#summer

Three months and one day.

| Jade SV

8 AM.

The boy slept last night but I didn’t. Some summer nights this happens. I fell asleep early, while nursing him in my lap on the couch and then dozed with him on me. Eventually B. took him and got him into bed and I thought I would go too but wanted to stay in the wife space of the living room verses the mother space of our bedroom. I lay on the couch under the fan while B. meandered the internet and then he read aloud to us from The Alchemist, which we have both read. This time though the book is causing him some stress and that’s what had him up in the middle of the night. Me, it was the summer heat and the odd chill that comes from too many hours under a fan and also when I fall asleep early and don’t actually get into bed, it’s often like this, a chance for deep sleep that passes and then doesn’t return for many hours. Sleep can be like this for me; a bit jealous, a bit vindictive.

An insomnia night is much more high stakes with a babe but I repeated my old mantra, passed to me from my grandmother, “Even if you can’t sleep, just try to rest.” I tried to rest, though from some weird shifting in my vagina I always feel like I have to pee at night.  I’m trying to remember to do a set of kegels every time I nurse but for some reason I only remember to do this during the barely conscious, middle of the night, sessions.

After an interlude of smiling, wiggling wakefulness (which is his typical morning way) the boy fell back asleep on my chest this morning, while I was standing and swaying on the top of the stoop. While standing there I imagined my father walking up and looking at me from the bottom of the stairs. I smile and put a quieting finger to my lips and then invite him in with a tilt of my head. We climb all the way up because B. is still sleeping and then I ease the boy into the rocker.

“Are you hungry?” I ask my dad. “I can make you some eggs.”

I put on the coffee, and we sit down under the fan.

“Why did you name the boy Rafael?”, he asks. (It was his father’s name first and in my mind he is currently mad at me for using it. I have no idea if this is true or not. I haven’t heard from him though, since the boy, since Rafael, was born.)

“Because that was his name,” I tell him, and it’s the kind of answer my father likes and he smiles.

I got no further in the scene because a garbage truck was coming down the streets and the squeal of the air brakes tends to wake the boy up. I went back inside the house, and then to the bathroom mirror to take a peak at the cuteness of him asleep on me. He was stunning of course, but then I looked at my own face too and held my own gaze. I saw there a tired and beautiful woman.

Two months today.

| Jade SV

A collection of sentences today because I’ve started many entries that never get written; the days that begin so slow and gentle, like now, even the garbage truck out front seeming like a soft, summer sound, and then come to this sudden close, me wondering where all the hours went. It’s officially summer now because public schools are out. And now that it’s officially summer it means that I officially begin to worry that September will come too fast.

The boy, who very kindly slept so as to give B. and I a quiet breakfast, stirs. He stirs by raising both arms straight above his head in triumph, he shakes his head from side to side, one arms lowers into a fist under his chin and the other lowers more slowly in one long straight line. I bet he’s making me a faster, more accurate typer.

He is two months old today. Does it mean that at three months we’ll cross some border out of this magic land?

I decided yesterday that when my mother came over I would make my new mama friend an Israeli salad, a thing of sliced mango, and a batch of muffins. I also planned to fix the mobile that disintegrated a week (or more?) ago. Also, to join my neighborhood listserve so as to go hunting for a bouncy chair and a nursing chair. Also, fix the storage problem on my phone. And write my godmother. Also, send these photos to my other friend that she’s going to use to make a set of illustrations for this very project. And return my friend’s phone call. Also, find an air bnb for a few nights for me and B. in the end of July. And…there was something else but I forget.  Oh yes, make two doctor’s appointments. And I owe three baby gifts.

There was this night in his first week before my milk came in when I sat with him in the moonlight, in a creaky rocking chair, and I sat and began to tell him the story of himself and just sat there crying.

I think I keep writing that moment over and over.

Two months! B. just pointed out that the boy is officially bigger than our cat.

The problem with the days when I try to get specific tasks done is that every time I’m holding him I’m thinking of when i get to put him down. So by the time I get to the end of the day, the tasks somehow undone, I also feel disconnected from the boy, and then the whole thing becomes a haze. It’s also true that yesterday had many magical moments sprinkled throughout. I’m been getting a little emotional. Moody. A little rollercoaster-y. He’s in a new sleep pattern that’s leaving me a little…weird.

Also, I’ve been meaning to tell how I did officially have sex, but that was a few weeks ago, and is kind of old news by now.

And there’s this whole bit about Father’s Day.

So I’m going to stop now. Because I am trying to get to this new mama gathering which I think would be very good for me to get to. The way B. nodded when i said I was thinking about going made me think that perhaps it would be more good for me than I realize. Did I mention that I’m also really happy?

Oh, and I’ve also been meaning to write and think about resources and support for new mamas. And my relationship with my boobs.

I did have a moment of total wisdom and surrender this morning, though. That I would just do one moment at a time and see what comes. I’m deciding right now, and declaring, that today is in fact the first official day of summer.