“Six days until my birthday!”
“It’s three days until my birthday!”
And today: “Do you know what tomorrow is?” he asks me, dancing about the room.
And each time, especially as the day nears, I can almost feel myself once again that strange sea creature of late pregnancy, stranded on land, awkward, ungainly, tethered to gravity. Eight years ago right now, I was in the early stages of labor, determined that this one was going to work in the natural way. By morning, we decided that it was time for another caesarean section, and Josiah Pearse came into the world.
I did love pregnancy and the baby years, but I also felt like I never quite lost that gravity, that awkwardness, as long as I was toting tiny people around, anxious and sleep-deprived. Today, I feel like (except for the fighting and territoriality between the two) we’re entering a sort of sweet spot in the family years. Still, reaching eight feels like a particular farewell to babyhood, and I can almost feel the transformation in this exact moment of the year-change. He seems taller, more big-kid, more angular than ever. His teeth seem to be too big for his face and his elbows and knees stick out all over the place. This happens every spring, but this year it seems particularly acute and poignant.
Goodbye, Baby.
Gratitude List:
1. My obsessions run deep. Last night I dreamed that oriole had returned.
2. Robin singing his rain song, announcing that he belongs to the family of thrush.
3. Purple carpets of dead nettles in the field. And carpets of foamy blue speedwell.
4. The dawn, and a just-budding tree against the dawn, and a watchful hawk on a branch of the tree.
5. That thumbnail of a new moon.
May we walk in Beauty!
Mockingbird Chronicles 