They say the first month is your babymoon. I disagree. The first month is a not entirely pleasant blur. The pain of labour and trauma of birth. Hospital. A tiny wrinkled baby that is now suddenly your constant responsibility.
The reality that you're likely to be struggling to sit up, that stitches may be all that is holding your nether regions together, especially if it's your first baby.
Home. Now what? Your partners leave is all too brief and then off they trot back to work. Hi Ho Hi Ho and all that. And there you are, all alone, at home with your newborn. Shock. A whole day may pass where you barely leave the bedroom. An endless cycle of feeds and changes and snatched sleep and meals for you. Where pyjamas become the new daywear. Before you know it a month has passed and you're no longer a complete novice. Feeding, changing and burping can all now be done in double time, and exhaustion has become a permanant state of being.
The second month you're settling in. You're even starting to own it a little. Motherhood. You've gotten the hang of unfolding your pram (hopefully) and have established a little route for your daily walk. Your battle scars are healing (hopefully). You are starting to understand your baby and experience occasional blinding glimpses of insight. Your motherly intuition is tuning up, gradually and with infinite precision, like a mighty and precious organ.
By the time the third month rolls around you're in cruise control. At least some of the time. Both you and baby have had your six week checks and with any luck are on the road to recovery. Baby is starting to hold their head up, a fact which marks a massive change in how you handle them. Their little body is filling out like bread rising; spindly legs grow chubby and strong and cheeks become rounded and rosy. Delightful rolls of baby fat appear around their thighs and their neck, and their skin takes on a powder-puff softness that demands a constant rain of kisses. Your baby is officially no longer a newborn but has become an infant.
Three months was a turning point for me. A picture swimming into focus like an old fashioned photo in a tray of developer. It was the first time Felix laughed, a tentative chuckle that seemed almost to startle him. It was also when the babbling started, a gutteral primative bubbling monologue, his tiny tongue moving around the mouth exploring the sounds. Copying my lips. Felix is no longer a tiny baby but a very small and perfectly formed little boy. His face is his own. He has lost the slightly odd squashed look of the newborn. His nose has become a perfect button and his blue eyes have widened, framed with curling blonde lashes. With his pink puffy cheeks and downy new hair he has become overwhelmingly, crushingly cute. I find myself clutching him in a hug that I never want to end. His body brings me sensual delight unlike any other I have experienced.
It is not only Felix who is developing however, mummy is also on her own journey of discovery. Our bond has strengthened and deepened, like an anchor on a thick chain of iron. Even the slightest pull registers. We have become synchronised, and I can read his cries like a menu. Tired, hungry, bored. Whingy. The honest and high pitched screams of pain. I am perfectly attuned to him; like a broken radio I am stuck on a single station and I wouldn't have it any other way. I stand and watch him sleep, his cheek a mellow curve of wonder. Like every other foolish mother who has ever walked the earth I creep into the room and put my ear to his mouth just to make sure he is breathing.
At just over four months Felix is simply the most splendid creature that ever lived. I have become a devoted, doting, lovesick mother. I adore him. I caress him. I protect him. Bizarre morbid thoughts pop up like molehills on a perfect lawn. I imagine scenarios where someone wants to harm him and I plan my grotesque revenge; how I will pull them limb from limb and tug out every strand of hair before setting them alight and watching them burn. I am like a layer of ozone, every molecule of my being aches to protect and care for him. If he is restless I am too. If he doesn't want to feed I become distraught and cannot relax till he is fed and happy. Far from finding them disgusting I await his poos like precious gifts, and I praise him for them. I clean him and comfort him and sing to him. I sterilise and wipe and massage and change and carry. I spend hours staring into his sweet face, smiling and coaxing out laughter. I try and fail to let him cry for long; every sob and gasp tears into my heart like a lion bringing down its prey. His pain has become my pain and cannot disconnect myself. I cannot untune my radio. I have become utterly stuck on a single station called Felix, and I love it. As they used to say on the good old pirate radio 'don't touch that dial'. We're on our babymoon folks, do not disturb.
Something very odd happened recently. I
bought a pair of ordinary jeans. 'Medium rise'
pale blue skinnyish jeans. Having thought of myself as a low rise girl
since the 1990's I recently made the disturbing discovery that they are too low
for mummydom. They gape too much at the back and let cold winds penetrate as
you bend over. Builders crack is not a good look with a pram...too close to
original pramface for comfort.
