have the concept down too.

Your Laugh

Da!

Then tonight, you were sitting in your high chair and I was spooning yogurt mixed with pears between your gums and you were watching Daddy, your eyes following as he walked from the kitchen and through the living room. You craned you neck to follow his figure as he mounted the stairs and you called, clearly and loudly "Da!" Loudly and clearly enough the Daddy stopped in his tracks and looked at me and I looked at him and back at you and then back at him.

What commenced was a five minute discussion about whether you'd actually known what you were saying, whether you actually attach that specific sound to your father, and whether you'd do it again.

You didn't, of course.

And you're unlikely to do it again at the moments we most expect it.

Instead we're forced to remain humble and attentive. And open to the possibility that any moment might change everything.

Newsweek

Today is a gray and rainy Saturday. Today is the kind of day in which I leave you in your pajamas, the ones with some kind of animal face sewn onto the feet, because I would like to remain in mine. Today we are in Minneapolis because Daddy and I are going out on a date night tonight and because Grandma Ricki and Grandpa Peter want to gulp you up in large doses before they leave for China on Tuesday.

You are sleeping longer at night now. Seven days in a row now of seven hours of sleep in a row. Only one bleary-eyed middle-of-the night feeding. You nap two or three times a day. Usually 45 minutes a pop, but sometimes an hour, sometimes an hour and a half, usually longer if it's Daddy or Grandma taking care of you and shorter for me.

You like to practice standing now and the best place to practice standing is at the magazine rack. It's a sturdy wooden contraption, about a foot tall, with a dowel across the top for lifting. You hang on to this dowel and pull magazines from the enclosure and crow at your accomplishments. I have to sit directly behind you, hands positioned just inches from your hips, but you can feel the moments where you are independent and in control of your own body--and you are so proud.

Last night, after work, we went to the Cow. We ate nachos and drank and listened to live music. We stood close to the musicians so you could watch the soft mallets against the silver xylophone, the brushes against the drum heads, the mouth of the sax moving into and then out of the light. You sang along. Then, at the table, you grabbed the lip of my cup and spilled beer all over my lap.

When we arrived at Grandpa and Grandma's today, you said something that sounded like "hi" except it came out more like "ay" and so Grandpa Peter started calling you the little pirate.

As you digest bits of the Atlantic Monthly and gurgle yourself to sleep, we grow more and more anxious to know what you're thinking. Anxious and a little terrified, the way I always am when I know I will get the truth, pure and unadulterated.

Bear Belly

It seems important, somehow, to mention that you are now rolling over in your crib, back to front. You are now sleeping on your belly. You are now rotating 180 degrees and flipping yourself over like a little blueberry pancake. We are, of course, impressed.

You are also trying to crawl. You can almost lift your belly off the ground. You attempt this move often, a sort of yoga cobra position, but then give up and relax back onto your chest, lifting all four limbs of the ground and wobbling back and forth ridiculously. After dinner, Daddy crawled around the living room while you did this. He was trying to set a good example. Luxy was perturbed.

Today we went to the zoo with Grandma. You touched the stiff neck hair of a goat and watched baby piglets dig their snouts into straw. The best part was the grizzly bears. We watched one swim for quite awhile, watched his huge legs and arms churn the water, his long hair swirling. He never put his ears below the water, just his snout. I lifted you up and down so you could see above the water line and below it. He was an awesome and terrifying force. And at one moment, his snout was inches from your rosy round cheeks; he was looking at you, through you. All I could think of was the glass collapsing. They do this on purpose, I'm sure. The zoo does, I mean. They are such powerful creatures that somehow no cage, no aquatic tank, no moat ever seems entirely reliable. And it is the sliver of fear that makes things interesting, that made this experience today precious and beautiful. This sounds sentimental, but I keep replaying him in my head: legs churning the water, paw pressed against the glass, claws close enough for me to count. A part of me felt like an irresponsible parent, holding you so close to danger. A part of me thrilled at that.

Post In Which You Contemplate a Play Date with Cousin Nora

Today, a thank you note arrived from cousin Nora. Enclosed in the note were two lovely pictures. I showed the pictures to you and here's what happened:

Frayed a Little

And today was beautiful. Sunny and 61 degrees and all the leaves emerging, new and unscathed. From a distance, the branches look frayed, fuzzed with green. So we experimented with the frame backpack. Put you in it and took ourselves and Luxy on a walk through the natural lands behind St. Olaf. From the outside, everything looked pretty good--we did, the world did. Inside the house though, Thiz, we are a little frayed, fuzzed with worry and exhaustion. Yesterday at work I opened with window for the first time since last fall. It was windy outside and so seconds later my desk was covered with the bodies of dead bugs, dry and delicate, tiny legs folded in on themselves. On the inside, this is more how I feel. There are so many people to care for: students and friends, you and Daddy--and there are so many things to care for: the plants in my office, the gas tank, the living room rug, the washer full of dirty diapers, the empty refrigerator. There are plane tickets to book and papers to grade and mothers to call (I'm co-leading the next New Mom's group, the group that saved my life last fall). And behind all of this, last of all, seems to come my own writing and then today, when I finally had two blissful hours to write (thank you, Daddy) what emerged was absolute crap. Finally, two whole hours on my own and all I produce is garbage. So there is spring and there is also, inside me, a slow sinking. How much of this you know or understand I don't know. How much of the deterioration of my parents' marriage is knit into my subconscious I do not know. Today, you seemed unperturbed. Probably you are learning the textures of tone and sound, how words can have hard edges or round bottoms, how sentences can blister or twine together. Ironically, whatever hurts emerge within our own home are the ones I will least be able to protect you from, Thiz. So I pray for patience and grace and kindness. And I lay you down in your crib, sinking a little on the inside, but still filled up with such gratitude for you, such joy.

