This Guy

This guy is seven months old. He's known as "Little Man.” "Loveybear." "Little Poh-poh."  His latest nickname is "Mr. Media," inspired by his fondness for crashing adult night-time TV hour. Any effort to shield his eyes or turn his rocker around is thwarted by “M.M’s” owl-like ability to rotate his head. I suppose Benedict Cumberbatch is just that good.

M.M. is delicious. His wet shiny lips are like jelly candies.  His breath smells like rice pudding. His feet are like warm dinner rolls. They give off a sweet baby foot funk, even fresh out of the bath. His velvety plump arms and thighs beg to be binge-eaten. Kissing his soft belly is like tucking into a warm brioche. When I lift him up over my head, he shrieks and flaps his arms like an excited penguin about to take a plunge off an iceberg. His short fuzzy hair sticks up in that baby way that makes him look eternally surprised.

In the lexicon of babies, he’s an “easy baby.” Happy and predictable. When I walk in a room, he smiles and gurgles.  When I walk out the door, he cries. He blows raspberries when he's bored, arches his back and grunts when he disagrees, and squawks like a baby pterodactyl when he's excited. His latest thing is vigorously shaking his head "no" like a cockatiel. M.M. is particularly garrulous during diaper changes. When placed atop a changing table, he goes "da, da, da ga ga ga" and grabs onto his feet.  When asked, "Milky-time?" he wiggles and giggles, and opens his smiley mouth up wide, the way swimsuit models do when sprayed with water -- only less sexy, with a lot fewer teeth. He laughs at mundane things, like piles of laundry. Today, I plopped him on a bed next to a mountain of freshly washed clothes, and held each item over his head as I folded them. He laughed and shrieked at the puppet show of bras and underpants as everything around him slowly transformed into neatly folded squares.

I remember falling in love for the first time when I was eighteen years old. Coming back home on the Staten Island Express Bus, I would smile for the entire 45 minute ride, gazing out the grimy window and retreating into the storage unit of thoughts within my head. As the bus rumbled along the B.Q.E. past decrepit buildings and abandoned warehouses, I would sigh as if we were passing through a French countryside of wildflowers because that’s what love does to you. Love blinds you to the ugliness. It makes you oblivious to all that is unpleasant by giving you somewhere else to go. An escape in the form of replayed moments, imagined sensations, flutterings, and anticipation of times to come.

This past year has been the equivalent of a fast and dirty highway made up of a series of ugly checkpoints - four houses, four cross-country flights with kids, new coast, new city, new job, new school, new drives, new supermarkets, new doctors, new everything. Transitions are ugly. But falling in love with this little guy has made me sigh. The kind of sigh where your heart is so filled with happiness and love that there's nowhere for it to all go, except out in a bubble-gum pink exhaled cloud. Even with 87 boxes left to unpack, plaster dust and a house full of workmen playing loud music on cheap radios, I would simply think about this little guy and sigh with happiness.

It's these sighs that have kept me going. That have kept me sane. Alive, even. This drooly, portable well of joy whose plumpness feels like a squeezable rainbow, and whose sweet, milky scent smells like safety. In protecting someone so small and so helpless, it’s interesting how we come to feel protected, too. We soothe them, and somehow they soothe us back. It’s as though we create our own bubbles of tranquility, made up of happy sighs and the rhythmic gulping of milk. But it’s these happy sighs that also make me fear the end of baby-dom. When I’ll no longer have all-that-is-good-in-the-world to pick up and gaze at and hold. When I’ll no longer have a purpose that is so simple, honest and straightforward. When I’ll no longer have this small gurgling, feet-grabbing piece of proof that the world, despite all its imperfections and potential for evil, is indeed pure, kind and good.

There will be a day when I’ll have to sell the stroller, give away the crib. I’ll have to pick which onesies I donate, and which I pack away in our clear 10-gallon “memory box.” I’m nowhere near ready. I’m being throttled out of babyhood faster than I can handle, and I find myself clinging to the little I have left. This is the last of the babies my husband and I will have, and each day with this little guy feels like a piece of chocolate plucked from a treasured stash that is equally savored but simultaneously mourned.

A month ago, I spotted two shiny white nubs poking out through M.M’s bottom gums. Those nubs have since grown into two tiny arrowheads, and although they marked yet another normal milestone for our healthy growing baby, their arrival made me seize up with anxiety. This is it. There will never be another, I thought as I stared at the two sharp-fin shaped protrusions. I scraped my knuckle against its edges and marveled at their razor-sharpness.

I lay M.M. down on the soft down pillow next to me. We say stupid things to babies. "Do we love each other?" I ask, as I stroke his forehead. “Who made you so handsome?" He turns his face to mine and opens his mouth. I’m unsure if he’s trying to kiss me or nurse off my cheek. I blow a kiss at the cave of his open mouth, and it makes a whistling, echoing sound. He sighs a happy sigh. So do I. A cloud hovers above us. And once again, for a moment, everything is alright