landslide

It's been a mildly emotional evening here at the Kessler home. Eliana's papa is gone for a week to British Columbia for work, so Els, Lucy and I are holding down the fort without our Mr. Big. Eliana's been a little less smiley than usual, a bit more clingy, a teeny bit less effusive. I don't even think, oh she must be teething, anymore because I've been thinking that every time she's acted a bit down in the dumps for the past six months. But after her lengthy evening nap, I was feeding her dins in her high chair. As I spooned a bit of sweet potato into her gummy gums, I finally saw it. The unmistakable mark of a tooth cutting through the pink flesh on the bottom right.


Now the tooth story has been long and sordid. I think we thought Eliana was first "teething" back in November when she displayed some consistent fussiness and had rosier than usual cheeks. Five months and two bottles of holistic teething tablets later, still not a mark of porcelain in our G-Gums sweet mouth. And there we were, doing our thing, listening to some old, sentimental CD I made a few years back when I spotted the tooth. Then, of course, Stevie Nicks has to come on singing "Landslide." So I begin to sing, with all the heart and soul this mama can muster, to Elie in her high chair. Next thing I know I have tears streaming down my cheeks, while Elie stares at me with her big blues, a look on her face of equal parts confusion and amusement. She used to hearing, "Eliana, have you any wool, yes sir, yes sir, three bags full..." and "...someone's in the kitchen with Eliana, someone's in the kitchen I know, oh, oh, oh...." but the earnest, intense, American Idol style rendition of Landslide that was coming out of my mouth was unlike anything she'd heard from me before. If we were in a movie, my singing would have actually sounded good and some cheesy montage of photos would have flashed on the screen, perhaps various shots of Eliana's toothless grin, the last frame frozen on a single toothed mouth, then fading to black.


But, alas, it was just us, together, in the kitchen. Just another seemingly common moment in our little lives. Perhaps that's what gave me the emotional go-ahead and chutzpah to really let loose with both the notes and the tears. Knowing that my husband is across our northern border and not about to walk in the door and laugh hysterically at me made the moment all the more intense. Maybe the emotions of the tooth's arrival were mixed with the incredible hormones that have been blasting through my body lately as my reproductive system kicks back on in full force (cramps, bloating and mama blood to boot). Whatever it was, the tooth, the tears and the notes took hold of the room.


And then the song ended. The next song on the mix pulled me right out of the freeze-frame (Fiona Apple lacks the refined, aged wisdom of Ms. Nicks and completely spoiled the mood). And the moment passed, just another of many, fast, fleeting and full, that I'll face with my little girl.