The Last Cradle

A friend gave us this cradle when her last babe was done with it, so it wasn't even one that I used for all of my babies.

First, for Ethan, there was a bassinet; a garage sale find.

Next was a crib; a hand-me-down from folks at church.

By the time Adam was a few months old I'd gotten rid of it because we had taken to co-sleeping, and the crib was just a place to pile blankets.

But when Ellie was on her way I found a little swinging Jenny Lind cradle at a second hand store and brought it home.  After losing the baby before her, it was my way of affirming that it would be okay to plan for the happy arrival of this little one.

It lasted through Tessa, and then was decommissioned.  A little too rickety.

But then Jonah made his way into the world, and this cradle, this last cradle, made it's way into our house, well loved and used by my friend Nicole for her littles turned bigs.

And at our home, the cradle was again well used.  Jumbo Jonah insisted on catching his zzz's in it till he had to bend his knees to fit. And then tiny Natalie, who I tended to place into it more often for the sake of all of our sleep (because of her ability to place her left foot in my spleen while her right occupied Guy's armpit), used it until not so long ago.

A few months ago the big girls got a bunk bed with a twin on top and a full sized mattress on the bottom, and Ellie began stealing Natalie away at bedtime to share her lower bunk, apparently undaunted by Natalie's nighttime calisthenics.

******

I don't know when the last night slipped by that my last baby had her last dream in the little wooden cradle.  It just happened one day.  One morning I simply realized that the cradle hadn't been used in... days? weeks? I wasn't sure.

I sat on the floor by my bed, folding the jumble of baby blankets it held into a tidy, still pile. The kind of pile that is waiting for a cupboard or a box, and not a chubby little person.  I cried a little, and pressed the cloth into my face trying to catch a hint, a whiff, of my babies there.

But I couldn't.

I left the cradle, with it's pile of carefully folded blankets, there for a few weeks, a month, or maybe two, telling myself there was no place in the garage for it.  And then one day Guy suggested we move it out.

"Don't rush me." I said.

I'm not ready to say goodbye to this last little cradle. I thought.

*****

Then one day a few weeks ago I finally moved it out of our room.  Natalie is 3 after all.  But I firmly informed Guy not to get any fancy notions of sending it off to Goodwill, that my grandbabies WOULD be sleeping in it, and that until that time, it would be waiting.

Waiting to hold babies again.

There is something so impossibly hard about saying goodbye to baby days.  I have been rocking babies for nearly 20 years.  It's who I am now.  It's my identity.  I'm a mommy.  Not just a mom, but a mommy.  A nose wiping, back stroking, booty patting, weep comforting, sleep coaxing mommy.

And cradle or not, I always will be.

Natalie on her new toddler bed.

Thoughts on Eggs (and other little things)

I have been thinking about
our chickens lately.

I am afraid I have been a bit oblivious of them.  Since I learned that our puny family of a mere seven souls would be joined by a sneaky little stowaway, I have been a deer in headlights.  I have always told Guy that if babies would have come to us easily, and we were younger, I would have rolled out the pink-n-blue welcome mat and bought an insurance policy for my nursing bra collection. It's not the wanting them, it's the loosing them that has left a weakness deep in my bones. After the shock of "the two pink lines" faded, the headaches and cramping came, and I waited for the end. 

In that time, our chickens - "The Girls", as I call them- have been watered and fed, mostly regularly.  I had the kids throw some hay into their coup to edge out the drafts.  Guy tacked up a tarp to cut the winter chill.   Basic maintenance.  They stopped laying when the cold hit, and let's just say I haven't been going out there to cuddle them.  Yeah, not at all.

The other day I finally stopped passing the black farm hat to the kids and went to the coup myself.  I cleaned it up a bit, watered the girls and restocked the food.  Then I noticed some golden brown orbs poking out of the straw.  Ten eggs.  Ten!  While I was on the couch trying to make the the molecules in the air stop crashing together so loudly, those birds were out there in the cold working their little egg-makers off.  I know they aren't even trying, they are just out there, doin' their chicken-thang.  The eggs grow, that is just what they do.

And while I have been in here watching dust bunnies swirl on the floor when ever someone walks through the room, a certain tiny human has been growing retnas and a spleen and, apparently, little thumpy limbs.  In my brain, I was "pregnant", a temporary and frequently fleeting condition around here.  But something occured to me the other day...

