Susan Senator

20 years ago, when Nat was a baby, we lived in a terrible little place.  It was not terrible to anyone else but me.  Most people would think it was s cute little “starter home” neighborhood, filled with young families and stable older ones.  But to me it was awful.  All I could see was the ugliness of suburbia:  tiny vinyl-sided Capes and cars parked everywhere and luridly colored plastic toys covering perfect links-green lawns.

Was everything ugly to me because I was sad about my unexpectedly self-contained baby?  He wasn’t silent; he wasn’t placid; he wasn’t difficult; he wasn’t easy.  He was who he was, but he was not whom I had expected.  Something was “off” but to this day I don’t know if that was me or him.  The years stream by and wear down my memories like a river softens rocks; days stand out polished and bright but sometimes become years.  What was what?  I don’t know.  I draw on this very flawed pool of feelings and memories to explain new thoughts I have.

In the bad little neighborhood, the only thing I liked to do was take my baby on long long walks.  The neighborhood seemed endless; you could walk and turn and walk and you’d never leave it.  The little curvy streets ran into one another, forming a large web.  I liked that, because parts of the other streets had slightly prettier houses and gardens.  So I would walk there and show them to Nat.

I would talk to him the entire way.  Not as a Mommy to her Baby, but just me talking to him.  I actually wondered if this was OKAY — the first of a million moments of self-doubt around Nat.  Or should I be talking to him like, “Oh, look Natty!  A dog!  What does a dog say?  Woof, woof!”  And on and on.  But I hated doing that.  I also hated myself for hating that.  But still I just talked to him, Sue to Nat, and lived with my self-hatred.  I talked to him about whatever was on my mind.  I needed that.  Ugly houses, fixing up our house, moving away, mean neighbors, people I was mad at, people I loved.  Things I wanted to do with my life.  I’d look down at the stroller sunshade — maybe it was back, or maybe it covered him — and at his feet sticking out in front of him.  His feet stood at attention — until he inevitably dropped off to sleep.  Then they would collapse, toes inward.  I used to love seeing the difference.  Nat was just so Nat, even then, so definite in his various states.

I didn’t know it at the time, but talking like that established something between Nat and me.  This was to become one of the cornerstones of our relationship.  This sounds corny as I write it, but I feel it is true.  I have always talked to him regularly.  I have also always talked to him teacher-ly, when I have to explain things to him.  Social-storylike, to be sure he understands.  But there is this whole other dimension to our talk that is just plain talking, where I don’t stop and wonder if he gets it.  He listens, either way.

Like just now, I went into the kitchen for more coffee, while Nat sat in the windowseat watching.  “I just love my morning coffee, Nat,” I said quietly, holding the pale green mug carefully in my hand.  “I love this book I’m reading,” I also said to him.  He didn’t answer me; he knew he didn’t have to.  It was just Mom talking to him, telling him what was on her mind, in her heart, or simply right in front of them.  And he would probably just listen until he was tired of it.  And indeed, he is now gone from the windowseat, into his own thing.