Present

This past week was Zeke’s first full week with Jean, our new nanny, shared with another family. And as much as I savored those three hours every day to sit down and focus on writing my thesis or to run errands with both hands free, by the end of the week, I felt this strange unrest – as if something wasn’t fitting quite right. I realized it was because it was such a dramatic reduction of focused, awake, sun-drenched, active hours with Zeke. It was essentially down to just the hours between his waking up and his first nap, because after his second nap, I am usually distracted with preparing dinner.

Today is Friday, his stay-at-home day. Ryan took him to lunch and then I got to play with him out in the courtyard after lunch, and then put him down for his afternoon nap in a leisurely way. I’m watching him nap on the monitor right now, his chubby arms folded, his giant head pushed up against a bundle of blankets, his full little legs curled up into a right angle, and my heart is full and happy and at peace. I should be finishing up the critical literature review section of my Master’s thesis, but for the first time in a long while, I don’t feel this nagging rush to be doing something “productive."

Next week will be my last full week at home with the baby. After that, I’ll be gone for a conference in New Orleans for a few days, and then we’re off to Hong Kong, and then we start Spring quarter, and then it’s boom, boom, boom till school ends. And it’s just a month and a half until the little boy turns one. How did time go by like that? And how did I waste so much of it wanting to be somewhere else, not savoring where I was? 

Well, no time for regret. I resolve to be fully present for the next 10 days, to be unrelentingly grateful, even when I’m tired, for the gift of being able to be home with my baby, to make him laugh, to watch him grow, to pick him up when he wants a hug, to cradle his heavy and beautiful sleeping head in my arms.