i went through the bin of baby clothes yesterday and wept through one small, precious item after another from, sure, nostalgia. or really the unsettling awareness of how quickly the tape runs out on childhood – all the time i spend shepherding our son out the door to school or up the stairs to bedtime or somewhere else away from me, all to one day look back and beg for one more moment of this exact time of our lives: where i am the person he wants most to be around, and where he can say so, and does. where i am kneeling in the kitchen, tomato sauce spoon in hand, to make eye contact and listen carefully while he tells me that he missed me that day “as deep as the ocean and as high as someone going up into space,” and i say jesus christ, me too kid, that’s exactly it. it isn’t supposed to be like this forever, i know. that’s why we do it with a partner, if we are lucky enough, so that lauren can put her hand over mine and say “he’ll call” when i ask if i should check in on him, three days after moving him into his college dorm or some shitty little apartment or wherever life takes him next. his birth and infancy are part of our stories, lauren’s and mine, but we’re approaching the parts that will be his and his alone. i can feel the wave cresting. how wonderful, how frightening. you can roll your eyes at me, but i’m right.
anyway. the clothes. the silly dry clean only cashmere suit that came with the only socks small enough for his brand-new feet, the hat i nervously worked onto his head in the corner of the operating room, the pajamas i put him in after his first bath. more than nostalgia, i was struck by the sense memory of those first weeks. the august heat on the treeless block where we were living. the pooling condensation beneath a plastic cup of iced coffee left on the changing table. the knowledge that unlike everything else i had done in my perfectly controlled life, i was not already good at this. nothing prepares you for parenting other than parenting. my therapist asks what we’re doing differently this time, and i tell her – a can of backup formula, a stable of babysitters, maybe a treadmill. more importantly, this baby will get parents who know how to dispatch motrin to an unwilling patient, how to clean the bottles, how to bump up against their own inadequacies and adjust. i’m not afraid of being tired, or wrong, or foolishly bad at the logistics of my life; these are the problems of the luckiest woman on earth. what i am afraid of is wrenching my heart open again like the creaky handle of a bank vault. when lauren and i started dating, my deepest fear was that i would get used to the feeling of her warm hand on the back of my neck. now i’m preparing to love another person who will learn to kiss my cheek, and in turn stop wanting to kiss my cheek. and like a fool, i can’t wait to meet her.
last night, long after bedtime, lauren comes into the three year old’s room and finds me wedged into the twin size bed with him, my shoulder blades up against the hot pink guard rails. when she leans over, he wordlessly lifts one pajama-ed arm to pull her into us. soon – maybe even sooner than expected – we will be four people, and the stasis of my home will slip back into chaos. but for one moment last night, we were three people curled sleepily into each other while a small projector whirred the moon and stars onto the ceiling above us.
it’s been like eight years since i had a real habit of taking office bathroom mirror selfies but perhaps it’s never too late to return to our roots
some good things do continue to happen, of course. i got cleared to run again and did one beautiful, plodding loop of prospect park on a day so perfectly clear and sunny that the only sign of winter was the number of water fountains still turned off. we’ve moved into temporary housing for a few weeks while some very necessary work is done in our home, and our son flings himself onto the couch every 10-12 minutes to watch the train rumble by out the window, as joyous as if it were the first time. we flew to texas and ate quesadillas with our feet in the hotel pool. i wept when the new orleans preservation hall jazz band came down the steps into the crowd of mourners but it was the clean, grateful type. this too may one day pass.
enough gut-wrenching things are currently happening in my life that when i describe to friends, my mother, my therapist what the last few weeks have looked like, they universally put one hand over their stomach. it is unimaginable, i say to my therapist, except it is happening, and i still have to go to work and choose a pre-k for my toddler and put things in the mail. friends bring us food: large baked pastas tucked under tinfoil, tupperware containers of soup, green salads, babka after babka. they offer to take out our recycling, put away our dishes, bring our child to the park, and to some of them we even manage to say yes. one day i will look back as this period and say yes, it was hard, but it was also full of love.
ten years ago i held lauren’s hand in an emergency room and told her about the first thing that came to mind, which was carl sagan’s dedication in cosmos. you know the one. in the vastness of space and the immensity of time, it is my joy to share a planet and an epoch with annie. as i was reciting it, i thought: we are going to get married. i am going to be in love with this woman for the rest of my life. this week i have spent more time than i could have imagined holding her hand in various doctor’s offices, coming up once again with whatever i can to distract us both from the clinical sounds of science at work. lewis hamilton’s old trainer might be coming with him to ferrari, i say. i tell her that i bought our son polka dot sweatpants, pajamas with the moon on them, a blue dress that he can twirl in. we talk about whether it’s time to rewatch the sopranos. in the vastness of space and the immensity of time, i think, it is my honor to feel my hand go clammy in hers again & again & again.
back in midtown, back at my little desk wearing my little vest and looking at my little pictures of my family. we stayed up too late last night and we knew it was too late but we were feeling indulgent after twelve days of no childcare and many flights and car rides and only one fight and even that was just because we had waited too long to have dinner. one more episode of rivals just because it’s fun, one more little late night snack shared on the couch, and for a moment it felt like we were young again, and weightless in the world. when i woke up tired this morning to put on my little vest and talk the toddler into wearing mittens, i was happy for all of it, even the fondue pot still soaking in the sink and the cold wind curling around the hinges of the front door.
last month, walking through the white house, an older woman in elegant turquoise glasses kept exclaiming about how confident i seemed. and look: the white house stewards are so comically good at their jobs that you actually can walk confidently through their building, knowing that if you make a wrong step, you will be redirected by the gentle gloved hand of someone paid to make sure you don’t touch something very old and expensive. so that’s part of it. but also in the last month i have very suddenly remembered that the person i can count on most is and has always been myself. i know all the jokes that i think are funniest and i can write a pretty good sentence when i haven’t watched too many tiktoks that day. i’m reliable and i’m fun to have dinner with and i’m getting braver ever day. there were whole swaths of this year where being alone felt like a punishment; now i don’t take for granted any ounce of pleasure i find in my own company. i feel like i could learn something from you, she said when we departed, and i wanted to tell her this secret, this ultimate trick of fake-it-until-you-make-it, but then the sun was setting over the eeob, and the lyft had come, and it was time to go home.
happy thanksgiving from my gay elitist east coast family to yours
lately i have been trying not to answer questions with my phone. what’s the name of the actress who plays the friend in you’ve got mail? it will come to me in time. there is no joy in imdb. lately, i mean, i have been trying to look up. the world does not need any more tweets. the world does need me to teach my child to say good morning not only to his teachers, but to the woman who cleans the apartment building that we walk by on the way to school. to wait patiently in slow lines. to vote. to be a part of a community, even when it’s inconvenient. to know that the inconvenience is the point of community. last month, the woman who checked me in for my mri complimented my nails. they look like a flag, but i can’t remember which one. we guessed, but came no closer. the next week, a coworker came into my office to ask for a favor, and on her way out she said, almost as an afterthought: your nails look like the croatian flag. it was perfect. i’m not saying that we’ll all be saved by chitchat and patience, but i do certainly think they’ll help.
