Falling in Love

I have heard many parents say how fun it is to Fall in Love with their babies. Up until recently, I didn't quite get that. I mean, I absolutely LOVE my son. I think he is the cutest baby ever born. And everything he does strikes me as genius and/or adorable. I can spend hours gazing at him, or into his eyes, and I often do. I believe he was meant to be my baby, and I was born to be his mom.

But falling in Love? As in heartsoaring, butterflies-at-the-sound-of-the-lover's-voice-or-car-in-the-driveway, every-love-song-applies-to-me, the-world-is-so-beautiful falling? I don't think so. Or I didn't think so. But now?

I don't know what has changed. I guess falling in love, really falling in love, takes time. Not always a lot of time, but some. And I've spent some time with this little being. Every day since we met. I stare at him while he sleeps. I can't believe how lucky I am to have such a darling, sweet, gorgeous baby. I celebrate his skin. His skin! It's incredible. I can lazily linger my hands on his skin, try to touch every hair on his head or in his brows, enjoy the texture of his earlobes, soft but crunchy cartilagey, press fingertips into his three serrated tiny teeth, pinch gently his jowly cheeks or the tip of his nose...last night we pressed our fingertips together so lightly and for so long I thought I was going to cry.

Doesn't it sound like I'm falling in love?

He is my favorite companion in the car. He giggles, plays, sings, babbles/talks most of the time. He kicks his legs excitedly as soon as I tell him we're leaving the house, getting in the car, and going on an ADVENTURE. He loves looking out at the sky while we drive. We listen to the radio, and I explain what we're listening to, or where we're driving to, or what's happening in the news or on the streets.

Every song reminds me of him, especially the ones he likes. Do you realize how many songs use the term of endearment "Baby?" Yes, but it's even more meaningful when the love in the song is actually a Baby. I've been listening to my Dad's old radio shows, one from 1967 and another from 1968, and it dawned on me that he was a DJ in California during the Summer of Love. And he was playing all this music that I think of as so my own, so fundamental to my makeup. The Rolling Stones. Beatles. Soul music of all kinds. The Supremes. Jackie Wilson. Marvin Gaye. The Doors. Did I ever talk to my Dad about all that music? Will Bodhi think Death Cab for Cutie is all his own? Or Krishna Das? Or Bob Wills? We'll see. It will always remind me of him, that's for sure.

I love the tone and timbre of his voice, even when (especially when?) he cries. He grunts and gurgles when he nurses. His laughter is water bubbling over stones. Lately he has been growling, making every sound he knows how to make deep in his throat and vibrating in his belly.

I love his hands. When he nurses, he presses his fingers into my breast and lifts his pinky. He falls asleep with his hand between my boobs; it's hilarious. It's like falling asleep on your backpack on the train when traveling: SECURITY. He handles and studies his pacifier like a scientist or a diamond cutter examining a precious stone. He turns it in his hands, practicing and honing the dexterity of his fingers. And then he plops the nipple part into his mouth and chews. Or tries to put it in my mouth, or Daddy's. Or in my navel.

He also pulls my hair, can seem to grab just ONE hair -- ouch, that hurts more -- or pinch my nipple, roll it between his fingers and PULL it hard! Or scratch my face, the inside of my nostril or my ear, reminding me that I need to trim his nails. And he gnaws on my jawbone, on my chin. He sometimes burps and spits up on my cheek or, worse, in my mouth.

But I don't care. And Daddy walks around the house wearing spit up epaulets on his t-shirts.

Lately Bodhi's fascinated by the buckles in his carseat, stroller, and high chair. I can just hear the gears turning in his head, paying attention to how I strap him in and how I release him.

He reached for the velcro tabs on his cloth diaper cover today. Yikes. And he is practically obsessed with the babyproofing tabs in the electrical sockets. Not to mention the remote control, the lamp cord, the blind cords, my laptop and my cellphone, that weird metal box I am always sleeping with or talking into or typing on. It lights up!

I love the texture of his hair. It's fuzzy! There ain't much there, but what is there I love. It sticks up in funny places; he was born with an Alfalfa-tuft on the very top of his head and a little dark cowlick curl on his forehead...and nothing else. Now the areas in between have begun to fill in, and his tuft is sprouting more hair, while his cowlick curl has shaped the hairs on his forehead into a pleasing smooth wave. His little nose tilts up at the tip.

He has dimples on his shoulders! He got this from me. It's not something I ever considered, how I'd feel noticing my own body parts and genes transferred to another person. But it's an AMAZING feeling. I feel like a part of me will live on after my body is gone. Kind of like my Dad and his big fleshy, Buddha-lobe ears...I have his ears, as does Bodhi.

And, like a new love, I have begun to see my baby's face in the faces of strangers, of other babies, his mannerisms and sounds manifesting in the cute little babe on TV or in the grass at the park. All children have become cherished and adorable to me. They have become reflections of my love for my son.



Bodhi has begun to cry instead of play now when we put him on the changing table. It makes me sad. I try to make up songs about diapers and pee pee and poo poo and onesies and jammies and everything. (To the tune of "Paperback Writer," or "Let's Do the Time Warp Again" or "Boogie Fever.") I blow zerberts on his belly, which I am also in love with and obsessed with. His belly button is so beautiful, ovally and a shallow innie. He has lots of baby pudge, but I can see the long leanness of him too, long arms like his Dad, long torso, big muscular thighs and muscular feet.

I am memorizing every detail of him. I can feel him memorizing me, like I did my parents. I can close my eyes and see my mother's slightly crooked front teeth, the mole on my Dad's neck, the outline of their lips or the backs of their heads. The shapes and textures of their feet.

He hugs me when I pick him up. He reaches for me when he wants me. As though we were in "Flashdance," when this happens, I hear "What a Feeling!" chorus through my brain. His eyes flit from my chest to my face in a way that is not subtle, nor is it creepy the way it is when certain men do that. He sleeps with his cheek to my chest, right above my heart. He quiets immediately when I chant "OM." I think of our birth, how I chanted OM almost the whole labor, letting him hear me and know that I was waiting for him, and that all he had to do was hang on to my voice.

He loves rolling. Not crawling, but rolling toward his destination. Doris, my motherinlaw, told me that all of her children rolled instead of crawling. Bodhi rolls like a dervish at night and in the mornings. He gets on his hands and knees and tries to nurse while on his belly. It is really funny.

He also shakes his head from side to side, seemingly out of delight, and sometimes out of tiredness. He's added joyously and vigorously thrashing his hands. And sometimes, I'll put my lips next to his face so that when he turns it to that side I can kiss him, and this cracks him up.

He loves rattles, and tries to makes sounds by clacking objects together.

And guess his favorite food so far, discovered today, when he miraculously asked for MORE and ate almost the entire jar (organic, all-natural, plain and simple, folks) full? CARROTS. Not my favorite, or his dad's, particularly, but HIS favorite. It has made me realize he will be his own person, a person with a unique set of likes and dislikes, preferences and aversions, ways of doing and being that are not at all like my own. I knew this, academically and intellectually, before, and all the poets and parenting pundits mention it like it's the most basic and profound fact of having a child, but it wasn't until I saw him reach for another mouthfull of carrots that it hit me: wait, I don't like carrots THAT much.

Oh. Okay. Cool.


So even though Bodhi and I haven't run through the waves at the beach, or had a candlelit dinner in front of a fireplace, or slow danced to "Dreamweaver," I am definitely, slowly but surely and deeply falling in love with him.