Confession 33

I could drive for days with nothing but a case of Diet Mtn Dew & some nonstop talk radio.

Not a Single Photograph

Today, Eva, your Grandpappy and your Mimi both turn another year older, and I want to take photographs of you with a thousand cupcakes or you in a sea of candles; of you with your watercolor eyelids and your seashell ears and your cupid's bow mouth, your ten pink toes and your ten tiny fingers. I want the photograph of you in the park the other day when you felt your first Oklahoma breeze, of you last night when I told you to look at all those stars, of this morning's smile, this moment's sleep. I want the one where your Mimi rocked you to sleep on the covered porch of the house she married in; I want the one where you gave your very first smile to your Grandpappy as he sang you Twinkle Twinkle Little Star on Christmas Day. Every moment I want to capture. There are days when I wonder why we live so far away; days when I think, oh, we could live just up the hill from your Mimi and Grandad, just around the bend from your Grandma & Grandpa, down the street from your Poppy, right next door to Nana. Today's one of those days. We'd make homemade frosting, and I could put a little on your nose, and we wouldn't have to take a single photograph because Mimi would be right there stirring the batter of her own cake and Grandpappy would be strumming a ditty on his ukulele. The house would be all cake and love and light and goodness, and everyone could say, This is the best birthday ever. Just because we're all here together. And they'd be right.

Day 88

and dreaming of more...

Dream 224

I was walking barefoot in the city. It was winter, and I jumped over icy puddles. It's okay, Zoe told me. You don't really need shoes. When I woke, it was still dark in Oklahoma, and I nursed Eva while she clutched my index finger and made the sounds she makes. My mother was at the hospital working the nightshift, and my daughter and I were in her bed. The smell of both of them made it take what seemed like forever for me to fall back to sleep. Finally, I did, until unfamiliar birds woke us and light came through the window. The wild sky awaited us.

Blue, Blue Sky

Twenty-five years ago, I was nine years old and had never been on an airplane. Yes, I had laid on the hot summer sidewalk and stared up at the sky and wondered where those big metal birds were heading but never had I gotten a tiny bag of peanuts or a blue pill-y blanket or said Sprite, please, when the flight attendant asked if I wanted anything.

My first flight was from Charlotte to New York City, and I still remember my first glimpse of the city's skyline and how it knocked the air out of me, how I told my mom this is where I want to live. Even now, after living here almost a decade and a half, flying in, that view gets me.

How strange that this afternoon I'll be getting on a plane with Eva--not even twelve weeks yet--and we'll be flying away from this city and out to Oklahoma. All that sky, sky as far as the eye can see. I wonder what I'll tell her when we get there, how I'll explain the vastness and the quiet, how I'll explain all that blue.

Note to Self

Refrain from breastfeeding in the back of a taxicab.

Waiting

Cold, gray sky, and sometimes I wait. I imagine if I wait long enough I'll have something to say that's not about the baby; something witty or wise or somehow compelling; something that has nothing to do with feeding or sleeping or pooping or smiling, nothing to do with our long walks down the avenue or our visits with friends, nothing to do with seeing an orange for what seems the first time or hunting down the name of a bird because the name suddenly seems to matter. I tell myself that if I wait long enough there will be something other than this love that has consumed me for almost three months, but it doesn't seem to be happening. There's just her and me and this love. And C. And sometimes the wind or a bee or a bunny or the tea in the kettle, but mostly just us, just this, just love.

One Final Valentine

Because I'm a sucker for love...

From my dear friend Katie Berg.

My Original (and forever) Valentine

Summer 2008
Portofino, Italy

My Sweet Valentine

My Funny Valentine

Xoxoxoxo.

My Pretty Valentine

O Valentine, be mine, be mine, be mine, mine, mine.
O Valentine, you're mine, you're mine, you're mine, mine, mine.
All mine, all mine, all mine, mine, mine.
O little love of mine, I'm gonna let you shine!
(Hide you under a bush, oh no!)
I'm gonna let you shine.

O my little Valentine Birdgirl,
my little love of my life,
thank you for changing my whole world.
Won't you please be mine?
(and the little birdy sings...
but mama I already am.)

An Unexpected Sweetness

Yesterday, standing on the subway platform waiting for an uptown train, the sudden smell of oranges filled the station. I looked down at Eva who I was carrying in a sling. That, I said, is the smell of a stranger peeling an orange. We had passed deli tulips with honey bees and sidewalk cafes with coffee-sippers, and I had been whispering to her about each, but this new sensation was so unexpected, so out of the blue, that it caught me off guard.

