March

When it starts, all I can think about is last year. I woke up with contractions on the first and it was all pull. I was still in labor on the second, and it was all drag. To start a whole month like that. 03022023: the day I became a mother.

This year, we celebrate by making pancakes. I stack three on your plate. I push a single candle into the center of that steaming stack and light it. Raspberry compote and cream cheese drip down the sides. You grunt. We sing happy birthday and take a few pictures, none of which have you smiling. After, we grab the balloons we blew up the night before and put them in the living room for Hugo to paw and pierce. They pop. Your brow furrows, but that’s normal. Then you sign more, more. Dada and I race between the pops to collect balloon shards before they find a way into yours and Hugo’s mouths.

Later, we watch the video the doula took from when you were born. We are sitting in bed while you nap and I hold my phone so we can both see. It’s raw. I feel like turning my head away, exposed even though I lived it, even though it’s me on that screen, holding your alarmingly warm body against my own, sobbing. I want to ask for a tshirt for us, something to cover us up. I want to say is that how we sound when we cry? because the sounds I am hearing are unrecognizable. I am unrecognizable.

We talk about what we remember, what we lost. We plot and plan for next time, as though that matters. I am crying when you cry through the monitor, awake. I stay in bed while Dada grabs you from your room, like he usually does. When I have you, I hug you and press my face to your cheek and our tears smear and smash and I am reminded that no matter what, for all of time, and despite time, you will always be my baby.

***

As the days march on everything swirls. My grandma died exactly one week before your birthday. I am grieving her death as I am celebrating your life and I do not write because I do not know how to capture the magnitude of these memories. I do everything but. 

I hold you in the doctor’s office as you get poked twice in each leg. I take us to Tartine for scrambled eggs and toast, and we sit outside and cheers the mangled pieces of our crusts. I make the lists and pack the bags and load the car as we prepare to drive 6 hours north for the funeral. I shakily hold a microphone, graveside, as I remember my grandmother aloud—her watermelon kitchen, her red enchiladas, her eyes looking straight into mine the moment we said what became our last goodbye.

I carry on with your care. Baths and diaper changes and bedtime routines, all at Nana and Papa’s house. You speed in circles around the kitchen with your walker, squealing. You take your first real steps in the same place you started crawling four months earlier, at Thanksgiving. Everyone cheers.

When we get home we settle in, but two days later we are coughing, congested, sick. I make chicken broth from a whole chicken and it turns out better than ever—amber in color, clear, balanced. Into the broth I grate obscene amounts of ginger and garlic and I squeeze in lots of lemon juice. Thin vermicelli noodles boil along and finally the chicken. My bowl is soothing, perfect. With your furrowed brow you inspect and pick and throw yours overboard. This is when I know you are sick-sick.

You sleep a lot. I try to. We are a miserable, grumpy pair. It seems like Dada will avoid it, but then a week later he gets it too.

***

Meanwhile, the baby hummingbirds hatch. Mama bird is coming and going, feeding them, sometimes on the nest, sometimes off. You know about her too, since the nest is visible from your seat at the kitchen table. You offer her your cup of milk or your bite of food when she flies into view, and it’s so cute, it’s so damn cute, I can’t believe I get to witness it. 

Every weekend is rainy but every weekday is sunny, crisp, big white clouds. We clean the balcony and push the outdoor table against the wall so there’s space to move. You crawl and then walk to and from the kitchen, on and off the balcony. You play outside while I make a citrusy chickpea salad with serrano and dijon and herbs. We eat it with supremed oranges and avocado.

I go to the doctor’s again, this time for myself. I talk about the hormones and the rage. I talk about how different it feels now, now that I’m not pregnant, now that my periods are back, now that I can articulate the moment in the month it feels like my mind and body are being taken over. For the first time ever I am prescribed an antidepressant. I skip when I leave the office.

I am daydreaming about spring cleaning and spring projects and spring meals in between exhaustion and logistics and life. I am wishing time and energy were infinite resources. I am drinking a lot of coffee and not a lot of water. Sometimes, I nap. Daily, I am trying.

***

Grandma and Grandpa come to town and despite how relaxed and low-expectation they are, I feel the need to be available, to have a plan, to stay ready. It is self-made. Or is it conditioned? Regardless, I do not rest.

We walk the Huntington Gardens and eat pizza and you try your first french fry. You are so wiggly in my lap at the restaurant while we wait for food that I want to scream. The three other adults at the table continue conversation, deeply engaged, until I interrupt, desperate, and ask who wants a baby? I get no eye contact so I say again, louder, this time looking right at Dada, I am at my limit and he realizes and jumps up and takes you outside to walk, where you are so happy touching leaves in the sunset light that he takes a video to commemorate it.

***

The month almost ends but not before a clogged kitchen sink and old, old pipes cause black water like lava to pool all over the floor, the plumber cursing, Dada using the shop vac, a whole day wasted. Dirty dishes from before line the counters, dishwasher dirty, full. When the plumber leaves at 6pm and you need dinner and the space is crammed and chaotic I again want to scream.

So you eat eggs and toast and after I want to forgo your bath but something about all that dirty water, so we don’t. Our dinner is pizza, again.

Dada is back to work as the days dwindle on and finally, I find myself alone at home. Not truly alone, because you are here too, but when you nap I am mostly alone, and mostly alone is enough.

I sit down to write, surprised by it.

Surprisingly, I write about it all.