Benjamin Penguin

Dear Benjamin,

Really? It cannot possibly be a mere 7 days away from the end of April. But, alas it is a mere 7 days away from the end of April and if I am to actually complete your 15 month letter before you turn 16 months old, I am just going to have to sit down today and make it happen. All of these letters to you are somewhat challenging because I want to make sure I fully encapsulate all of the various changes you have gone through in a month. This requires a recollection power that I am sorely lacking as of late. These past few months have been even more challenging than usual because I have been incredibly busy completing what I hope are my last academic course requirements for my program. And these last four weeks have been a merciless onslaught of work. The next three weeks will be similar in their unrelenting misery, so these little 45 minutes that I am setting aside for you here are the one bright spot in an otherwise unenjoyable writing period. I always love to write about you and it pains me greatly when I cannot do so. You are so easy to write about and the words generally flow from my fingertips. It’s a small pleasure in a sea of headache-inducing writing responsibilities.

So, I mentioned the illness in a previous post to you. And I really don’t want to revisit it, except to mention that it overshadows much of anything else I would write about in this letter. It was the thing that Daddy and I focused on most during this time period and seems to have erased from my memory all of the other cute things you have done since March. Now, you will be correct in recalling that you were also sick in March. You were, and you even had a fever. Where the experience deviates from the norm is that this go around involved a seizure and subsequent blood tests and all manner of inquiry that had our minds settling on the most horrific of outcomes for you. We didn’t want to go there mentally, but it is hard not to when you love someone and you are scared witless by the jarring (literally and figuratively) event of a seizure. Because what happens is that you start to think about all the little ways in which your baby’s absence will leave an indelible mark on your daily experience. And that? Not a line of thinking that is happy or healthy.

But the truth is, little gentleman, that ever since I crossed the threshold between living with PPD to living a life that feels full and rich and happy, I have feared losing this newfound joy. It was so hard won and came with such a price tag that I savor it now to a degree that is immeasurable in words. When I was just a few months postpartum, I remember watching some video posted on a mama blog. The child in the video was probably about 2 years old and he was being filmed running towards his mama. She was laughing, he was laughing, the daddy filming the exchange was laughing, the sun was out (and probably laughing), the birds were laughing – everyone was in a most splendid mood. I, on the other hand, was sitting in my office chair, my lower back and extremities numb and my shoulder pinched from holding you for hours as you napped – and I cried. Sobbed, even. Because that experience felt so far away. Would I ever feel that happy again? Would I ever laugh like that again? Oh, it seemed like such a hearty, exuberant laugh and I would have given my left leg to have that kind of sound emerge from me again. About four or six weeks ago, I started laughing like that again. Mind you, I’ve been laughing for a while now. The end of last year and the start of this year ushered in a renewed sense of peace that marked the end of the very challenging first year of your life. Sometime around the beginning of March, something clicked. I’m clueless as to what this mechanism was or how it works or even where it is located in my body. Maybe behind my thumb. Who knows? But all I know is after that moment, I started laughing again. Deep, hearty, enjoyable laughs that involved my whole body and left the sides of my mouth tired and my jaw aching. For the first time in as long as I could remember, I was me again. And it felt great to have her back and to welcome her to motherhood.

So, as you can imagine, when you had your little seizure, I panicked. After the terror subsided, my second thought was, “Are you kidding me? Not now.” Not after all this. Not after this feeling that I have been desperately waiting to feel has finally settled upon me. Why, when I am EXACTLY where I want to be, would the universe think it amusing to tinker around and set in motion a chain of events that led to you being sick and my joy being held in a tenuous grasp?

And then you got better. Your temperature improved and you started to act like yourself again. We’re still awaiting some results but I miss the laughing and so I am just going to proceed as though everything is fine. You were sick. Strangers or acquaintances may see my response to your illness as an unnecessary exaggeration. Parents that read this and have infants that are really, truly unwell may fault me for being indulgent in my emotions. But I stand back and remind them that when the birth of your baby ushers in a prickly black mass that works diligently to poke you and prod you and slice you and cut you into misery for the first six months of your baby’s life, you’re entitled to a little ennui. I wanted so badly to be well during your first year of life. And once I was really and truly and honestly well, I wanted so badly for you to never be unwell so that we could spend all of our days laughing and smiling together. It won’t always be like that. You’ll get sick. I’ll get sick. Daddy will get sick. We’ll have good days and bad days and all manner of days in between. I’m beginning, albeit slowly, to factor this into the parenting experience. You would have thought that this “things not going as expected” experience would be old hat to me by now, but you forget that I have the memory of a banana.

