Rosie took something that was mine without asking, and she meant no malice, but I can’t get it back and it went away unappreciated, unloved. I cherish things, it’s a characteristic that makes me who I am. For better and worse, she doesn’t. So I set up a still life, hoping maybe there were some lessons inside it about attention, about care and mindfulness and really seeing.
Rosie’s beautiful drawing:
And the parallelogram left over after the still life was gone:
He says bpbpbpbpbpbp with his lips when he’s playing happily. He says mamamamama when he wants something, and dadadadada when he doesn’t want something, when he’s just saying hi to Steve or when he’s looking actively at something outside of himself.
It is the most amazing phase in my life to get to witness a breathing thing turn into a human being so quickly. He’s seven months old and he knows language. I say mama and he looks at me. I say mama’s milk and he does a breathy laugh for yes and pulls at my shirt. I say Lucky and he looks at Lucky, Moby and he looks at the black dog, Joonie and he looks at the brown dog. Dada, he looks at Steve. Do you want to go in the sling? Steve asks him and he does his breathy laugh for yes.
One day he watched his hand opening and closing several times, opening and closing, studying it. The next day he was waving when people walked in the room. He waves at strangers, this funny claw-like wave with his hand pointing back at himself. The next week, last week, he learned to point. He points at Rosie then waves at her. He makes kissing sounds at the cats and at things he likes, at Rosie and at strangers and at the light on the ceiling in his room and at the cuckoo clock when it sings the hour.
He yearns to walk. He wants to skip crawling. He hops like a bunny on his feet with his hands on the ground, going mostly backwards, though today he dragged himself a foot forward. He can pull himself up to standing on his own, then he wobbles like Elvis when he gets there.
Does anyone understand how amazing this is? I scream this at the world. I gave birth to a curled-up thing in the winter, and by summer he waves and kisses and laughs at the dogs. There is no other feeling like this, this awe and exhaustion and frustration and exhilaration while the tiniest and most important moments unfold throughout one day and then the next. This accretion, the accumulation that I’ve been drawing and writing about, it’s happening in my arms.