Had we been at home, I would have shown her the orange and maybe pressed the cold of it against her skin, and then the smell would have been what naturally followed, but there in the semi-dark, looking down into the tunnel for the light of the 3-train, I was suddenly overcome. I turned back to the woman standing near us. She smiled down at Eva; I smiled at her orange.

When the train came, I found a seat for Eva and me, and on our long ride to the upper west-side where we'd eat heart-shaped cookies and laugh with friends, I tried to explain to her a little about strangers, how sometimes they surprise us, how you shouldn't--maybe--talk to them or take candy from them, but how smiling at them and smelling their oranges is perfectly fine, and maybe some candy-taking would be okay too, but by then, she was asleep, and she slept, rather soundlessly, until we were back above ground walking hat-less on the sunny side of the street. This, I said, is almost spring.

Dream 210

Last night, just one room away, Eva slept--for the first time--in her crib. On the other side of the wall, I dreamed I had locked her in a metal folding cabinet and was pumping in fake heartbeat sounds to keep her from waking.

This must be what they mean by separation anxiety...

Dream 209

In the dream, I fed Eva chopped-up mango from a tiny glass jar. We were in Mama Heaton's kitchen but I couldn't remember where the window was so light scattered everywhere. Eva had seven tiny teeth. I counted them. Seven. I knew that one day she would lose all seven and that I would have to find a silk pouch to keep them in when she did.

Day 71

"nobody, not even the rain, has such small hands,"
ee cummings

Mother vs. Woman

There are days I try to pretend my life is unchanged. Yesterday, I paraded around Manhattan like any ordinary woman. Sure, there was a baby strapped to my chest, but she was quiet, and we were taking subways and wandering around the Calder exhibit at the Whitney and sitting at a little French bistro with friends. We were laughing and talking, and sure, there had been a blow-out at the museum where the baby pooped through her Je T'Aime t-shirt and her onesie and her brand new blue jeans and the Ergo carrier, but I was surrounded by other mothers, and they had handed me wipes and laughed with me and wetted paper towels in the second floor bathroom, so it all felt okay.

It felt so okay, in fact, that I kept going, somehow ending up down at my office, sitting in a meeting for Painted Bride Quarterly , pretending I was still just an editor for the magazine, pretending there wasn't a baby hanging off my boob, a baby crying again, a baby being bounced, a baby back on my boob. Sorry, I kept saying. No, no, they said. It's fine. Until finally, it was obvious that it wasn't fine, and so I stood, stuffing Eva back in her sling and saying my goodbyes. And, uhm, the editor-in-chief said, you know the sling is all wet, right?

I palmed the bottom of it, and yes, it was true, the bird had peed right through it. And then, not a second too soon, we were in the back of a cab, heading home, and I was feeling decidedly unlike the woman I used to be, feeling like no one but a mother who had taken her baby out for far too long. We rode over the Brooklyn Bridge, and I whispered that I was sorry, but as bad as I felt I couldn't promise that it wouldn't happen again.

The mother in me wanted us to be getting our bedtime routine downpat (bath, lavender massage, goodnight moon!), but the woman in me wanted it not to matter; the woman in me looked back at the city and thought heck, better to see the world than lay around dreaming. I have a feeling these two are going to be fighting it out for many years to come. I just hope the best one wins.

Snowlove

Out wandering in the cold, I told Eva about Valentine's Day, about Coffee Shop Cupids and paper cut-outs, and how when you're in school you color red and pink hearts on brown paper bags, and at the end of the day, those bags are stuffed with too-sweet candies and cards that say silly things; I told her how it's a day that's all about love but also about chocolate, and I spelled love for her and tried to tell her what it was, but I couldn't find the right words so I spelled it for her again, L-O-V-E, and then we came home and danced in the kitchen and watched the snow fall in the backyard, and L-O-V-E, I kept saying until she fell asleep, and I put her down and kissed her, and now it's running through my head, over and over, my mid-afternoon mantra, my l-o-v-e.

Gratitude Monday

Today, I am infinitely grateful for:

1) Vanity Sizing.
(I know it's a lie, but it's a lie I love.)

2) My husband's good taste in television.
(This means he won't let Evabird
watch The Bachelor with me
so I get two hours of Monday night freedom.)

3) It's a tie between Target nursing tank tops
and that Doritos commercial with the crystal ball.
Ah, the simple things...

And you?
Anything ridiculous that you're grateful for?