We've been living with that Barely Getting By feeling around here lately, accompanied by the Oh my Christ Will It Be Like This Forever? sequence of panic attacks. Our girl is not quite four months old, you know, and already parenthood begins to feel like a relentless series of fixes and by-the-seat-of-our-pantsedness. Ben and I are sticking things together with bubblegum, and hoping we make it through the night without our tent blowing away.
Except for sometimes. Sometimes, it's Sunday morning and there's good coffee, and Bee is contentedly world-watching from a bassinet wheeled into the living room. She's smiling and serene, so Ben and I eat breakfast not one-after-the-other, but at the same time, and it is a revelation! We sit on the sectional and have a grown-person conversation about politics, music, or art! And perhaps it will be this way from now on! Maybe today marks a turning point, and life with a baby will now be as smooth and glassy as a pond on a windless day! And I will always keep my composure, easily remaining nonplussed all day because there shall be no further infant melt-downs or sleep strikes or inconsolable all-day shriek-a-thons. This will be our new way of being, surely. It will be perfect.
And sometimes it's twilight and Bee and I are having a cozy chat, snuggled up in the rocking chair, and she smiles with rosebuds in her cheeks, and I am Mommy, and could this world be any righter? Mommy doubts, blissfully, that it could. And I don't even think about that still pond on a windless day. In this moment it doesn't matter whether life will always be this way, or even how long this quiet moment lasts, although it would be nice if it lasted long enough for me to finish eating this bit of chocolate. It doesn't matter whether we dodge Bee's meltdowns (we can't), or if I always remain unruffled (I won't), or whether this is our new way of being (dream on). It doesn't matter, because she looks up at me with sleepy eyes and rosy cheeks, and life is perfect right now. In our cozy twilight, it really is.
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