joke (noun) – a thing someone says or does that causes amusement, and when there are some things (even small things) that could make you laugh or cry I think I want to try to laugh and see it as the gift or blessing or God-in-the-moment that it really is.

“Hey Eric,” I said one evening after Caleb was in bed. “Question for you.”

He glanced over at me. “What’s up?”

“Well… do you think potty humor is funny? Like, poop jokes?”

He laughed, which I guess answered my question. “Do all boys? At any age?” I press.

“I dunno. Maybe. Why?”

I sigh. “Because I think I’m starting to appreciate them more, as a boy momma. Even this baby boy of ours seems to think poop is hilarious.”

But I’m getting ahead of myself. Let me backtrack to one morning last week. I’d been awake the previous night a lot more than I like to think about. Not quite “first-week-home-with-a-newborn” awake, but maybe the closest to that I’ve been in a while. I try to appreciate it, if not exactly enjoy it, because my boy never wants to cuddle except in the middle of the night. But on this particular day, it was still dark out when he woke up for good. I was not nearly

ready for morning yet, though, so I plopped him down in bed next to me with a chew toy— or a teether, I think you call it when it’s for a baby and not a dog— hoping it would keep him occupied while I read a little.

You try doing that when there’s a cold little hand poking and tugging at your ear. It’s kind of impossible.

But when I rolled over with a sigh and he grinned at me—still adorably toothless—I decided that maybe the short night and early morning were okay after all. There’s always coffee, right?

It was that thought that propelled me out of bed and into the kitchen. My exuberant little boy can get anywhere by rolling, then squirming to adjust his direction (crawling is sooooo traditional!), so I left a circle of toys around him to keep him occupied while I got my own breakfast ready. Every so often, I peeked around the
corner at him to see how he was doing, and each time he stopped what he was doing to beam up at me.

I was just sitting down with a mug of steaming coffee and a piece of toast when that boy of mine rolled into reach of the stuffed rabbit we’ve
affectionately dubbed “Wrassel”. The poor bunny got its name from Caleb’s habit of wrestling with it every time he gets his hands on it, and this morning was no different. Those blue eyes of his narrowed, and with a growl (yes, a growl!) he latched onto the ears with both hands and wrapped his legs around that hapless rabbit’s middle. I laughed out loud and took a fateful sip of coffee as they rolled over… and over… and over.

One sip. Three rolls. And then, as Caleb flung the toy away from him with a triumphant crow, I noticed with a sinking heart the orange-ish stain spreading across his grey-and-white striped pajamas.

And it wasn’t confined to his pajamas. It was all over, like he hadn’t been wearing a diaper at all (he was). Front, back, and sides. In a pattern on the carpet that matched those three inauspicious rolls. On Wrassel.

“Ca-leb!” I yelled in dismay. He giggled and slapped his hands to his (stained) belly like it was the biggest joke in the world. Coffee and toast forgotten, I leapt up and snatched his hands away, but it was too late. The damage had been done.

When it comes to stuff like this, I’m learning the “baby first” rule: take care of child, then take care of things. Once I’d gotten my still-giggling boy to the changing table, it took only a brief glance to tell me that this was no wipe-only fix, and that Wrassel and the floor would have to wait a bit longer. Off to the bathtub we went, me carrying him gingerly out in front of me like Rafiki introducing Simba to the rest of the animal kingdom.

But oh, let me tell you, he is adorable in the bath. His round little tummy sticks up out of the water just asking to be kissed, and he curls his toes, pressing the bottoms of his feet together like a tiny little buddha. When I rinse him off, his eyes get huge and he reaches out, trying to grab onto the stream of water and blinking in surprise when it splashes against his fingers instead. Somehow, being bundled into a towel and swept up into my arms hasn’t gotten old yet for either of us, and it’s only after he’s clean and dry and dressed into outfit number two for the day that I get around to the much less fun job of cleaning the floor. 

And, of course, Wrassel. 

It’s not how I expected my morning would go, I think later, when I finally have a chance to finish my breakfast. My toast is more chewy than crunchy at this point, and my coffee is so cold I throw in a couple ice cubes so that at least I can pretend I wanted it that temperature to begin with. But I’m laughing, because Caleb is sitting on my lap, twisting his head to look up at me with those twinkling eyes as if to say, “Wasn’t that funny, momma? What a great joke!”

And I guess I really am a boy momma now, because I hug him tight and say out loud, “It sure was, buddy.”

manifesto (noun): a statement declaring the views or intentions or dreams or ideals of the one who thought it up and lived it out day by day by day by day--

There’s a canvas hanging on the wall of my living room with a poem painted on it: a gift made for me by a dear friend. It’s simple— black words on a grey background— except for one phrase. 

Plant sequoias.

Those two words are drawn slightly larger in deep, heart-red paint. If I had to squeeze my twenty-some years of perspective into one dream, one goal for my future, that would be it. To plant sequoias. There’s an elusive beauty to it, isn’t there? Anyone who’s stood marveling at any old tree, let alone a sequoia, has probably felt that quiet awe stir her soul at this thing whose beginning and ending stretch long beyond her own.

The thing is, it’s a little vague on its own, especially to the more prosaic reader. Is this a dictate to go around plopping trees into the ground? I guess it could be—in many of his other works, the poet’s words do sketch his love for the natural world. But this short phrase, slipped as it is into the middle of his manifesto, takes on a less literal directive. Every time I read this poem, and that phrase in particular, my soul thrills to the commission to invest in the millennium; to live beyond the scope of my own life.

