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May 12, 2019

Golden Hour

This is me, mere hours (maybe even just minutes) into motherhood. I’ve heard this period of time—the 60 minutes or so following delivery where it’s just you, your spouse, and your baby in the room—referred to as The Golden Hour.

For us, Golden Hour happened to be on a Friday morning in early fall with the City of Columbus outside our window, busy getting wherever she needed to go. As for our family of three, we were already right where we were meant to be, Ty and I slowly taking in every inch of our brand new, beautiful baby boy.

I don’t need to say it, but motherhood is certainly not one continuous Golden Hour. The long days, the learning curves, and the lack of sleep are just a few reasons why this is true. But if you look hard enough, you’ll find that the gold is still there:

That moment when your breath catches in your throat at the sight of the one you nurtured from birth dancing around the sunlit room. Or all the times you simply can’t help but gobble those cheeks and nibble those toes because you know they won’t be this little forever. The unprompted kisses and hearing him say “mama” and all the other magic that’s so easy to miss.

Above all else, Mother’s Day reminds me of the privilege it is to be Ford’s mom. A mother may not be all that I am, but it certainly requires everything I have, especially during this season of mothering in the tiny years. But when I remember that this is something I GET to do, amid the simultaneous joy and struggle (because there’s never one without the other!), I find that I’m simply overwhelmed with gratitude.

So here’s to all of it—the Golden Hours and the not-so-gilded ones. The hard, the happy, and the heartbreakingly sweet.

Oh, that I wouldn’t ever take it for granted.

December 16, 2018

Nostalgia on my Mind

The memory always finds me this time of year. Long ago though it may have been, it’s still as clear to me as the freshly fallen snow was white that night, all crunchy and frozen under our boot-strapped feet.

It was the first time I had been out of the house in days. I was coming off of a brutal bout of strep throat and an accompanying case of cabin fever. The air held an uncharacteristic silence, penetrated only by the rumble of the El track above us as we quietly made our way down the street.

The flakes fell soft that night, spiraling down through the muted glow of the street lamps as we walked hand-in-hand; the hazy orange thrown off by the lights adding a particular magnificence to our real-life snow globe.

We were younger then, not even 18 months into marriage. It was just the two of us, and we inhabited a high-ceilinged, exposed-brick loft in the South Loop of Chicago. Those days spent at 16th and State were punctuated by Bon Iver listening and book reading, party throwing and couch cuddling. Simpler times to say the least.

I hadn’t eaten a proper meal in days. Hungry as I was for both food and the outside world, we set out on foot heading North. Our destination was the burger joint just up the street, but we took our time getting there. The chill was biting, but the beauty breathtaking. It was as though this frosty Chicago night belonged to us and us alone.

***

I’ve often wondered why it comes to me as it does: this memory, replaying in mind’s eye year after year—the details as sharp as the day I lived it.

Maybe it’s because I was taking in the scene with a fresh set of senses after being holed up for far too long. Maybe the magic of the snowfall had excited those senses, causing a sonic overload of sorts. Was it the meal I ate? Those first bites of solid food so good they’re beyond forgetting?

Perhaps it was simply one of those nights that, for no particular reason, you’re bound to remember forever, common and ordinary though it is, yet distinct and important in its own way.

Whatever the reason, I’m glad for the memory. It warms my soul on chilly nights, filling my heart with gladness and my mind with nostalgia.

After all, those just-the-two-of-us times are no more, and thrilled though we are, I still catch myself daydreaming about them—the charming days of a uniquely sweet season that can no longer be touched, only felt.

It feels odd sometimes, thinking about how life used to be. It’s funny that something that was once all we ever knew is now so foreign and, at times, hard to recall. I suppose, however, this is how all of life will be: the familiarity of today traded for a future that was formerly known only in dream and in prayer.

I’ve decided to count it an annual Christmas gift, this winter memory of mine. It’s trappings are ones of sentiment and romance, and, like all good presents, its effect is long-lasting. I don’t ever know which day it’s going to arrive, but when it finally does, I like to unwrap it slowly, take it in from every angle.

And that’s what I’m doing tonight.

We may be far removed from that snowy city night, but it’s never not near. Because my heart won’t let my mind forget what it needs to remember from time to time.

November 14, 2018

No Place Like Home

It had been just over 15 months since we last stepped foot on those (sacred to us) city streets. The afternoon sun reflected off the river’s rippling surface, making this particular November afternoon in Chicago an exceptionally pretty one. It was our first time back in The Windy City since our big move to Columbus, and with less than 24 hours to explore this former home of ours, we were bound and determined not to waste a minute of it.

Making this already memorable visit even more special was the fact that we had our son with us: our newly turned one-year-old who was almost a Chicago-born baby. We moved to Ohio when I was 30 weeks pregnant, so the majority of my pregnancy had been spent in living in Illinois. We were all sorts of excited to give our baby boy the grand tour of the place that was home during the six years that preceded him.

I was curious what it would be like, returning for the first time since moving away. Although our move to Ohio was both extremely intentional and desirable, it had been hard to leave Chicago. The majority of my and Tyler’s story had been written there, and we have the memories to prove it.

