We're settling into new rhythms around here. Forming new patterns that, like a broken twill, seem disjointed up close but resolve into recognition from a distance.
Life has a new center.
Home has a new meaning.
Sleepless nights wash away resistance. Diapers, nursing, sleep, and incandescent smiles unearth the blueprint of a family. It is everything I reached for and everything I never could have dreamed.
It is blissful and sometimes at 3 am I cry with the frustration of a wakeful baby who needs nothing more than to hear my heartbeat under her ear as we rock back and forth. Back and forth.
Friday was the new moon, the dark moon, the pause before the journey back to full; a time for releasing the past, a time for planting seeds of the future. "Every new beginning comes from some other beginning's end," the song croons.
On Friday I pulled out the 6 month size clothing in which to dress my 6 week old daughter. On Friday our dog died.
Thursday night, truly Friday morning very early, we gave him his third dose of IV fluids in a week. All week he wouldn't eat, would barely drink.
I nursed him with special spoon-fed meals between nursing my daughter. On Thursday he was brighter, he ran around the yard, he licked Avery's head. The vet had said it was a bad sign if he started vomiting again. Thursday night he was vomiting, and stumble footed.
Crazel Hazel boy.
He's gone to the land of endless trails, infinite feather beds, and boundless treats.
His passing has unsettled this tender new nucleus of a family. Our hearts are tender, the cats are on edge, our other - now once again sole - husky is missing him. We all need extra hugs, extra pets, intentional inclusion in each other's habits.
And Avery? Avery is my metronome. Arms to hold, heartbeat to hear, milk and nursing. Her needs are simple and constant. Their disjointed patterning and my disrupted sleep resolve themselves, through the distance of mourning, through the distance of recalibration, as a healing rhythm.
She draws the household in around her, creates it home.
She limns the blueprint of family, drawing us each - just as we are - within it.
Life has a new center and we all are living in its messy beautiful heart.
