I drive differently now.

I have to most definitely stay alive for this boy. Or else what would he eat?

It’s not just about the milk. I have to stay alive for at least 25 years. That’s when Henry reaches adulthood. If I die before then, I risk putting in his eyes what I see in the eyes of people who lose their parents too soon.

(I will always be here. I will be in everyone he loves. I am the one who holds him at night to keep him safe, the one who feeds him and shows him what love looks like. I will be everywhere after I go.)

I swear I never used to think this way: I have potential wives lined up who might be good for Steve in case I die — people who could love Henry so that he grows up strong if I’m not here. Jealousy snipped.

Wolves    — by Laura Kasischke

Small, red mitten in the snow—

my heart, my baby, my terror:
At the side of the road in a moment, all of it is there,

though the baby is safe at home, and it isn’t

blood or his mitten in this blizzard. Even

in first grade I remember

crying, thinking
I am not crying. I am pretending to cry, while I
watched the other first graders watch me
from the corner of my eye. My crying

was a pack of white wolves
in the woods, beautiful, immutable.

I was a liar, too. I remember

lying and crying at the same time. He pushed me. He called
me a name.

And the boy without guilt was sent
to the Office of Invented Crimes. I saw

his white shirt tail soaked with nervous sweat wagging
out of his pants as he left, but who

believes a boy?

And even when I left one day
in a blur of accusations
from my first husband, I felt

those wolves in my chest. I just

can’t take it anymore, I said.

Take what? Take what? he wanted to know, and I
wept into my hands, pretending, though

I wanted nothing from him. I wanted

only to be pure of him, and never

felt what I felt
about him, just

imagined the camera on me, what
my suffering would look like
from the distance of God

to a girl. For decades, the days

were long and full of stars. The nights were brief and false. I
couldn’t
imagine what love was, what

fear meant, and didn’t care. But now

I see this blood-spot, heart-stop
of a baby’s mitten in snow and all of it is there

in a moment at the side of the road—authentic, and primitive,
the terror like love, the love like terror—and wonder

where did that girl go, and wonder

who will punish her for what she wasn’t
now that I’m a mother?

March 31st, 2010 | Category: apparent | Leave a comment

Steve and Rosie and I spent a lot of time at the amazing Ann Arbor Film Festival last week. This film by David O’Reilly, “Please Say Something,” about a relationship between a cat and mouse, won for best animation. It’s complicated and aesthetically specific and strange. Many parts of it I found myself saying inside, so true, and feeling sad and understood and in love with this crazy world.

March 29th, 2010 | Category: overheard | Leave a comment

This came in the mail today and I am just so happy — so, so happy.

Anne Carson’s new book of poems, Nox.

March 29th, 2010 | Category: book | Leave a comment

I thought this baby-tending would be a more balanced activity between me and Steve, but the nature of the job doesn’t permit that. There’s so much I couldn’t have realized until I held Henry in my arms, and a big realization is that he is always in my arms. When he’s not eating, he might be hungry and so he’s passed to me to see if he wants to eat, or else he’s in my arms sleeping after eating. The gaps between these activities is too small to let others spend much time holding the baby.

Steve would lactate if he could, but also the fact is that someone has to go to work. He’s the one with more business savvy, clearly, so off he goes. Someone has to tend to the garden, and dig massive holes and reroute water drainage, and order huge piles of rocks and compost and $700 in wood chips, apparently. Looking at a shovel makes my arms tired, so the job goes to him. I hold the baby. And hold the baby.

Hour after hour the baby is in my arms. My arms hurt. My rotator cuffs are stiff. My back hurts. I don’t get much done. And sometimes I feel a teensy bit of resentment. I just didn’t realize that nursing round the clock means I am always on duty while everyone else runs off without asking to do those activities I envy, like running outside to check to see if the mail came without telling anyone where you’re going. What spontaneity, what autonomy!

Twice this weekend I wanted to disappear for just ten minutes. Just plop the baby down and go to my bedroom, lie down, disappear with the dogs and sleep, daydream without jumping up to tend to that fussing sound or see if anyone else was going to check on that fussing sound. I wanted to disappear without having to ask if it’s okay, if someone else could watch him for a bit. I wanted to go to the bathroom without putting the baby on the bathroom rug. I wanted to change the laundry without putting the baby in the hamper. I wanted to step outside and breathe and look out further than eight inches without asking if someone else could take over.

