Reunion

A dreary Saturday. All of us still a bit under the weather and the weather under and beneath and around all of us. In Northfield the banks of the Cannon River haven't held. The water has overflowed, crept into basements and fields, over the riverside sidewalks and the parks at the river's edge. E-mails for emergency sandbagging attempts. The radio station shut down after Excel Energy cut off their power. I took you downtown yesterday morning and by the time we headed for home all the downtown streets across the river had been closed. I brought you down to the edge and we watched the water. Dark and fast, foam cutting slivers of briny white into the churning fabric. Fast and with purpose, a different kind of river. The wind whipping around us, raising the fine blond hairs around your face.

Before watching the river we sat on a couch at Blue Monday. I fed you bits of blueberry scone and we listened to a man from Greece talk about following his dream to build Nascar auto parts. His one-year-old had open heart surgery. She was an unplanned pregnancy but in Greece, "we don't terminate" he explained. "I mean, you know, the babies." He showed pictures of his family on his cell phone.

Then we watched the river. And then we drove home. And then we drove to Minneapolis. You ate mountains of macaroni and cheese for dinner. I tried on different shirts and said things like "does this one make me look too dull?" "does this one make me look like I'm trying too hard?" "does this one suggest a more zesty personality?" "does this one suggest too much boob?" Ricki and Peter played along. Your father sat in the armchair in the sun room, reading a paper and rolling his eyes.

Then we left you and went uptown and ate a grand amount of delicious Thai food. Daddy had a beer and I had a pomegranate martini that smelled exactly like the cough syrup we've been squirting into the back of your throat for the last three days.

And then we went to my ten year college reunion. And what a homogeneous bunch the class of 2000 truly is. White and upper middle class. And I was so torn, Thiz, between wanting to look like I belonged and desperately wanting to look markedly different. Which sadly means that maybe my 31-year-old self is not so different than my 21-year-old self.

Or maybe I'm not being fair. One classmate lost a leg to the Light Rail. Steffan lost the use of his left arm to a stroke. He put down the beer in his right hand to give me a hug. Nikki used to design sets but is now training to become a landscape architect. Nick was almost unrecognizable; he's lost so much weight that a sharper, far more distinct face has emerged. In the center of the room were huge plates with thousands of pieces of cubed cheese. The side of the room with the bar on it was considerably more crowded than the side with tables.

I cried a little in the car on the way home. Mostly grief for everything that I thought I was going to accomplish by now--and haven't. And maybe won't ever accomplish. They give awards and a full page spread in our college magazine for the man and woman who have accomplished the most in these last ten years. I won't lie, of course I wanted to be that woman, I wanted a glossy photo of my face framed by a white collar, not a single slick hair out of place. But I know the man who won the award--he is teaching physics at Oxford. He has a beautiful wife. And he was drunk beyond belief. The kind of drunk you get when something crucial is missing. I know because I was that way at the five year reunion.

Which isn't to say I wasn't drunk this year. But it was a different kind of drunk. A ten year reunion is really just an excuse to grieve a little for the person you didn't become.

But there is nothing missing from my life. Sometimes I don't get around to everything that's important. Sometimes things are out of balance. But there are no dangerous and dark absences, the kind that can pull you into affairs or suicide or Kool-Aid cults.

And I have you and Daddy to thank for that, Thiz. You fill up my life with presence--the true, difficult, maddening, vulnerable, hilarious kind of presence. I haven't accomplished what I thought I would, but---well, that just means the write-up for the 25-year reunion will be that much more fantastic.

The Good Kind of Breaking

So as of 2:30 this afternoon, dear Thiz, you had no fever. No fever without the assistance of Ibuprofen or Tylenol. Your father wept. I felt like my body melted into the floor in relief. These are not exaggerations. We went for a walk altogether in the late afternoon September sunshine and the world was glowing.

Now, back home, we're feeding you bits of banana. We're letting you watch the Vikings and dial random numbers into the phone. You look a little like a burn victim now that the rash has spread to your face, but you're personality is back, somewhere behind the blotchy red and the slime-trails of snot. The Thiz is back. We're so glad to see you again.

