Babies are conquerors. They blaze into a home on a wave of glory and milk and lay claim to every inch of a life. For several of those early weeks after Truman came home from the hospital, he slept in a pack n play tucked behind the couch and Chester and I would take shifts sleeping beside him while the other cobbled together four or five consecutive (!) hours in our bed. Over time we moved him to a bassinet in our bedroom, his sleeping coos and grunts and whistles inches from my face. My bedside table was a mess of burp cloths, breast pads, and vaseline. It has been amazing, and at times disconcerting, seeing how much space this tiny person can occupy. Every room has been commandeered by him in some way, every corner dedicated to some aspect of babyhood.
He is only six months old. He has only taken up physical room for half a year (a bit more if we count the space he used to take up below my ribs). But already the landscape he has altered is changing. After months at my bedside, we moved him to his crib, and the bassinet is no longer a shadow along the wall when I'd wake at night, listening for his breath. It's in the basement now, filled with a hodgepodge of baby gear, accoutrements we've already outgrown: too-small diapers, nipple shields, the bottles we never used, the swing he hated.
The rocking chair and foot stool that occupied the corner where I'd pump multiple times a day has also been retired. The pump tossed, having done its six months of service, and the chair moved to Truman's room. The pack n play will be swapped soon for a bigger playpen, packed away for post-Covid adventures or maybe a sibling someday.
After we moved the rocking chair this afternoon I held Truman as he surveyed the room and his face settled on the space where I used to sit with my pump. I have no clue what he thought but he notices change these days, his eyes rest more sharply on things that surprise him, things that appear in a new location, the space where a Christmas tree used to be, or a foot stool. This home is his whole world. Planet Earth is just this address, with infrequent visits to not-too-distant satellites inhabited by family. When the tree is taken down, the rocking chair replaced, the new rug unfurled, he notices. He smiles.
Covid has made my own world feel small, even suffocating sometimes. I think one of my deepest reflexes is to reach. It isn't always a conscious impulse, but I think I have always and will always be grasping something in the distance. And that has often translated into a need to leave often, a need to go elsewhere, explore. And Covid has taken that from me. So I've had to reach here, in my own space. I've had to reach for my husband, my baby, books, the sweat on my Peloton bike, the knitting needles, the pen. I'm not sure I would have ever fully appreciated this space had I not been robbed of every means of escape. And so the space feels changed to me, too. Perhaps in the same way as the relocation of a chair or the taking down of a Christmas tree. Altered, repurposed, refreshed. My whole world. And I feel my heart linger on the change, the contentment, the joy, the way I imagine Truman's mind lingers on the shadow cast by the new high chair. I smile.
