Last week, Lily was awake during my acupuncture appointment.
Her newfound alertness was one of those developments you look forward to in theory, only to realize once you get there that it isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. Sort of like when I used to stay up half the night anticipating a trip to Disneyland only to get there and find more in the way of crowds and heat than personal audiences with Mickey Mouse.
Don’t get me wrong. I love the way Lily and I now make my already favorite chore of folding laundry into a game where I wave each item of clothing in front of her rapidly darting blue eyes on its way from basket to drawer. I cherish the puckered little smile that blooms across her face when I bluster, “B-B-B-B-B,” to her. And I’m pretty proud of how I cobbled together parts from two partially functioning mobiles to make one under which she kicks and coos in wonder.
But what you gain in moments of unexpectedly woozy love when your infant approaches two months you lose in sleep time. Hers. My own is, thank goodness, increasing. Which is a good thing because I’m reduced to a pretty complete state of exhaustion at the end of a day spent trying to cram just as much dish washing and cooking and, yes, writing into the shrinking hours during which she now naps.
This cramming includes acupuncture.
The first time I brought her with me she was sound asleep in her car seat by the end of our ten-minute drive there. The most stressful part of my appointment was worrying that she’d awaken as I lay there full of needles, forcing me to tug at the ones sprouting from my wrists as the acupuncturist had advised me to do in just such an event.
This time, however, she proved her new prowess at staying awake by — quite amazingly in the context of our new world together — staying awake during the car ride there. And then sitting in her car seat in the waiting room gazing suspiciously about herself as she decided whether I was going to release her or she needed to complain. And, when we settled into the treatment room, finally letting me know it was most definitely not okay to leave her in the car seat stationed in front of what I took to be some lovely shadows.
Whether it was my anxiously fluttering pulse or his own worry that he wouldn’t be able to fit a proper treatment around a fussy infant, the acupuncturist was as nervously creative as I at suggesting things that might — one could always hope — placate her for long enough to make a difference. We moved the car seat around. I took her out of it. I swaddled her. I rocked her. I spread her blanket on the floor and assured her that we were in a very safe place. He offered another blanket to put under it as if to prove how safe and welcome she was.
Lily settled back cautiously. “Pretty comfy,” she seemed to say, still reserving judgment on the larger situation.
She looked around. “Decent shadows up there,” I could hear her say to herself as she gave a few experimental kicks.
“Okay?” I asked.
She kicked again and ignored me. “Okay,” was her answer.
And, true to her promise, she didn’t utter those first clicks of I-might-cry-ness until the acupuncturist started removing the needles.
“You are a generous spirit,” he told Lily graciously.
And thus defined her and my good fortune in a few short and honest words.
Continue reading ‘Traveling with Two: An Ode to My Generous Little Spirit’