Fever, Day Six

Still holding steady at 102.2. The rash is in full bloom on your chest and back and neck. Our sheets are spotted with spilled breast milk and Ibuprofen liquid drops and snot and urine (you like to pee when we take your temp.) Your eyes look bleary and you've got snot crusted around your nostrils. You're wearing your pink pajamas with the panda faces on the toes. While I read "The Happy Man and His Dump Truck" or "Thank You, God!" you tug absentmindedly at the panda ears or at a tuft of hair above your left ear. You don't have much interest in your choo-choo or your mailbox or your dump truck. Sometimes I can seduce you with my wallet and its dozen plastic laminated cards. But this morning you just wanted to read or to lay on the floor with Mr. Meow. I keep hoping this is the kind of exhaustion that comes with getting better. I am tired of this worry. Tired of pressing my lips to your forehead a thousand times a day. Tired of making sure I know at every moment where the Ibuprofen and thermometer are located.

Fever, Day Five

So today the doctor put a catheter in you and said, once it was in, that then your crying helped, it made the process faster. Daddy and I stood near your head. I held your face so close I could smell my own breath.

While we waited for results Daddy read a magazine with NFL on the front and you slid the face of the fireman upward to reveal the firetruck.

Your smooth bare legs are almost exactly the length of my thighs. Your toenails are small and jagged. The doctors still don't know what's wrong.

Probably a virus. But also if it gets worse we should take you directly to Children's Hospital in Minneapolis where they specialize in taking blood from the veins of babies who are toeing the death-line.

Last night we rearranged the furniture. Luxy now sleeps below a shelf of plants, giving her the appearance of a jungle animal. Then we ate spicy nacho Doritos and watched "The Young Victoria." When Prince Albert died, Victoria continued to lay his clothes out every morning. For the rest of her life, for 43 years, she did this. It makes me sad to think of all those empty shirts waiting for a body to fill them.

This morning, after we gave you Ibuprofen, you had a bit of your usual spunk back--wrinkling your nose and smiling, swirling your fingers through Luxy's water dish, attempting transport the word "hot" from the back of your brain to the outskirts of your lips. And I realized as I watched you do these things how much I've missed you this last week. I keep remembering your infant days, back when you were just a small, sweet body, back before we really knew you. Sickness brings forth these same sweet infant tendencies--nursing round the clock, falling asleep in our arms, burrowing into our necks--but now we also feel the absence of you--your sass, your spunk, your curiosity, your constant motion. Each day you arrive more fully within yourself, and with each day your absence becomes that much more unthinkable. Be well soon, darling girl.

Myth

Pouring down rain and the thunder rumbling. You, a feverish sweat-mess, sitting on my lap in the rocking chair, rubbing your nose back and forth against my T-shirt, finally falling asleep, your little furnace body pressed against my heart.

A masking tape tag with your name in black block letters on the back of flowery corduroy overalls. The woman at ECFE telling me to put my coffee on the shelf in order to respect the safety of the children. As if she knew that only an hour earlier you'd pulled Daddy's mug of hot coffee onto yourself. Your small foot below the bathroom faucet. The coffee-drenched toe of your sleeper now soaking in an ice cream bucket filled with water and Oxy-Clean. Still, I wanted to punch the ECFE woman in the face.

Poems about Leda. The rain comes and I write notes to myself for discussion tomorrow: "What words does Graves use to mean rape?" "What kind of person is Zeus in the poem?" "How is the poet reinventing the power dynamic of the original myth?"

Your father is singing in church. Joining his voice to other voices while the rain comes down.

When you are sick the power dynamic shifts. I know how much you need me. I remember that it is possible to lose you. Your body is hungry for my body in a way it hasn't been since you were small. It may be selfishness more than selflessness that makes me pull you close and rock you until your limbs grow heavy and you sleep.

When I Walked Out of the Kitchen

Today Grandma Gail and Grandpa Michael and Great Grandma Judy will arrive for a weekend visit. Of course we are very excited. And of course having guests always takes a certain amount of preparation: grocery shopping, cleaning, laundry and the like. And of course Daddy and I often wait until the last possible moment to do a number of these things. In part because we are procrastinators and in part because most cleaning is undone by you within a matter of hours and sometimes minutes.