My new jeans are perfectly pale, the
pastel soft hue of the Mediterranean at dusk.
They are made of some kind of uber soft lightly brushed denim and are
deliciously comfortable. They sit in the perfect place between my knicker line
and my bellybutton. They don't pinch. They caress my buttocks softly like a
sensitive lover. They look great with my yellow wellies, naturally.
Friends who know me well will be surprised
by this admission. I've never been a jeans and tops kind of girl, not since I
was a teenager. It pays to know your assets and I've always have a cracking
pair of pins. Never one to hide my light under a bushel I have paraded these
shamelessly. Tights in the winter and bare legs in summer. I love a dress. A
single, ultimately versatile piece of clothing.
What could be easier? I find women who claim to hate dresses odd
creatures, and I resent the assumption that if you wear a lot of dresses you
are somehow less thrusting, less serious. A dress can be the ultimate weapon;
the right dress makes everything possible. But I digress. The point is that in
the last decade I have rarely been seen in jeans, especially not sensible,
medium rise, mummy jeans. But there is absolutely no way that you can
breastfeed in a dress, unless it's some kind of maternity number. You cannot
pull your dress up to your chest and whop out a boob. It's just not the done
thing. And pulling your neckline down to feed would look equally odd. No, I
have discovered that you simply don’t want to be wearing a dress if you are
regularly breastfeeding your baby.
My many dresses droop forlornly on their hangers like flags on a windless day. They
know this is not their time. Instead I have found myself wearing the same pair
of jeans on a daily basis, chucked on with wellies and mac ready for bracing
park walks. I had to bite the bullet and admit the truth. It was time to buy a
pair of mummy jeans.
I agonised over this purchase the way
women agonise over their wedding dress. How would I find a pair that fulfilled
the demanding brief; practical yet flattering, comfortable yet stylish. What I
needed was a pair of jeans that transcended the fickle demands of fashion, that
were classic. Jeans that whispered milf, not fashion victim. That channeled
Cindy Crawford on the school run. The kind of jeans the sexy Guess girl would
wear on her day off. Not too tight, not too baggy, and definitely not too low.
I am not one for high rise jeans; those raised waistbands give me the heebie
jeebies. Thus I strode out in search of a mummy jean that would fulfill my wish
list and grant me the perfect 'jean butt' whilst giving great milf.
Feeling a little like Goldilocks I trawled
the rails of sale jeans. These too small, those too large. These too trashy,
those too frumpy. And then I saw them. A pair of pale blue jeans that looked
perfect. I read the label; size 10, medium rise, skinny jeans. Not uber tight,
just slim. I felt the cotton. Soft. I considered the colour. Yes they were
pale, and therefore possibly not the most practical shade. And yet somehow they
were. I took them to the changing room, and as the smooth denim slid silkily
onto my thighs I was suddenly transformed into Cinderella. You will go to the
ball. You will be a milf.
Everyday as I stroll down the high street
or through the park with Felix in his pram I am struck by the fact that I have
joined the formidable force that is the Chiswick Motherhood. Sometimes I feel I
am but a tiny wave in a fathomless sea of strollers,
a pawn in an army of prams.
How do I feel about joining the buggy brigade
of W4? At first I felt I had assumed an identity I was not ready for, as if I
was wearing a mask. Due to the nature of my delivery I was not able to
ride my bike for six weeks, and I ached for my more familiar wheels. If the
bike is the hare; agile, efficient and speedy, the pram is the tortoise;
cumbersome, trundling, slow. How heavy I felt the first time I stepped out
with the pram. Used as I am to the nippy nature of my
'everywhere in five minutes' bike, the pram felt like a brace; holding me back.
Ballast to my balloon. I longed to throw off the extra weight and sail off in a
blaze of glory...
Six
weeks passed and I have the all clear to ride my bike, and the first time I did
I felt as if I was flying. Such speed, such efficiency, such ease of motion!!!
And yet my daily pram walk is a firm fixture in the daily routine of motherhood
and I have grown to love it. Gradually I have adjusted to pram pace. Nevertheless, I long for the day when I
can secure Felix in his bike seat and ride off with him, the two of us united
in our need for speed. Make no mistake; this is a baby who has already
travelled a great distance 'in utero'. Being as I cycled each and every day of
my pregnancy, until the very last afternoon, I have calculated that together we
covered at least five hundred and fifty miles. Felix was the foetal eqivalent
of Bradley Wiggins, and I'm sure that when the big day arrives he will feel it
all strangely familiar, like a baby bird that flies the nest and finds that it
knows exactly how to use its wings.
