august is forty weeks old. TEN MONTHS. that means he's been living on the outside for as long as he was cooking on the inside. {yeah, that's right. whoever said it was nine months apparently didn't count the first month before they realized they were pregnant. or maybe they chose to forget about the last month that seems to draaaggg} lately, it's this ten-months-in/ten-months-out parallel that's got me all nostalgic and maybe a little sentimental. also, full disclosure: i've been reading rainer maria rilke. so. you've been given fair warning.
but twenty months! how does something just go from not being to being in such a short amount of time?
i ask you.
because i'm still reeling at the wild the fact that something so complex as human life can essentially be created from nothing and that that something becomes someone.
i remember many nights during my pregnancy; sitting on the couch, my feet propped up on andy while we dreamed about what our little family would be like. we'd talk about what kinds of parents we'd be (firm but trusting) or we tried to imagine how our baby would look (andy's big eyes, my ski slope nose). all of it was just talk and we knew it. how could we really know when, for so long, he was just this vision. time moved slowly then.
of course, august was more real to me than he was to andy {what with the exhaustion and aversion to coffee, awhaaat?} but even then, he was just a heartbeat for such a long while. after a few months though, we got to put a blurry black and white picture to the pulse. and weeks later, the image became a bump. and soon after that, the bump gave an assertive little kick! and that's when things sped up. an intense heat, a warm rush, and we were suddenly holding those little kicking feet.
watching august grow these past ten months has been like watching a polaroid develop. his face has filled out, his corn-silk hair is long enough now that it curls slightly at the ends, his big eyes (just like we envisioned, only not hazel like his dada's) have changed from the iceberg blue of his infancy to a true blue, like denim. all his features coming together now to form a little BOY.
now our conversations are about what kind of man he will be or the things he will accomplish or the woman he will marry... one night, after august had gone to sleep and it was just the two of us again alone on the couch andy told me this:
becoming a father has brought me at peace with my own mortality. i'm not worried about dying anymore because now i know that there is something bigger than me. you know what calms me at night? the thought of august being an old man one day. i see him as a grandfather with little ones, like he is now, crawling all around. that gives me peace.i've been thinking about that a lot and you know what? andy may be onto something. i look at august now and i see every age he's been, from fetus to infant to baby to boy. but then i really look at him and see that he is already every age he will ever be. even that old man with the wisdom of time in his true blue denim eyes.
0 comments:
Post a Comment