My Children

Week 37

Daddy would always wrap him up so tight in that receiving blanket you almost couldn’t believe there was the rest of a real body in there. A beating heart and breathing lungs. Fragile as his newborn body felt in your stare, there was an unassuming, mind-bending power behind that beating heart and growing brain and working organs when you held them in the palm of your hands. The blankets were all still new on the job, crisp and bright out of their packaging. I thought so many times before he was born that I couldn’t wait to use them, but when he was wrapped up I felt robbed of the real thing. I couldn’t get enough of his tender, feeble body in all of it’s living, breathing, being, beauty. Holding him changed me.

When I read to him back then, he had no reaction. His eyes stared in their normal direction and if his brain registered any fascination with the geometry of the illustrations or the rhythmic sound of my voice on the words, nothing gave it away. Sometimes his eyes would get heavy in the middle of the third or fourth story from that night’s feeding and I’d let the words fall over him like a blanket until his breathing told me he was under as far as he could go. It was finally safe to lie him down in his crib and sneak back to bed myself, but sometimes I’d read for just a little longer. I liked to think that I was soothing him to sleep, but I had no way of knowing.

The dies on Scarlett’s blankets could give you paper cuts they’re so crisp and untouched, wrapped up in their white ribbons, still hanging from the clear plastic hangers they hung on in the store. Spencer laughs that I keep leaving the door to her nursery open, teasing that it’s because I can’t stop walking in there, neurotically making sure that everything’s in as perfect, pristine order as it was the last time that I walked in there to check, and to drink it in… the smell of the baby powder, the sound of the wind chime outside of her window, and the kaleidoscope of sunlight dancing into her crib through the beautiful entanglement of tree leaves just beyond her blinds. I love the silks of the ribbons on her crib, and the cotton of her sweaters and the stitching on the noses of her tiny animal toys. And I caught myself thinking just last night that I couldn’t wait to Christen it all with the gentle company of our tiny newborn daughter. I can’t wait to unfold these blankets and tear off these price tags and get down and dirty with being a new parents all over again.

And that’s when it was bedtime for Matthew. Back to reality; Spencer’s shower hisses to a start down the hall and that’s my cue to meet Matthew in his bedroom for story time. Without a hiccup in the schedule, Matthew peeled himself out of the day’s clothes and climbed into bed so that I could put his Pull-Up on under his jams. As I tossed the clothes into his hamper and reached over for his favorite book, he pulled out the orange tin from the cubby of his headboard and fished inside for one of his Binkies. He plugged it into his mouth, nuzzled his waist under the quilt, and folded his arms behind his head, lying in wait for the first page to turn. When I read to him now, he listens to the words like he’s devouring a meal. He reacts with every muscle in his face to every predictable situation I read aloud. The first sentence crosses my lips and it’s hard to reach the next punctuation mark without his interrupting to point and exclaim and repeat what just happened. It’s as if his understanding of what just went down is so much deeper than mine, and he doesn’t want me to fall behind in the plot. His eyebrows catapult from his forehead, his binky bobs to and fro under his button nose, and his fingers point harum-scarum from one corner of an illustration to the next, as he tells each piece of the story back to me before the turning of the page.

Kissing on the wing of an airplane

In the hustle and bustle of raising a toddler, it’s easy to loose sight of how these milestones were reached. When Matthew’s scooping a pile of mashed potatoes into his mouth without getting more of it on his cheeks than on his taste buds, I don’t always take time to remember the many stages of breast milk and cereal concoctions at the highchair that got him there. I just enjoy our more civilized dinner. And when I’m reading to him at bedtime, and he explodes with enthusiasm over every recognizable event he’s had read to him a hundred and forty-two thousand times, I don’t always take time to appreciate how far we’ve come together to make story-time such a magical part of our ordinary everyday. I just enjoy that it is.

In such a very short time I’ll have a newborn nestled into my arm again, taking from my breast and taking from my heart and taking from my stories. We will start from the beginning, where hysterics of expression and laughter don’t give back to every shared experience. We will start from a place where she is just she, delicate and powerful and completely unaware; just trusting and growing quietly in the blanket of my words on her thirsty ears. It’ll be a place sometimes that I won’t be used to, but a place that I can’t wait to rediscover. A place that I can’t wait to let change me all over again.