Thursday, February 18, 2010

These are my mornings




I wake each morning sandwiched between two little souls, their mouths puckered and gulping periodically throughout the night. I pull each one to the contour of my body and take the greatest pleasure in rubbing the lines on the perfect casing for their little hearts and veins and brains and breath. In the night if one cries and the other is just fed I whisper to Youssef , “quick pull that one over, hand me this one, shh, quite, is she moved yet, hurry before the other one wakes”. We are in it together and it feels like we are robbing a parent or something like that and have to hurry quick before someone turns around or comes in a room we shouldn’t be in.
When Youssef rises for the day, he takes one with him, whichever one I just finished feeding and he changes her diaper and I hear all kinds of going and gahhing and laughing and “oh my god Carrie you have to see what she is doing” coming from the bathroom. Then he will bring the one back and take the other or if he is ahead of the clock that morning he will put the dry one in a stroller and take the other one and then take them both out of the room. This morning he left me with both, but brought coffee to make it better.

I finally crawled my way out of the mountain of blankets and pillows on our bed and found my way to my slippers, half disappeared under the edge of the bed. My legs stiff and muscles sore from yesterday’s return to working out. I stretch and slowly make my way to the kitchen to make him breakfast. I relish in doing so, to be able to do something so little but so important for him.
Because he does so very much for me.

So many dinners and lunches. So much paper work and taking care of business, his whole life seems dedicated to working for us. So I love making him his breakfast in the morning. My favorite part of doing it is when I fold the aluminum foil over the breakfast sandwich and fold two little paper napkins onto each other and put the whole thing into a nice plastic sack that we have saved from the previous evening’s baguette. I set the precious goods on the table and he finds it and takes it with him.

Each morning as I am folding the napkins, I think about two things: One- I should really write him a little love letter on one of these napkins. And Two: I wonder if he notices the extra touch of my napkin fold, I wonder if he knows it means I love you and I think you deserve a folded napkin each morning with your egg sandwich.
After that there is usually laughter and conversation and sometimes I follow him around as he is getting ready, sometimes I am already back in bed with the brats sucking away at me again, Sometimes I say good bye a the door and then over come with emotion swing the door open and yell after to him to be careful on his motor bike, to come back safe to me, to please protect our happiness. Protect himself.

3 comments:

Unknown said...

I could see it all happening as I read, and a little tear came to my eye when you said goodbye at the door in the morning.

Nona LaRue said...

oh my god! tears!! its so sweet! domestic bliss HAS to be the most touching thing around!

"I love you and I think you deserve a folded napkin each morning with your egg sandwich."

Anonymous said...

So sweet carrie. I am so glad you are happy & appricate it like you do.