This Christmas was not one I could hold in my mind. Lola says Mommy look at me, take a picture with your mind and I blink, but this was not a Christmas I could hold. It slipped by me in tumbling piles of wrapping paper, laundry, sleeping bodies, my two girls in their matching pajamas I was so excited to pick out, to order, to have them wear on Christmas and then I never took a single picture. Blink.
Ever sick, her little chest out and in and out and in like a body builder, the pediatrician, the breathing treatment, the steroid I don't think she will need it but just in case, the next day, the steroid, necessary, a modern marvel. Every night is Ever's body on top of my chest, her head turned sideways, her mouth open and on one of my naked breasts, breathing with the fever's own pulse: hothothothothothothot Lola sleeps at the end of the bed horizontally, like a faithful dog. I put my feet across her abdomen. Snuggle me, Mommy, she asks at 2am, after Ever falls asleep during her breathing treatment. I was supposed to have Lola go to her own bed, but I didn't. We all fell asleep to the Kardashians. I think of my mom You let her watch that? I lie with the baby over me and the machine in my hand, holding tubes with one hand and Ever's head with the other. I'm sorry, sweetheart, I can't, I whisper to her. I love you, I tell her. I love you too, Mommy. After Ever's treatment ends I pick up Lies Chelsea Handler Told Me and my reading light blinks off and on every odd page.
Christmas Eve we eat an early, amazing dinner at my mom's. Shrimp with sauce, gluten free noodles underneath, an amazing salad, avacado chunks, champagne, freezing cold, warm wheat bread with butter, and pie. At home we pile on the bed and watch Miracle on 24th Street. I cry. Dakota falls asleep in his room, Ian is at his moms. Mr. Curry and I stay up late wrapping and walking Ever. She breaths in raggedy humps. Momma, she says in her sleep. She loses her voice and tries to cry for me.
After all the presents were open, after Mr. Curry and I watched Rise of The Planet of The Apes, Lola and I carefully wrap up each ornament off the tree. We've been to our new place three times, we love it more each time. This is sad, Mommy, she says. I know, I say, but it's exciting too. I am so tired now that everyone speaks from a different level. I am 5D. You are 3D. I am asleep. You are awake. I am too tired to even feel guilty that I have spent Christmas week in a daze. At least we saw the lights, got hot chocolate, decorated, had a tree, I count to myself my maternal accomplishments. We sang, we listened to Christmas music in the house and the car, we shopped, we had fun. Mr. Curry is a machine of moving: he makes boxes, he talks to his dad in the important, strident way that men do when they are organizing something, he speaks louder. I want to tell him shhhh. I want to tell him a long list of things he is doing that are annoying me. I am very, very tired. Mr. Curry wakes at 5am to go to work, and sleeps alone in a child's bed because one of us has to get some sleep and he is the one. I hate him for this. I would also kill him if he tried to take my baby from me at night. He can't win. I am very, very tired.
Tomorrow I go back to work.
Friday, we move.
