Now it is night. The house windows show us ourselves. The light is orange.
Nirvaan is 30 days old. It is already dark outside, winter is finally here and our house is tucked into a snug blanket of silence, sprinkled with traffic noise and a certain peace.
He is beautiful, and when he smiles in his sleep his grin makes this tiny world of mine explode with sparklers.
I am delirious. There is a learning curve to all of this for both of us.
First week, first month home with a new babe, is such a fragile, isolating time. You wonder, invariably if anyone else goes through the same things: the stupendous heights of new baby love, and the rocky catapults to below low. I’ve always wondered what it is like for other people. I imagine, now that I am in the thick of it, the moments become wrapped in a protective bubble of forgetfulness.
I don’t want to forget.
I want to write even though the tiredness feels like an animal in the room with me: large and soft and voracious. I want to write so that I can remember what these moments are like: new, and precarious.
Nirvaan is asleep on the couch, tucked into a corner, dreaming. Even when he is being quiet, he stirs the air around him like an oar dipped into the smooth surface of a pond.
House was full for quite a while. Full with people I love. Full with people come to meet him. It was noisy and festive. All the noise startled me and him over and over again for few days, so that I was neither awake nor deeply asleep. Some internal tuning shifts with giving birth, so that every noise filters into my brain differently. I am always on the alert for his breathing, his slightest whimper, his smallest sigh. When I sleep next to him, I breathe in synch with his breath, and the rhythm of us breathing together is like the complex jazz score and anything else, any other sound, disrupts this and makes it harder to sleep.
Now all are gone and its still harder to sleep. The family portrait cozy together, is now looks empty.
It isn’t like I am just tired. This is a different kind of tired that originates in my organs, my muscle tissue, my sore, sore body. Everything hurts. And where adrenaline made the first day and the second a soporific rush of moments; the trauma of labor catches up. My body is stunned.
Outside there is traffic noise. I nurse Nirvaan, then bring him to the couch outside the bedroom and nestle him in the cradle next to me where he sleeps, his arms above his head. I love him. I love him unimaginably, and feel almost surprised by this sweetness and my love for him makes my heart flutter.
Every day is different. Wonderment, a thousand sighs and tears and laughs.
Happy 30th day, my son!
CpRyt@NeerS
