A Walk Through Our House

A happy chaos.

In the kitchen, a bottle drying rack, on which is drying a manual breast pump and extra bottles.  Gifts of cakes and cookies on the counter, breastmilk storage bags strewn across the oven.  Dishes done and put away in the wrong places, by Nana, but we find them. A freezer full of dinners.  Magazines and newspapers piled on the kitchen table, and a handful of half empty glasses.  In the front room, a bouncy seat, empty but left on vibrate, with three receiving blankets draped on it.  Two breastfeeding books, with markers in them.  A camera, on the coffee table, at the ready.

Down the hall . . . the office, where Mom and baby spend their nights, filled with burp rags, blankets, pillows, and Mom’s special donut pillow that she needs for sitting.  A box of breast pads, a bulb for cleaning out baby’s nose, and three half-drunk glasses of water.  A cradle along the wall, with a baby swaddle hanging from the end.  A white noisemaker underneath the cradle, the plug cord coiled on the floor.  Three pairs of warm socks for Mom, a pair of red slippers, the tv remote, stacks of library books.  A bottle of Motrin by the computer, a nature documentary in the DVD player.  A clock on the wall that ticks, ticks, ticks by the dark night hours, brings in the dawn, every day, together.

In the baby’s room, which smells of diaper wipes and soap: neatly folded clothes, stacked on the guest bed, most of them newborn sized, and a pile of cleaned burp rags and receiving blankets waiting to be folded by Nana.  A carseat in the crib, left there after a trip out when the baby fell asleep, and all around it dozens of stuffed animals, most of them tigers.  Hanging on the door next to the changing table, a diaper stacker, half-depleted already in six days.  The dirty diaper pail, newly emptied, and filled up with old dryer sheets, for faux freshness.  Then through the door, and out into the master bedroom: sections of newspaper, a stack of breast pads, and a bottle of expensive bourbon with an inch missing from the top, jumbled on the desk.  A rumpled mound of women’s clothes in the corner.  Three hospital bracelets next to the jewelry box, two big, one little.