10 Minutes or Less

You are downstairs with Daddy. I can hear the train whistle and smell the smoke, your squeals echo above the clicking of the wheels over the tracks. I am forgetting to write everything down.

Last night we put you down to bed and a few minutes later you began to shriek. High pitched, venomous shrieks. We went in and found that you had rolled over in your crib for the very first time, back to front, and you were terrified.

Now that it's warmer, we don't zip you into your sleep sacks for sleeping. Now, when I lay you down you push your head to the right, upward, as though you were trying to gaze behind you, your whole body twisted on its side, nose up to catch a dream scent, hands clasped together in a slumber prayer. Your little body arched that way, every night a tiny bow.

Grandma takes you to see the rooster. Later, you make sounds like crowing.

Today the clouds were moving quickly. It rained in the morning and then the wind swept the clouds away. You ate peas and bananas and pears and mangoes for dinner. In the middle of eating, you often turn your head to the side and watch the branches swaying outside the window. While you watch, you open your mouth without looking at me. You watch and go on eating.

I took you to a conference in Denver. You slept in a closet in the Hyatt hotel room beneath the safe, beside the ironing board. Instead of going out for drinks with friends (too exhausted) I watched hyenas devour a lion on television. Later, meerkats and elephants.

We have taken the cellophane down from the windows. In the early evening, we leave the front door open and long shadows and rays of sunshine fall across the carpet. You pull pages from Newsweek and Atlantic Monthly and attempt to devour them. We dress Luxy in your sun hats, stroke your soft head, kiss you just behind your earlobe, just below your hairline, at the place where your neck is softest.

Easter

Today we went to church. Brass instruments, flowers at the altar, a choir that spilled over the edges of the platform. Daddy stuck his name tag to your shoe (the gold shoe, with tiny star cutouts) and you spent much of the service trying to remove it. You babbled during the alleluias and leaned forward attentively during the children's sermon. The sky was an even, bright blue, the grass newly green. 62 degrees.

Elsewhere, Grandma Dorothy and her sisters and her father gathered around Momo and Momo took her last breath. I do not know the details yet and I will never know exactly what her loss will mean to each member of her family. The part of me that loves a parallel narrative hoped that maybe Momo would breathe her last breath yesterday. That way, Dorothy and her sisters and her father could have gone to church today together, could have been surrounded by brass instruments and flowers and a choir that spilled over the edges of the platform. They could have been reminded that death never has the last word, they could have been filled with life and hope and promise. Momo's death today reminds me that our bodies are finite, that no amount of belief will resurrect our flesh, that in spite of great love and faith we will all die someday. God does not save our bodies from that.

But that limit, that ending, is a gift too, Thiz. When, just after dinner, Daddy propped you against the ottoman and you stood, for the first time, on your own two feet, when you looked at us and laughed (on your own two feet, for the first time), I was filled with great joy. A great joy made greater by the presence of death standing close by.

Spring Break

Day one: scalloped corn, green Jell-O, peas and pork with Great Grandma Judy. Also cards and a black and white movie in which male doctors smoke cigarette and clap one another on the back between delivering babies from between the legs of delirious mothers.

Day two: six hours in the car. Daddy walking with you in the ditch by the Taco Bell/Gas station. Screaming in the car and ceasing when "Great Hymns of Faith" began to play. Sitting in your Bumbo watching Auntie Martha roll out pizza dough. Sitting in Grandpa Mark's arms, in Grandma Dot's arms, lots of kisses.

Day three: bean bag toss in the backyard. Grass against your toes for the first time. Auntie Marth shows you one blade of grass and then another. While you nap, Anjuli and I sprawl in the sun and listen to Auntie Martha play the Tennessee waltz on the guitar. A song about climbing a high mountain. Warren arrives and we all sit on the three season porch. Anjuli feeds you squash and prunes, the prunes on the tip of the spoon so you eat the squash. You scream yourself to sleep. Across the country, Momo is shrieking herself to sleep too.

Day four: you and Daddy and I go out to lunch at a coffee shop. Then we go to the pet and hobby shop. You see tiny sharks, glo-fish, guppies, mice, kittens, bunnies. Baby rats squirm below their mother. You are strapped against me in the Ergo carrier, in the 75 degree sunshine we make a kind of oven between us. Then a bath outside, the yard stretching big around you where you sit in the dish tub we took from the sink. Tonight you will not attend the Maundy Thursday service. You will not see the stripping of the altar. You will not hear your Aunt Martha singing "Orphan Girl" in a crowded cafe. You will not hear her voice trembling in the high corners of the room.