Tending to the matter - #141

Five months in.

Thursday

1:20pm

Tomorrow, we’re taking the baby “camping.” What we’re really doing is sleeping in a van, but both the dictionary and the internet of things (Wikipedia) agree that sleeping in a van is technically camping. So we’re taking the baby camping. And there are, as you might presume, a lot of things that go into taking a baby anywhere, but

2:26pm

Sorry, I had to attend to the baby whose yelling had gone from very keen on talking to one’s self to very keen on losing it.

Anyway, there are things to get ready. Namely, his diapers. We use cloth diapers, and I really enjoy them. If we’re traveling for more than three days, I think we’d pick up some easy disposables, but given the ease of the van, we’re just bringing our cloth

4:22pm

Sorry, I had to attend to the baby in the future. I had to drive to the medical center to get a doctor’s note (that they would not email me) that excuses me from jury duty because I am breastfeeding an infant. 

Anyway, the diapers are at least dry now. So we’re packing

Friday 

10:11am

Sorry, I had to attend to the baby. I don’t remember what happened mid sentence but I’m happy to report we’re on the road and everything was packed, or at least we think it was. We’re in a Walmart parking lot while Ben picks up a gas canister. Already being in a van is a type of luxury I can’t deny is easier. I’m no longer climbing from front to back amidst traffic to see what troubles him. He is no longer sloping on the backseat while I attempt to change him. It is a small house and that is a delight. 

Of course Ben has already argued several times that this “isn’t camping” and while I mostly agree with him, I need this win. I need to be able to say I went camping if only to offer salve to the self I know is still in there somewhere. 

I’m not keen to write about motherhood. It’s an intricate puzzle that billions of people have already

12:31pm

Sorry, I had to … is it attend or tend? Is it both? The baby was wailing and it was likely just because he was still in his car seat after deciding he no longer wanted to be in his car seat. But we gotta keep going, baby, or we’re not gonna get a campsite. He was fed, changed, gassed, and had his gums massaged, so the only thing left was to surprise him. 

So I licked his head and then blew on it. 

I don’t know where this came from. I didn’t learn this on TikTok or have it passed down generations. It just seemed like a very fast way to create a very novel sensation. And it worked. He’s asleep now, and I’m back up front attempting to write whenever the road straightens out. 

Unfortunately, it seems to be

1:21pm

You couldn’t call certain hills gumdrops until they invented gumdrops. 

We passed one, a gumdrop amid the bluffs and hills. It was sheltering a small farmhouse with a very big farm. The nearest grocery was maybe an hour, and it settled into the landscape like the painting of it had already been removed from a motel wall some decades 

1:36pm

Sorry, baby. 

People say we domesticated dogs, but surely they in some ways domesticated us. It means to tame, after all. The baby is five months old now, and he loves the dog. He also loves the cats, don’t get me wrong, but the dog is here right now so he’s getting the credit. This former wolf was this baby’s and old babies’ predator, and now the wolf is dropping toys into the car seat when the baby howls. He licks the salty tears and stands on either side of the baby, unsure what to do. The baby giggles. Look at my wolf. The baby and the wolf are equally softened, equally tamed. 

You would hunt him, this companion. You would hunt each

2:29pm

Sorry, this campground that was BLM, first come first serve, is now reservation only. There’s a paper sign taped to the old wooden one. I am unfazed by this because 1) I didn’t plan this trip, 2) I am an effortlessly cool person, abd 3) I am in a van.

Also the baby has been unleashed while we figure out what to do and he is very pleased by this development. He has recently learned how to blow bubbles with his mouth and boy does he spend a lot of time practicing this new skill. Everyone and everything gets to see the 

4:12pm

The spot we found in Witches Canyon is picturesque. But there are

8:37pm

I tended to the baby. The campsite was so beautiful and the evening was so sweet but Woods cried. He cried a new cry. It wasn’t his cry for hunger, and it wasn’t his cry for pain. It wasn’t the cry for gas or teething or overtired. It sounded sad. He looked sad. He whimpered and buried his face and pouted his lips and we thought, I don’t know, is he sad? Does he miss home?

And so I crawled onto the van bed with him and took out a few of his toys. I played his favorite songs from Genesis and Spin Doctors. I read his favorite book and there, there was his smile again. It was time for the night diaper and the night change and I bundled him up and nursed him to sleep while I sang a song I wrote for him and by the time he was asleep it was now and dinner had been made and rocks had been climbed and a fire had been built and I could hear the laughter of Ben’s cousins and I was in bed with the baby and the dog.

I could sit up long enough to eat the plate Ben brought me, and I ate it in the red light to not disturb the baby. All food looks the same in red light. Mounds and gumdrops. But each bite tasted rich and different, of garlic and cumin, of pork and tomato. I pulled bits of the pork off for Jib, who’d been so frightened and overwhelmed by the climbing and the laughing that he cowered in the van.

I had a good bit of chocolate and I read my book with my dog in my lap until I could hear the signature sound of the baby waking up: his little arms flapping against the bed, reaching out to where he expected, hoped, I would be.

I tended to the baby.

9:14pm

I walked under the Milky Way following and followed by Jibs’s red light to the fire. I smelled the magnolias Jess strung alongside it. I held my dog in my arms in the sharp night air until I felt the tug.

I clambered back into the van over the turned around front seat, dog in my arms. I changed into my sweats and with one leg in and one leg to go, the baby flapped his arms, his signature call.

The tug had been right.

And so I tended to the baby.

Saturday

8:53am

We walked along the dirt path in my slippers. They’re made for that. That’s the kind of slippers you have when you live where we do. The baby was strapped to me in his bunting, zipped into my puffy. The baby woke up laughing, blowing his bubbles, and through them you could see a line of white.

His first tooth had broken through.

Sunday

7:37am

I’m atop the rocks, high above our campsite to catch reception. There’s a newsletter due in some 20 minutes. I can hear cows somewhere but I certainly can’t see them. Open range down in Pénitente Canyon. Ben and Jibs and the baby are all still in bed, our little campsite hidden from a not yet risen sun for another hour. 

Yesterday we hiked and climbed all day. We clambered and jumped and swung. We made meals over the fire and split blocks of cheese under the canyon walls. We got a bit lost and then quite found and we didn’t return to the campsite until dinner time. 

And everyone tended to the baby, smiling ear to ear with his singular chess piece on the day he turned 5 months.