rhythm

Its 8:00 A.M. and I have been up for 3 hours already. Lukas is down for his first nap. He has a cold and is more sleepy than usual. It’s strange how life is all about creating rhythm for him. I have never had such a strong and clear rhythm to my day and yet I feel like I have lost my personal rhythm, my busy, rushing, feel important rhythm. Now I follow someone else. I follow him. I spend all morning trying to manipulate his rhythm so that he will be in the right mood to go out when I want to. It isn’t easy. I have lost my flexibility. I can no longer just go when I want. Yet my baby is changing all the time. I get used to one rhythm and think I have it all down and then he changes. I have to be flexible to move with these changes. He teaches me a new relationship to flexibility. My mother always said that her children were her teachers. When I was pregnant I used to wonder…what will this child teach me? Who will he be? Already I see a personality emerge and he is only 4 and half months old. He is such a person. The other day I was nursing him and I looked down at him, slow blinking eyes, drinking, the stray hand tapping my neck, lightly tugging my hair….and I thought … now I am certain that human beings have a soul. If I ever doubted the soul, thought that we were just ticking machines running through survival and pleasure functions, Lukas has taught me otherwise. I look at him, this small human being. He has been alive for such a brief time and yet he is so complete. He arrived in this world as a little person with a capacity for love, fear, wonder. I am simply his care giver. His guide for a brief time. I teach him the rhythms of being in a body, eating, sleeping, speaking and grasping. He reminds me of the rhythms of the soul, waiting, watching, trusting and listening. It is our soft and beautiful, necessary exchange. It is what life is about.

silly snow

So we are shut in. Three feet of snow and two very rosy little 4 month old cheeks. No going outside for us. We stand at the window. Lukas is fussy. There is something wrong with his eye. It’s a little glassy and pussy and there is green stuff caught in the corner. I start to feel that I am going a bit mad with the rhythm and the boredom. I am captive in my own house and I so want to go outside. So yesterday we ventured into his room. We never go in there, oddly enough. I lay him on the bed and start singing. I dig out my harmonica and grab my old drum. I try to show him how the drum works. He bangs it and scrapes on it….I think accidentally but maybe there is a progeny hidden in there. Who knows, he could be the next Mickey Hart. He bangs and I play the harmonica and sing. After about twenty minutes we get bored with that. I look out the window and sigh. I am cranky. I want to go outside and play in the snow but I can’t because Lukas can’t. My little ball and chain. It’s too cold out. So we are in here banging on my drum as I sing “We’re jammin’ We’re jammin’ I wanna jam with you….hope you like jammin’ too.” He seems to like it. I’m his personal entertainer. Hey at least that theatre degree finally has a real use. As he starts to wiggle and crank I pick him up off the red plaid bed spread and we head back downstairs for a new scene. I lay him back down on the puppy dog rug and he starts to rub his eyes. I look out the window and watch the snow drift and blow. There will be other storms, I tell myself, but this time with Lukas, this is precious. I will get out later….I tell myself these stories all the time. I mostly believe them. But today I want to be childish. Today I want to be irresponsible and moody and dig into the wound and so I cry. I cry because I can’t go sledding and dig snow caves and be silly in the snow like I did when I was a kid. I’m not the kid anymore, he is. I am the adult….well, almost….I still sing silly songs to him and bang my drum….maybe I am just playing the adult…hey, another use for that theatre degree. It’s gaining in value by the minute.

