First Meal Shivers

Addie had her first solid meal today at five months old. I say solid food, but in all actuality the best way to describe this rice cereal mixed with mother's milk would best be described as somewhere between the consistency of runny oatmeal and snot. Not the most appetizing of items on the menu.
Addie sat in her little chair wearing a plastic bib and looking at the small spoon waving in front of her little face. She looked puzzled. We looked puzzled. Larry, our dog, just wanted to eat the cereal. The first spoonful found an opening in her mouth and I shoveled it in...it came back out and rolled like a little river of sludge, like an oil spill, like a bear's cold porridge down into the little envelope designed to catch just this substance.
One scoop in, one scoop out: that is how this experiment in feeding went. Addie had it on her forehead, left hand and elbow, and circumnavigating her mouth. She "ate" without understanding.
Do you remember your first shot of tequila or whiskey? Do you remember tilting your head and letting the shot enter? Do you remember the warm feeling as it rolled down your throat, and then the taste? The taste that sent a shiver up your spine, and an uncontrollable spasm up from your stomach to your neck and into your face where you turned your head, squished your face, and shook, just briefly, like eating a sour lemon?
That is exactly what Addie looked like. She had her first spoon-fed food.
And she hated it.

Late Night Windows

The street light cascade is distant and broken; the moon settles in from the south and never sees my late night windows until almost morning. I have a chair that stares into the street-straight through these windows. I didn't really sit in the chair often until Addie came home.
I never looked out these windows at night for long.
It is funny how observation works; people can observe the minutest detail like E.O. Wilson's ant or the grandest panorama such as Ed Abbey's desert. I have my front yard and a shadowed soul in my arms sleeping just below wakefulness to observe.
It is on these nights where my sleepiness passes and I sit, rocking slightly, and gazing into the late night windows.
I think it is this late at night only when silence and stillness meet that the world lends itself to be observed in full transparency: clear as glass.
The first few weeks I noticed the grass bending toward the East and looking slightly wet, I saw the small cottonwoods, hoping for maturity, flicker in breeze and above them an old aspen quaking toward the sky, before the walls of home cover my view. I began to observe more and less through this time both large and small. The corner of my eye would catch the rabbits as they lifted their heads together to investigate an anomalous noise; I saw how dark the black top tar became without humanity to give it purpose; and I saw the land fall as I looked north watching it rolling gently downward. I imagined the houses on the other side of the street were not there to allow something else to be. I also noticed that I began to observe myself, clear as glass, as the soft body of my daughter curled in my arms to get a bit closer as she turned her head to find the small angle in my elbow where her head fit perfectly. You could hear her movements before seeing them.
These night windows scared me. I could see all of my faults and how they were also my strengths. I noticed all the doubt, and fear, and I asked in a whisper if I could some how be better than I am, if I, some how, could change. The quietness left no hiding places and I understood how the rabbits felt.
I did not get an answer at first until I felt down in the mixed stillness of night, and I mean felt not looked. I felt the beat of my daughter's heart and the warmth she gave and as I looked out those late night windows I knew I had no answers to if I could change but I knew I would try.
And somewhere beyond the glass in the night filled world something changed and I had hope I could.

And I Never Let Go

7.16.2009

And I Never Let Go

Trying to recollect the hours and minutes before the birth of my daughter I just seem to remember only flashes and feelings. I remember sitting alone in a small room with the news on trying to put strange paper booties over my shoes and thinking to myself, "why do I need to have these on my shoes? What could possibly be thwarted by wearing strap-on slippers?" This lasted no more than a few seconds because it was impossible to think about anything over my silent panic as I sat in the chair waiting to be told to meet my wife in the surgery room so she can give birth to my daughter. The news was on.

I didn't move much while I waited...

And then a person came in and everything blurs to pastels in the rain. Snippets of visions I recall. Aly, my wife smiling at me and I knowing that it was a smile trying to hide everything my smile was trying to hide: everything from now on is nothing I have ever known.

A woman asking me if I wanted to cut the cord and my split second reaction, "No" as I was covered with audio/visual equipment, pushing the cart down a hallway and thinking to myself how very important it is right now not to run into anything as Addie looked up and than fell asleep wearing a little hat, and watching my daughter as her grandparents watched me through the glass of the nursery.

Those days, and the days after are memories. In those days I kept searching for what had changed. I was a father but nothing felt different. I still stayed up late, still wanted to watch movies and have a beer or two (or three) on the weekend. I changed diapers, let Addie fall asleep in my arms, and spent a lot of time just trying to figure out what I was supposed to be doing differently.

I am still not exactly sure of the answer. I know that I think of things differently now, and perhaps that is all that is different. I think of Addie's giggles, and like I said earlier of feelings.

It is this that is different more than anything else. I don't think of when Addie was grabbing her toes, one little hand on two little toes and the other little hand trying to make that final reach to grab two others. I should say that I do think of that but just briefly. I let the memory slide away and let the feeling associated with it stay. I focus on it.

That is different. My focus.

It happened, like so many things in our lives, so slowly or so quickly you are not sure which it was. I may never know if I felt this way the day she was born or collected it over time. All I know is one day, and I have no idea what day it was, I picked up Addie in a different way than I have ever picked up anything ever in my life...

And I Never Let Go