So today, when Daddy headed off for his first day of classes, I knew it was going to be a busy first day on the home front too. I, however, was determined to meet my lengthy to do list with energy and grace.

To that end, you and I left the house at 7:15am, you in your fuzzy pink pajamas, brown tennis shoes and winter cap and me in running garb. I had you in the stroller, I had Luxy on a leash, I had a plentiful supply of Cheerios and plastic bags. And we were off! Cool crisp autumn air, early morning sunlight, your bobbing, capped head in front of me...and a small boxer-pug mauling Luxy. What could be better? I didn't let Luxy off the leash for fear of Luxy killing the other dog; I did try to maneuver away from you while also not letting myself get trapped between the warring canines. You looked on without much concern, rolling backward slowly but surely. Stroller brake be damned.

Anyway, the owner finally approached and we were off again, Luxy's ears folded to her head, Mommy's heart pounding, and you looking highly unperturbed.

We had some oatmeal and mashed banana and then I got you dressed. Notice how I waited to dress you until after breakfast? I'm sly like that.

At 9am you looked tired so I put you down for a nap. You cried for half an hour so I got you up from your nap. I brought you downstairs and began looking for your shoes so we could run some errands. Then I heard you laughing a little maniacally. I stepped out of the kitchen and realized I couldn't see you. The laughter continued. I finally realized you were sitting at the top of the stairs, waiting for me to become aware of my POOR parenting skills.

We ran our errands and returned home. I went into the kitchen to prepare your lunch. I walked out to find you gleefully holding my empty coffee mug. The rest of the coffee was on your darling outfit and the floor and the leather ottoman. More bonus parenting points for me.

You ate lunch in your coffee stained, garden-themed overalls. I took the clothes off you so I could redress you for lunch. Then I changed your diaper. And I discovered a horrible, terrible diaper rash. At 9am your butt-skin was perfect. At noon you had blisters on both cheeks. The best treatment for diaper rash is a little air-dry time. So I decided to let you play naked for 5 minutes while I did a few dishes. Then I would diaper you and dress you and put you down for your nap.

Except that when I walked out of the kitchen after washing TWO BOWLS you were standing next to Luxy's kennel holding a handful of your own excrement. There was a little on your belly and another dollop on the door of the kennel. The rug featured poop footprints. I thought briefly of that cheezy poem about Jesus and the beach and the carrying. And then I swore. And then I laughed. And then I spent the next 15 minutes picking up globs of poop from the rug and squeezing bits of poop from your fist and then bathing your tiny naked self in the bathroom sink.

Finally, FINALLY I got you clean and diapered and dressed and down for your nap. And then Daddy walked in the door. And then I realized it was only 12:30pm and that it was going to be a very long day.

Toddler Bath

Ever since you began to walk, you have refused to sit down in the bathtub. You totter resolutely from one end to the other, a jar lid or medicine dropper or travel-size bottle of shampoo held in each fist. Small butt. Round belly. Aghast at the thought of sitting.

So I decided to start bathing with you again, something I haven't done since you were small. I thought of doing so a few nights ago when I had an entire half hour long phone conversation with my friend Miriam while she was in the tub with her 18-month-old daughter, Ursula. So now I fill the water a little higher and make the temperature a little warmer. I try not to think about the hunched curve of my spine or the swells of belly fat at my waist. I lean my back into the faucet so you won't hit it with your head. Tonight I added bubbles. You were baffled. I could feel your muscles relax when some of the bubbles cleared a bit and you could see your toes in the water below. You quickly forgot about the bubbles and focused on a Dasani water bottle instead. You sat facing me, your legs pressed against my thighs, and practiced putting the blue cap on the water bottle, over and over again.

Sometimes I know, when a moment is happening, that I will long to return to it when you are grown. Like tonight. The warmth, your slick skin and dark lashes, the barely noticeable echo of our voices, the sound of Daddy finishing the dinner dishes downstairs, Luxy nosing the door open from time to time to peer in on us, the bubbles silently dispersing (a soft fizzing sound I can actually hear when alone in the tub), and your absolute focus on a small blue lid and the place you know it belongs.