My musings regarding buggies have resulted
in a strange phenomenon induced by constant close contact with a
multitude of stylish strollers.
I
have nicknamed this 'pram envy'. I push a respectable Mamas and Papas
pramette in light blue and grey, and I used to be perfectly content with it.
However when faced with a confection of
strollers in tempting ice cream shades - lemon sorbet, pistachio, raspberry
ripple - something stirs in me. A monster with gleaming green eyes rears its
head. All those shining Silvercrosses and Bugaboos with their matching livery
of bags and accessories make me feel
inadequate. Have I really started to envy other mothers buggies? Is this who I
am ?
***
Less disturbingly, the other day London experienced a
proper pea souper, a
truly foggy day when the mists barely thinned all day
long. I loved every second. I have always adored fog; its photographic
qualities, its mysterious nature, its ability to render the familiar
unfamiliar. Just like its more boisterous cousin snow, fog is transformative.
Ethereal. Transcendent. This being Felix's first fog I took the chance to have
a really long walk. We took the river path, only to find the water utterly
obfuscated by thick blue mists that swirled alluringly. A heron loomed out of
nowwhere like an apparition, while ghostly boats slid along the white wafting
water like the vessel in the Phantom of the Opera. All was muffled and
wonderful and magical.
And then a phrase popped unbidden into my
mind. Pram Face. A cruel and ugly expression from my school days, used to
describe the kind of girl who leaves school early and seems immediately to be
pregnant. Thereafter she produces a succession of raucous, squalling infants,
each seemingly more unruly than the last. The poor girl is deemed to be a Pram
Face due to the premature aging associated with having children when you are
still a child yourself, and the copious cigarettes and cheap alcopops she
consumes in order to bear her burden. So goes the theory anyway. It’s a mean
and horrid little phrase and is terribly unfashionable and unPC – rightly so –
but there it was, lodged in my mind like an annoying stone in the bottom of
your shoe that refuses to budge.
So I decided on the spur of the moment to
reclaim Pram Face, to resurrect her as an icon of motherhood. My name is Kat
Kowalewska and I am a Pram Face. All of us pushing our buggies, whether they be
box fresh and glossy or second hand and slightly down at heel, we are all Pram
Faces. For every mother has her story, every mother has the right to hold her
head high and say ‘I bear the burden of being a mother. I surf the dizzy
heights and suffer the crushing lows of motherhood. Let us unite! For who am I
to judge when is the right time to have a child, and who is the right person?
Let she who is without sin cast the first stone. Pram Face and Proud'.
Writing this latest blog has been a
real strugge. Nearly a fortnight has passed during which I have half
composed several entries but
scrapped every one. Nothing has felt right. The words have refused to
flow. A
touch of writers block perhaps?
I tried listing my daily itinerary
and scaffolding some observations of daily life on top. This merely came over
as a pathetic 'poor me' bleat, for it is impossible to convey the fullness of a
day spent in the company of your nine week old baby. It may be an impressively
repetitive list of tasks but it is the spaces between the tasks that are so
difficult to convey. The niggling cry that interrupts the morning nap and which
effectively ensures you can't get anything done. The extensive burping session
after a tricky feed that bleeds into two hours. The afternoon walk that you
left too late and which ends in you running the half mile home with a bawling
banshee in the pram.
So I have decided to come clean about how
I'm really feeling at the moment. Crushingly, brutally tired. The cumulative effect of never sleeping more than four hours at any
time is starting to take its toll. I worry that I haven’t had proper REM sleep
for weeks, and that the exhaustion is drying up my creative juices like a
drought in the desert. Until now I have powered through, refusing to surrender
to the despotic routine of the baby. The tiny tyrant who dictates the ebb and
flow of each day and night. Whose needs are so vast and so urgent, whose moods
are so unpredictable.
