This Morning

Sssh, sssh, sssh. The baby is still asleep, the sweet little family spent the night.

Jason got off work at nine last night and Lily at eleven. Mr. Moon got home from Orlando at eight and I have no idea when Owen went to sleep. I imagine the second his mommy took him upstairs and laid him down beside her and got the tittie in his mouth. Before that, before his saw mother, he gave sleep the good fight. I got in the bathtub with him where he was happy as a little clam, a little water baby in his natural environment. I scrubbed him up because he gets dirty at Grandmother's house. He's on the floor, he's grabbing at grass and everything we pass.

Pearl licks his face and I do everything but. He wants my yogurt, he smears it with his fist into his cheeks, that boy has dirt under his fingernails! He rolls and twists as I change his diaper, my face, my tricks no longer enough. He needs to SEE what's on the other side of the bed. He does not have TIME for this ridiculous act we must repeat over and over again every day.
And when he's tired, which I knew he was last night (how could he not be? I was exhausted!), he fights it. He fights the bottle but if he deigns to take it, he pats his fat little leg or my old, wrinkly face. He taps his foot on the arm of the chair.


Too much to do to sleep! There is just way too much!

After his bath I found some baby massage gel in the diaper bag and so I gave it a go, Mr. Moon watching, all three of us on the bed. "Promotes better sleep," said the bottle of gel which Owen was happily gnawing on. I turned him over to "do" his little back but no, that would not work at all for him and he flipped back over and grabbed the bottle again.
Yeah. It really calmed him down. Mr. Moon and I laughed and laughed to see how well it calmed him down.

Then Jason came home and Owen was so glad to see his papa who had been at work all long hard day and Owen insisted that Papa hold him and play with him and he flirted with me from his daddy's arms as if he'd never seen me before in his life and all I had to do was look at him and say, "Owie, Owie, Owie," and he'd break out into laughter, showing me those sharp white teeth and all I could do was laugh right back.

Oh my. That boy. So are you counting? Three exhausted adults, one squirmy, clean, lavender-smelling, sweetly massaged boy who had slept oh, maybe two hours, MAYBE, all day long. And it was ten o'clock at night.

And since he was with his father, I tried to clean up the kitchen and make today's smoothies and the coffee and start a load of laundry and do all the things you can't do with a six-month-old monkey-man on your hip but I had to keep going back to look at him, to even GRAB him away from his father because even after all day long with him, even though I was so very, very tired, I could not keep my hands off him, not to mention my gaze.

And then Mama came home. Mama. Look- let me tell you something- that boy does love me. I know he does. As well he should. But when it comes to pure, unadulterated adoration and love, that boy loves his mama and papa. And this is exactly right. I am so completely content to be third-in-line (but don't you put me any farther back than that- I mean it- my husband has a gun and I could learn to use it if I had to) that you can't even believe it.
He may love me but the sun rises and it sets, in fact was put into place in the heavens by his mama, his papa.

The little family went upstairs. The holy, sacred communion of tittie milk was given. And I am sure he passed out like a stone.

Yesterday when Lily brought him to me, she was very quiet.
"Something wrong?" I asked her.
"Yes," she said. "I can't do this. I hate this."
She was referring to having to go to work and leave that boy behind. And she said she was always afraid that she is imposing on me. That taking care of Owen is getting in the way of my life.

How do I tell her? How do I let her know, fully and truly, the enormous gift that boy is in my life? That to be the sort of grandmother who "gets" to see her grandchild only now and then would break my heart? That before he came along I was moaning and mourning about all my years of experience going to waste, no baby for my arms, no child to get dirty and clean up and now- oh now. I have it.
Owen.

I am not going to lie to you. My legs are sore. My hips are tired. He wears me out, that little muscle and bone of a boy. I woke up this morning thinking I HAVE to get a backpack because that would be the kindest way for this old body to tote him.
But. But. Oh, but.
There is ibuprofen. There is the fact that I always get a good night's sleep. There are days off.

And soon, he will be waking up and these arms can't wait to hold him to me again.

"What will we do today, Owen?" I will ask him.
We will kiss and we will roll around on the floor and we will feed the chickens and we will laugh at each other's jokes. We will walk down Main Street in Lloyd, we will go to the Post Office.
We will fight naps. We may succumb.

Oh yes. He is rested up now, I am sure, gulping in those last moments of sleep upstairs with his mama, getting the last of the nursing for the night.

The sun is shining. The rooster is crowing. Everything is in eye-burning bloom.

The day begins. Own is here.

I am ready. As soon as he needs me, I am ready. I am so sorry for his mama that she has to go off to work but while she is there, she needs to have a quiet heart in that her son is not only being taken care of, he is being adored.

And that perhaps he is saving my life. In this, my care-taking is the most selfish thing I've ever done and I am not ashamed of that. I use that boy shamelessly. Every one of his smiles, every laugh I coax out of him, every babble, every time he raises his arms to me, my heart breaks and love pours in.

There. That's my take on being a grandmother this Wednesday morning in spring.

Sssh, sssh, sssh. He's asleep.

Wake up soon, boy. Come play with your old grandma.

Come break my heart again.