If I’m being honest, I expected to feel the heart pangs—the same ones I felt when we left her. I questioned whether I would return to Ohio wishing Chicago was still my residence, longing to go back to a life lived among the urban hustle and bustle I did sometimes miss.

The magic was certainly still there, but the city is always a magical place for me. I definitely felt the electricity—the shock of energy that never fails to surge through my body when my feet hit those streets. But it just wasn’t the same. I didn’t feel the longing I once had. I wasn’t swooning over the Gold Coast brownstones or even pining for our old exposed-brick loft in the South Loop. I definitely felt the nostalgia, but not the desire for this past experience to be our present reality.

In the same way that we have memories sprinkled throughout Chicago and her surrounding suburbs, we’re starting to populate the city of Columbus with the same. Like pins dropped on a map, little marks of this life we’re living are starting to stick, and it feels good. We have new anchor points; experiences and memories that tether us to this place we’ve now called home for nearly 16 months.

* * *

It was a rainy Sunday evening when we arrived back in Columbus. I had fallen asleep in the passenger seat, but I awoke just as we were passing through the heart of the city. Looking out through the rain-splattered windshield, I caught a glimpse of the skyline. As if they had been trained to do so, my eyes immediately found the red brick building with the white block lettering—the hospital where our son was born. Talk about an anchor point. I couldn’t help but smile.

There’s no Willis Tower, and it certainly doesn’t overlook a Great Lake, but what Columbus has come to mean in the short time we’ve been here more than makes up for what it may lack in geography and grandeur.

For all her pomp and circumstance, Chicago no longer feels like home. And what I’m finding is that, for the very first time, I’m perfectly okay with that.

September 23, 2018

The Remembering

He’s cuddled up in my lap, hair still wet from his warm bath while his tiny water-wrinkled fingers curl around his most recent prized possession. It’s the first thing he runs to every morning and the thing he requests at least a dozen times a day. It accompanies us in the car, on trips to his cousins’ house, and even during the occasional mealtime. I often have to remind him not to put it in his mouth, but really, how can I blame him? After all, is there anything more deliciously appetizing than a pumpkin in the fall?

Tonight’s bedtime routine is no different from the ones that have preceded it for weeks and months. We brush teeth, take a bath, and I chase him around his dimming nursery for ten minutes before finally wrangling him into his diaper and jammies. Tonight he’s wearing my favorites—the Gap ones with the colorful trucks and cranes zigzagging every which way. Adorably attempting to remove the feet from these footie pajamas, he sits and grabs at his hidden toes while I pull the seasonally appropriate “Duck & Goose” book off of the white IKEA shelf—the one where they find a pumpkin. He holds his own beloved “pumpa” while I read, looking up at me each time I utter the oft-repeated word “no,” wondering, I imagine, why I keep saying this when he’s done nothing at all to deserve it.

After two (or three or four) readings, I place the book back on the shelf and put his pumpkin in its rightful place on the dresser next to the lamp, much like a trophy on display for all to see. I flip off the light and begin to rock my almost-one-year-old to sleep, squeezing my eyes shut in the dark. Most nights my eyes close automatically—fourteen straight hours of “mom-ing” will do that to you. But tonight it’s more than the exhaustion that forces them closed. With only three weeks to go before my son’s first birthday, I’m doing my best to take in every last bit of these unbearably sweet, tragically fleeting moments of his infanthood. If my eyelids are the shutter, my brain is the camera, housing tens of thousands of moments turned memories just like this one. If I’ve learned anything about Time this first year of my son’s life, it’s that he’s an outright thief, stealing away these moments one by one and diminishing my memory of even those most sacred and treasured.

* * *

The orange and white spheres dotting the open field come into view as our gray Honda Civic approaches the lot. After allowing my excitement to build for the entirety of the 35-minute car ride, I place my hand on the side of the door, flinging it open the second we stop. I swoop into the back seat and retrieve my restless son, knowing instantly that this is going to be one of those memories I’ll desperately want to hold in my heart forever. It’s already my favorite seasonal rite of passage—that inaugural trip to the pumpkin patch. But having a baby in tow while we hunt for those jack-o-lantern-worthy gourds? You’ve got to be kidding me. It’s a reel that’s played in my daydreams a thousand times before. And now here I am, those dreams my reality.

My fall-loving heart explodes as I watch my firstborn toddle around the patch in his denim-blue jogger overalls, excitedly pointing at all of the “pumpas.” He makes his way from one to the next, occasionally tripping over a prickly vine, hands and knees planting firmly in the slightly damp ground. The air holds the perfect amount of chill—just enough to necessitate wooly sweaters and cups of hot cider. And the breeze is a mixture of earthy and sweet—overturned dirt mingling with the scent of saccharine apples just one field over. These are the details I’m filing away; the present moments being saved for a future me who will want to look back and remember this past.