What have I learnt in the past ten days
that I can communicate to you, my dear reader? I have learnt that motherhood is
relentless. Overwhelming. It demands 100% and nothing less; for you cannot half
feed your baby. You cannot half comfort them or half dress them or half love
them. It is all-consuming, impenetrable, stifling, and yet wonderful, rewarding
and incomparable. It is unique and cannot be explained, cannot be taught. It
can only be learnt through cold hard experience and trial and error. You earn your
mothering stripes through graft alone, and though you can be supported no one
else can do the job for you. You alone are the mother. You are the centre of
your baby’s universe and therefore must be their sun and their moon. There is
no shortcut, no substitute, no 30 day return policy. There is simply a long and
sometimes cruel road, one with plenty of blind corners and hairpin bends that
test the mettle of even the most diligent driver. There are potholes aplenty
and never a hard shoulder to pull onto when you really need one. There are
sheer drops and excruciating hills and endless irritating bumps. And yet the
views are magnificent. Life-affirming. Unsurpassed. Only a mother sees the
whole view, and in her heart of hearts she nurses the secret truth; that she
would never exchange the journey for anything else the world can offer.
This morning as I gazed down into his cot
Felix opened his eyes and smiled.
A
real smile, not a copy cat smile. My heart swelled with a love so deep it was
fathomless, a love that could eclipse the sun.
In the last few days I have noticed a
profound psychological change materialising, a process that began with Felix's
birth and has slowly and inexorably been gathering pace in the eight weeks
since. The self centered only child is being written over with something
different, something better. I am finding a patience and selflessness that I
never thought I could posses. An urge to care for and nurture my baby and my
family that overcomes the tiredness I feel, that gives me new strength when I
am all wrung out.
A new me is emerging from the chrysalis of
the selfish child. A deeply caring, nurturing, patient and loving person whose
primary concern is the welfare of her three boys (cat included) In other words,
a mother. Until now I have at times been going through the motions, indulging
in resentment at the sabotaging of my sleep, at the trauma to my body, at the
constant tidying and sterilizing and feeding. Grimacing at the crying, the face
turned away from the bottle, the arms that rail and nails that scratch at my
chest. The hard labour of true motherhood.
During my pregnancy I worried that
I was incapable of sacrificing myself for someone else. I feared having a tiny
dependant that constantly needed me, a helpless being whose entire welfare was
my responsibility. I was terrified of it, fearing that I simply did not posses
the right qualities and the emotional resources to care for an infant. Yet this
morning, as I gazed into his deep blue eyes with their whites so pure that they appear almost blue, like the snow at the poles, I realised that the
qualities I sought were already in place. All I needed to do was let go of the
little blonde green eyed girl who made her mother walk the long way home. Who demanded a chocolate éclair after school every single day, the
best ones from the bakery. Who would sit and refuse to eat a plate of food for
hours on end. Who insisted on riding her scooter for miles until her weary legs
could push her no further and had to be carried home in her mother’s arms,
scooter and all. I had to let go of that little girl who was me, for now it was
Felix's turn to be the child. The centre of the universe had shifted and a new
equilibrium had to be found.
To my surprise I welcome it. My
metamorphosis, painful as it is at times. I wave goodbye to the little
girl knowing that truly I am not bidding her farewell, as she will always live
on inside my heart. It turns out my heart has an infinite capacity for love,
and space inside for both the child I was and the child to whom I had given
birth. As the moon pours its silver light onto the page of my notebook I shed a
tear for the closing of my childhood. The end of the era of selfishness, of
being number one. And yet I embrace the new era, of being a mother. Of being
the carer, the worrier. The shoelace tier. The dribble wiper. The one who
kisses it better. I know in my heart of hearts that it is time. I have lived my
wild times, my endless lazy days of summer, my halcyon days of happy go lucky
frippery. I have fallen in love and in lust, had my heart broken more than
once, made and lost friends, lived on different continents and discovered and
nurtured passions. I have tried and failed and studied and worked, and now I am
ready to invest myself, to pour all this experience into my treasure, my child.
It is time to share with him all these joys and passions, to awaken in him the
love for nature and the wonders of the universe. To look through his eyes at
the world afresh.
Dearest Felix. My sweet fair prince. My
fresh green acorn. I am ready to be your mother. I will not hold back. I will
surrender myself to caring for you, to nurturing you, to being your number one.
For as I look into your deep blue eyes, as you smile at me so sweetly, full of all
the innocence and goodness of childhood, I realise that the circle of life is
never-ending, a truth both beautiful and bittersweet.
