Here We Go

"First train ride, or what?" asked the gruff conductor. Peony looked up at him from her front carrier, where she was attached to me as I slid into my seat. I nodded. He gave a sort-of smile and tipped his conductor hat. I gave her a squeeze and we rolled off through the misty woods to Concord. She loved the train---well, she loved looking at the people on the train and the metal grille under the window. Not so much out the window. I saw a deer as she fell asleep on my chest. In Concord, we disembarked and walked to a pond, then got lunch for Mommy, then bought a bonnet for the baby.

I am trying to pack in the outdoor adventures these days as we wind down sixteen weeks of maternity leave. Walks with other moms and trying out the stroller, walking alone with the baby strapped to my body, walking home from downtown, walking huge loops around the northern suburbs. We walked to Davis Square the other day and I bought her ruby colored sunglasses with rhinestones in the corners. We walked to my work, too, and had lunch with my boss, who Peony showered with smiles and love and hugs, and then walked to her daycare, where we toured the rooms yet again and saw the sleeping babies, crying babies, playing babies, and babies getting held. It was cramped, but there were lots of arms to hold babies, and that's all I cared about right then.

She likes other people...she likes me most of all, but she likes watching other people. She fussed until I held her facing outwards the other day on the bus, traveling home from the doctor's negative pregnancy test result and heating up in our coats in the early spring sunlight. It was hard for the bus passengers to ignore her: she looked at each one so openly and full of heart, her dark eyes wide and her little mouth open; the old woman, the tough guys with headphones, the teenage girl with the Jonas Brothers backpack and busy texting fingers. Each one had to look back, and maybe even smile. "She's taking it all in, huh?" say strangers everywhere to me, or commenting on her alertness. She is alert, and she has been for months; she is curious, and I rarely see her distracted from her curiousity. The other day I was looking at her in my husband's arms, stressed and consumed by the discomfort of her little growing body, and I said, "It's so hard being a baby, isn't it? You know, you won't always be a baby, and it's going to be a lot easier when you're a big girl. Your body just has to grow right now." Her whole body fell quiet and her eyes softened as she listened, and she looked at me like she had traveled through the whole universe to come join our family, and she knew she was in the right place, in the now instead of in all time. In yoga, Barrett asked to us to assume prayer position and imagine what we were most grateful for, and my body was flooded with love and power for Blue and Peony, my two beautiful beings, almost actually of my heart.