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Pony: The little jolts of love
1.7.2008
The last few days of 2007 were spent waiting for news. My good friend was in a long prelabour with her first child while my father was bunked out in a palliative hospice, waiting for the final breaths of his wife of 23 years.
I remember this time last year, waiting for G. to be born, waiting for Chris's grandfather to breathe his last breaths. And I remember marvelling at the constant conflation of matters of mortality. Profound, sad and beautiful. You know the adjectives.
Gabriel and I flew out to Vancouver on Thursday and came back on Sunday night. I am glad I went. I had a lot of support when I got there from family and friends who helped me with every detail of travelling alone with Mr. G.
It was a good, healing thing to have Gabriel there at the funeral and for the time after, but it was a kind of exhausting with a baby who is going through major "stranger danger" and won't let anyone hold him ("Perhaps," someone coyly suggested, "He is sensing your anxiety about returning to work").
I was thinking of the way we get these little "love bursts" all day from people we love. Every time Gabriel smiles at me or squeezes my arm when he gets excited, I get a little jolt of love. And going back to work (Jan 16th) - and not having that constant feedback - will be like withdrawing from the best intoxicant.
After the funeral, walking through his neighbourhood with my father, he started to tear up, and I think I understood. He was realizing that he 'll no longer get to go walking through that neighbourhood with his wife. Who will banter with him as they browse the sale shelf at the drugstore? How do you withdraw from 23 years of love?
On the flight home, the woman beside me was returning from the Philippinnes - one of those economic refugees who cleans our houses and diaper our kids and elderly. She sees her kids for 5 weeks a year. She won't see them again for another whole year. I am lucky, lucky, lucky.
Gabriel was perfect on the plane, by the way, and didn't cry at all, but pressed his face against the glass as we ascended and then looked at me with big, serious eyes and said something in his crazy language, and laughed. These days he babbles at me in slurry-seriousness, like a drunk patron confiding to a bartender.
When I got home I called my friend who had a beautiful, large-headed (owie) baby boy. Everything hurts - from her stitches to her boobs, but none of that matters. Her baby and his dad were snoring beside her and she could not sleep for all the love.