When you have a baby your life is supposed
to go on hold while you struggle to mother a newborn. Sleepless nights,
non-stop feeds and endless nappy changes become de rigueur and mummy turns into
a blobby, downtrodden workhorse with giant eye bags and grotty jogging bottoms.
Always keen to challenge such
preconceptions I organised a weekend away to the seaside with two of my best
friends and Felix. Hythe in Kent
was the destination,
and I duly booked
a family room for our unorthodox menagerie at the Stade Court
Hotel on Hythe seafront.
We arrived to pouring rain. Proper cats
and dogs rain, the kind that soaks you instantly and thoroughly. No matter, we
retreated to our favourite Nutmeg Cafe where we consumed high levels of carbs
and caffeine. But first off a trip to Aldi to stock up on junk food and
decidedly moderate amounts of booze. With one pregnant and one nursing mother
in our trio it seemed clear that our vodka shot days were over, at least for
the time being. Like a true gypsy I breastfed the baby in the back of the car
whilst the others shopped, thankful for the steamy windows that partially
obscured me from view.
As the sun began to set the weather turned
and the sky lost its leaden coat. We set out along the promenade, the pram
bouncing merrily along the pebbles that the high tide had strewn upon the path.
Soft streaks of pink and rose brushed the horizon where the setting sun met the
sea. Barrel shaped waves launched themselves at the shore, creating a rhythmic
roar as they dragged stones back and forth in the undertow. Keen to give Felix
a proper lungful of sea air we manhandled the pram onto the beach and stood
looking out to sea. Jubilation washed over me in a warm wave.
The next morning dawned bright as a new
penny, and as I sat and breastfed the baby I watched the sun climb out of low
clouds into a faultless blue sky. Ever the modern girl I facebooked a photo of
the rising sun, captioning it 'Good Morning Hythe'. 759am on a Sunday
morning...how things had changed!
After breakfast and a mercifully brief
incident of being locked out of our room, me and Bells headed down to the shore
for a swim clad in wetsuits and wide shit-eating grins. As Monika pushed the
pram along the seafront we entered the November sea, feet frozen instantly,
soles blanching from the pinpricks of sharp stones. We gasped, we grimaced and
we cursed but we got in, and shrieking with adrenaline and gusto we swam
triumphantly back and forth. The sea that morning was as calm and blue as the Mediterranean, the low morning sun pouring honey-golden
light onto its calm expanse. A million points of light glimmered and glittered
in the sun-trail, and I let the buoyancy of the sea and the wetsuit combine and render me almost entirely weightless. Bobbing like a buoy I
turned my face to the sun and closed my eyes, letting the serenity of the sea
wash into me and over me. Heaven.
It was then that the real meaning of the
weekend struck me. I was still me. I was still free. I had survived the ordeal
of his birth and I was alive, more alive than ever. Far from taking away from
my life Felix had merely added another string to my bow. The sweetest and most
melodic sound I ever heard, like an angel singing a lullaby.
In order to grow a rose one must endure
the cruel prick of thorns.
So far this blog has mainly been a
celebration of motherhood, but as I promised in my first entry I aim to be
absolutely honest about all aspects of motherhood, which brings me to
the thorny issue of childbirth.
I know of women who seemed to sail through
childbirth like a ship on a calm sea, embracing the pain of labour and
recalling the final push as a painful yet beautiful experience. Hearing the
first cry of your child as it sucks air into its lungs for the first time is
surely a moving and magical experience, but one I was unable to
appreciate. To be brutally honest I found childbirth the most excruciating and
traumatic experience of my life, one I am not certain I can face again. Dark
visions of blood and pain and long hours of torment haunt me. I wake night
after night soaking in sweat, partly from hormones, partly from demon.
I went into labour on a Friday evening, initially finding the
contractions painful but bearable. Sometime during the witching hours of 3/4am
I became plagued by a terrible nausea, after which every hour or so when a
particularly strong contraction hit I would vomit copiously. As I became weaker
the pain intensified. I felt like a small boat in a terrible storm, battered by
waves that crashed over me, threatening to capsize me and drown my crew.