I don’t know what it is about you that I adore the most. It could be so many things. It is really hard to pin my adoration on any one aspect of your being. The curls and the big brown eyes are certainly a part of my love for you. You are irresistibly cute. Many times I stand back and marvel at just how perfect you are. Your little fingers on your little hand. Your little toes on your little feet. Your little ears. Your little nose. Your silly little grin. Your little belly that I poke incessantly with my finger. Your skin is so soft. Your hair is so soft. You never stink. You are always smiling. You are inquisitive. You are emotional. You are happy, loving, stubborn, willful, silly and smart. You are everything I never knew I wanted.

A week or so ago, you were spending the night with Daddy at your Grandma’s house. On days when Daddy works, you spend the day with your Grandma and traipse all around her big, fun house. Grandma mentioned that you had been helping her with the laundry and you found a shirt of mine in the clean laundry pile. This shirt, since neither of us will remember in time, is a pinkish-peach shirt with little grey flowers and vines stenciled on the fabric. I purchased it from Old Navy about a month after you were born when I realized that I simply had NO good breastfeeding shirts. I may have been crap at the breastfeeding game, but dag nabbit, I was going to look affordably stylish as I sat there cursing my bosom. Anyways, I wore this shirt a lot. And I still wear this shirt a lot because it is eminently comfortable. Indeed, on the night that you were taken to the emergency room after your seizure, I was wearing said shirt. So, on the day that you were helping your Grandma with the laundry, you spotted the shirt. Grandma says that you picked the shirt up and sat down and starting wrapping it around yourself. She tried to take it away from you, but you got upset and insisted that you carry it around with you upstairs. For the remainder of the day, if memory serves, you could be found cuddling the shirt. I got to observe this later when I spent time at Grandma’s house with you and noticed that you do, in fact, carry the shirt with you. You carry it, you wrap it around you, you hold it. Mama’s shirt. Your Mama’s shirt. I don’t know how the human body can survive after your heart explodes in its chest, but mine did. I would have thought that I should have at least collapsed from the overwhelming shockwaves of emotion, but I was somehow able to keep myself righted and keep from crumpling down in a useless heap on the floor.

I don’t think I’ve ever felt a feeling like that in my life. Daddy has done some amazing things during the course of our lives together and he makes me a very happy person. And I am sure he will forgive me when I say that nothing in my life has compared to that moment. Your birth was wonderful, to be sure. The first day that you smiled? Priceless. When you took your first independent steps, I was filled with a most terrific glee. But you, my sweet sweet Benjamin, you sought comfort and solace in Mama’s shirt. You took this thing, this thing that represents me, and you wrapped it about yourself in a loving cocoon. I don’t think you can begin to imagine how many times I do that with your things. I take your little pajama top and wrap it around my hand and kiss it, inhaling the smell of your sugary baby skin. I take the blankets that you used to use and I wrap them around my shoulders, remembering how I used to swaddle you so tightly in between the folds of the fabric. I lay in the bed that we lay in as a family and I wrap myself in the comforter, cuddling in and hugging it like I might cuddle you as I rouse myself from slumber in the morning. The scents – the memories – are so ingrained upon these things that they are more than mere pieces of fabric. It is YOUR shirt. The shirt in which you laugh and cry and run and hide and kick and hit and throw and eat and breathe. It is an extension of you, as though somehow by wearing it you have breathed life into it or imprinted upon it some flicker of an external heartbeat that keeps it merrily buzzing with the electricity of being. If Mama’s shirt can bring you half the joy that your shirt brings me, then Mama is a very happy Mama indeed.

Benjamin, I say that nothing in my life has compared to that moment. And nothing has. But I have said that so many times when I reflect upon my life with you that I must take pause and acknowledge this. The truth is my life is infinitely better with you in it. The experiences that we share together change me in so many ways. I know happiness to a degree that I have never felt before. I also know terror in this way, as well. That I could do without. But it comes with the territory, doesn’t it? How could you love something this much and not live with the everlasting fear of losing it? You make the sun seem brighter, the stars seem jazzier, the trees seem greener, the air seem lighter and my days positively rife with possibility.

You.

Love,

Mama