Backward

Really, Thiz, as if walking FORWARD wasn't enough!!! Geez. Soon we will train you to ride small lions with crimson flowers braided into their manes or we will teach you to blow singing bubbles out of a kazoo the size of your arm. Then we will sell you to the circus and retire. Or maybe we will bottle your energy and intensity and sell it to a rural village in Transylvania. And then retire.

Or maybe we will wax poetic about this new development--how lovely it is to watch you move into the unknown and unseen, into all that empty space, without fear or hesitation. Your faith in the universe is infinite. We are taking notes. We are still hoping to retire.

Then Comes Marriage

Oh, what a weekend! So much, so much, so much--best captured in list form:

1. You turned one. We put a candle in a cupcake and sang to you. I put frosting on my fingertip and shoved it into your mouth. I thought you would be pleased. You were disturbed.

2. John and Anna got married! Anna wore a lovely dress with an ivory sash around her waist. John walked around in his fancy suit, lime green tie, matching handkerchief--and a bottle of Gatorade in his hand. They were both dear and beautiful and sincere. Supposedly, babies don't remember anything that happens before the age of two, but I wish you could keep this wedding tucked into your memory, Thiz. There were a lot of tears; there were Subway sandwiches in the church social hall; there were carafes of wine and sparkling glasses on a green, green lawn beside a lake; there was orzo and salmon and kale; there were truffles that undid themselves inside your mouth. I slow danced with you next to the band. The saxophone player held the horn out to you and you retreated into my shoulder. After you went to bed, Daddy and I drank too much and slow danced close together and stood outside and let the stars fall down around us.

3. You have been tough. Shy. Needy. Pale with a glowing red nose. On the way to the wedding, I knelt on the front seat, back to the windshield, and poured a tiny white pellet of camomilla into the cap of a tiny homeopathic bottle. I fed you the pellet, hoped it would calm you, said a little prayer.

4. You and I wore dresses that felt a little like crepe paper.

5. You received: a birthday bear from Margaret, a jacket and doll from Becca, a CD from auntie Martha, books and a darling outfit from Anjuli, a book and pail from Trevor and Angie, and crabs from John and Anna. Crabs donated in your honor to a rural village in India. Later, you will understand why this is funny.

Happy Birthday!

Your birthday has arrived and with it the cold. It's blustery this morning, drizzly and gray. You woke at 5:45, ready to celebrate.

All the cliches are true--it's impossible to believe you've already been around a full year (i.e. how time flies!) and impossible to believe you've ONLY been around for one year (did life exist before Thisbe?).

Soon I'll dress you in a fuscia onesie and flowered overalls. We'll pack you into the car along with a cooler full of hard boiled eggs, three bushels of apples, a beanbag toss game, diaper bag, suitcases, and a slick garment bag filled with fancy clothes. We'll drive to Luthercrest Bible camp in Alexandria, we'll unfold ourselves from the car, and we'll hug your Uncle John and Aunt Anna, who will be married tomorrow. Tonight we'll put a candle in a cupcake and sing to you and think about 7:45pm last year, the moment you emerged into this lit, breezy, Kodachrome world.

It's only now, one year later, that I can see how remarkably our worlds (mine and Daddy's) changed along with yours. The world we live in now is full of a kind of gravity and richness we didn't possess before we met you, Thiz. All the big words (love, grief, suffering, faith)--they mean something new and different to us now.

Tomorrow at John and Anna's wedding, I will read these words:

"You will go out in joy
and be led forth in peace;
the mountains and hills
will burst into song before you,
and all the trees of the field
will clap their hands."

May your life, dear one, be filled with joy and peace; may you be given ample time to burst into song and clap your hands; may you explore wildly (yet carefully) the mountains and hills and fields; may you be given moments that deepen, enrich, and re-start your life the way that the moment of your birth (and the moments that followed) have deepened, enriched, and re-started ours. We love you so.