Aug
26

367.

Since finishing my…confessional? Elegy? Ecrivatory deluge? (Well, not that last one, because according to Google the word “ecrivatory” doesn’t exist)—since finishing last week’s whatever-it-was, Ames is suddenly a real person to me in a way he wasn’t before, and when I think of him I am sad in a way I haven’t been before now. This sounds like a bad thing, but I promise you, it’s not. The guilt that used to swell up at the thought of him has dissipated, and left unmuddied grief, for the first time. Odd as it may seem at seven months past his death, I feel like someone just told me this weekend that I had another baby, a son, and he died. And I know it must be wearing a little thin, my constant marveling over the oh-so-original observation that People Can Be Happy and Sad All At Once, but I really do find it amazing that I am so full of joy that the loss can only seep in around the edges, in tiny pinpricks or in a brief rush before I fall asleep. I was terribly nervous about posting some of those pieces last week, and your kind stewardship of them meant everything. For some reason I am always prepared for a virtual stoning to break out in my comment section, but of course it never does. I have the nicest readers.

Simone is teething, and I am very peeved about the whole process. Not at her, mind you, at the fact that nature has seen fit to have solid teeth thrust their way upwards through the tender flesh of infant gums. WTF, evolution? My poor baby is reduced to mouthing her hand and my shoulder, constantly sliding her tongue over her gums or sucking on it to make little clicking sounds. She is producing a ridiculous quantity of frothy drool and while there is no tooth out yet, I am fairly certain that this is what we are dealing with. And the screaming! Oh, the screaming. Luckily Simone is a very decorous baby and only screams for relatively short periods, but the screams are so sad and so piercing that they would make a grown man cry. And possibly lactate.

My daughter was one year old yesterday. On August 25th of 2007—after I emerged from a pleasant fog of Versed to find myself 22 ova lighter—a sperm and an egg came together in a petri dish and created the girl who is now chewing on her blanket in the swing across the room. A year ago Thursday, I saw her outside of my body for the first time, when an embryologist named Christopher led her father and me into a dark room to peer at her through a microscope. She and Ames were three days old, and only seven and nine cells big. They were beautiful. A man in a bow-tie and head lamp snaked a catheter into place, and Simone was sluiced through it. And 167 days later, I saw her again.

By Alexa | Posted in Ceci N'est Pas Une Ecrivaine |