Ruminations on Parenthood
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)”
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.
I revisited BabyCenter’s natural unmedicated birth group a couple times around Rebecca’s birthday. Like usual, people are asking how to prepare for a natural birth. Which methods? What are you doing? Like usual, the responses give sensible and encouraging advice, but I can’t get past how narrowly practical their focus is, as if birth were such a specialized activity that getting ready for it nowhere intersects with the rest of your life. (Note to elder family members: this post includes sexual content!)
This post marks Rebecca’s first birthday and the beginning of the public life of this journal.
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.
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…
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…