Um... hello... there is an actual BABY in there.  The soon-to-be pooping, crying, needing-a-name kind.  And it is getting sorta, I dunno, ... big.  All energy has gone to getting the heck outta that evil "First-trimester jungle".  Once out, I forgot that the baby (not just my bod from the earlobes down) is actually growing.  I picture the baby about 3 inches long ricocheting off the walls of my generous vessel like a ping-pong ball in a dryer. 

You would think after (a-hem)... five... of these little biology experiments I would know what was going on.  But it just now occurs to me...

We are having a baby.  And all my "I'm too old" and "People will judge" and "It probably won't even survive" has not detered the wiggly critter beneath my ribs from organizing it's DNA into a  nano-human.

Holy moly.  We are having a baby.  Well, wha'do ya' know.

Eggs are amazing.

JuJu

It was one-thirty in the morning, and Tessa sat beside me on the couch playing

Pet-shops Old-maid, solitaire style.  That is what happens when you take a nap at 7PM and wake up at 10.  I was pooped, (yes, I said pooped!) after doing The Shred (Jillian Michael's butt-kicking workout) and then gardening with Kathy and Bishop.  Well, you could call it gardening, or you could call it Looking for Spiders in Creepy Ivy, or perhaps Making Big Piles of Yard Crap on the Curb so that your Neighbors can see what SLOBS You Really Are (in case they ever doubted.)

Then last night we had a special surprise.  My sister, who lives in Utah, came to visit us with her hubby.  It was so wonderful to see her and be in the same space with her.  We ate and laughed,

and I asked myself how I could live so far away from her.  

When I was born, my sister Julie was 11.  I adored her.  I wanted to be just like her.  I was sure she was magical.  When I would wake up from a nap and see her little white weekend suitcase in the living room, I knew JuJu was here, and that for the next day or two I would sit on her lap, have her braid my hair, and hold her hand as we took walks.  She was like a real life, honest-to-goodness fairy godmother.  She had honey-gold hair, in perfectly straight seventies style.  She was the one who explained to me that the ends of my long hair were comprised of the actual hair that had been on my head when I was a baby.  After she told me that, I wouldn't let anyone even trim my hair for years.   

Julie is technically my half sister, and only stayed with us on the weekends, but I didn't know what any of it meant or why I had to say goodbye through eyes clouded with tears every Sunday afternoon.  I just knew I loved her, I knew she loved me, and I couldn't understand why we ever had to be apart.

As my sister and I worked side by side in the kitchen yesterday, she told me about my mother.  Our eyes misted and I listened in awe as she described a woman that I only knew in my own way, as her daughter.  But Julie saw her as a beautiful step-mother, the antithesis of all step-mother archetypes.  She told me that if she were to name the most influential people in her life, my mother would be among the choice few at the top of her list. 

***

Today I went to lunch with Wise-Woman Chantal and we talked about mothering.  She said that every child, even if they have the same parents as a sibling, have completely different parents.  Different, because they respond specifically to that child's unique personality, specific behaviors and individual spirit.  No two children can ever have the same parents. 

Who do my children have?  I know I react differently to each one in their moments of fear or sadness.  Some of them probably get more compassion and empathy than others.  I usually see myself as "just being the mom", and it never occurred to me that I am being "Ethan's Mom" and "Adam's Mom", and so on... times five.  Even if I tried to be completely consistent with each child, I would still be seen differently by them, because they are different.

 Jonah discovers cherries.

Julie gave me another gift last night, one that was my mother's to give.  When Mom was alive, she gave my babies a bath in the kitchen sink when she came to visit.  It was so special to me, though I am not sure why.  I guess it just gave me a picture to carry with me in my heart wherein she was frozen in time, forever enjoying my child.  I loved seeing Mom with babies she loved, and I loved it that I had been able to give her grand babies to nibble on.  I can still hear her voice saying "Please pass the baby", the way someone might ask you to pass the butter. 

It felt right to see Julie soaping up baby Jonah,

 tickling and teasing and coaxing smiles and kisses. 

She gave Jonah a bath, and she gave me

a new way of remembering my mother.