One Year and One Month

(yes...it is amazing that I am actually utilizing this outlet of communication)

I have been thinking a lot about my life's changes over the last year, and I instinctively want to write about my thoughts but never do. During my teens and twenties, I wrote constantly. I had volumes of journals, which I conicidentally destroyed in preparation for Charlotte. I wish I hadn't, but I can't go back. I did keep my poetry though and need to work on it more. There was a time in my life when I wanted to be a professional writer, but I chickened out and became a teacher. I hate that saying "those that can't do, teach," but apparently it is somewhat true.

So, yes...I have been reflecting a lot on my life. Then, due to my department's wonderful tribute to writers over the past week, I was introduced to the poet Beth Ann Fennelly. The 40 minutes I listened to her read poems and stories of motherhood entranced me. It was way over my students' heads, but I loved it. I even borrowed a couple bucks from one of my students so that I could purchase Tender Hooks for her to sign.

Tonight, while cleaning out papers that have apparently been stacked under our office desk for over a year, I came across my hospital discharge papers from Charlotte's birth. I smoothed them out, read through the guides to breastfeeding and caring for a newborn, found a chart that Dan and I kept to track her feedings and dirty diapers, and was brought to tears. It seems like I was there with her tiny little body yesterday, but now it is March 1st, 2008 and her small frame seems to have doubled. Her face has changed but I still catch that same expression at times, her personality is more than I ever imagined it could be, and my love for her is painfully sweet.

The following is part IV of Beth Ann Fennelly's poem "Latching On, Falling Off" and seems to suit my mood quite well right now:

IV. It Was a Strange Country

where I lived with my daughter while I fed her
from my body. It was a small country, an island for two,
and there were things we couldn't bring with us,
like her father. He watched from the far shore,
well meaning, useless. Sometimes I asked
for a glass of water, so he had something to give.

The weather there was overcast, volatile.
We were tied to the tides of whimper and milk,
the flotsam of spit-up, warm and clotted,
on my neck, my thigh. Strange: I rarely minded,
I liked the yogurt smell trapped beneath her chinfolds.
How soon her breath bloomed sweet again.

She napped, my ducts refilled
like veins of gold that throb though lodged in rock.
When she woke, we adjusted our body language.
How many hours did she kiss one breast or the other?
I told her things. She tugged my bottom lip,
like sounds were coins beneath my fascinating tounge.

We didn't get many tourists, much news --
behind the closed curtains, rocking in the chair,
the world was a rumor all summer. All autumn.
All winter, in which she sickened, sucked for comfort,
a cord of snot between her nose, my breast.
Her small pillows of breath. We slept there, single-bodied.

Then came spring and her milk teeth and her bones
longer in my lap, her feet dangling, and, rapt,
she watched me eat, scholar of sandwiches and water.
Well, I knew the signs. I held her tight, I waded out,
I swam us away from that country, swam us back
to my husband pacing the shore, yelling and waving.

in his man fists, baby spoons that flashed, cupping suns.
It was a strange country that we returned to, separately --
strange, but not for long. Soon, the milk stops
simmering and the child forgets the mother's taste,
so the motherland recedes on the horizon,
a kindness -- we return to it only at death.

The next time I write, I hope to have something of my own to share.