The Nightgown

Your fibers have worn too thin for me to repair your tear, the tear that began tiny from tiny hands grabbing at you in search of the breasts you covered. That tiny tear has grown, just as the tiny hands have grown and I have had no control in stopping any of it.

I wore you first on my wedding night, in a tent, in the woods, and you smelled of smoke from the fire that kept us warm. I was wearing you that following morning too, when my first child was conceived.

For nine months you covered my growing belly and my husband teased us both. You were there that first night home too, when I was so tired and sore and terrified, terrified that I did not know anything about being a mother to the child that cried in our arms. I was wearing you when the breast milk I'd waited five days for soaked the front of you. I laughed and laughed a nervous laugh because what strange things my body was capable of!

When my father left this world and I was too sad to get dressed, I wore you for a week, finding comfort in your softness and your smell. You smelled like the baby boy who was always tugging at you and burying his face into you, holding tight to you, to us, with his whole body.

I was wearing you when my second child was conceived, too. And again on that morning when I realized what had happened, that despite a marriage failing already, I was again with child because one night I'd needed to feel something but grief, anything.

Another winter and spring passed with you and then came summer and a baby girl. I'd argued with the nurses the day she came to let me up to have a shower and you. And so they did, with supervision, an hour after giving birth.

Three days later and back home, again you were soaked with milk from my own body, milk made special for that little girl. I laughed again because it never stops being amazing what a woman can do. As recently as this morning that baby girl clung to you and I, tugging at your tear. How something so thin could provide such a warmth, I do not know but we were both especially grateful on this cold November morning.

You are just a thing, nightgown, and I've been told not to love things in this world, told to save my affection for the living. But you are alive to me. And since I could never toss a living thing into the trash to be carted away to a hole in the earth or to a fire in the sky, I will tuck you away with the other things I've been told not to love. Into a drawer devoted entirely to secret and wonderful 'things' for me and me alone so that they might be pulled out from time to time, to be held, to be smelled, to be remembered.

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Sometimes Pa was very lucid and we'd talk or we'd cry together but as the days went by I'm not sure he always knew I was there for my short daily visit. I had a baby at home to take care of, to nurse, and an intensive care unit was not somewhere I felt comfortable lingering with him the handful of times I'd brought him along. I couldn't ever stay long and just hold my father's hand.

 

Food no longer interested him and he only stared at his crosswords with pencil in hand. These were two things we had shared a passion for, food and puzzles, but overnight they became just mine and so I couldn't bring these daily comforts to him as gifts.

 

In his other hand, his phone. And sometimes he'd say he had to call so and so and there would be such an urgency in it. He had to call his friend Ray, who he had known since they were boys, and he had to call my husband, Jason. But I could not make these calls for him, I could not say to them what he wanted to say because I did not know what the message was.

 

And he had to call me.

Which he did several times a day from the hospital, but rarely did he say more than "hello?". I don't think he had anything he had to say to me because we had always been so good at saying things to one another all along, the good and the bad; I think when you talk to someone five, six, seven times a day for years it had just become habit to hit speed dial 3, "Supergirl". My child would be crying or another call would be ringing or a pot on the stove would be boiling, or my heart would be breaking and I could not sit on the phone and listen to his breathing, his repeated hellos.

I just couldn't.

 

A walk one evening with my son and Mom - the one night she had left her husband's side to come home and do the things a person needs to do to remain human - revealed a swarm of monarch butterflies, migrating, stopped to rest in the trees before moving on again. He would have so loved to see that, he would have called it a gift to witness it, a miracle. I tried to photograph them for him, remembering what he'd asked of me before I had moved back: to send him a photo a day, that it didn't matter what it was a photograph of, he just loved seeing what I saw as I saw it. But I couldn't get the images right. And I certainly couldn't bottle a thousand butterflies for him so he could see it as I had seen it.

 

I was driving his beloved car, driving to visit him, and I came across his MP3 player in the glovebox. I stopped and bought him a pair of headphones, more than I could afford really, but, while I was raised not to buy things I couldn't afford, I was also raised to treat purchases as investments. I wish I could say that as I stood in line to pay for those headphones I was justifying the purchase by saying to myself "Only the best for my Pa" but what I was really saying was "He's going to die very soon and then I guess I will use them and use them for a long time."

