James Bond Romance Antithesis

Our love
Is not a stampede of horses
Or tidal wave
Or explosion
Or fire
Or drug
Or battlefield
Or any other dangerous metaphor once scrawled madly into song.

Our love
Is rather
A quiet inhale
That takes in all of you –
Your breath from dinner
Your wrinkled shirt
Your five o’clock shadow
     Your aging body
       Your imperfect everything 
– and finds there

oxygen.

Sometimes there be hard times.

To be on the verge of tears –

To feel the wellspring in the back of your throat burst up and push at the walls behind your eyes and nose; a throb, throb, throbbing, indifferent to the curious spectators on the other side (the boss at his desk) (the passerby on the sidewalk).

The sigh before the wellspring bursts that at once hurts and salves the heart; that at once lifts and intensifies the lump in the throat and the weight in the stomach.

The desperate final attempt to suppress a perfect storm, an uphill battle against Mother Nature herself (who lives, as we know, in the back of the throat as much as in heaven’s hovering rainclouds).

And then you cry.

Dreaming of reality

Sometimes I am flying through an orange sky and taste the autumn air 

Then I am on my balcony on the 900^th floor, where I inhale deeply from a cigarette and look out over an alternate universe that I discovered, of all places, in a playground’s tunnel slide. 

Then I dance with abandon to a song that plays as it is written inside my head.  

I stretch my legs, my arms, my toes.

And the orange sky is gone

And the strange wildlife below are fading

And I am lying in a bed in a basement apartment. 

Sometimes my dreams are as real to me as the pillow beneath my head

And I return from them and think

Maybe I’m dreaming now of this basement apartment

And my life is still happening on that 900^th floor

And this breakfast

This conversation

This kiss goodbye and drive to work

Will seem so magical and strange from my view atop a tall tall balcony

So I’ll inhale them now like my dream cigarette

Like I’m going to wake up at any moment

and find they’re all gone,

like smoke

like a whisper

like a forgotten dream

and I’ll try to remember that everything is extraordinary to someone

so why not my life

to me?

The seasons of a new boy

It goes like this.

The sun beats down on you for the first time when we emerge from the birthing center. Your eyes are closed and your skin smells new and you’re so tiny that the world at once feels giant and welcoming.

Leaves change colors and so does your hair, growing in tune to your increasingly chunky body that snuggles into my shoulder as I take you with me everywhere – from backyard to refrigerator to stove. I master the one-handed egg crack and you master perfect slumber on the hip of a new mother; habitually swaying a tiny body back and forth, back and forth, like an autumn leaf drifting peacefully to the soft ground.

The world gets smaller when winter storms rage, and we create a universe in our two-bedroom upstairs apartment where exist warm baths and fuzzy pajamas and a big laugh from a tiny belly, rich as hot chocolate and deep as the snow.

Today you revel in the feel of damp grass beneath your still-tiny toes and fresh fruit on your jabbering tongue. Soon the sun will beat down again on a person who is no longer so new; whose eyes are wide open, whose knees are carpet burned, who far prefers dancing to snuggling, but whose cheeks remain as pink and delicious as strawberry cotton candy.

It goes like this. I race to keep up with the swiftly-moving seasons, which play like a movie that I am powerless to pause except in snippets of memory and two-dimensional Facebook albums. So I’ll revel, captivated, in each day and week and month. I’ll store up each fleeting laugh and cry and slobberkiss in my pounding, infatuated heart.

And I hope that once in a while you’ll still want to snuggle – even when wrinkles frame my face like the thousand winding pathways that lie ahead, and these seasons turn my hair into swirling winter snow.

For a little boy

You.

All of you –

Your chunky thighs that kick when you’re surprised

Or enraged

Or ecstatic.

Your three-almost-four-toothed smile that flows into your eyes

That squint in a way that makes me think maybe

maybe a person could really burst from joy

or a really good secret.

You.

You and your arms that flap when you’re excited

And it’s as if you’re going to fly away;

right out of my arms and become

One of the dancing snowflakes out the window.

You and your soft forehead that touches mine

When you need the kind of assurance that can only come

From a nice meaningful forehead touch.

You.

Your tiny mouth that says mama and so many non-words

Only you don’t just say them but yell them

and whisper them and try them out in every part of your mouth so that you savor the sensation of speech.

And that mouth opens wide now for airplanes and choo-choo trains that carry rainbows for cargo –

a spectrum of flavors and textures that elicit an “mmm” and a grin every single time.

You.

You who are unafraid of failure

Unafraid to laugh until your whole body aches

You who forgive in an instant

And love unconditionally

For whom I would do any crazy chicken dance that I’ve never done for anyone else

At any time of the day

just to see your toothy smile for another instant.

You who breaks my heart with a cry or a cough

And mends it again with a laugh.

