Eleven Months and one Week

You are eleven months and one week old today, Thiz.

In my mother's Page-A-Day journal, her entry for eleven months and one week after my birth reads: "Today we went to Susan Still's to plan a puppet show for the PSN meeting tomorrow. Susan showed Kaethe a lion puppet, and Kaethe walked up and kissed it. Her 4th tooth, the upper left incisor, broke through."

What I love about this entry is that the breakthrough of the tooth seems so directly connected to the make out session with the lion.

It was hot today. Too hot in the shade, too hot to be outside. In the morning I drove to Mapleton and met Phoebe Joy, my friend Joleen's new baby. She was adorable and alert and tiny. I remembered, Thiz, what it was like when you were that small, when we never put you down, when you were connected to us--it seemed--at every instant. Now you walk around the house in a very business-like manner. Carrying flashcards featuring gnus and kangaroos you walk from the living room into the kitchen, down to the far end where the dryer rumbles, then you turn and enter the living room again. You stop and bend and grab hold of the door of Luxy's kennel. Or you brush your palm against the leaves of a potted plant. Or you steal a cotton sleeper from the bin of clothes next to the changing table and drape it over your head--and then you walk around, blind as a bat, giggling.

Now you are asleep. Daddy is having a beer with Pastor Charlie at El Ranchero, a supper club that is not Mexican. Instead there are checkered tablecloths and frosted mugs with dark German beer and relish trays with pickles and olives and miniature corn cobs. I am at home, listening to the whir of my computer fan and the drone of the cicadas, audible even through the closed windows. Summer is beginning its long good-bye.

It will be the last summer we spend in this townhome, I think. Even if we stay in Northfield, I think our time in this particular space is limited. And though when the time comes I will be eager to leave, I will always have a fondness for these rooms. The oven that never told us the correct temperature. The kitchen light that won't turn on in the humidity. The gray carpet that turns the tops of your feet black from all the embedded dirt. The furnace room with the boxes Daddy stacks so neatly to make space for his trains. Your nursery with the elephant rug Grandma Ricki found in an alley and the bookshelf Daddy found in an alley and the nightstand Daddy found by the side of the road. The dressers and desks and armoires that line the sides of our bedroom like monks waiting to offer a benediction. Our bathroom sink with the crack I always think is a hair. How the front door sticks in every kind of weather. How the air conditioning never offers complete relief and so we sleep with the sheets tangled around our calves, too hot to touch completely, just our fingers knotted together or my palm upon your father's chest or the back of his hand, flush against my thigh. I concentrate on that warmth, Thisbe, and fall asleep.