My heart breaks as you drag your protesting eyelids open just enough for a peep. You frown at the effort it takes, then blink slow; let out the softest yawp of protest at one of life’s many discomforts. As you tire, you fold your adventuring hands slowly inward and tuck them comfortingly under your chin to rest awhile in the shadow of your pursed lips.
You are bittersweet, baby. I breathe the mist from your brand new head. It calls me to you; to your sisters to your father and to myself; an essence barely visible of who I am/once was/could be. You calm me; make me soft and malleable; doughy and drunk with love.
Perhaps you are the last. It’s all so hard with a just-turned three year old ready to embrace the world and an eleven year old coming into her own beautiful self before my eyes. Both asking so much of me. I know I’m giving you the profound gift of each other, but with each of you, there is less of me. Just please love each other the way that I love you. Please cling to one another. Be kind.
And oh, how I hope you’re not the last. Will there ever be a time I don’t think that? Or am I destined, like my mother, to live the everyday tragedy of one last baby never born? Surely that question, at least, can wait.
What I really want to tell you, sweetest of little boys, is that I love you for your gentle ways; your slow blinks; questing hands and soft yawps. I love you for your quiet contemplations and your meditations on the mundane sublime objects of your world.
But more important still, oh sweetest of little boys, I vow that I will love you in equal measure when your eyes open wide enough to take in the whole damn world at a single glance; when your yawp rings out barbarically and startles me more than I care to admit; when you forget that you are gentle and sweet and embrace the wildness within.
Oh, tinsenpup, he is beautiful. Oh sweetest of little boys. (I can say that because each of my boys is the sweetest of little boys too!) What a beautiful post. I am so happy for you, and at the same time I understand the barbaric yawls and the wildness within – a beautiful and difficult time for mothers in equal measure.
Thank you for your quiet, unwavering support, Givinya. I am very grateful for you. And I would say that you are rather an expert on sweet little boys.
I was wondering about you just yesterday. So happy to see the work you’ve been up to.
Thank you for being here, Dear Friend. You are very kind.
“with each of you there is less of me” i can only imagine how profoundly true that is, and yet, i can also imagine there being so much more of you, knowing how much i was reborn myself and grew a whole new me, when suddenly there was quinn. to think of growing in such ways each time one gives birth… i sometimes think my quinn is like having 3 children all at once, the way he needs me. but then i think “three!” and i go back to “i can only imagine.” i have been thinking of you, and wanting to check in, and finally got my butt over here to your hemisphere, and what a wonderful treat to see this new little being. oh, he is just beautifully scrumptious. i hope all is boundless joy for you right now, though i know enough to know what bittersweet means. i always believed quinn’s particular baby smell, which i can only very rarely still catch a whiff of if the sun hits him just right when i happen to be burying my face in his hair, was almost exactly the same as cinnamon- if that isn’t bittersweet, i don’t know what is. still, you sound in a good place, the few bits of evidence that are here of you sound strong and good. i enjoyed the piece about birth, very much. in fact, i had birth dreams last night after reading it, vivid and amazing, and nothing like i’ve ever experienced, reminiscent of “the famished road” if you’ve read that one. going to go and ponder those dreams, and do more birth healing of my own (because no matter who we are and how utopian our birth was, birth will always be something from which one needs to heal, i believe.)
it is good to read your words. keep ‘em coming! xoxo