Vacancy

Nate is a first rate communicator, despite his garbled, nonsense babble.  He pratters something at me in fluent Ewok and I cock my head, puzzled, but undaunted.

"Vroom vroom?"

"Uh uh."

"I hungry?"

"NO."

"I thirsty?"

"NO THIRSTY."

I glance around the room and spy Garrett's indestructible digital camera on the mantel.  Ahhh.  "Do you want the cheese?" I ask Nate.

I've found it, I know because his response, when you understand him, is always the same.  His face spreads into a cheek-splitting smile and he raises his chubby, just-barely-still-baby arms high above his head and brings them down to his knees with a satisfying smack.  "UH HUH!" He exclaims.  "UHHUH! UHHUH! Teez."

I should really take a video of it.  Trust me, it's cute.  Not youtube cute, but watch-in-ten-years-with-tears-in-your-eyes-cute, certainly.  I have a flip camera.  I have had a flip camera for OVER A YEAR. I've never used it.  Not even once.  I know.  I know.  But it's just one thing too many, do you know what I mean?  It's one thing more to charge, to carry, to remember and I can't do it.  My brain is at capacity for poignant, yearning memories and ways of preserving them and I feel that if I add one more thing, one more media, one more task, one more burden that must be applied equally, times four, I will melt into a greasy puddle of inaction.

There must be some balance between living your life and recording it, no?

Still. Four nights ago, when he waddled, proud beyond reason, into the Snow White room at bedtime, the littlest duckling in the row behind his big brothers and sister, I wished, for a moment, for some faceless documentarian standing behind me silently recording our lives.  I wished to both live it and sit in front of the TV later, watching it over and over with tears of pride and joy and fear streaming down my cheeks.

The nursery at Chez Any is vacant.  I have never endured this move without the pressure of a taunt, overstretched belly nudging us along.  Nearly toddler out. Newborn baby in.  This has, in the past, been a moment of beginning, a focus on nesting and cleaning and preparation.

I stood on the blue and green rope rug later that night, as my children slept in an adorable row, one, two, three, four, someone shut the bedroom door, across the hall and felt that odd, expectant, watchfulness of an empty room.  The gorgeous crib mattressless, the beautiful art, hand-painted for my children, suddenly forlorn.  I tried it out, the sadness. It was there, but it was soft and fuzzy and through the mist, I could see the ghost of a little writing desk in the corner.  The sweet, pinstriped-green nursery curtains fell away so that the bright sunlight could stream in.  The pretty built-ins held my files, not outgrown, mismatched socks.  Behind me, where I sensed the presence of the little-used rocking chair, my very own bookcase.

An empty room.  Imagine, it's still a beginning.