note to self

17Feb10

There’s a picture of my son on the beach, sitting in the middle of a crowded blanket, smiling beatifically at the camera. His chubby face is perfectly tilted and serene despite the low grade fever from the reaction to the antibiotics he had been taking for 10 days. Babies to his left, his right, looking down, up, rubbing eyes, complaining, resisting – they’re swirling around him making his gentle smirk all the more perfect and irresistible.

I’ve had this photo on my laptop as my wall paper for over two years now. Despite the fact that I have gazillabytes worth of photos of my little girl, I can’t bring myself to change this one. Looking backwards has always been an annoying habit of mine. Nostalgia is a compulsion for me, and has never really served me well until recently.

I don’t have time recently to remember details of days worth remembering. Mornings like today’s filled with vomiting children, a twisted 3 year old ankle, sore throats and design presentations at work make it impossible for my obsession with hindsight to truly surface. Even still, I catch myself doing it. I used to fantasize about being a rock star or a movie star, and now I find myself daydreaming about the feel of my children’s newly delivered bodies placed on my chest after pushing them out with little to no pain, thanks to the glorious epidural.

Maxie, our foosa, looked like a prop in an alien sci-fi movie. His eyes were wide open and locked onto mine, his skin was perfectly rosy, even tan. There was no blood or gore, just a slimy sleek seal lying on his side, weighing less than 7 pounds and feeling like he was made of over heated lead. I was shocked at how heavy 6 pounds 12 ounces felt. The first recognizable sensation was this weight on my chest after a numb battle of contracting and breathing and guessing at what muscles I was actually using in the vicinity of my uterus. Maybe the room was cold too, making it seem like there should have been waves of steam rising off of his perfectly lithe little body. I don’t know if I was expecting a baby to be cool to the touch, like a doll, or a figment of my imagination, but this wet little creature was ridiculously real and hot and messy.

I kind of remember a sense of relief when they took him away to wipe him off and to analyze his vital statistics under the warming lamp 5 feet away from the bed. I swear he never took his unfocusing eyes off mine. His scratchy whimpers made an impression on the doctor who declared that he must be a mellow kid to be making such understated cries. 24 hours later, we discovered he was colicky and able to scream like a yeti for hours upon hours.

Even though we were only separated by a few feet, it gave me a chance to regroup, think of things to say to this little person who was so unexpectedly unfamiliar. I had been talking to him for 9 months, out loud and in my head, so to be at a loss for words made me freak out. I thought it might be appropriate to cry a little when they gave him back to me, and I did. I didn’t really know why I was doing it, but at least it represented some of the emotion I was probably feeling.

The girl was completely different and similar at the same time. She was heavy too, but didn’t weigh much more than her brother when she came out. Still less than 7 pounds, she, at least, had some budonkachunk to back up the weight of her reality that was again placed gently on my chest like a bag of bricks. Hot, like her brother. I couldn’t get over the battle marks this time. The doctor must have nicked her head while he was trying to open the non-existent placental membrane to help the contractions. I think she also must have scratched her own face in the 9 minute joyride out the chute. It was a hell of a lot faster than the first time, but it didn’t look it judging from red lines crisscrossing her purplish white skin.

I stared at her funny little face with the giant nose in the middle of it. I was completely floored at how unfamiliar she looked to me. Again. The blood started to flow under her delicate skin and she was purple no more. They took her from me and I was startled to see that she didn’t have a gigantic head and a face as wide as the universe. It was just that I was looking at her so closely and so intently that she filled my world for a minute or two.

I don’t remember if she cried. That upsets me. I don’t remember as many details of my daughter’s birth, and it makes me feel like shit. I do remember that she had a texture that was completely unique. Her personality was instantly known to me, and she was without a doubt, not her brother. She turned out to be larger than life after all.

I do remember that she literally shed her skin within a day of being born. Her limbs and her torso started to slough off the onion paper thin newborn shield that came out looking inhuman and purple and coated. Then fair and transparent, she epitomized ‘Girly’. I rarely fretted about walking into her room to potentially witness some post-partum depression induced horror scene when she was an infant. The moments I mark with her are actually her rare crying fits where she pathetically looks up with arms pointedly aimed toward the floor just in front of her feet. She looks like a Tim Burton character with her perfectly round face and lavendar eye sockets and blotchy forehead when she’s truly upset. Her brother’s ear shattering, high pitched shrieking that makes me always wonder if this time someone really is pulling his limbs apart, is not her style, although she imitates him for affect. Her natural crying sound is gentle and heartbreaking.

Almost always, no matter how upset she is, the crying stops dead in its tracks because she is all of the sudden smiling at you because you’ve made a funny face. This ability of hers to do that astonishes me to the core.

Both of these kids are so resoundingly remarkable, so unmistakably splendid. I just wanted to write myself a little note about that fact before I develop dementia and forget this ever happened.

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