11/28/09
Mateo, you sit in your seat squirmy, arms moving in a windmill as if you expect to grab something, a shadow that has stayed in your mind from a past lifetime. Sometimes your arms reach out in a perfect, circle, the beginnings of a hug or expectation to grab onto something. You’ll do this as a startle response. You sounds are squeaks, enough movement to tell me that you’re awake and exploring or grunts to tell me that you’re working food down your system. You stare off into space, mostly sideways, now it’s to your left, through the blue mesh covering in your seat. They say that you can’t really see straight ahead and that nature let’s you see about 10-15 inches, the distance to my face. So I wonder what your mind is connecting with. You must notice your own hands as they fly jerky across your face hitting yourself in the ear, making motions to pluck our your eye or grab your face, as if in distress, as if saying, “Um, I don’t like this very much.” Mom and I have fun creating cartoons out of your movements, putting words and thoughts to them making them say more than your cluster of cells formed into automatic nerve responses really means.
When you’re sleeping, a kaleidoscope of emotions run across your face as a slight grin moves above your chin before the old man face, a grimace that begins in tight wrinkles in your forehead moving down through tightly pursed lips, takes back over and then releases, to smooth baby skin. I smile every time I watch you, eye lids dropping, mouth hanging open, hand behind your head and on your chest. I can’t believe I made you, that your little body grew in mine before it came out to be its own thing.
You’re fighting sleep now, mouth moving in slight motions as if feeding, hand curled in front of your face, eyes slightly open and then closed, open and closed, as your breath starts a rhythmic breathing, your stomach keeping you awake, you start to throw your arms and squeak, grant almost cringe. The gas grin is back and you are fully with me again. A yawn, sigh another gas grin as your legs squirm under the chenille blanket of soft yellows, brown, beige and whites cut together in overlapping blocks of color.
I have been almost equal bits happy and sad as we start this journey together. Happy every time I watch your face, feed you, see your legs stretch out in wakefulness as I lay you in your bed to change you before you take your bottle or sleep with you on my chest or on one of mom’s bed’s my hand resting on your stomach so you can feel the warmth penetrate your skin relaxing you, your stomach. I am happy when I am with you.
I am sad, grieving really that I didn’t get to see you born, that I lost the rest of my small supply of breast milk yesterday. I wanted to give you that, for months, a connection we shared that made you stronger every day – one of two things I’d planned on the whole time I was pregnant – breast feeding and a vaginal delivery. They are both gone, like childhood dreams that fade as life takes over. Everyone says – at least he’s healthy, at least everything turned our okay, you should focus on that. And they say it as if I am not grateful to have a healthy, content little boy. It’s somewhat akin to the responses I get about my childhood, while long over still lingers in my cells, holds firm in the alters that circle in my head. That was 30 years ago, focus on the positive. Focus on the positive.
And I will, I do. I just need to grieve the loss. Grieving the loss, gives space for the light, the energy, the here and now. Even as I marvel in you, your energy, your spirit, I need to grieve the loss.
