So I am finally coming back to our neglected blog, like a favorite novel I am dusting off. I have missed our blog, our connection here where we meet on the pages of motherhood, friendship, nurturing our creativity, our ability to be prolific, or at least intentional. Where our lives crisscross like doodled hash marks on a mindlessly drawn dinner mat, waiting for a server to deliver the meal. I miss this sacred place of intersection, and instead of talking about it, I am just plunging in and recommitting to it.
Seamus is now 15 months old and I feel like another layer to the onion of motherhood has lifted. The first being when he hit six months and I came up from air to look around, and see that yep everyone was still there in my life after six months of gazing down at his sweet cheeks while he nursed. The next layer revealed itself when he turned one in April and I breathed a sigh of relief that yes, he made it to one, able bodied, breathing, and in his case sprinting around our house like no other boy before him had done. (The others did not attempt walking, much less running until 15 months, he had mastered it by 12. Much to my chagrin.) Now this most recent layer peeled back to reveal my oldest boy waiting for more of my attention to his creative endeavor, photography. And no coincidence, my writing presses in on me for more time, and my running pulls me out of bed before dawn, or some mornings with dawn, when previously I would have hit snooze and rolled over; I roll out.
Having a new baby, is sacred it takes you into your center. Like diving into the center of the onion, its raw, pungent, sweet nucleus, its heart, its core, and then gradually layer by layer working your way back out to its papery sheaths. Seamus’ feet still tender, have slivers from walking barefoot on my brother’s dock, they will never be that newborn raw again like last summer. And reading your Outside post, made me miss the carefree ways of summer, the way I grew up, the way I want my boys to grow up. And yet, this summer has felt heavy with humidity; with summer’s abundance juxtaposed by some friends who have had near and dear losses, and with the anomaly of our lack of travel. No Seamus’ baby feet will never be that fresh again. As I write this, Sandro Cisneros’ words from A House on Mango Street echoes in my mind, “Only a house quiet as snow, a space for myself to go, clean as paper before the poem.” Summer is about barefeet, solitude, a space for myself to go, the quiet raucous; and having a baby is about that clean fresh paper before you know the poetry they will inevitably write upon your heart.
And so, I begin again adding another layer to the sheath.