You came from me. And sometimes I do a double take just remembering

There was ever a time when you weren’t.

But I feel like a bigger person in the world knowing that because I am

You are

And because you are

I am

whole. 

Fall is sweet melancholy

When the pockets of winter 

                in this dying summer air 

make me at once feel like crying 

and singing.

On meeting a new soul

I’ll never forget that morning.

I watched the sky outside turn from dark to gray to a quiet pink that illuminated every corner of our backyard.  I’d never been patient or alert enough to watch heaven make this transition; completing its daily ritual with a wakeful blue that triggers the hustle and bustle of the day. 

But this morning wasn’t like other mornings. There would be no hustle and bustle for me today; there would be only counting to twenty a thousand times with a thousand prayers of gratitude and pleas for strength in between.  There would be only a strawberry blonde and her dark curly-haired man, working together through each twenty-second count and kissing giddily and nervously when each one was over.  It was the beginning of a 24-hour long journey that would prove both exhausting and exhilarating.  It would end with us meeting our son. 

A thousand more twenty-second counts. A batch of cookies to distract my body. The blue started to fade from the sky when I questioned aloud whether I was capable, burying my head into a future father’s chest and soaking his t-shirt as we swayed back and forth and he whispered words of strength in my ear.  We felt heaven encircle us as the sky became gray again and my curly-haired man said a prayer – a blessing – that assured me in the most simple and beautiful way that my body was strong and prepared.  His words were close and far away at once – my yoga ball had become a raft in a clear and vast sea, bouncing gently as each crystal wave lapped against its sides.

The pink morning was a distant memory as the future father helped me into the car and drove me swiftly and silently through the black stillness of a sleeping town.  More twenty second counts. Four hands helping me out of the car.  A brief exam and whoops of joy as someone said the number “8.”  Counting faster now, struggling to focus and not flee, stepping into a steaming hot bathtub and letting a synergic team take over: a husband, two midwives, a doula, my body, my baby, and God.  My eyes were closed now, almost permanently, but I felt everyone’s indispensible presence with each new ice pack on my forehead, each whispered “I love you,” each soothing pressure point, each beat of a tiny heart, and each strained breath that left my body. 

Time was an illusion – it stood still and sped by and my body took over to do the work Mother Nature has trained it to do over a million years of sacred nights like this one.  I was a distant onlooker – There was a team of support, surrounding and coaching and holding and whispering to and kissing a frightened-looking strawberry blonde as she pushed and screamed and cried and mentally counted to twenty, merely out of habit now. 

And then it was over.  A tiny dark-haired person was placed gently into the strawberry blonde’s arms, and she was back inside her body, no longer an onlooker but a mother now, staring into a pair of wide and alert dusky eyes that stared calmly and curiously back.  I stroked his curly hair and rubbed my fingers across his rosy round cheeks. His smell was intoxicating and his skin was smooth and his features were tiny and perfect.  I could have laid in that now-cold water for hours more, locking eyes with this new person – my son – and telling him in a hoarse whisper a million times that I love him more than life. 

And now we’re a family and sometimes it’s as though I’m not in my own body again, but watching myself from the eyes of a little strawberry blonde girl whose dream of this life has always been too far away to see clearly until now: She watches as a strawberry blonde, grown-up mother puts the tiniest little body against hers to feed while she hums a Lithuanian lullaby. She smiles as the woman hands the tiny person to her grown-up, handsome, dark-haired husband, who begins to rock his son and read the same story aloud that he’s been reading to a growing belly for months now: “How to Train Your Dragon.” She wonders, does that strawberry blonde really have all this?  Does one life deserve this much love and happiness?  Is that person with her two dark-haired boys and dog and backyard really me?

After another late night, the strawberry blonde turns and sees the sky outside unveiling another perfect summer morning. She kisses a smooth, rosy forehead that has finally bobbed to sleep and inhales his fresh baby smell.  Deserving or not, it’s another one of those gifts that can only follow a long dark night.

World, meet Clark.

Summer son

We walked tonight, the dog and I, while a little person we haven’t met rode along inside.

A distant baseball game and the sound of backyard sprinklers are clearer than ever on this cloudless evening.

And I hum as I stroll and dream about holding his hand – tomorrow? Next week?  Surely, God, no more than that?

And it’s as though my little passenger is reading my mind. A determined hand reaches up, up, pushing against the wall of his small world.

An invisible hand with five tiny fingers – so close yet so frustratingly unkissable just yet.

So for now I playfully push back and swallow some night air

and I wonder if my son can taste it the same way I can -

If he can appreciate the smell of wet wood chips and the freshness of a summer night and the rhythm of a tiny dog yanking eagerly on her leash.

His hand nudges the barrier between us once again, and I stop wondering.

He’s a son of summer, this one.  

July and I will be his first loves.