Dear Zavian,
Early this morning, I scooped you out of bed to let mama sleep, as we do every day in the pre-dawn dark. Still half-asleep myself, I performed the same routine we’ve done a hundred times or more: I lowered you into the playzone, always with my right hand under your torso, and my left hand resting on your back until you look at me and start playing. I crawled under a blanket on the couch with the useless hope of catching a few more z’s. Usually, you play quietly for a bit, while I either nap or get ready to take you and Quyana for a walk.
Instead of playing, you pulled yourself to standing, and made it clear that you wanted out. Reluctantly, I pulled you out of the playzone and laid you on my chest, as when you were newborn.
That’s when it happened. Instead of lifting your head with a big smile and squealing and making your way toward something I’d have preferred you not, you just nuzzled into the crook of my arm and went to sleep.
Had I been less tired and more amenable to deeply feeling in that moment, I’d have cried. Instead, knowing that this tectonic shift was going to throw off the whole morning routine, I pulled the playzone tight against the edge of the couch so the wall would keep you from tumbling, and closed my eyes.
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Even since I started this letter a week ago, more moments like that have unfolded, moments in which perhaps we’ve both learned a little more about communicating with one another, or as I’ve watched you discover a new skill or fascination.
It’s hard to remember them all, to be honest. Someone said to keep track, write them down! You’ll want to remember these moments later! (says someone who was so tired and bleary during these years that they don’t remember why they themselves didn’t keep a journal of all the sweet and precious moments.)
Not enough rest for a long time now. Longer, for your mama. It’s a very sutble point of tension that I got the best sleep of my life during pregnancy, and she got the worst of hers.
Sometimes, I forget things that have some immediate consequence, like the times and days friends schedule to hang with you. It’s the things I forget that seem to have little or very delayed consequence that I’m grateful for. Those are the places where You flood in, all sensation and sound and love and curiosity. All of that other stuff just falls away.
With you, life has become simpler, more tactile, and clear.
Your mama sang Billy Joel’s ‘Lullabye’ a few days ago in the car. We listened to it a bunch of times til she got the tune just right. Love songs are starting to make more sense now. It occurred to me that more of them are written for children than lovers.
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I’ve been crafting another letter to you in my head for weeks. There is something about writing monthly that allows the material to build into something clear and potent. Whether those ingredients actually make it onto the page, and their essence is communicated, is something else.
The letter that I’ve been drafting is terribly depressing. Something about revealing what a shit-show grown-ups have made of the world, and offering some words of comfort, or solace, or resolve. The time for that letter will come. Like Quyana’s honeycomb food dish while she’s eating, it is not for baby right now.
For now, we cuddle. And things will continue to change. Gods willing, your personality will continue to burst with heartbreaking openness, and soon you’ll be speaking soliloquies to unicorn kittens atop the brightest pyramid in the desert, and after that, who can say? You have already been blessed with galaxies beyond what I was given, and we both have your beautiful epic mama to thank for that.
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I heard that you cried when K walked out the door, after hanging with you for a couple hours. Then, T came over, and once again, you cried when she left. You noticed when connection was no longer there, and you felt sad! Poor Z.
Tonight, before you went to bed, you clawed at my eyeballs and twisted my nostrils into knots and scratched my lips trying to pry them open, and I redirected your hands in the gentlest way I could, and you sat up in your perfect posture and bawled. It’s so hard being kept from what you want!
And so confusing, wanting to give you the world—and yet, boundaries. That’s what the rituals are for, I’m gathering. To shore up our days, we walk, eat, play and sleep at more or less the same times, to make space for nuance, subtlety, and novelty. Those little pockets of newness are where the joy floods in.
I want to be around for as many of those as possible.
I love you, bug.