Given how standard it is to ask about a baby’s first word, it’s ridiculously complicated to figure out. One time when she was a couple weeks old, Rebecca was sleeping in my lap when I heard a very small voice, very clearly say “Help!” I looked around the room, half expecting a fairy or gnome, …
Category Archives: Motherhood
The Background Drumming (Just Like Magic, Part One)
I’ve been writing a post about language since January. It keeps changing and getting bigger as Rebecca does, so I decided I’d better break it up. It surprises me, words aren’t as important to me as I thought they were. Over the last year or so, I’ve become more sensitive to the tone of voice …
Continue reading “The Background Drumming (Just Like Magic, Part One)”
January
We’re lying on our backs on the dining room table on a new clear day of the New Year, watching the reflection of puddles on the ceiling.
Scuba Fiasco
I have a friend whose baby is nine months older than Rebecca, and recently she and her husband decided to do a romantic getaway before their next baby comes. That sounds nice, I said, whenever she mentioned it. Was I really oblivious that she was nervous about leaving her daughter? I really was. Despite having been a stay-at-home parent for over a year now and having read a lot about other mothers’ experiences, I apparently still haven’t gotten it through my head that leaving your baby can be hard to do, even when your baby is more like a toddler and even when you’ve got someone you trust and who isn’t unduly put out to look after her. Lots of people leave their babies every day, so how bad can it be?
Dear Readers
This post marks Rebecca’s first birthday and the beginning of the public life of this journal.
Remembering Tiamat
Sometimes with Rebecca I feel like I’m a place as much as a person. My body is her habitat: arms, a heartbeat, and two breasts. It makes me feel cozy. What can a place do wrong? All a place needs to do is be present and be itself, and that’s enough. That’s exactly the right thing for a place to do.
They’re Made of Meat
When she wakes me at night, she’s not staccato like an alarm clock. She squiggles against my belly, kicking my legs, quietly groping for a breast with her eyes closed, until I’m awake enough to do something about it. I roll onto my side, lift up my pajama top, and help nipple find mouth by the light of the clock radio…
Half Empty, Half Full
When we were pregnant, I didn’t grok the asymmetry of fatherhood and motherhood. I knew I had the boobs and would be doing the nursing; I hadn’t expected the corollary that Milky would then spend her first two months sacking out in my lap in full-bellied bliss. Usually I enjoyed it; sometimes I didn’t, but not enough to move her; either way I became default baby-holder…
Opentide
The word I use most frequently to describe new parenthood is idyllic. I can hang out in bed whenever I want, snuggling Littlest and studying her movements and swapping bodily fluids…