Bliss of Life

I have a running list of chores, like all the odd items that need to be washed by themselves and changing the litter in the kitty litter box, but all I get myself to do all day long is look into my sweet baby’s face.  I don’t care if the dishes need to be put away or the laundry needs folding.  If it takes time away from making my baby smile, I just don’t want to squeeze it in.  In fact, I think making my baby smile is my full-time job.  It’s the best work I’ve ever done.

Right now, Lily is on her back studying a couple of Wee Gallery flashcards.  She is busy cooing and kicking and moving her little fists in a way that makes me think of a maestro, and the only thing that could make it any better were if she were also smiling.  These cards are fantastic.  I prop them up on her car seat when we’re in the car and they seem to give her at least fifteen minutes of interest, if she’s in the mood.  She’s been looking at these cards for the past 25 minutes, but I swapped them out and flipped them over about 10 minutes ago.  These are great time-buyers, if there are things you absolutely need to do, but like said, I can’t think of anything more pressing than making her smile.

I am trying to get Lily on a schedule.  I once heard someone say that “trying” is failing with honor. Last night, she let me know that she was not quite ready to be that predictable. I got to bed around 1:30am. Ben was committed to sit with me until she was down for the night. Tonight, she got to sleep a little after 8:00pm. I’m hoping she isn’t ready to start her day at 5:00am. We’ll see…

Ever since Lily’s nursing troubles were resolved, things have gotten a lot easier. I’m not saying that taking care of an infant is easy, hardly. But it is infinitely easier when that infant has a full tummy. So with those troubles behind us, Lily has moved on to other things, like smiling and cooing. Today, she decided that she was going to start crying every time Ben held her. When I passed her to him, she cried. If he plucked her from the sheepskin pallet underneath her beloved ceiling fan, she cried. As soon as he handed her over to me there was silence. I’m sure this is just another one of her many phases that she will pass through. She’s already had so many.

When I look at her I now my mind races to remember everything about her that has changed since she was born. I try to remember just how skinny her calves were, how much hair she had on her head, when the second chin appeared and when her eye lashes became long and curled. All these memories are hidden treasures. I revisit them because I know how slippery memories can be.

While I was in Houston with Ben’s family during the eighth month of my pregnancy and his mother was preparing to leave this world behind, we looked at hundreds of pictures of her life. I saw her as a little girl surrounded by siblings, parents and other elders. Then she turned into a doe-eyed-youth-in-love, and Ben’s dad was always nearby. And then there were children, small at first, held in the nook of her arm or on the curve of her hip. As children grew too big for her arms, she aged. Then there was a procession of birthday parties and family vacations and in all of them she aged. Then the children became the doe-eyed-youths-in-love. And there I was pregnant with my own first child. On biological level, I could feel how fleeting and fragile life is. How it all goes by in a flash. It’s no longer than the bat of an eye or a deep breath. The breath analogy probably works better. We spend so many years preparing for the structure of life, inhaling as much life as we can so we will be ready for the future. Then one day it’s time to start letting go. The exhale has begun. When we were busy making plans and preparations the future wrestled itself into the past.

I’m not sure where this is going, but I know that when I look at my daughter I see myself and my husband. I see our past, our infancy and childhoods and the years that came afterward, and it feels like I’m trying to hold onto water. All the moments of our past, just dripped away and now I’m just left with the sensation of what they used to be, the sensation of who I was at the age of three, and nine, and twenty four. And that’s how it is with Lily, but exaggerated because babies change so much. They’re just breathing it all in.