Nearly a year later

It's been nearly a year, and the words are coming back to me. I don't know why I take these long journeys into silence where writing feels impossible, but they tend to happen quite regularly. I feel like I'm constantly trying to re-invent myself as a writer who covers this topic or that. It doesn't really work for me though. Not right now anyway. I was reading a blog post though about the grace of everyday love, and the words started coming back.

I have what I once thought might never be mine - a four month old son. He's propped on the arm of the couch and probably about to demand my attention, and he's been teaching more than I can say. Ever since I found out about him he's been wiggling his way through my defenses and my reserves and my selfishness and all those false parts of my identity. He's got a face as familiar and uncanny as my own, and an otherness that utterly undoes me. He's a whole other part of me that I'm almost scared to touch in case I break the very thing that should receive my most tender care. I'm so tired sometimes that his newborn days seem like another lifetime ago, but then I stare in incredulous wonder at how big his feet have grown. When did he first smile at me or laugh or duck his head against my shoulder? I haven't a clue. Once done it was as though he'd always done it, and I was just waiting for him to do it again.

And this is why there are times I play video games or read stupid novels or watch junk food tv or do anything rather than think. I held Jacob, and it was as though I'd spent half my life just waiting to hold him. Years and years of traveling and writing and learning to keep house and wasting time all because I didn't want to think about looking into those eyes that are my eyes and yet not and seeing him flash his daddy's dimples at me. I didn't want to think that it might not happen. I still don't want to think about it. In the hospital I had a dream in which I gave birth to a girl, and I woke up in half panic looking over at his bassinet to make sure he was there. Before his birth I didn't care whether we had a boy or a girl (and in fact we didn't know). After his birth it had to be Jacob.