Today, sun. Today water droplets falling steadily from icicles along the eaves. Today, fat buds on the forsythia, neighbors running lines for sugaring, the sky the color of a bluebird’s back. Today I am less tired. Still, it is an adjustment, a translation, a prayer.
Sprout is eleven days old. He sleeps in his bouncy seat dappled with sunlight, making porpoise noises. Under the table Bean builds with blocks and talks to himself, his fingers still sticky with mango from lunch.
Things are already different than they were. Sprout is growing, and even with stagger-tired nights, I feel more like myself during the day. Five pounds to go before I’m back to my pre-pregnancy weight—except, alas, nowhere near as fit. My belly is a morass of softness, and though the stretch marks have been kind, and there are only a handful of them, they are there, like purple ribbons running up my belly.
I have decided to do a self-portrait documentary of getting back into shape.. Every week for a year, a photo. Already my dear friend and I have a goal for the fall: bike the entire state.
My body and spirit are craving this activity. I miss my feet pounding down the dirt road. I miss hiking. I miss the feel of my bike’s handlebars and the way sweat feels cool on my forehead on a summer afternoon. And while there is something so final and bittersweet knowing that this will be the last time I’ll breathe in the scent a newborn or hold him close before there are words for love or milk; before laughter, or sitting up, or teeth, or squashed fruit; there is also something remarkably liberating knowing that I am thirty-one and done with giving birth.
I try to remind myself of this when I’m restless with the crying and the juggling of two boys and the last month of winter. Nothing lasts.
Still, it is hard not to be impatient for everything that I know is to come: blossoms and seed starts and a warm chinook wind; longer hours of daylight; mud on the road and puddles for splashing in as we take long walks. And also: Sprout’s giggles and smiles; a regular school schedule for Bean again (he’s been on vacation the past week and a half); and some sort of routine for writing daily and running.
I’m craving new peas from the garden, and teaching Bean how to climb taller trees, and just simply being able to go out the front door without boots and jackets and blankets over the baby. Nothing lasts.
Today the late afternoon sun falling towards the lake makes the mountains rosy and purple. Through the jar of stems on the table, the light is milky and opaque. As daylight slips from the room the temperature drops. Chickadees flit off to wherever they go at the end of a day, and the woods at the edge of the snow covered meadow beyond the garden is silent.
Today DH and I haven’t been able to say a sentence, just us together without distraction or misinterpretation or interference. Today our sentences fall apart like brittle clay in ways that leave us confused. We blunder into one another’s emotions. While I’m feeling slightly more on even footing today, he is less so. Not sleep deprived per-se, but drained nonetheless. He feels put upon by the needs of a newborn, even though he dutifully, gently, patiently responds. The crying jangles him, he’s told me this, and to him Sprout is currently just a bundle of crying and soiled diapers.
It was the same way with Bean—it took until he started to smile back and to react with noticeable recognition that DH really established a connection. Now of course they’re thick as thieves, inseparable, adoring.
Maybe it’s because men tend to like things obvious, upfront, and straightforward and loving a newborn is exactly the opposite of this. It is unspoken, and blurry, and intuitive. This is not to say he doesn’t love Sprout. He does, fiercely. I saw this when he first held Sprout for the first time, almost breathless, grinning. But there’s something about the newborness that makes him feel helpless or incapable perhaps.
And I want to be as understanding of this as I can. I am. But also there is something about knowing that he doesn’t feel the tender indescribable love that I do towards our baby makes me…oh I don’t know. Something quivery and uncertain, like the way ice is when it’s breaking up and melting, all thin and silvery blue and black at the surface of a pond. It makes me feel fragile, as though if push came to shove it would be me who would have to fend off the wild beasts, even though of course this isn’t true.
Nothing lasts. This palpable state of tenderness doesn’t last. The light doesn’t last. The quiet doesn’t last. The winter doesn’t last. In a year from now I won’t be able to remember this. The way the days were at once stretched thin, and broken into tiny bits. The way between DH and I there is a building urgency for touch and intimacy that’s been missing for a few months: our hands quiver when we touch. I lift my face to the soft part of his neck, and feel him wrap his arms around me and press me close. Under the ice, the water is turbulent. Want. One word in the dark. And yet there with us is the babe, every three hours, nursing, my body still not mine, and in the soft morning light when the little one sleeps, it’s Bean tumbling into bed all limbs and giggles, stroking our faces.
Nothing lasts. Today the daylight has become twilight. The sky is the color of mandarins on a china blue plate. The snow is blue in the shadows. The fire has been started again, and the flames lick at the glass. Today, as evening falls, miraculously both boys are asleep: the little one on my lap, the bigger one on the couch having fallen asleep in the car when DH when to pick him up from his grandparents house. In a moment I will get up, move Sprout, and invariably he’ll wake. Bean will wake too, grumpy and startled to be home. The sounds of dinner will ensue. Night will gather. And then another day. Nothing lasts.
I wouldn’t be so sure your husband doesn’t feel the same love for Sprout that you do. He probably just processes and expresses it differently. I used to feel the same way about my dh when my four were tiny newborns. It took me a while to realize that he did feel that love just as strongly and there was a definite connection there.
