Observing

”I’ve decided the reason Sam’s so gorgeous is that God knew that I wouldn’t have been able to fall in love with this shitting and colicky little bundle if he looked like one of those E.T./Don Rickles babies.” –Lamott

I like to stroke her hair softly while she nurses. Maybe it’s because people tell me it’s supposed to all fall out at some point—I keep expecting to wake up one day finding her bald with soft black strands strewn about her like fallen snow. Her hair is possibly even softer than her skin, certainly silkier, and spirals out in geometric perfection from a point at the back of her head. I think to myself, one day this hair will be gone, and she’ll grow back new hair, but it won’t be this hair, the hair that was wet in my body, the hair that crowned for an hour before the rest of her followed into the world.

I like to feel for her fontanelles, the soft spots on her head where her skull bones have not yet fused, markers of her vulnerability. One day the little triangular windows will close, but for now it’s frightening and exhilarating to think I can feel her brain. If I had an ultrasound probe I could cast in sound and look around.

The other day we put her down on the ground on her belly, naked. She could do brief little push-ups and lift her head in a bobbing sort of way, but even though it looked like she should just crawl right off the sheet, it was clear she couldn’t, and then it struck me what a small, helpless thing she really was. Sometimes the force of her personality—her alertness, stubborn cries, zany smiles—is so strong that I think I honestly forget that.

I think about the things she teaches me. Like how to be vulnerable and utterly helpless. How to exude a beauty and joy that comes of a complete lack of self-consciousness. How to relish eating and splashing in the bath. How to sleep with great abandon, head flopped back, mouth open, body slumped into mine, breathing like a little Darth Vader. She does all these things simply by being, and there is a purity and clarity in it that I’m trying to memorize before it disappears. On one hand I can’t wait for her to start speaking; on the other, she speaks more purely now than any other human being I’ve known.