6 weeks

Sava, you were born in the time of sunflowers, when they lined the country roads, tangled and wild amongst the weeds and the emptying fields. When great tall sunflowers filled the vases in our house along with the last of the summer flowers- the cosmos, dahlias, and baby’s breath. The leaves were just starting to fall. Then came weeks of golden sun, golden leaves, all the world throbbing with your birth color, and many walks we took amongst the crunching leaves, feeling grateful for each day that dawned warm and yellow. By the time you were six weeks old, most of the leaves had dropped and had been scraped into compost piles, collected and gathered, and suddenly our yard was transformed from a leafy, shaded green world of filtered hot sun, to a wide-open place, the sky and the yard emptied of intense color, so that everything seemed a piercing, lovely shade of clear gray or scoured dun. I can’t explain how but it felt nice to walk out into the yard and feel first of all how large it felt with the great quantity of clear air that surrounded me. As if without all the foliage and chaos of summer and fall, the air came rushing in, became expanded in volume. Humidity has fled this place and we are left with all this dry air- still warm- poised on the precipice and about to tumble into a splintering of cold.

Every day I fall in love with you a bit more, as you become more alert and aware of your surroundings, and as I learn how to be with you- more confident in the rhythms of the day and my new life. You are- luckily- a flexible, adaptable, and good-natured baby. Calm and grounded, and now more and more -obviously happy (because now you have started to smile, and so we can tell). Smiling often at us, smiling large when we zoom in for noisy kisses on your cheeks and ears and nose and mouth (you love that game!) We have started to spend mornings lying in bed together and just gazing at each other, talking quietly to each other with our assorted languages.
Me: babbling and singing and sometimes just reciting lists of things: jonagold, pink lady, granny smith, braeburn, red delicious, honey crisp!
You: warble. gurgle. grunt. heaow!

You can spend larger and larger periods of time by yourself in your bassinet, looking up at the world and grunting or talking quietly to yourself, before you realize that you miss me and need to be held (Instantly! Desperately! Now!) If I don’t react quickly, there might be a period of time in which I am consoling you, petting and holding you so close and warm in my arms, purring and trying to fill the void with love and comfort, as your lower lip quivers with the indignation of neglect and abandonment and you struggle to swim up to the surface of a great wet ocean of tears and screams. It is a tightrope walk: a careful dance between independence and togetherness, that we are cultivating.

I am not saying that there haven’t been rough times. I am really exhausted after over a month of incredibly broken sleep, and sometimes you cry with an intensity and a ceaselessness that scares us: we just don’t know what to do to calm you down. I have eaten something that doesn’t agree with you/ you are starving to death/ you are overtired- sometimes it seems impossible to figure out why, and I usually just end up sticking my nipple in your mouth to quiet you down- it is like an automatic mood reset button. Even if the attack is not from hunger, it seems to soothe you to the point in which you can drop off to sleep.
So these are my notes from the field, at 6 weeks of age. Everything is about to change. We are moving to a new town in a new state soon… leaving this house you were born in, and off on yet another adventure. It will be the town of your early childhood, and I can’t wait to explore it with you. I have already started to imagine all the walks we will do, hand in hand, along sidewalks littered with crunching leaves.