Thoughts of Transition

Now, it is the pleasure of my everyday chores, the warm sunshine of Spring, the songbirds, the children laughing during their recess in the schoolyard next-door.
My heart is ripe with gratitude. How lucky I am to be here, right now.

I want to chronicle the stars and air and sounds for Luca, the setting of his first chapter. Most important, I want to remember this sweet period right before he joins us so that later (perhaps when he is sixteen and pimply, sneaking cigarettes and breaking curfew) I will have something luxurious and soft to pull from my battered mothering box, a cloak to wrap around my sweet boy and protect him from my easy judgments and exasperations.

Every mother has a pile of these memories, perched on the edge of our minds, at the ready.

These quiet, mundane weeks before Luca is born are now ready to be folded and put away. I can feel a shift occurring in my body and mind. Every minute lived is another minute closer to Luca. Soon I will have memories of woven with details that only a parent can savor, like those tiny, tiny fingernails and the way his eyelids will flutter while he is lost in newborn dreams.

The whole family seems to sense the transition. Every morning I wake up surrounded by my children, all of them quietly vying for my attention, even if it is just passive physical contact. They perhaps sense that my attention will stray for a little while, to be focused on a little one instead of homework assignments and skinned knees. The boys are more understanding but I wonder how Colette will respond to this coup. In these days before she loses the Baby crown, I am kissing those sweet cheeks just a little more often, giving her more time to gather her rocks and dig in the sand at the playground. I think she will like the Big Sister crown just as well, though it might fit a little awkwardly at first.

Sun Day 日曜日

Sundays are the one day of the week when nobody has to go to school or work. I realize that we just had two weeks of straight Sundays during the Spring vacation yet you can't fully value the day until it is sandwiched between six non-Sundays.

The sun rises here just after 4:45 now (Japan does not have daylight savings time) and as I have mentioned before, there is nothing to keep Nico from rising with it. He is a patient fellow and usually takes care of himself quietly until around 5:15 when he makes his older brother join him. With their powers combined, they then decide on which request they can make that will squeeze past our usually strict regulations, made slack by the desire to sleep until a more decent hour. On Sundays though for some reason, they seem to accept the relaxed nature of the day and will instead join me on my futon until that decent hour arrives. It makes the day much better when there isn't a power struggle to be fought at first light.

Today was a typical Sunday of banana pancakes, housekeeping, park visiting, and grocery shopping. Right now the boys are with the neighborhood kids at the nearby park and Colette's eyelids have succumbed to their growing heaviness and she is peacefully napping in the other room. The open windows bring in a warm breeze and the songs of all the flitting little birds, dancing on power lines. The quiet embraces me, enchants me until I too must succumb to an afternoon nap.  Oh, the joy of a good Sunday.

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When I came home from my first day back, the littlest one was cranky and so I laid down with her. Before I knew it, I was surrounded by the whole gang.