 

I'm not sure he really understood what I was asking him when I showed him the headphones but with eyes near closed he had nodded. I felt afraid in that moment because while Pa loved his music, there was always a time and place for it as he was someone who required a lot of quiet, someone easily overstimulated by all the senses, and the last thing I wanted was for him to become agitated. I looked to my mother and she nodded. I hit play, I'd chosen Bach, and Pa's eyes shot open. It startled me, his eyes opening like that, and I thought I'd done wrong, but as I reached to remove the noise, he smiled and his eyes got wet and he said "Oh. Oh, that's so lovely..."

He grabbed my hand and squeezed gently. Pa was never one to gather you up and hug you in his arms; Pa would hug you with his hand, a squeeze to the arm or the knee as you sat beside him, or your hand in his great big hand. And it was the most comforting and reassuring thing I've ever known.

It was as I had told myself in line that day. Pa died very soon after, less than a week later. I don't know how many more times he used these headphones that sit before me, that I now use and will use for a long time. But it wouldn't matter if no one ever used them again after that day. I brought my dearest friend something lovely, for a moment, and in doing so I unknowingly brought myself something lovely because I will use this day, that moment, the smile and that squeeze of his hand for the rest of my life.

That is one hell of an investment.

And I say to you

In the morning, Grandmaam puts you in bed with me with your bottle of milk and I kiss your face and hair and tummy and knees, breathing you in. And I say to you, "This is my favorite part of our day."

We head downstairs for breakfast and squirrel watching and Sesame Street and arguments about keeping your socks on. And when you tire of these things, you go off to find a book and then you climb into my lap with it, never letting me finish the words before you've turned the page, but always with your head laid heavy on my chest and an enchanted grin on your lips and a promise of things to come - the promise that you will always climb into your mother’s lap for a book and you will one day allow her to read it to you cover to cover, over and over. And I say to you, "This is my favorite part of our day."

After your nap we climb into my bed once again, falling into the pillows, laughing. We put our legs in the air, together, bending our knees, twirling our feets and wiggling our toes, taking turns mimicking the other, and we laugh and laugh some more. And I say to you, "This is my favorite part of our day."

We wander outside and we feel the grass and dirt together, watch the birds come and go together, collect pine ones together, and look for hidden wonders all around, together. And I say to you. "This is my favorite part of our day."

Then it's time for a snack and some play; some cheese and crackers and wooden blocks; some cucumber and ham and dump trucks; maybe some peanut butter on toast and chasing Doo the Scottie Dog. You love everything whole hearted, so quick with a smile and a laugh, and so sincere are you that I can't help but follow your lead with the same sincerity even on days when I’m tired or my heart is heavy. And I say to you, "This is my favorite part of our day."
 

Into the tub we go! We splish and we splash, Police Duck quacks the case again, the red ball goes "plunk!" and Cow the washcloth cleans you head to toe. Grandmaam helps us now, because soon your new sister will be here. She laughs with you like I haven't heard her laugh in many, many years, helping Cow clean you and saying, "First, we wash up as far as possible and then we wash down as far as possible and then... THEN we wash possible!" And I say to you both, "This is my favorite part of our day."

And finally, it's back to the bed, all warm and damp and smelling sweet. I kiss your bottom and I kiss your toes and we chase and wrestle you for powder, a diaper and clothes, always letting you win for a good while, unable to resist your squeals of delight. And I say to you, "This is my favorite part of our day."

Now it's time to say goodnight, I lay you down and never do you let me forget to make your fish swim and your birds fly. Again I kiss you and I tuck your favorite blanket under your arm, the very same kind of blanket your mother called her favorite so many years ago. Before I say anything to you, your brown eyes ask, "But how can all of these parts of our day be your favorite, Mama?"

And I say to you, "What I mean to say, Lovely, is that you are the favorite part of my day, all day, every day. For ever and always."  And then you smile and I realize that never have I said more true a thing to another human being. 

 

"Forever and always, sweet baby dreams."

