My first baby. We named her Eva, but we called her Sneeva (and Diva or Bereava, as the occasion demanded), and Christian wrote a set of three jazz tunes for her called the Sneeva Suite during her first week of life. Sneeva was for her little snuffling babyhood. Diva was for her tiny legs walking at eight months, her little head bolt upright on my shoulder at one week, and her teeny fingers on the keyboard as an infant. Bereava, well, all babies cry, but I didn't understand when she was a babe the weight she would carry on her shoulders of worry, anxiety and a certain kind of understanding way beyond her years. So maybe that's what it means. Or maybe it was just the hour between 10 and 11 pm, every night in our cute little Richmond District railroad flat in San Francisco when she would wail, wail, wail, and then finally droop into sleep.
So now my baby is a big girl off at college in the big city. I'm awestruck by her. She is one of the most fascinating people I know, and still wise beyond her years. I love her sure touch with children, part stern and part tender, that makes them feel so safe. She's always had that, always loved babies. When Cecily was a sick newborn, Eva understood how her oxygen, oximeter, and nebulizer worked (she was 12) and was the person other then me or her father that I trusted the most with Cecily. She seemed like, if Christian and I were suddenly struck dead, she could have easily stepped in and made everything work with aplomb.
I love how attached she is to her two little nanny charges, and the concerned phone calls I got from her as she worried if they were on track developmentally.
But that's not all.
This girl can cook up a storm, write a beautiful sonnet, short story, or essay, make these amazingly detailed paper cuts and drawings, play the bass, program "almost anything," teach herself physics and calculus, breeze through symbolic logic, write a stern letter to the sexist Columbia paper, and still retain a great sense of humor and a killer smile.
Sorry to brag, folks, but I just can't help it, so I'm giving in to the urge to splurge wholeheartedly. I'm so proud of my baby, one of my favorite companions, my first born, eva snow.
5 comments:
i love a mom who sees and loves her daughter.
i LOVE the blog makeover!
your kids are remarkable, fabulous. i think of eva & ing as full on peers even though they're young'ens. watch out world.
oh! and i remember attending a calling house party (urging people to vote) and being astounded by the casual grace of one of your kids. which one? do you remember?
awww momma! I love you, too.
I ate a delicious whoopie pie from a local bakery today and thought of you.
I think you would like Cambridge, even if it is a little nerdy.
What a lovely post and so true. The subtitle to the tune "Bereava" is "Born into a house of morning. Eva was born shortly after my Dad died. He had an unused ticket to see our new baby that he never used. Mom and Emily came.
Oops, I meant "mourning" not "morning".
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