Dear Baby Wonderful: The World Turned Upside Down

Dear Baby Wonderful,

Before you were born I had imagined a whole new world with you in it. I imagined how just knowing you were here, with your brains and your personality and your potential, would change my entire outlook. I imagined the books I would read to you, using different voices for every character and not even caring if you decided to turn the pages right to left instead of left to right. I imagined tucking you in and singing "I'll be loving you, always..." to lull you to sleep just like I did your daddy and uncles. I imagined a clean junk drawer in the kitchen.

(Not really on that last item. But two weeks ago I was suddenly struck with the irresistible urge to organize the drawer under the coffeepots that has always been the repository of birthday candles, the upstairs hammer and pliers, pizza coupons, picture-hanging paraphernalia, gum, and other miscellaneous stuff. For years that drawer hasn't opened except under duress, but that day I had HAD it with that mess. Seven hours later I saw your face for the first time. Nesting: It Isn't Just For Parents.)

(Also, since we're being all parenthetical now, the reason there's a picture of the junk drawer instead of the one we got yesterday of you grinning in your sleep and wearing a HI! onesie is because your Dad and Mom are understandably reluctant to share the innermost workings of your life with the internet. I think that's an excellent decision, but may lead to some interesting illustrations.)

Anyway, you were the big news that day but since then you've been knocked off the front pages by...what do we even call this turn of events? Circumstances, let's say.

The very day we kissed you goodbye and headed back to the House on the Corner we began to find out that the scientists had been correct, and shockingly, the politicians had been wrong when they told us there was nothing to worry about from that virus clear across the world. (Here is your first bit of English instruction for today: You notice the word "shockingly" in the last sentence? That's known as sarcasm, and you'll find that your grandmother fights her tendency to use sarcasm but that the sarcasm often wins.)

The very next day we started washing our hands every time we saw a faucet, and since then we've stopped hugging, kept our distance from other people, and now are having lunch with our friends through the Zoom app on our computers.

It's been quite an adjustment for me. Schools have been cancelled, so I'm not working. All of my regular groups and clubs are not meeting. Music contests and lessons were called off.

I vividly remember taking out my phone and deleting every event on the calendar, one after another, for the next two months.

Your parents have been wonderful about FaceTiming every evening so we can see you--what a beautiful boy you are! And five whole ounces above your birth weight! (Your doctor said you're a "champion eater," so we know with certainty that you're part of our family.)

You're often asleep during those video sessions and every once in a while you suddenly throw out an arm, or kick a tiny leg. I understand this is quite normal, as your nervous system begins to figure out the world.

That kick, that startled jerk, is what I've been feeling as we begin to figure out our own new world. Our schedules, the daily-ness of our days, was the womb that was nice and tight around us to make us feel secure. (That, dear one, is a metaphor.)

We're figuring out life, just as you are. It's still spring so it's lovely and bright, but there are times when it's quite scary and we have to train our reflexes. In this case, we're taming the impulse to be social so that we can get back to the parts of the world we miss--the hugs, the handshakes, the smiles.

We're fighting the impulse to be scared.

The "before" world we had just a few weeks ago has been turned upside down, but the "after" will be a world with you in it. You'll come visit the House on the Corner and we'll read books and bake cookies and I'll let you get a piece of gum out of the junk drawer as soon as you have teeth.

The snuggles and hugs with you will make all of this staying apart to stay safe worthwhile.


And I'll be loving you, always, 

GrandmaQueenBee