I’ve been watching them all day.
Two small brown songbirds decided that our house looked fertility friendly and decided to build their nest in the basket of begonias hanging near our front door. I ignored their popping in with leaves and twigs at odd hours of the morning, thinking they would change their minds in the parade of realtors and home inspections. They didn’t. Craig swooped in with the watering can a week ago, and Mama bird flew out of the basket straight at his head as if to say “Get your own young!” A chorus of chee chee chee chee chee chee chee kept up until she returned 20 minutes later.
So now I can sit in the leather chair by the front window and watch two little brown birds provisioning their babies. They approach from below, tantalizing Ally kitty by hopping sweetly across the windowsill. When they reach the doorstep, they turn, fly straight up to the edge of the basket, and pop the yummy grub they’ve been holding over the edge. We respect their privacy and don’t want to disturb the nest, but Craig is a whiz at the telephoto and so managed to get a shot of one of the babies…
…and even a good one of Mama bird with the avian equivalent of Enfamil tucked in her beak.
It’s stinkin’ cute to watch, but it makes me glad I’m a mammal. Seems easier to eat food and make it into milk instead of nourishing my newborns with a 24-hour supply of foraged and regurgitated stuff. I think it would be really cool, however, if humans were marsupial. Those mammas got it made. The koala has her baby when it’s the size of a Brazil nut, and it nurses and sleeps in a special tummy pouch made to hold its weight and not develop stretch marks. Then, when the babies are bigger, cuter, and more aware, they pop their heads out of the pouch and look around like they’re in a 100% natural Baby Bjorn.
By far the greatest attraction of the marsupial lifestyle is that they never have to be THIS pregnant. Last night I spent five minutes flopping around in the recliner like a beached trout. Craig finally asked me what the problem was.
I couldn’t get up.
So, of course, he put his foot on the footrest, gave a hard push, and out I popped. I still wonder what I would have done if I was home alone.
A few weeks before I had Devon, my then-10-year-old nephew asked if I was afraid of having “my first painful birth experience.” His exact words, I swear. I told him I was more afraid that the baby wouldn’t come out and I would be nine months pregnant
forever.
People tell me to think of three weeks from now when I can hold my cute little girls and see their sweet faces, and then maybe hand them off to Grammy so I can shave my legs without navigating around the bowling ball in my lap. This is true, but it doesn’t make me feel better, and I’d rather not build an association between the twins and these last few weeks of discomfort punctuated by moments of pain. Today is Sunday, and I’m up at 5 because for the past month Twin B’s way of observing the Sabbath involves resting on my sciatic nerve. It’s a fun new way for me to experience the curse of Eve, but the Bible also says I’m going to forget my travail in the golden sweetness of motherhood, and I’m sure I will.
At some point.
What really makes me feel better is to think of intensely uncomfortable things I’ve done for short periods of time.
1.Taught for one year in the Lexington Public Schools.
2.Refinished my kitchen cabinets in 110 degree Ripon weather as viscuous black stain dripped and dried all down my lower extremities.
3.Broke my foot in June of 2007. Moved 2500 miles in a black boot brace.
4.Worked for two weeks in the Stanislaus County Welfare Office, signing the perfectly capable but clueless up for portions of my tax dollars and offering free and off the books abortions to local fifteen-year-olds (yeah, it was that last one that made me quit when I finally realized what all those fresh-faced middle class darlings were getting when they showed up in line asking for “Confidential Services”).
While it may depress some to hear about the low moments of my life, they perk me right up, convincing me that the human spirit is resilient and capable of handling a lot for a short period of time. It is an important milestone to reach 34 weeks, the marker after which over 99% of babies born survive. From here to 36 weeks, some estimate that every day I can carry the twins saves two that they could have to spend in the NICU. I’m not above trying to score some sympathy (in the form of an extra back rub), but I’m not asking for an earlier delivery date.
Devon is still checking my stomach, and checking other people’s. He’ll circle the living room lifting shirts, wondering why Daddy’s tummy is so much flatter and hairier than Mommy’s. He’s even taken to contemplating his own navel several times a day.
On Friday night Devon spied Ben, his next-door-neighbor friend, playing outside. Since it was bedtime, I brought him away from the window and he collapsed in a paroxysm of weltschmerz , wailing so hard that his tears dripped down his face and into a puddle on the kitchen floor. He wasn’t just mad for not being allowed to play outside. He was tapping into some well of deep human sorrow, mourning the loss of Eden where there were no early bedtimes. Not one to reward tears with pleasure, I put him to bed and let him exhaust his grief and fall asleep.
But as a parent I do love giving good gifts to my children, so Ben came over for a playdate Saturday afternoon. For two hours they hid from each other down the hall, bounced the ball, and shimmied under the coffee table to Devon’s great delight.
Six-year-old Ben also composed an original song for Devon that he sang so many times that it’s still running through my memory:
Life with a baby
Just wouldn’t be the same,
If there was an apple
RIGHT NEXT TO ME!
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