tulip stick and multiple shadows
Archive for May, 2010
glow (husband)
I can be a teensy bit of a whimp. A teeny tiny little scaredy chicken. I have big ideas and then a big clap of thunder shuts them down. Out squeaks an eighth of a breath of a thought that was supposed to be an opus.
But Steve doesn’t have such a violent editor. He has an idea for a garden, then he spends loads of money, buys lots of plants and soil and tools, and throws his body and time into a garden without knowing how it will end up. And puts his perfectionism and vision and courage into it and it turns out beautifully.
So he bought glow-in-the-dark paint and that’s what he’s been doing these days, painting. Why not!
Paintings rocks and pots and trees.
One of his websites, stephenwarrington.com, has a movie of one part of a project, and this (undoctored!) photo of another:
baptizo: to immerse
Henry’s getting baptized on Sunday. We’re having a party.
The language of baptism is scary — talk of renouncing Satan — lots of words that are turgid, maybe, to some.
But if the words are changed to ones that aren’t so thick and old and loaded, I think lots more people would rush to get baptized.
Because our intention is to celebrate his birth with the greater community. We want to say sorry to him that he’s come so pure into a world that’s complicated, and to give him a ceremony to try to free him from our worldly mistakes. We like ceremonies and their concrete manifestations of abstract intentions. We want to thank whatever-force-made-this-crazy-world-because-something-must-have for creating such a beautiful boy. We want the community to promise that they’ll help us to raise him to become a good man. Jesus was a good man — whether he existed or not, people could argue that, but I don’t think anyone could say that the person in books named Jesus isn’t good. He was wise and complicated and stood up for what he believed in, he was courageous and kind. And, most important! he loved his mother. So we look to that model, and celebrate it. And in a way we look to a baby to remind us how to be so pure. Then we have a party.
(image from http://fortysixthatgrace.blogspot.com/)
sleep solution
First it was the umbilical and then that was cut
and now we are most connected when he eats.
I can’t believe I almost gave this up in the beginning, when I was bleeding and had ice packs on my chest and the doctors and lactation specialists shrugged and said he had a bad habit, that’s how it was and time might fix it, sorry Bub; but every hour, twelve times a day I would cry as he ate and even feel mad at him because he was hurting me so badly.
He nurses to sleep a lot, which is common, though some people say it’s not a healthy sleep association. I can’t think of a more healthier way to go to sleep, actually, a baby pressed up against his mama, filling his belly as much as possible to sleep as long as his body will allow. But it’s true that when he wakes in the middle of the night, he needs to nurse to go back to sleep. In this way it is his pacifier, though an actual pacifier won’t do. And so, though it’s a healthy sleep association, it also means that I’m the only one who can usually get him to sleep, and I have to put him back to sleep every two hours all night long, and if he wakes up after twenty minutes of a nap and I’m not right there to put him back down, he’s up and then he’s cranky the rest of the day.
I read a book that offers a simple enough solution, and, compared to leaving the room so the baby can cry himself to sleep, it’s pretty harmless: each time I notice that he’s no longer nursing but still attached, I gently remove him from the breast and see if he’ll fall asleep without it. He fusses and searches with his mouth and I give it back to him, again and again. In time, the book says, he will associate sleep with a mouth that is breastless.
Each time I take him off, I feel an overwhelming sadness. It is a sadness that hits at the base of my gut and closes up my throat. I watch my small baby searching with his eyes closed for his one small comfort and I buckle. Of course he can have it. He is only a baby once. He is, by definition, dependent. I connect us again and again. I don’t want the last thought before he sleeps to be one of deprivation.
But also, it’s working. Often now he peels himself away just before he sleeps, takes a deep breath, then relaxes into the steady breathing that I know now to be a sign that he won’t stir if I slip away. And then soon, sooner than I can imagine, he won’t need me in order to go to sleep at all, and anyone else will be able to put him to bed.
He is so strong — the adjective that I’ve felt from his birth describes him best. He is capable and willing and as independent as a baby can be. He will be out of my arms in no time on his own will. He already wants to look out past my gaze to what the world is doing without us. I don’t want to rush this part. I don’t think I’ve experienced a sense of peace any greater than when I lay him down to sleep, the two of us very quiet and connected in the dark. He has all that he needs, and I am the lucky one who gives. He clutches my hand in his before his body relaxes. All the books teach a mother how to push her baby away, but I’m not ready to detach just yet.
mother’s day
This Mother’s Day, Henry cut his first two teeth, one emerging a couple of hours before the second. That’s what made it memorable. Not that I finally had a baby. This is the first Mother’s Day where people called thinking of me, but it’s not my first Mother’s Day. I’ve had at least four.
When I came along, at first I was not Rosie’s mother-figure. At first I was just her dad’s girlfriend. I think it took two years. But four years ago Rosie gave me a card, and two years ago even her mother wished me a happy Mother’s Day. This year, like many years, Rosie woke up and acknowledged the day with a smile as I was making breakfast. Sometimes I got cards, but she’s older now. Then she walked over to Steve, walked back to me, and said, You’re not supposed to cook on Mother’s Day. Dad’s coming to cook. She sat down at the computer to check her Facebook.
Love is attachment. I don’t love Rosie any less than I love Henry. I thought I might, but I don’t. What I have with Henry is more time, and in that time he cries and I soothe him and love grows. When he was born, I didn’t love him instantly, though I was definitely hooked. With Rosie, with joint custody, we have had to say goodbye so much that it was almost difficult to get too attached. But she’s been living with us — we’ve been living with her — full-time since Henry was born, and rooted love grows like roots do. I love her like I love Henry — with all my heart (even when it’s difficult), and naturally.
We’ve just been through one of the most difficult weeks with the new boy. Teething is not for saints, or at least watching a baby go through his first real pain isn’t. But he’s emerging with two sparkly white masts, and today at last he is almost himself. I haven’t left his side almost at all in this difficult week. Love entangles itself a little more.
list
lullaby
birds of sadness
honey
dinosaur
catastrophe
collection
kaleidoscopic
boy
sorry
fur
flat
I am bored of myself.
Henry has two sharp, glow-in-the-dark white teeth that have emerged like strange ships out of the ocean of his gums.
He says eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh all day for four days straight.
Yesterday was the worst of it. There was a lot of hard lemonade flowing.
Constant tending, tsking, sympathy –
and sometimes a pallid numbness. I am a flat shade of gray. I have nothing creative to say.
All I do is write about a boy. But no, all I do is tend to an eh eh eh boy.
I am not interesting at this time.
origami roots
I found this on Oh Joy’s blog many months ago and keep it on my desktop to look at it now and again.
recent photographs
previous posts
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