is a single mama in the city, super-savvy editor, writer, video host and shameless shoe whore.
On the eve of kindergarten
Monday, September 6, 2010 Laying next to Lil E tonight in the dark of his room, singing the same songs I've sung him for nearly six years, I was suddenly cognizant of the sound of my own heartbeat pounding out of sync with "You Are My Sunshine."
I've gotten good in all this time of singing the lullabies and thinking about things other than dreams and love and Michael rowing the boat ashore and rays of light. The song filled the room steadily and my thoughts unfolded to the time when I first heard Lil E's heartbeat, that day laying on a table in the doctor's office with my belly exposed to the air conditioning and colder jelly and a tape measure.
His heartbeat blared over the static of the machine, like a galloping horse so powerful it made me close my eyes.
Lil E's dad worked at a hospital and borrowed one of those machines from a doctor or nurse and brought it home for me to strap to my stomach to listen in utero on my own. Periodically, for months, I wrapped the elastic around my middle, found where the growing baby inside me was positioned, rested against a pile of pillows on our bed and heard the heartbeat gallop through our tiny apartment.
It reassured me. I tried to quickly count the beats for ten seconds and wondered whether it really was a good predictor of his gender. Long after I could feel him moving, could even see him ripple across my belly just when I was ready to sleep, his heartbeat in stereo was soothing.
It wasn't just the sound of his heart. It was the sound of ours together. Never matched up but there, pounding inside the same body.
When he was born, it was instantly like the cliche -- my heart now living outside my body. Different beats, different people, but much of my heart swaddled in the pink and blue and white flannel hospital blanket, calling "MOMMY! MOMMY!" from his crib, jumping from the playground equipment, crying that he misses his daddy or me, swinging air light sabers and quoting five different Star Wars movies, waving at me gleefully through the window of his preschool room, got punched "in the heart" on the last day of school, asked me earnestly in early summer, "Can we please talk a little bit about kindergarten every day because I am not completely comfortable with going yet?"
And now, a bit of my excitement and anxiousness and bliss and tears will go with him to kindergarten.
This boy's life, this heart beats on.
I feel so much tonight. So very much. Mostly, I feel amazed that we are here already. And so, so lucky that even after we do our kissing hand and wave goodbye and the door on this new year closes for the very first time, I get to be there through all of it.
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