pretty good year

Dearest Solomon,

I just nursed you to sleep and felt a compulsion to write about you. I put on my pandora and Tori Amos's Pretty Good Year came on. The perfect song for the way I'm feeling right now about you. Even after you were up every two hours in search of my breasts, a regression back to the little you who slept by my side all those months. And even though my head aches and I'm bleary eyed, I still can't get enough of you. You looked up at me after you nursed just now, your big, clear blue eyes and your little toothless mouth spread into a beautiful smile. A smile that said I am the one you love. And that smile assuaged my exhaustion, my guilt over how much I work or how often I need to do things to take care of myself only. You are a very different creature to your sister. The first born. How simple and just the two of us her first year was.

But you, my little boy. Less than a month away from your first birthday, little boy. Walking, eager, expressive little boy. Little boy who is perfectly content as long as his mama is by his side. We drove seven hours together on Sunday, you and I. I made googly eyes at you in the backseat and watched you fall in and out of sleep. I fed you road snacks and sang you Spandau Ballet's True. Last night when I couldn't get back to sleep in between your excessive nursings, I listened to that song in my head, over and over. It's the perfect little love song for us. Simple. Repetitive. Beautiful. Dramatic.

Oh little boy. We're here in these snowy mountains. Even though I've had enough snow, enough days without sunshine, I think of you asleep in that little room and I feel fine. This is the vacation we are supposed to have. Old ones below. A wild haired little girl zoned out to PBS kids. These days where the old and the young in habit our space more than those of our generation.

I think about your birthday. How I want to celebrate. And I keep coming back to your birth, to the few friends that were there, who helped me bring you into the world with the grace and calm you deserved. I think about your placenta sitting in the red biohazard bag in our deep freeze. I wonder if the ground will have thawed enough for us to put it in the ground, plant you a tree by your sister's. I imagine all you want for your birthday is us. Maybe a cake to sink your fingers in. An audience to strut in front of. You don't even crawl anymore. You strut. You little nut, you.

My headache is going away as I write this. I feel my body settle into a snowy day. La f''in nina. But this is the life we chose for you. Close friends. Open spaces. Jagged mountains. Snowy winters.

Blessings abound.