I get nostalgic so fast. By nighttime all I wanted was to hold my beautiful baby. When else in this boy’s life will I matter so much. In just a few months he’ll be eating rice cereal and carrots and squash. Someone else can be there for an hour or two or three or even four. Right now I am all his.

And even already he needs me less. I can hold him to sleep, then slowly walk away and the past few days he can stay sleeping for sometimes half an hour. A half hour when my baby is all alone behind a closed door. It breaks my heart a little. This constant touching, suckling, this needing me only, it really is only a phase. This is the only chance we have to be this way together. And I want a break from this so I can do what? Pay bills? Go buy food without a creature crying in the backseat? Hold a book with two hands? Suck it, monkeys. I can do that later. There is a boy building neuron connections in his brain that are only formed once. His whole life unfolds from here, from this crucial first year, and he’s waking, waiting to find my face.

March 29th, 2010 | Category: apparent | Leave a comment

March 27th, 2010 | Category: henry | Leave a comment

March 26th, 2010 | Category: house | Leave a comment

30 poems in 30 days for April, national poetry month.

March 25th, 2010 | Category: written | Leave a comment

I wondered what he would look like when he was born. I went through so many images in my head. I pictured every baby on the street to be mine. Lots of traits skip a generation – perhaps he’ll have Steve’s grandfather’s ears, perhaps he’ll look like my father who looks nothing like me, who knows.

I pictured him fair, and when he was born his hair was wet and dark. And so much more complicated.

And after a few minutes I could picture no other baby: of course my baby looks like this. This is my baby.

But in those first few moments I felt something that was probably exhaustion. A gun shooting, time positively stopping. All these possibilities, and then the target hit: this is my son. This is the one. All the possibilities narrowed down to this. All the guessing, and now he is here. These are his hands and no others. This is his hair, these are his feet. I thought I would be able to identify those feet but I couldn’t. I didn’t know whose feet they were, they didn’t look like mine or Steve’s. I was afraid he would get some awkward visual characteristics that popped out once in a while in Steve’s or my genes, but he came out free of those. All my fears dispelled. A relief and an exhaustion.

I thought to myself that those were Steve’s hands in miniature form attached to the new baby in my arms, and something about that, though I love Steve’s hands for sure, made me exhausted. So the baby doesn’t have my hands. But he’s mine, right? I’ve been carrying him all this time and now he comes out and I didn’t know what he would look like,  and now all the possibilities are narrowed down into one, and these are his only hands.

The midwife shot me with pitocin and started stitching and it hurt. I was so tired. There had been labor pain for over twelve hours and now I was at last lying down without pain, at last he was here, and the needle was in and out piercing more pain. I was so tired and woozy, and they took the baby away. I missed him when he was gone, whoever he was. I wanted to stare at him, I only saw that his mouth was open screaming, and I saw his hands. Is this normal? I asked the midwife about the boy’s loud lungs, and she assured me that it was.

I thought he wouldn’t cry in his mother’s arms. Steve remembers that he settled, but I remember that he cried and that I had no idea what to do. I remember feeling that way several times that night, that he was crying and mad, actually pretty mad, and I couldn’t figure him out as well as others probably could. I couldn’t tell if he knew I was his mama.

It was all so exhausting, and I was sitting on a stained bed and a bag of ice, and the skin on my stomach was flabby, and the boy would not nurse. I couldn’t tell if he was mine or if he knew that I was his, but also I could tell that he was beautiful. I was relieved.

Those were Steve’s hands. Of all the possibilities, I didn’t picture this. People filed in the room and gave their opinions, most saying that he looked just like Steve. I agreed he had Steve’s eyes, but I thought maybe that was my mouth and my chin. Nope, he’s all Steve. I felt saddened. I wanted him to be mine, I wanted to feel that he was mine, but it seemed, that he was not. I felt tired.

Over time, his face has come unswollen and it looks now like he actually has my eyes and Steve’s mouth, and I think that’s still my chin. Biologically, I’ve read, babies come out looking more like their fathers so that the fathers will stick around. And now he is most certainly mine. Ours.

I can picture no other baby being mine except him. I want to have another baby, but I don’t want to have another baby because the new baby couldn’t be as beautiful as this one is. Of course my baby looks like this. This is my baby and no other. There is no other baby I would rather have.

March 25th, 2010 | Category: henry | Leave a comment

March 22nd, 2010 | Category: henry | Comments (2)