Interlude
Rain fell most of yesterday; today is our reward. The sun is bright, sky clear, humidity low, temperature agreeable, breezes gentle. It is the sort of day that people in Southern California abuse by bragging to friends east of the Rockies, the sort of day that lulls one to easy contentment and disappears too soon after the sun tea has finished brewing. I am outside now, sitting at a table beneath a silver maple in a flat spot of the backyard (not to say lawn—the grass was overrun by dandelions and clover and other groundcover years ago). The red-bellied woodpecker whose nest is in a hollowed-out tree in the woodlot across the creek is calling, a black-capped chickadee is singing, and a gray catbird who has haunted this place since last year is checking me out. As I write, I have a sinking feeling, but not idiomatically: the waterlogged soil can’t support my chair with me in it. I’ve lost an inch to the mud since I sat down.
Last week we celebrated G’s first birthday with a small party. We baked a cake and had some friends over; Mom drove up from Arkansas to celebrate too. G tasted his cake but didn’t go all-out like some babies will; he’s still a tentative eater. Mom took his hesitation as a personal challenge. All weekend she shoved things in his mouth—a hunk of bread here, a mulberry there. Meanwhile, she regaled us with stories: “At ten months, your cousin’s baby wouldn’t touch solid food. Then, one day, when he was at my house, I mashed up a banana and he ate it right up!” She talked as though she could make any baby to eat what she wanted it to by force of will. And she itched to put on a demonstration. While I was feeding G cake, she offered, “Do you want me to give it to him?” (I didn’t.) By the end of her stay, however, G had proved a tough nut to crack. He spit up the bread, and she said he didn’t much like the mulberry she offered him while K and I were out and about. If she offered him banana, she didn’t tell us. (It would be good if she hadn’t—he doesn’t care much for the taste.) At the party, though, he did eat a small amount of chocolate cake. Then, just as we finished our own cake, it started to rain, and we beat a hasty retreat indoors. There, G showed off his lock(ed-knee )steps and generally enjoyed all the attention he received. So it was a pretty good birthday.
This time last year, I couldn’t have appreciated a party or enjoyed the loveliness of a day as a day. With G in neonatal intensive care indefinitely, I was exhausted from shuttling back and forth between work and home and the hospital. I was confused and afraid: I didn’t know what would happen; I didn’t know what wouldn’t. The only part of my day that I didn’t experience as a fog was the time I held him. G weighed only three pounds then and was as heavy as the world. But when I held him in my arms, my entire being was stillness. I was wholly the heat that kept him warm, the heartbeat that lulled him to sleep. I could have sat that way for days on end; it was rare that I got more than thirty minutes. Then a nurse would return G to his bed and me to my delirium.
That delirium passed some time ago and was replaced by a more typical set of uncertainties, none of which are worth belaboring here, certainly not now. Besides, I see that K has awoken G from his morning nap—they’re joining me outside as I type. Which is as good a reason to stop writing as any.
