This is what I wrote on my long-ago blog just after we brought our little boy home six years ago. Happy birthday, Bug!
We made it through our first full night in bed. The near disabling fear of crushing or dropping you has finally begun to dissipate. The first few nights after you came home, my mind raced around like a skittish cat, imagining every terrible way I could lose you. I had to be a sentry, and ached to wrap you in a bubble of pure protection. I was so tense with watchfulness, your grandma had to buy me a sports mouth guard to keep me from grinding my teeth to powder during the night.
Now, I am starting to trust you are here for the long haul. When you wake to nurse, you rest up against my side, opening your eyes wide into the faint glow of the flashlight I keep in the bed and looking all around. I know you cannot see me yet, but I love to watch your deep violet eyes, try to catch their gaze as they trace the shapes of the bedroom. Our bedroom. Yours.
When you are finally satisfied and begin to drift off back into that mysterious place that holds you most of the day and night, I roll you back onto my tummy to sleep. Your face is towards me so I can watch you sleep. Your cheek can pick up the familiar rhythm of me. We both can sleep. All I need to be reassured, even deep in my own restfulness, is the occasional mew and wiggle against my belly. I know you are safe here. You belong here.
Sometime near dawn this morning, you gulped too much air and developed such a hearty case of the hiccups, the bed shook. I remembered you as an inside-baby, when your hics could send little earthquakes through my entire frame. I am still in awe of the you here with me, knowing you are the same you who floated and fluttered inside me all those months. When I run my finger down the string of beads making up your spine, I cannot believe I grew you. Flesh and bone, brain and body. You sprouted from that tiny germinated seed, and grew into you. Our Bug. Our son.
Tag: birthday
Happy 100 Days: 89
In the car, we talk about the special things a kid can do when he turns six. “You can join little league and play baseball,” I tell him. “Or be in the big kid gymnastics.”
“What else?” He asks.
“Well, once you turn six, you have to use your own metro card.”
He gasps. “I can have my very own metro card? Can we go get it right now?”
“We’re on our way to school,” I laugh. “And besides. You’re not six until tomorrow.”
“Oh, yeah.”
Wheat Bug doesn’t know is that I have already bought him a SmarTrip card and that I am heading to Staples on my lunch break to find a sleeve and a retractable clip just like the one he is always trying to steal out of my purse.
“What else can I do when I’m six?”
“Well, there are probably new rides you can go on at the amusement park. And I think you can use some of the big-kid high ropes elements at camp.”
“When I’m six, can I drink mouthwash?”
“Can you what?
“I mean,” he says in that exaggerated don’t-be-a-doofus tone kids master far too early, “can I use mouthwash.”
“Do you know how to use it?” This whole conversation has taken an unexpected turn. Since so many of ours do, I suppose I should stop being surprised by these detours. On a recent commute, I found us in a very detailed conversation about breast cancer. I had to puzzle out how to explain cell mutation in response to my kid’s increasingly complex questions.
We are nearing school now. From the back seat, he says, “Yeah. To use mouthwash, you kind of swish it around and gargle it and then you spit it out.”
“That’s a pretty cool thing to do when you’re six, huh?”
“Yep,” he says.
“Okay. If you want to, you can start using mouthwash.”
His grin lights up the rearview mirror. “Yay, yay, yay!”
We turn into the Chicken School parking lot, and we are jostling backpacks and kissing goodbye and rushing off to the next thing.
Later that night, after we have made the brownies for school, put on jammies, and opened a couple of birthday-eve gifts (including a Nerf football and Lego mining truck that arrived special-delivery at bedtime by Giovanni), we head in to brush teeth. Bug is bouncing out of his skin, hopped up on brownie batter and anticipation. When we are all done, I pick up the blue bottle of mouthwash next to the sink.
“You ready to try it?”
Bug darkens and backs away. “No.” His expression is grim.
“I thought this was a special deal for six-year-olds,” I say.
“Yeah, but Mom, my birthday is not until tomorrow.”
“Ah.” I set the bottle back down. Bug relaxes. “No reason to rush things, huh?”
“Yeah,” he says. He is already out the door.
No reason to rush.
Right. We’ll keep trying to remember that one.
Shannon E. Williams 