Aileen Jeffries

Kea celebrated her 2-month birthday yesterday (with a round of vaccine shots, poor girl). Many aspects of my life have returned to normal. I’m back at work, my body no longer resembles an egg with legs and I can enjoy the occasional glass of wine or stinky raw cheese without worrying how my dietary indulgences will effect Kea’s future algebra aptitude.

Some things, though, will never be the same. I learned this a few weeks ago at my 30th birthday party. My actual birthday was one day after the birth of our daughter, making it both the least significant and most memorable birthday I’ve ever had. So, Kes threw me a party six weeks later on the 5th of July. The other reason to celebrate was the completion* of our house remodel. The party was great – a house full of music, good friends and plenty of alcohol. Yet even with Kea safely in the arms of my friend Michelle (mother extraordinaire) and a fridge stockpiled with milk, I found I couldn’t truly let go and get nice and drunk, freshman-year-in-college style. Part of me knew I needed to maintain a firm enough grasp on my faculties to properly care for my baby. In retrospect, this is probably for the best – wasted thirty-year-olds are considerably less appealing than drunken co-eds. Still, I felt wistful, knowing a stage of my life had definitively come to an end.

I mentioned this to Michelle the next morning and she retorted, “Oh, I didn’t tell you? Things will never be the same again!” So, like my new foot size, I’m going to have to adapt to a portion of my brain forever devoted to my child. I love being back in the office, but as I work, my thoughts tend to drift a little, wondering what Kea is up to. This morning, Kes reported that our baby has finally developed the motor skills necessary to stick just her thumb in her mouth but was furious to discover that sucking it did not produce milk. Little anecdotes like this are enough to make my throat tighten with love and longing and many other emotions the hormones have no doubt programmed me to feel.

The addition of an offspring has enriched my life more than I expected. But it is no longer just my life.

Two years ago on a visit to Rejuvenation Hardware, I spied an usual piece of stained glass depicting branches with pink cherry blossoms. Most stained glass is a little over the top for me, but this one really stood out for its simplicity. I had just the spot for it too, mounted in the frame of a small window at the foot of the stairs that lead up to our bedroom.

So, for my birthday, my mom and I split the cost and I became the happy owner of a David Schlicker piece of stained glass.

The next year, Kes and I embarked on our Endless Remodel. Daily, I would pass the window and think to myself, “I should really take that window out so nothing bad will happen to it.” Except I didn’t, and it did, in the form of a 2×4 that came sailing through one day, breaking both the window and the stained glass mounted in the frame.

Our contractor agreed to replace the window (it would be the one window in the entire house we weren’t planning on replacing anyway) and I took the fractured stained glass back to David Schlicker to see if it could be repaired. He explained it would less costly to make a new one. So, 6 weeks later, my new stained glass was ready. The window itself wasn’t so the stained glass piece floated about the house from room to room, avoiding the thick of the construction insanity.

Then, one night in May as I sat on the couch trying to breathe through some increasingly insistent contractions, Kes pointed out to me that the new piece had somehow acquired cracks. This wasn’t something I wanted to even think about my heavily pregnant state. In fact, it took me six weeks to come around to it. People would come by our house, notice the damaged cherry blossom piece, then look at the expression on my face and realize it would be better to change the subject. I wanted someone, anyone, to deal with it.

Of course, no one did and this week I’ve finally come to terms with the problem. I got a quote for repair and the new window arrived and was installed yesterday. Then, out of something like morbid curiosity, I checked to make sure the new stained glass would fit in the new window frame.

It doesn’t! Not even close! Hence, great angst.

A man in North Carolina is my new hero for recognizing that the act of dying doesn’t automatically make one a better person. Mr Eason worked for the state for 29 years and was deeply invested in his job but chose to retire early instead of obeying a state-wide proclamation to lower the flag in honor of the passing of the racist bigot Jesse Helms.

Fittingly, he worked as the head of the state’s Standards Laboratory.

He quit rather than lower flag for Helms [News Observer]

I worry sometimes what motherhood will reduce me to. Will I shut out the world and think only of feeding schedules and matching onesies to tiny little socks? Will night after night of 4 or 5 hours of sleep cause me to abandon all intellectual pursuits?

Then Kes sends me this and I find that I really don’t care if my brain is reduced to oxytocin-sodden mush. Nom, nom, nom. Toes.

That’s 39 pounds in 39 days. Eleven more to go, although I highly doubt I’ll be able to shed them in 11 days. Apparently, it isn’t normal or healthy to lose a pound a day.