A Quiet Moment

Dear Roan,

On Saturday we had a rare and beautiful quiet moment. Quiet moments with you are pretty much nonexistent. You are either extremely physically active, very (loudly) focused on some task, or dead asleep. You really don't spend much time loafing around.

It poured rain Saturday morning, the kind of rain where you only have to step outside for half a minute, or run from your apartment to your car, and you're drenched. It was so windy that umbrellas were useless. We drove an hour out to Long Island, to go to a birthday party for Mia and Taj. We'd only been in the car for 15 minutes when the rain turned to ice, and then snow. Snow in October!

After the party, Thunder McQueen had a nice layer of snow / slush. The tops of awnings, roofs, signs, were all white with it. And it kept coming, that wintry mix. By the time we got back to Brooklyn the roads were slush and the tree branches were bowed over with the weight of two inches of snow, bent over the roads in a low lying canopy. It was like driving through a tunnel of trees. It felt magical and it took me a while to realize why I'd never experienced this: it never snows here so early, and when it does snow, the trees are all bare, without the weight of their leaves to bend them low. The next day we would be warned to stay out of parks, away from the trees, whose branches would be snapping off all over the city.

You fell asleep in the car and you woke up groggy and tired. All three of us dried off and got in bed. You laid right on top of me, draped over my belly with your head on my chest. For a long time, maybe 15 minutes, nobody moved or talked. I thought maybe you'd fallen asleep, but you were just relaxing, staring into space. It was some quality family quiet time. We cuddled and watched the snow fall in our yard. Then Fred ruined the moment with some kicking and squirming and I told you how to feel for the baby. Then you said you wanted to "wash" something, which is what you say when you want to watch TV, and you and Daddy got in a fight over whether to "wash" soccer or some dinosaur show with terrible child acting.

As I've gotten older and increasingly pregnant, I've had to recalibrate my idea of a wonderful moment. They all used to involve a lot of action and some degree of chaos. Racing down the hill with you, watching your sneakers kick up puffs of fall leaves, hearing your wild laughter, it's still a damn good moment, but running anywhere at this point, with 30 extra pounds and no clear view of my own feet is unpleasant.

15 minutes of quiet inactive togetherness? Heaven.