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I took this before we went in to the RV show at the Minnneaplis Convention Center. Ess is holding what she calls ‘mama’: a hot pink Under Armour shirt of Mykala’s that Ess, out of the blue, began to use as a security blanket of sorts. In fact, she’s holding it as she sleeps right now. Anyway, we needed a way for Ess to be able to hold the blanket as we strolled around; Mykala thought to tuck it into the straps.

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I’ve had this file, 20111229_fa_02.mp3 sitting on my desktop for a while. It’s Terry Gross’s final interview with Maurice Sendak, on the occasion of the publication of his book, Bumble-Ardy. I knew that, in 2011, it made me think when I heard it, but I had forgotten what it was: a creative human, successful in his time, looking back with his hand lightly brushing old scars and lamenting the accretion of new cuts as he watches, unable to affect the marching-on of time:

…the fragility of life, the irrationality of life, the COMEDY of life. My tears flow because two great, great friends died close together, a husband and a wife, who meant everything to me and I am having to deal with that. And it is very, very hard.

And on art and seeing:

There’s something I’m finding out as I’m aging: that I am in love with the world. And I look right now, as we speak together, out my window in my studio: I see my trees, my beautiful, beautiful maples that are hundreds of years old. They’re there, they’re beautiful. And, you see, I can see how beautiful they are, I can take time to see how beautiful they are. It is a blessing to get old, it is a blessing to find the time to do the things to read the books to listen to the music.

And:

I have nothing but praise now, really, for my life. I mean, I’m not unhappy. I cry a lot because I miss people. I cry a lot because they die and I can’t stop them. They leave me, and I love them more. And I’m in a very soft mood, as you can gather, because new people have died, and they were not that old.
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Oh, god, there are so many beautiful things in the world which I will have to leave when I die. But, I’m ready, I’m ready, I’m ready.

You really should listen to this, because the tone and inflection deliver at least as much as the words when Sendak speaks. There’s a difference between talking of the past, on his troubles with his parents, and talking of the present, on losing those he loves.

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“Dada, hi!” and then a pause. “Dada… hi.” Essie had just turned to see what I was doing at the edge of the bedroom, and while she has been uttering expressive morphemes in response to me and my actions for a while, her greeting marked one of her first definite sentences at me. The thrill! Burbles and gurgles of infancy have so quickly become expressions of thought and opinion and frustration and love.

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“No!” Essie said with an upward lilt in her inflection, meaning she was saying her word for snow, that she saw it falling and wanted to tell me the huge flakes were settling on her face, transforming into tiny little water droplets as the warmth of her skin transformed them.

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When Mykala was just three months pregnant with Ess, one of the challenges I anticipated was a sick kid at home. How difficult it must be to watch your little one run down by aches, a runny nose, a tight cough and tired lungs. It has been about two years since that thought, and through a combination of luck and hand sanitizer, our family has threaded the contagion needle through birthday parties, sick relatives, and an entire cold and flu season. Then there was last week. Ess was down, down, down. The primary prodrome was her tendency to sit on our laps for extended periods, paging through a book, resting her head on our encircling arms. Kid must be fighting something, we guessed.

But the thing I hadn’t considered was when you have a sick kid, you’re pretty likely to be sick yourself. And so we were. All of last Monday, Mykala could not even move she was so nauseous. Eating or drinking were suspended indefinitely. And that night, Ess was up about every two hours, feeling awful. After Mykala went to bed I began tablespoons of water, separated by decreasing intervals, trying to get some liquid in her and keep it there. Feeling just a little achy and a little coughy myself, I thought I had dodged the sickening. My immunological hubris was quickly corrected during the the next few days, which I zombied through, performing my work and father duties while looking through the dirty fogged lens of illness. Each phase of it rolled in and lingered since there is no true down day of recovery when you have a toddler. Through this my mom helped us every time she could: taking Essie so Mykala could nap and convalesce, watching Ess while I fought cabin fever with some exercise, supporting us at each stage. How helpful it is to have one healthy person with whom to share duties!

Slowly, slowly we have been recuperating. Essie recently had her first normal-kid morning again and only then did Mykala and I realize how stressful it had been to watch her hurting and coughing and fitfully sleeping. Delivered from the illness crucible, we found joy in little daily activities: feeding Ess in her high chair, chasing her around the house, coloring, cooking, grocery shopping, reading. As the quote goes, having a child is “[deciding] forever to have your heart go walking around outside your body.”

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If Essie doesn’t know or can’t say the word for something, it is always always ‘dahVEE’. “Can you say ‘refrigerator’?” we ask. Then, with utter confidence comes the response: dahVEE. “What’s that?” we query, pointing to something new. It’s a dahVEE. Obviously.

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