* * *

I always struggle with the remembering. Actually, I need to qualify that. I suppose it isn’t really the remembering itself. My issue, the issue that haunts me on at least a weekly basis, is how best to remember the terrible-wonderful that is my life playing out in front of me each and every day. It’s the very real tension I feel between wanting my iPhone velcroed to my side, while at the same time desiring to keep it out of sight most hours of the day. It’s the manufactured lens versus the natural eye. Capturing and curating versus mindful, real-time attentiveness. Do I push the record button and risk missing out on the fullness of the present moment for the sake of having this memory to replay over and over again for a future version of my most sentimental self? Or do I set the camera aside and instead capture this fleeting moment in my mind’s eye alone; the edges of the pseudo-pictures fading over time, but the details remaining sharp because I lived them—really lived them.

I often try to place myself five years in the future and think about what it is that I wished I had done with the days I’m currently living. Within the specific context of remembering, I wonder what I will want more of: memory cards or just plain memories. While it may sound obvious, the answer, I think, is both. It’s balance. It’s enough of the recorded stuff to satisfy that deep-in-my-bones yearning to experience afresh the puffy eyes and shrill cries that accompanied the newborn stage, as well as all of the firsts that those initial 12 months of life hold. And it’s also plenty of moments that didn’t make the highlight reel—the ones only documented on my heart and in my mind. The ones where I stared straight into his eyes instead of through a lens, and where I didn’t risk him stopping those belly laughs in the time it took for me to run and grab the camcorder. These are the more special ones, in my opinion. But I still need the others. I definitely need the others.

This summer my husband and I (and our sleep-resistant eight-month-old) walked along the Carolina Coast, kicking at ankle-deep waves while the sun made its most glorious morning debut. I was struck by how many people (myself included) had their cameras at the ready, choosing to watch this beautiful solar phenomenon through the screen of their phone, consciously or unconsciously forfeiting some of its magnificence in the process. I snapped and recorded as shards of red and orange broke through the low cloud cover, splintering the sky and brilliantly reflecting against the ocean’s glassy surface. When it was all said and done, I had more than 20 photos (and three videos) of the same exact scene. One or two would have sufficed, I later told myself. I had plenty of proof that I had witnessed that gorgeous Thursday morning Nags Head sunrise, but at the end of it all I was left empty of the experience. I longed to relive the last 40 minutes—this time without my phone.

I know there are less sentimental moms out there, ones who don’t give second thought to their camera to non-camera ratio, marching forward with a steadfast acceptance of and readiness for the future that I can only observe and admire from afar. I know you because I’ve met you. But I also know that I’m not you. I’m the mom who stands at the sink weeping over the half-peeled kiwi in her hand because HOW ARE WE ALREADY AT THE STAGE WHERE I’M PEELING KIWI FOR TOMORROW MORNING’S SOLID-FOOD BREAKFAST? I’m the mom who started emotionally preparing herself for her son’s first birthday three months in advance because, well, it was necessary. I’m the mom holding tightly to a dear friend’s emphatic promise that each stage is better than the last. Burdened by both the passing of time and my own thoughts about whether my attempts to capture what I can of it are right or wrong, helpful or prohibitive, I aim for balance and try to give myself grace.

* * *

His head rests on my shoulder while a barely-there snore makes its way to my ear. The aroma of his lightly-scented hair fills my nose, and I take a deep breath: my way of remembering. I eventually lay him down, leaning in close to watch his chest rise and fall. He lets out a grunt and changes position, his little bottom now up in the air as he pulls his arms in close to his chest. I walk over to the nightstand and grab my phone. I know it’s risky to use the flash, but I do it anyway. Snap! Another way of remembering. I only have three weeks left before he turns one, and you better believe I’m filling my heart and my mind and my walls and my shelves with memories of this not-so-little baby of mine.

Ready or not, from infanthood to toddlerdom we go. Spoiler alert: I’m not ready.

September 16, 2017

Life at Thirty-Seven Weeks

What do you do when you’re nine months pregnant and have been up since 4:00am unable to sleep? Apparently you toss and turn for two hours (in between intermittent bathroom runs) before getting up to make muffins at 6:00am.

That’s what the wee hours of this Saturday morning look like for me anyway, at approximately 37.5 weeks pregnant.

These days are filled with lots of nesting and an excitement that’s building by the day. I feel Baby Boy moving ALL THE TIME, and our midwives have repeatedly commented on how active he is as well. We are SO ready to meet our sweet little babe, but, at the same time, I’m also realizing I’m going to miss having him here in my belly. I’m so accustomed to feeling his kicks and rolls—the constant reminders of this little life I’m growing. I of course am more excited to meet him, but there is a tiny part of me that wants to keep him on the inside just a little longer—all safe and warm and wrapped up tight.

Lucky for me, it appears as though that’s exactly where he wants to stay (at least for now). With less than three weeks to go until his due date, I’m trying to savor this final homestretch of my pregnancy as much as possible.

This morning that happens to look like slowly sipping coffee and eating warm muffins as the sun rises outside my dimly lit living room window. It’s as though Baby Boy and I are the only ones awake for miles, and I love that.

Here we sit, just the two of us. A mama and her baby. I’ll continue to cherish the remaining moments I have with him in my belly until I can hold him in my arms.

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