One Year Ago

 Today I was in the hospital, entering my 24th hour of induced labor to have a baby. Today I am draped over a smooshy beanbag chair in a funny little 1920s era office that I have rented together with some friends to have a space to write while my Succotash is in Montessori up the street. After a bumpy beginning my baby now happily walks himself up the steps to the infant and toddler house, and knocks on the glass door to be let in. Today he almost jogged into the classroom to see his babyfriends, not even stopping for an extra hug, and barely registering when I said "bye bye Succotash, I love you. Quack quack quack I'll be right back."

My baby isn't a baby anymore. In the night he rolls over onto his belly and sighs. I am beginning to think he might wean himself of his own accord, after several weeks being worried he would remain a gung ho partisan of nursing until well into first grade. He doesn't reach for me as much in the night as he did before. He rolls enough that we have obtained a toddler mattress and padding for the floor, because I'm worried soon the bed won't be safe for him. Strange days.

Tomorrow we will celebrate with a grandmother and an uncle and a neighbor or two in the garden, with a cupcake each and a balloon for the birthday boy. He won't know why so many people he loves are all in the garden, or what to do with the candle. Here is the robust little fellow, tall, inquisitive, with an unfortunate habit of poking baby friends in the eye when interested in them. He is unlike the seven pound creature who emerged from my body in one very surreal moment early in the morning almost one year ago. And yet, in that creature I can see the outline of the boy who lives with me now.

I feel sort of inadequate to the task of expressing what it means to me, and to my husband, to have him here, for him to be turning one year old tomorrow, for him to be real, and really here, and alive, and with us, and a person who is at the very beginning of what (God willing) will be a long and eventful and meaningful life. I look around at Mustard House now and dare to imagine that he might be in this house with his grandchildren one day, that it will have been in our family for over a hundred years, that my first book will have secured a home for this imaginary family I never dared to dream I would have until, one moment, almost one year ago, it appeared.