Held

I hold the baby during dinner. It isn’t hard because I can hold the baby with one hand, she is that little, and eat with the other. Dinner is salmon, rice, and asparagus, and the last of the melon, food for nights holding a baby. This is not a good time for steak.

The lack of sleep and recovery from a C-section have taken the starch out of my daughter’s efficiency. She is tired, bone tired, and so after dinner, she sleeps on the couch, and I hold the baby.

I could put the baby in her swing. It has become a welcomed, restful place for her. Its swinging is silent and hypnotic and she will lay there like a doll for a long while until her body says she’s hungry and then she flails a bit and makes noise.

But it occurs to me that holding a baby, especially a sleeping one, is a rare opportunity. It has been years since the last baby was here. I remember the weekends she spent in our house, the Saturday nights in winter when, after dinner, she would climb on my lap and we would cover ourselves in a quilt and watch animal shows until she feel asleep. And then, with her asleep, leaned against my chest, I’d watch old movies with my husband until we carried her heavy little girl self upstairs to bed.

So, I hold the baby through three cooking shows and late night cable news and then I carry her upstairs. Her mother wakes and follows and the shift change is made.

I consider it an evening well spent.