But while I’ve always loved it, there is a part of me that shrinks back from the challenge. Am I doing this thing, this beautiful, life-giving thing? Or am I failing completely? And if I’m not planting sequoias, what am I doing instead?

Skip ahead a bit: a few lines in the poem and a few years in my life. It’s May of 2017—the “lost month” as Eric and I sometimes refer to it now. I’m as bleary-eyed as only a newborn momma can be, sitting on the couch with a baby who’s finally (hopefully?!) figured out how to eat. Eric is slumped beside me, the pump next to him and a bottle ready in his hand in case Caleb forgets how to nurse yet again. I’m fixated on that tiny, soft cheek, willing my baby to keep going, and this time we’re lucky and he does. I pass him off to Eric, relieved, but inside I’m already dreading repeating the struggle when he wakes up hungry in a few hours.

My eyes wander to the poem on the wall above me. A few lines below the bold red dare to plant sequoias are the questions that have puzzled me since I first read the poem.

Ask yourself: Will this satisfy
a woman satisfied to bear a child?
Will this disturb the sleep
of a woman near to giving birth?

They’ve always seemed a little out of place, given the rest of the poem, and my new experience doesn’t shed much light on them at all. The answer to those airy, soul-filling words seems farther away than ever before, and I hate that. Over the months that follow, I try to ignore them, and it isn’t that hard: the pragmatic regimen of catching a few minutes of sleep between Caleb’s difficult feedings rule those early weeks, and now, almost five months in, my days are full of the thousand little things that stretch a stay-at-home momma’s day so long.

But they’re right there, every day, and I’m not always successful at avoiding the thoughts they bring to mind. I should be satisfied. More than that, I should be the happiest girl in the world, because each day I get to wake up to my happy, healthy son. And some days I am. But if I’m completely honest with myself, sometimes I’m not. Even though Eric and I decided after much prayer and conversation that this was the right decision for our family, I still chafe a little when I see the acronym “SAHM”. I’m still trying to decide how to phrase it when people ask me what I do. And as much as I love that small, spunky boy of mine, he has complicated my life in about a million unexpected ways in addition to those changes I was expecting. So what, exactly, are those few lines from the poem getting at? What would satisfy a woman satisfied to bear a child?

The answer dawns on me one morning late in August. Eric has already left for work, and the air coming in my cracked-open window is cool enough to make me burrow down a little deeper under my quilt, a sign that summer is winding down. I lie there, listening to Caleb’s waking-up grunts, my mind wandering through the space between sleep and the day to come, and that’s where I find the answer.

That out-of-place part of the Manifesto—what if it is about this new pattern my days have fallen into, where everything circles around my tiny, gummy-grinned boy? He is frustrating and delightful and adorable and exhausting and somehow, crazily, he is enough. He is the most commonplace thing, and yet at the same time he is the most extraordinary thing I’ve ever experienced. For the past four months, my world has both shrunk and been enlarged by this new life, and I’m struggling to put the miracle of that into words. I see flashes of the person he will become and shake my head in awe of the fact that he was no more than a whispered thought just over a year ago. I watch the dimples in his knees grow more pronounced week by week and try to wrap my head around the thought that my body grew him and birthed him and is still nourishing and sustaining him.

If there is any other thing in the world like this, I don’t know it.

And that’s what I think the poet is getting at. If we could all learn the habit of this quiet, simple joy, the discontent that clamors so loudly for our attention would be silenced. If we could fill our hard, calloused hearts up with the patient and completely selfless mother-child love I’m slowly learning, the stories of hate would cease to fill the news each day. If our leaders could be content with the pain of bringing one life into the world, they wouldn’t try to play god with the lives of millions.

If the rest of the world could still itself enough to hear the little baby squeals Caleb is making right now as he’s waking up to a new day, there would be a lot less ugly and a lot more beautiful.

It’s idealistic, certainly, but no less true because of that. This is enough. There is loss, too, and I feel it already: everything about our life as a family of two is gone forever, and that's just the beginning. But the loss pales in comparison to this new thing Eric and I are creating together as we raise our child. And—I could be wrong— but I think this shift in my life’s focus from me to Caleb is some version of planting sequoias. I think that a life spent caring for my wide-eyed child is investing in a world beyond my own small millennium.

I think I'm planting sequoias. 

loss (noun)- the failure to continue to have something, like when you’re at a loss for words because loss has come seeping into your life all harsh and weeping

Two pictures.

That’s what I have in my head. Two impossibly opposite pictures that I can’t fit together no matter how hard I try. One is sharp and clear, an ideal sketched by thousands of other tiny memories and drawn together by time. The other is foggy and dim, a recent, darkened image that slides away into the edges of my mind when I try to bring it into focus.

The first is a little boy with brown eyes and a wide smile. A ready laugh. He can’t say his Rs. Sometimes he carries a plastic lightsaber.

The second—but there it goes. Slinking off again, too horrible to be real. But oh, God. It is.

I keep calling them back, trying to overlay them somehow, because I know I have to. It’s “real life” in all its ugly, all its dreadful heartbreak, and no amount of ignorance is going to change the reality of this world.

And yet.

If this is real life, then so is a phone ringing and answered from miles away: a hand stretched out and grasped tight. So are arms that open and wrap and hold. And this reality repels the other again and again like the two poles of a magnet, just like those pictures in my mind, and I know that when it is finished, it won’t be the darkness that gets the final word.