Hey Baby T...
I'm feeling a little bit melancholic right now. Maybe it's hormones. I don't know. Last night we got rid of the elliptical machine, so the room that will be your nursery is really roomy now. When your dad was taking it apart before the people came to pick it up, I started crying. Change is really hard for me. I'm a Taurus, that's my excuse. For a long time, change was my life. From 1996 to 2005 I lived in fourteen places. In four states (not counting the state of confusion) and two countries. Change was the constant. I could remember what year it was by where I lived. 1998 was Knoxville. 1999 was LA. 2000 was Barnet and Highgate in London. 2001 was Muswell Hill and Finsbury Park. 2002 was back at home. 2003 was NYC. 2004 was Nashville. And then I moved back to LA and met your dad and settled down, and I've been in the same house for three years now, and I'm forgetting what year it is, and when Obama was elected. All this domesticity isn't natural to me.
But that aside, last night when we got rid of the elliptical, it became really real to me that you're coming and that we need to get ready. This was the first thing we did to really get ready for you. Up till now it's been mostly theoretical. Now there's an empty space where there will most likely be a changing table or something, and I'm going to be taking more walks around the lake because I don't have an elliptical.
I know that sounds really selfish. Of course I'll trade an elliptical for a baby. Obviously. But I guess the thing is that I've become so comfortable in my life, and it's going to get seriously shaken up in a few months. I won't be able to just go off to London for a long weekend anymore (though, thank heavens, I am working one in in October - to stock up on my products from Boots and take early-morning mystical pictures of the bridges over the Cam - I can't wait to take you to London before you're even born! You'll get to hear Anna Louisa and Sandor sing songs to you so you'll recognize them when you meet them after you're born).
So last night I was sad about the elliptical and this giant empty space where something baby-related will be featured. Tonight I found my first mp3 player - it holds like 16 songs, and I loaded it with music I like to listen to when walking to work in NYC. There's an eclectic mix - some of the Rutter Requiem, the Spice Girls (??), David Gray, a little Afro-Portuguese jazz, Blondie, etc. I had it all timed perfectly with my walk. I would usually make it through all the songs, depending on when I hit the red lights, and listening to it now takes me back on those walks. It's David Gray and I'm walking past the K-Mart on 34th street by Madison Square Garden. Crowded House (everywhere you go you always take the weather with you) and I'm walking through the construction tunnel outside the empire state building.
And I guess until now there's always been this idea in my head that I could go back to that if I really wanted to. I could have that life again, if I wanted it. It might mean convincing J that he really wants to live in Murray Hill, but it wasn't outside of the realm of possibility that I could load up my mp3 player, grab a bagel from the cart on the corner, and walk and eat, and then stop at Dunkin Donuts for a hot chocolate to warm me up halfway through my 45-minute walk to work.
But I'm never going to be that person again. I could do the same actions, but it wouldn't be the same because I'd be a different person. It's true that you really can't ever go back. And, not for the first time, I'm being reminded of that, and for someone who hates change, it sucks. After February, there will never be another day of my life that you aren't my first thought when I wake up, and my last thought when I go to bed, no matter what I do and where I go.
I'm going to learn about worlds previously unknown to me, like Dora the Explorer. I will become obsessed with departments in Target that I don't even realize exist right now. Like what's actually in the baby aisles, anyway? I'm going to find that out, pretty soon. And you can't ever un-know something once you know it. I'm going to be a person who knows about Babies R Us and sizes of children's clothes. I will re-learn algebra to help you with your homework. I will go to parent-teacher conferences and discuss your skills in saying your times tables. I will sit through Christmas pageants. I will bake cookies for bake sales. So help me, I will clap at talent shows.
On the upside, I will have a compelling reason to follow my dreams and my spirit; to show you how to do it, and be a role model. So you'll be proud of your mom, and so that you'll see how to take risks, get knocked down, and get back up and do it again. You will pretty much be the reason I do anything, even breathe. Not in some kind of weird overposessive way, but simply because in a very literal sense, you are me and I am you, and my life will be about providing for, and nurturing you, and providing you with an environment that encourages you to know yourself, know your bliss, and follow it. And the best way to do that for you is to do it for myself.
I am reminded of an e.e. cummings poem I found once, years ago. At the time I thought it was ridiculously romantic, and wanted to give it to a boy I had a crush on. But now I see the true power and beauty of the words...
losing through you what seemed myself,i find
selves unimaginably mine;beyond
sorrow's own joys and hoping's very fears
yours is the light by which my spirit's born:
So I'm kind of melancholy tonight. It's not because I'm not excited to have you. But because my world is about to be rocked in ways I can't even imagine right now, and I wish I could prepare more. Fasten my seat belt, and hold on, I guess...
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