We were ill advised by the midwives we
spoke to on the triage hotline. 'Don't come till the contractions are closer
together' they repeated like a mantra. The truth is we should have driven to
the hospital there and then for the anti-nausea injection which would have
saved me twelve hours of torment. 'Take a couple of paracetamol' they
said. All very well but when you can't keep anything down it becomes an
exercise in futility. I vomited up many pairs of pills before my partner had
enough. 'We are going to the hospital' he announced, but by then it was four o
clock the following afternoon and I was already in a bad way, weakened and
white and whimpering.
Upon arrival the relaxed manner of the
triage staff chimed badly with how I felt. Could they not see how I suffered?
Shortly they did, for my ketones test showed severe dehydration. Hooked up to
a drip and having been given the anti nausea injection, I lay in the triage
room staring up at the strip lighting. Some codeine based painkillers blunted
the pain for a while, but all thoughts of a natural birth had been banished. I
had already suffered enough.
Some hours later my contractions had
stabilised enough to move into the delivery room. I felt relieved, it was
all happening and shortly the big guns would arrive. 'I want the epidural' I
said. The following hours are difficult to describe. Dizzy from gas and air I
lay and endured the strengthening contractions, watching the clock opposite my
bed ruthlessly clicking away the minutes. Only the bleep bleep and drip drip of
my machines, and my partner playing some soothing Paul Simon. My mother at my
side. 'Where are the anesthetists?' I asked. 'Coming'. Hours passed. My
midwives exchanged worried glances.
'Please'
I begged. 'I need this pain to go away'.
Suffice to say that the relief never came.
On the night of the September Harvest moon the hospital experienced an
incredible surge of births, of women needing emergency c sections. Both
operating theatres in full swing and no time for anyone to come to tend to me,
the small boat sailing doggedly towards my ultimate destination, though each
wave that crashed over me made the very wood of which I was built creak in
agony. As the midnight hour loomed it became clear that help was not going to
arrive. Biblical phrases ran through my head as the midwifes prepared the
delivery bed. 'Oh Lord, why hast thou forsaken me?' Fully dilated but with
waters unbroken I was in limbo. A doctor arrived and broke my waters manually;
pain and a huge gush of waters that lessened to a trickle.
The following two hours were as close to hell as I hope I shall ever come. I struggled to prepare myself for the pain I knew was coming. I gulped
the gas and air frantically but in vain. I lay on the bed with my eyes closed
trying to contain the pain and the fear of more pain. The baby was very low but
stuck. Back to back they call it. Going nowhere. Suddenly bedlam. The babies
heart rate was falling, he was in distress. Running feet. No sight only sounds
and feeling. Eyes closed, contain the pain. Do not let it break you. Stay
afloat. Somehow stay afloat. Doctors racing to my side from surgery and yanking
me into an impossible position. Knees beyond my ears. 'Push, you have to push'.
I pushed. Behind my closed eyes tears of sheer agony. Instruments inserted,
staccato instructions from doctors, a sense of terrible urgency, of fear. And
all the time the pain. Unforgettable, unendurable pain.
'We need to get him
out' a doctors voice. And then the forceps, clamping down on my unborn childs
head and a vicious feeling of pulling. Screaming now, begging, sweating.
The doctors voice piercing my hell 'You have to push, now, hard'. I hear the
word caesarian. 'Don't cut me' I beg as I keen a high note of agony. Surely my boat
cannot withstand this onslaught any longer. I am broken, lost, adrift in a sea
of red hot blood, lashed by pain,
tortured
and tormented and demented by it. And then a giant sucking wrenching as I grunt
like an animal stuck with a knife and then it's out. Suddenly I feel hollow,
like the very stuffing of me has been
removed. I hear the scream of my child and through eyes as swollen nearly closed I see him, red and bloody and kicking. Alive. They clean him and
place him on me but I feel nothing. Only the knowledge that I have made it
through the worst storm of my life and the fear that my injuries are terribly
severe. The doctor talks me through it. I hear the words 'Third degree tear.
Danger of incontinence' in a blur of panic. I cannot take it in. Is it over is
it over? My mind races and tears pour from my eyes. The flow cannot be
contained. They lay my boy on my chest and for a moment I study him. His face
is squashed and his features flattened and yet bloated looking. A huge bruise
marks his forehead from the forceps. His skull is a strange cone shape from the
vontuese. I look at him and his deep blue eyes are open but unfocused. I stare
at him like the alien that he is, a strange being landed from an unknown
planet, and I know that in time I will love him.
