AS MOTHERS DO

Dear Spike:

You could not know it, but at this moment you are giving to your mother the very best Mother's Day gift you possibly could give. You are asleep on her lap, in the rocking chair in your room. And she, in turn, has slumped down in the chair for a nap of her own.

We celebrated last Mother's Day with an anxious excitement. You were due to arrive within weeks. Your mother had set to work sweeping and vacuuming, arranging the baby clothes in the dresser drawers of your room, and pacing around our home looking for things to set straight in preparation for your arrival.

Some call these sorts of behaviors "nesting." Fathers feel it, to some extent, but not nearly as instinctually as mothers do. And perhaps that says something about the bond moms have with their babies — bonds that can be closely emulated but never fully duplicated by dads. For how could we possibly know what it is to share one body? To be one being?

That is, in part, what makes Mother's Day so special. And it is, I imagine, why your mother never looks happier than in those times when you are asleep, resting on her belly, as close as you ever will get to those times in which your rested inside of her.

Maybe when you are older, you will come to your mother, on this day, and lay your head on her lap. Perhaps you will fall asleep there and she, in turn, will fall asleep too. I can think of no greater present you could give her than to rest there together, as one body and one being, if only for a few moments.

Love,
dad

MUST BRING CHAOS

Dear Spike:

Finally, Friday.

Even with a day off for Thanksgiving this week, the days seemed to drag on and on. I’ve never been a live-for-the-weekend kind of guy, but these days it often feels as though I’m under water, all week long, just counting the seconds before I get to come up for air on Friday evening.

That’s when the three of us get together, hop in the big bed, sometimes order a pizza, and pop a movie into the DVD player.

Tonight was a bit different. About once every four or five months, your mother decides she “just can’t take it anymore,” and embarks upon a cleaning project so vast that we often must bring chaos to the entire home in order to bring it back into order.

Today’s project: Our bedroom closet (and in particular, my rather slovenly side of it. By the time I’d returned from work, this evening, your mother had completely emptied the closet onto the hallway floor. We spent the next three hours matching socks, tossing clothing that we no longer wear into giveaway bags and creating a latest, greatest system of organization that this time — this time for sure — will help me keep my side of the closet neat and tidy for more than a few weeks.

The best part of the night: Watching your mother try on dresses that she hasn’t fit into since she got pregnant. Just under six months after giving birth, she’s back into all of her old clothes. She looks fantastic and, I think, she is very proud about getting back into shape while also juggling work (her job is ten times tougher than mine) and mommydom — and occasionally doing things like emptying our entire bedroom closet.

I know you don’t know to be both proud of and humbled by your mother yet — but I know you will be someday. I certainly am.

Love,
dad

MISS THESE MOMENTS

Dear Spike:

People used to marvel when I’d tell them that you regularly slept through the night. Six, seven, eight hours. “Yeah,” I’d beam, “my baby rocks the party.”

But lately, I suppose because you’ve been growing so fast, you’ve been waking up to eat at least once a night — and sometimes two or three times. And since every bottle I feed you is another bottle that your mother will have to fill at some other point during the day, she’s been pretty insistent that she be the one to feed you at night.

I suppose that’s nice, because I get to sleep. Or have the opportunity to do so, at least.

Except here we are, it’s 3:06 a.m. You’re asleep. Your mother’s asleep. And, really, the vast majority of the United States is asleep. . .

And I’m awake. Up like the Red Sox in Game Three.

OK, Star Wars is partly to blame. At the moment, Luke and Han are searching the Endor Forest for Leia. In a few minutes, the Ewoks are going to open a can of yub nub on the evil Imperial Forces — and who would want to sleep through that?

But also — and more so — I simply enjoy lying here and watching you sleep.

These opportunities seem to be growing more infrequent. You’ve been spending fewer and fewer hours napping during the day. You still take a few 20-minute catnaps. And whenever we’re in the car for longer than 10 minutes, you’re out like the Rockies in Game Four.

But during the daytime, every moment you slumber is an opportunity for me to get a little bit of uninterrupted work done. And so I often miss these moments.

Thankfully, Friday night has become “slumber party night” in our home — the night when you get to escape your cradle and come sleep on the big bed between your mother and me.

And while we say it’s a treat for you, it’s really for us.

And particularly for me.

I love watching your tiny tummy move up and down and my heart melts at the way your sweet little lips curl into a smile while you dream.

I love watching as you curve your back up and stretch your arms out in a way that allows you to take up as much room on the bed as either of your parents — even though you're only five months old and you only weight 11 or 12 pounds.

I love listening to your soft sleepy snorts and your dreamy little squeals.

And I love it when you curl your skinny fingers around my pinky and we sleep together, hand in hand, though the night.

Yeah, my baby rocks the party.

Love,
dad

GRAB SOME CHANGE

Dear Spike:

With just two months to go until you arrive, your mother this week began to exhibit what is commonly described as “nesting” behavior.

I came home from work, the other day, to find our home more neatly cleaned than it has been for months. Your mom, on the way out the door for her music lessons as I walked in, noted that she’d also “done some stuff in the basement.”

I immediately panicked. Over time, our basement had become a pit of endless piles of camping gear, Christmas decorations, seasonal clothing, school supplies and other miscellaneous items we bring out once a year, if that. Littered with power tools, buckets of paint and bags of concrete, it is no place for a pregnant woman to be nesting.

I was relieved to find she’d left most of the heavy lifting for me — but only until I realized that meant that we were going to be spending a very good part of the weekend “in the pit.” In the end, it turned out to be a pretty good time with endless opportunities for self reflection on materialism (it’s absolutely amazing what you think you’ll need but manage to live without for years but then can’t bring yourself to throw away because you still think you need it.)

While we were in the basement, your mother came across an old Zippo-style cigarette lighter I picked up in Japan, when I was in the Navy a number of years ago. The inscription on the side of the lighter indicated it was carried by a soldier who’d fought in the three-day battle for Loc Ninh, in Vietnam. How it wound up in a Tokyo street market, I don’t know, but I felt I had to have it.

For years after I got out of the military I carried the lighter in my pocket, where I could feel it anytime I reached down to grab some change or to warm my hands — a constant reminder to always appreciate how bad I don’t have it.

At some point, I think around the time I met your mother, I stopped carrying it.

With two months to go before you arrive, I’ve been spending a lot of time thinking about whether we’re ready to bring you home. Several nights this week, those thoughts have kept me awake.

Over the next two months, we’ll clean the house and put the car seats in the cars and wash your crib and check the batteries in your baby monitors. We’ll buy your diapers and wash your clothes and power clean the carpets.

We’ll nest in ways that have nothing to do with you: Cleaning the garage or fixing the rain gutters or organizing the refrigerator.

We’ll worry. About you. About us. About money. About life. About this house and this town and this world.

And for me, there are bound to be some more sleepless nights.

So for the time, I think I’ll keep this lighter by my bedside, perhaps next to an ultrasound picture of you — a small midnight reminder to appreciate how bad I don’t have it.

Love,
dad