The 100th Day

Anna's 100th day dawns.

At the playground watching the big kids with dad

Pony wrangling in Brooklyn

In the big girl seat

Not sleepy yet!

stripes

Maybe she likes them because each line is distinct, one from the next, and that's comforting when one is new to a world so fraught with ambiguity. Maybe she likes the multitude, the crowd of them together, packed like sardines. She was packed like a sardine not too long ago. Maybe they're like harmonic frequencies, and when she looks at them there's a resonance. Who doesn't like parallels - stands of trees, comb teeth, zebras, a marathon's thousands of bouncing upright parallel persons. They seem to delight her and set her at ease: all of the cast-iron gates of Brooklyn, and the venetian blind store on the corner that's never open where the lady with the loud voice hangs out with her plump yellow dog - now that's a window to gaze into.

some of what she likes

She likes to hold onto the strings of my hoodie. She likes stripes and plaids. She likes to gnaw on our knuckles. The wind makes her squint but she looks out into it anyway, studious. She likes faces and ceiling fans and the upright parallels of shelved books. She gurgles conversationally at the refrigerator. She watches the thicket of bare branches against the sky as we walk. She likes crinkly plastic and polka-dots and eating. When she's eating she holds my braid like a bell rope. Awake, her hands move through the air like wrens. The light in her eyes, a precise match with the dusk outside our window.

DJ AJ, the Baby Beat Box

Like most Brooklyn parents, we hope Anna Jane grows up to be as expressive and creative as Biz Markie.

three months, one day

Anna contemplates the beginning of her fourth month. . .



and finds it good.

thumb

I sucked my left thumb until I was eight. I sucked it so often and so hard it stretched a good quarter-inch longer than the right one. I hooked one index finger over the bridge of my nose and twirled my hair into knots with the other one. I couldn’t imagine not sucking it, even when my parents taped it up, or painted it with that terrible-tasting stuff. When I was eight, the dentist told me that if I didn’t stop it, I’d have to get braces for sure. I imagined that scary silver snarl of wires in the mouth and I stopped that night. Tucked the thumb under the pillow and squeezed my eyes tight shut. That was that (though I always thought it was distinctly unfair to have to get braces anyway).

Most people say, and I agree, that the baby looks just like her papa. But genes shine through in all sorts of ways. Just look at her – not quite three months old, and already sucking that thumb like a champ.

my two

true loves