Though I'm often surprised to realize it was that long ago, ten years ago this fall I was getting a room ready for a baby. I chose art that was a bit unusual for a nursery. Rather than go for babyish things, I wanted a room that could grow up with the baby. I started by framing some photos I'd bought from an artist at a craft fair, probably in Nashville, though I can't be sure. I do recall that I'd had the pictures long before my baby was expected and when I knew that I was pregnant, I planned the room around them. One of the pictures is of a small red chair at a table.
The other is of a blue-spotted bowl.
For the better part of the pregnancy, the gender of my babine was unknown. But in late November an ultrasound revealed all. Soon after, I bought and framed a poster illustrated by the same artist who drew the covers for the Harry Potter books sold in the United States. The poster, a picture of a boy astride his bike, riding through the sky with a backpack filled with books on his back, was just what I imagined when I thought of my boy. I spent a lot of that pregnancy idly wondering what kind of person my baby would be. But about one thing, I was confident: I would teach him to love stories.
When I brought home my barely 8 pound baby and showed him the pictures in his room I could hardly imagine that I would some day have such a big boy. But the evidence suggests that's exactly what I've got these days. The poster and the pictures still hang in the room where JT sleeps. It's not a nursery anymore, of course. The blue walls and the wide, white-trimmed windows are the room of a busy, imaginative boy.
At night, just before I go to bed, I check on the boy sleeping in this room. Most nights, I can see a shadow of the baby he once was in the soft curve of his cheek. And big boy that he is, he'll always be my baby.
1 comment:
I have a great photo of JT at Dade's b-day party. He was ankle deep in my in-law's sandbox and probably brought quite a bit of sand home in his pockets. :)
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