mystery

We have read your 3 books, played with your 5 toys and now you stare at me as if to say “what are you gonna do for me now?” I made a choice to only have a few toys so that you would get to know them and also so that you would discover the world outside of toys…so that you would discover that the world is your toy. But now we are bored. Both of us, and if I read “The Little Duck” one more time, I think I will be sick. So I pick you up and we walk around the house to look at things. This is a favorite occupation of yours and a good upper body work out for me so it works out well for both of us. We head upstairs and stop at the window to watch the cars go by. You love this. On the window there are patterns in the ice, snowflakes so intricate and beautiful that it’s hard to believe that they were not intentionally created by some careful artist. Maybe they were. You are fascinated by these sparkling circular patterns. You don’t seem to blink, your mouth open with a steady stream of drool trickling out, mountains of red cheeks on either side.
It’s the end of the day and the orange last light is sparkling through the ice. It looks like a show being put on just for us. This little corner of magic happening on our window. “This is magic.” I say to you. “This is mystery.” “Can you say “mystery?” You look at me wide eyed. “You are a mystery.” I say to you. “So you don’t have to say it…you just are it.” You smile and look back to the fading light at the window. “Everything that we can’t explain, all the mysteries, those are god.” “We can’t explain you, so you are God.”
Lukas is almost four months old now, so it seems like a good time to introduce him to the concept of god. It will take him his whole life to truly understand, so I want to give him a head start on things. After all, I am still uncertain about what god really is. There is still so much that I can’t explain, so much mystery.

After the light leaves the window we head into the bedroom and I make shadow puppets on the wall. Lukas stares at the moving patches of darkness. He is transfixed. In this moment I am glad he only has 5 toys. The world of distractions awaits him later….for now we have the sun and ice and our own shadows mixing with the mystery of so much unknown to entertain us....and that is enough.

generations

Yesterday we went to visit my grand-mother in the rehab center. She is 91 and is recovering from major surgery. She is slowly coming unraveled. Her body is failing her piece by piece. Bit by bit it all gets taken away. How can any of us be prepared for that? I brought Lukas to see her. I thought it could be uplifting. I bundled him up against the frigid weather and dressed him in my latest favorite outfit…the red turtle neck with his overalls. I love dressing him. I love how he looks like such a little boy in some clothes. Especially lately as he wobbles and attempts to stand. He gets so much joy from feeling his own weight. He is such a big baby with his double chin and round Buddha belly. It makes it difficult for him to roll over, his next chore in the developmental plan. Lately when he is on his back he struggles to roll over but winds up on his side or with his arm lodged beneath his torso or when I help him over he is terrified with his new perspective and grunts and cries. Then he wants to be put back on his back where he tries the whole thing over again. Instinct is a funny thing.
Lukas and I walked the Flores ant halls to my grandmother’s sad little corner of a room. There wasn’t much space to sit or spread out. I was thinking of how large her house must seem to her now…expanded in her memory. How after the fire her home was reduced to just one room. One room at the Sun Set home, a residence for older women. Now she only has half a room. She is sharing it with a woman who can no longer speak or hear or see. As I walk by my grandmothers sleeping roommate I wonder, when do we stop hanging on to life? When do we let our loved ones go? What about this woman’s dignity? Who was she? What were her dreams and aspirations? How close did she get to them? What does she dream of now as she lies, curled and fetal in her bed? Her body seems to softly mutter “back to the womb….take me back to the womb” as I walk past.
I take Lukas out of his car seat and my grandmother marvels at his chubby red cheeks, his bright blue eyes, his active hands and feet. “He looks so healthy.” She says as she pushes out a smile. He stares at her wide eyed. He is awed by the rivers in her skin. I sit in my assigned seat. She apologizes for the lack of space and asks me amazingly astute questions for a recovering 91 year old. When I grow tired of holding Lukas I lay him at the bottom of her bed by her feet. I look at the two of them. He is so small and fresh, a life stretched out before him. She is so frail and ashen. Stories crease her face and curve her spine. She says to me. “Here we are, one of us is on the way in and one of us is on the way out and we are sharing the same bed.” Her lucidity is shocking as she is mostly a woman who lives on the surface of life. “I tell you Lukas” she continues “Its not easy coming into this world and its not easy getting out.” He looks at her without blinking and twitches his chubby little legs as he tries again, without success to roll over. He will one day make it over. Bit by bit he is coming into this body. Piece by piece he is coming into this world.