 

 

Labor of Love

The girl moved into the darling little house in November.  It was very much like the house she came from, the one she had saved.  It needed so much work, and the few that even took notice of it couldn’t look past all the work to see it for the gem it was but the girl could.  The darling little house had quirks but she was drawn to them because they were charming and all the quirks together made for great character.  She often grumbled at the house’s disrepair and demands but she felt confident because she looked around and could see that most, if not all of the parts were there and all she had to do was dig them out and return them, refinish them, refurbish them.  It was a warm November, warm enough still to have the windows open but all the windows, save one, were sealed shut in some way: nailed, painted, nailed and painted, and some refused to budge for the girl despite any restraints, presumably because they had just not been opened in so many years.  Though needing open windows like she needs food and water and a dog, she tossed it off for the time being because winter was, after all, just around the corner.  This winter was different, too; not only did she not dread its onset, she looked forward to being cocooned warm and safe in this darling little house with all of the new house projects that go into making a home.

In a few short weeks, the girl remembered what she had tossed off a month earlier and that was that most projects require an open window, somewhere; you have to be able to let bad air out; you have to be able to let good air in. You have to breathe.

By January there was a project every day - sometimes it was one of the ongoing projects, sometimes it was the kind of project that springs up when you least expect it and when you can least afford it.   Slow leaks, sudden leaks.  Explosions and eruptions of one kind or another, blown fuses.  Skeletons in closets.  Missing pieces and parts after all.  A poor foundation lain long ago.  Pests.  Locked doors.  Ghosts.  Still, the girl thought of nothing but the house and she worked tirelessly on her home, and she did so with grace and gratitude.  And she worked on the windows everyday.

March came and so did her birthday but she hardly had time to stop for celebration or to even reflect on all that had changed since the last birthday because the house demanded so much of her resources.  She was still working on the windows, sometimes to the exclusion of other projects that desperately needed her attention, some said she was obsessed.  She was making progress she would say, pointing out the windows she had wrestled open if only a few inches and the windows she had managed wide open but that would not stay open without full time support.  But the girl was no fool, even she understood as she listened to herself justify her work to others that sometimes the worst thing for someone obsessed is some kind of headway.

So she took breaks, she would pack a bag and her dog and leave the house and all its projects, often mid project.  She went back to where she had come from because there had been a home there too and it was the only other place she knew to go in the world.  Each time she drove away it occurred to her how it had been easier to say goodbye to where she’d come from than it was to tell her darling little house that she would be right back and she always decided that was because she knew she could leave where she came from and it would be just fine.  That house could weather the elements because she had built it back up so strong, piece by piece and when there was the slightest hint that a part was not strong enough she had ripped it out and started over; it could not be shaken, it would not succumb to neglect and decay, it would not burn or crumble to the ground, the surroundings could not claim it.  A hundred years could pass and she could always go back to where she had come from.  When she was away from the darling little house though, she couldn’t even feel sure that it would not disappear in her absence, that she wouldn’t come back to a patch of dusty dirt and weeds where she had left it standing.  But that was silly because a house cannot simply disappear.

Spring arrived, the girl’s favorite time of year, the time of year that she spent the whole rest of the year dreaming about because some part of her is always stirred or reborn or returned as if she were one of the toads or a seed forgotten or a bird gone many months.  She had worked all winter and most of the windows opened now but none of them would stay open on their own, each one precariously propped open and threatening to slam shut at the slightest upset.  The girl had run out of props at some point too and didn’t know where to go to find any more so she had to hold them open her self and her arms were growing heavy.  It was so much to reopen a window fallen shut that the girl would leave them open even if all hell was breaking loose beyond them.  The girl was tired from her work and from holding windows open and from bad weather, and when she realized that even with the windows open that the house was no more ventilated than it had been before winter set in, she let herself fall into exhaustion, too tired even to go back to where she came from. 

She slept and the girl woke up very angry, on the porch.  She was angry at the windows for demanding so much of her.  She was angry at its former occupants, those trusted to maintain and care for the darling little house but who let it fall into utter squalor.  And the girl was angry at the house most of all.  Her darling little house had from the start locked her out from time to time without warning, a quirk.  She had not minded so much early on because it afforded her time to sit on the porch in the fresh air where she could lay her tools out in front of her and plan for the next task.  But now too much of her stuff was in the house: her tools were in there, her food and water were in there, her blood, sweat and tears were locked inside the house, and her heart was in there, in a drawer, in a room.