I think that men are just a little uncertain of their own place in a newborn’s life. Mom is the one equipped to take care of all a baby’s needs. If you are breastfeeding, it can seem even more that way. Men feel helpless with tiny babies. I think feeling helpless is a man’s greatest fear. They are problem solvers. If there is a problem they can’t fix or don’t understand, it frightens them. They need to be *doing* something toward fixing the problem. As helpless as you sometimes feel with a crying newborn, you have to know that a man (typically) must feel even more helpless. He simply isn’t equipped physically or through instinct the way a woman is.
It helps to tell men how much they are helping and what a good job they’re doing when they help with the baby. If he takes the baby so you can get some much needed rest, when you wake up, let him know how much good that has done you. When he holds the baby, smile sweetly at him and tell him what a good dad he is or how much you love seeing him hold Sprout. Reassuring him like that will help him build the bond that is already there and enjoy those moments with this new child.
I am almost two years away from the days you’re in, but your words bring back the intensity of it all. (And I have to imagine what it will be like with two…) That sense that everything is ephemeral, the wishing that he understood (or appreciated? or wanted to feel?) all the same connections with a newborn, the longing for some freedom, and the new intimacy and distance that having another family member brings for the parents. And as soon as it becomes a little familiar, it all changes…
i’m pregnant with my first and reading these posts really give me a sense of what life will be like. thank you for sharing!
i’m loving your evocative words. the tender, raw way in which you capture the moments of your life is really inspiring.
i also applaud your willingness to document the return to your body. it’s something that’s very present in my life – moving my body and food, but i find that i’m always making excuses or down-playing that this is important to me. i’m very connected to the physicality of inhabiting my skin and if it’s different (extra weight, not exercising, etc.) than it effects me. i look forward to your documentation.
i think this time of year there’s an urgency for me to get winter over, the anticipation is so sweet, it becomes too far. i like this reminder that because nothing lasts, i can choose to savor right now.
Another beautiful post. Thanks.
Your post-pregnancy posts are downright enthralling. (Your pre- and during- pregnancy posts were awesome, too, but these have a different kind of edge).
Something lasts: the beauty you’ve written down here.
My oldest son is 24 and my youngest is 16 — and yet your words bring their newborn days back to me as if it were happening in the here-and-now.
Your talent with words amaze me. The way you can describe things so incredibly just leave me breathless — especially on a post like this one.
Wow.
No babies here, just plants, but they likewise offer up the lesson “nothing lasts.” From last spring, for instance: http://awaytogarden.com/remember-nothing-lasts
Thank you for “inviting” me on a wonderful visit to your place of self-expression and wonder.
Your “nothing lasts” refrain sounds so dismal. Please remember, too, that nothing ends.
Oh I didn’t mean to be dismal. I meant it more in an ephemeral way: nothing lasts–both good and bad. Every moment is fleeting. Which is something I know you’d agree with me on.
And I’m curious–how do you mean, “nothing ends”?
Well, in the cosmic sense, certainly, that things transmute from one form to another. But it’s difficult for me not to be persuaded that principles which apply on the cosmic scale would not also obtain at the quantum level as well — and everything in between. Just as entangled photons at opposite ends of the universe can seemingly interact with each other from moment to moment, so it is easy for me to be persuaded that the entanglements you write of so beautifully between yourself and your family (and, to some extent, with us, your readers) are such that they cannot be undone, even by separation in space or time. Once those entanglements arise — and you create them, purposefully, in a sacred stream by the excellent life you live and write about — they can never be undone.
But you knew all this already, Christina: remember De Guevara’s lessons?
I came over here from Ali Edwards’ blog … she states being inspired by your words. My third boy is now 8 months old. And all too soon, you do forget those little moments … but you brought them vividly back to me. Thank you. I am not a painter, but I want to paint the sky you describe! Wonderful words.
[...] 2. Her words. [...]
I read a little “about you” & since you said you liked comments…I’ll leave one! First I don’t know you in real life–found you through Ali Edwards’ blog. No I really don’t have that much time to read blogs–I need a conection every now & then. Like, every day. Your expressions are beautiful. I can relate so well to what you describe except I would use one syllable words and much fewer–because I don’t know how to put words together as beautiffully as you do! (Can I hire you to journal for me? Then my kids will think I was brilliant and artistic and poetic!) I have a 3 year old son & a 10 month old son–so often I feel that “nothing lasts” feeling. It is bittersweet, isn’t it? Lastly (for today) please don’t have negative feelings about your little belly. I’m 44 & don’t look like I did when I was 31 regardless of children. It’s so okay. Plus I like the little bit of Mama that I now look like! Thanks for writing!
just found this from Ali Edward’s blog. Your words are beautiful. Not sure if you’ve ever written a book but you should.
Truly moving; so beautifully expressed…
just found you through Ali Edwards (as it appears some others did). Can I just say that is one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever read. I’m in tears. Streaming down the face tears. I had my second baby 7 months ago and nothing has so eloquently captured how I felt not so long ago. You really have a way with words. Wow!
Also here via Ali Edwards. Such a beautiful reminder – I am so glad I stumbled across this post today. Needed to hear that message myself again!
your words are so beautiful strung together…i found you thru alis blog…you are truly gifted and talented and bring back such wonderful times for me…thank you for sharing!
You always sound so unhappy.
From the outside looking in, it seems as if you have so much — so very much more than so many. But it also seems as if it is never, ever enough.
Nothing changes.
This makes me sad.
[...] know that nothing lasts. I know that spring in this place, northward where the light is lingering now and the first [...]
[...] One year ago, today [...]