Seven

Today is Aidan's 7th birthday and I am over the top sentimental about it. I have been trying to remember myself a few days before she was born, the way I waddled when I was over nine months pregnant, August heat, my parents eating Chinese food with Tad downstairs in the yellow dining room of the new house while I labored upstairs, Oh Brother Where Art Thou on the t.v. for distraction. I have been trying to remember her birth, her face, her cries. I have been trying to remember the person I was before my children were born--the teacher who could not stop talking about teaching, the book freak, a more patient, gentler, kinder me--so I imagine.

Our memories of things often fail us, or help us, depending. We remember what we want to--and this is the best way, sometimes. A bit of sadness wrapped up in sweet fondness makes for nostalgia, the kind that sits on our throats like a cat.

Of course I am very much in love with and proud of my baby girl. So much has happened in seven years that I couldn't possibly write about it here. O.k, yes, I have already written about it here and it is these memories and images that swirl around me and disappear into now.