Hanging With Baby
I took the day off from work today with that above subject line named as the reason in my email reminder to my boss and my employee. They wished me a happy "Peony day" ...and now that I've had it, I think I should have many of these days. They are slow, sensory, fun, and silly.
We took the commuter rail downtown into Boston, bought pink beribboned boots for her at Puma, ate lunch and watched fountains and birds together, tried on the baby winter coat at Patagonia (so cute, but didn't buy; not quite warm enough), listened to hip hop at Bodega, had Starbucks chats over juice boxes, played and laughed out loud in a children's book store where we bought the book CAT, and this after she spent long time yelling what sounds a lot like "Hi Dog!" at the puppies in the pet store. (The book DOG is now on order for us.) On Newbury St., looking down at her sleeping in the carrier on my chest. Looking at art in a gallery---she gazed upwards at huge paintings of grapes. Later at Starbucks we tried grapes, but she spit them out dramatically. Also a no-go on kiwi, which she tried for the first time. Sometimes we think she just likes spitting things out, though.
The best part is just how easy it is to be sensory again---we stood on a bridge over the highway and cars and trucks zoomed under us and she kicked and yelled and we could have done it for a long time. I spent a good part of my adolescence doing that (minus the kicking and yelling, but with the pleasure and wonder--where are they going? Who are they? Woah, here comes a truck!) but I haven't done it in years. Just being in the moment: she's hitting the window of the train with both hands as highway cars and graffiti tunnels zoom by. She's peering over the top of the seat at the rider behind us and smiling a huge grin until he is simply forced to smile back; her two bottom teeth are an irrestible invitation to smile. We're sitting on some grass in front of Boston Public Library, eating fresh mozzarella and basil while pigeons fly within inches of our faces. We're watching in a pet store as a pug and a dachshund wrestle and bite with joy, and their frenzy captivates her and makes her flinch when their bodies get near. But she kicks kicks kicks when a standard poodle, loose in the store, gets near, and we have to get low enough for gentle petting, which she has mastered.
People always tell me that time flies with a kid, "blink and you'll miss it," "it's over before you know it," "It's just weekends and vacations and then they are eighteen," but people have been telling me this or variants of it my whole life. I remember my grandfather Hilbert musing that life after 25 just flies. I was so curious about it; I wondered about it for about 15 years, until I turned 25, and then I waited with baited breath to feel like life was just about over. I'm now 33 and I don't feel it yet.
As a parent, you become more acutely aware of time passing because your child grows in some new tangible way every moment, it seems, and it's hard to forget that at the same time, you're aging. But on the other hand, time can get as slow as molasses. Today the time between 12 and 3 was so long, I really couldn't believe it. Between 12 and 1, under the sun, eating lunch, laughing with stranger after stranger about my baby and something she did (sneeze, look at sunflowers, smile)--it was slow. And certain sights, smells, temperature, humidity, puts me in Costa Rica, Cobbs Hill, the 490 overpass, the Co-op, the Andes---like it happened yesterday afternoon. Then again, Peony and I passed Sonsie on our walk and I remembered each of the four distinct times I'd gone there, and I was shocked---each time seemed like from a different lifetime.
Time is malleable. Routine speeds up time. Take time to be in time.
