Crying All Night

A title that says it all, no further commentary added until the morning, now days later.  Much is hidden behind the veil of privacy within the home, keeping up appearances.  Substitute words like magical for the reality in retrospect.  Much must be down to memory, what we care to admit even to ourselves, and what we gloss over.  What can only be gleaned through experience.  All that is forgotten.

Thinking about time, how everything returns to it.  In form and substance.  How if we only knew, decisions would not be fraught with anxiety, and that what is revealed could soothe, even in disappointment.  The way to avoid worry is to avoid thinking about time and its impacts.  Focus exclusively on the now, in the moment.  How funny that the Qatar WC slogan reads: “Now is All”.  As we wait to see about any additional ticket options before this month’s end and a meet-up with Lea from the Europa.  So much unfolding.  AA yips his agreement through the soother.  The little old man.

8 pounds, 6 ounces

The trajectory is good.  He’s growing, and steady urine flow whenever the female docs take a look.  You need to remember that.  How small he is.  How helpless he is.  How he responds to white noise.  How he slept this morning as we prepped the house for Grandmom’s first visit.  The cutlery sparkling.  The doctor’s appointment tests passed again.  

Old King Cole was a merry old soul… the circle of things.  J. Anderson M. tied these flies in 2000 for J. Anderson M.  If only he knew that 22 years later, and 15 after he slipped the bonds, they would hang in a namesake’s birthing room.  We cannot know the future, we can only guess at it, and do our best in helping usher it forth as best as we may hope.

I keep coming back to Scafell, that conversation in 2017 as the last full consideration of whether this was the type of life to come.  And the answer was no.  And the Bark was meant to solve the Ahab question.  And instead, Daddy Long Legs.

Moments of epiphany.  AA can deal with the flights.  Cape Town has to be the route.  Book it tonight, in faith.  Remember getting tongue-tied at grace with mom, who still seems strangely caught off guard by it.  So let’s bring her to church next week?  So she can see M and what she’s already developed?  Seems most natural.

A good day today.  A nice rest, a Killick for M, and thoughts of magic.  The Old King Cole was bought in 1982.  It is nice when things come around.  Potent.  Recollections of whether it was ok not to have put vasoline on the ass.  Grandmom teaching the swaddling, the accepted advice of putting to sleep on the stomach.  The comforts of this house.

And dreams of how to write it.  Taking shape a bit.  Has to be addressed to him.  A memoir about how he came to be, roundabout, but uniquely told.  Lessons and humility and magic and … I don’t know.  You were going to write in the Domus and they tore it down.  You were going to write and going to write and finally started in the MFA.  Then you took a break because you knew you needed time for the story to run it’s course a bit further.  

Now you’ve paid for this house so you can do it here.  On Garrett’s street, in Penney’s neighborhood.  Make it a good one.  He’s going to be.  I know it, aye.

1000% Normal

Helpful confirmation from birth/baby/sleep that everything will be alright, after a restless Sunday of googling.  So many scares to date, about oxygen and paralysis, dystopia and hyperglycaemia, but with a little rest all is well.  M slowly getting back to her best.  What an extraordinary, overwhelming, sleepless, adrenaline-fuelled moment-to-moment experience.  How to stop worrying and embrace some conception of faith?  What are the alternatives, in a one-perspective world beyond reason?  And understood only backward at that.

Here

There he sleeps, all 3.29 kg and 19.5 inches of him.  Now to go figure out what to do next.  M. knows, and there’s comfort in that guidance. Everything else - everything - can be worked out and solved.  Two hearts beating in sleep, and so far the visits from the doctors seem to confirm the best.  The feeding working and the pee as well, now hoping for some poop to go with it.  So many farts over this journey, and so much to remember that will fade in time, as it did for your own Dad who can only remember so much.  The drives and the IWK rooms, the baths and support and peanut/exercise balls, the contraction routine, can’t talk about it J, the exchanging of stories.  

Improbably, this one has made it.  The gift of the crown of life.  And you’ll follow it all.  

Effacement

The new terminology of these past nine months, is this word used in relation to anything other than the cervix?  The stopwatch is out and everything is progressing mostly on schedule.  The timeless act of birthing, the world over.  The anxiety comforted by the interconnectivity of it all, from google to calls home to Africa.  Relaxation techniques, embracing the rhythm of birth, downward movements, as the fluids leak out, running ahead of the little guy.

How valuable knowledge of this sacred, species-sustaining act would have been passed down before the wireless age... and yet in so many ways it is animalistic, innate.  I am checking out now, en route to a different acronym.  IWK.  Can't wait to see what happens next.  And to return here as a proper family.  Who could have imagined it?

Due

The internet/cable hookup arrived and the second of the two dispatched to the house seems only a slight improvement on the first.  The mysteries of the connections remain beyond me, an old vagabond struggling to learn the new tricks of the homeowner.  But answers are out there, and after a nice sunrise and getting the CIB and DSM acronyms off the plate, I am feeling more relieved.  (Even more so after tracking down Glubies.)  But there is still much to be done, some random new bug bites out of nowhere, and the timing uncertainty hangs over the days now, for the first time we have a moment to catch our breath and it feels... strange.  

Even as there is so much to do around.  The hot tub water festers until the drainage sometime later this month.  Thanks for the memo, Rhonda, but I'm going to need someone out here for the initial overview, as simple as it may be in the long term.  More importantly, the car seat is secured behind shotgun and cannot be budged more than an inch.  Amazing to think a human will soon be taking his place within it.  The sunrise this morning and the bluejays tonight have me feeling more pleased, although the whole process continues to be a rollercoaster.  Follow your love's attitude, my man.  Positive all the way.  Look back and laugh at how confident you were, how ridiculously focused on the little things.  

All in advance of the human person.

Moments in Time

May morning.  The Oxford revellers surely back to bed, while you use the cover of darkness to leave the last of the possessions in the garbage below.  Now a final toast of Guinness before we say goodbye, and forward.

It is a fond farewell.  Many escapades hatched here, stories and dreams, basically all realized.  If there were any goals on moving in, surely they’ve all been met in moving out.  Never did fix that dining room table floor light.  Never changed out the bedroom closet, never fixed the racks or hired an electrician or a plumber.  All left to Ring, the saviour of this crazy moving plan, the cog in the machinery that makes it work.

Must off to do the taxes, finalize the April hours, busy on top of busy, as the hot tub maintenance gets overlooked.  The stress of that, and the Walmart assembly, laughable when compared to the task ahead, the raising and nurturing of a life.  This morning, now, the move complete, I feel ready.  One year from the Canadian arrival and how much has been accomplished.  Surreal in its scope, natural in its evolution, on the mind more so than anything.

So much to write about, and write we shall.  If you can’t do it there, you can’t do it anywhere.

See you, 601.  Through it all, you were most fabulous.