Today’s prompt: What feels like a beginning in your life right now — even if it doesn’t look like one yet?
Well, the most obvious thing would be fatherhood. We’re about five weeks in, now, but it still feels pretty fresh. Everywhere I look, I can see it existing in my space.
I knew but didn’t realize how much stuff there would be. Every day, we’re on Amazon looking for a solution to something. Today, it was the size of the velcro swaddles that we have. Emi has grown faster than we anticipated so we had to order larger ones. She didn’t wear over half of her newborn clothes before she was too big to fit in them.
Her life is beginning and ours is, too, but as parents. At times, it’s a difficult transition, balancing what I want to do with what I’m required to do. There’s an imbalance, of course, with Emi winning each time. The experience is full of a truly unique joy, however, one that all parents must feel, marked by a deep sense of belonging with this one person.
Already, too, I felt a small sense of loss when I realized that Emi is longer than my torso. She used to be small enough to rest peacefully between the bottom on my chin and my bellybutton. That’ll never happen again. Instead, she’s now long enough to drape her arms over the sides of my chest, her feet stretching below my waistline. It can’t be more than about 10 cm of change.
It really feels like she’s beginning to recognize us, as well, Hannah more than me. Hannah plays this cute game with her where she kisses her on the mouth and then opens her mouth wide as she backs away. Sometimes, Emi will open her mouth the same way, too, sometimes echoing the small utterances Hannah makes.
Parenthood seems to be regular stream of beginnings. The monotony of the feeding, changing, sleeping routine is punctuated with flashes of change, hard to detect when you don’t know what to look for.
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