Fugue # 43

The experience of raising a second child wasn’t any less meaningful (he writes, I read), it was just less immediate - and more immediate.

There was a sense of scale, of time - of the scale of time - and a certain enjoyment in letting go that sweetened the bitter background sadness, and sometimes slowed the inevitable anxious rush of knowing that this time was probably the last, and there was no way you could be perfect.

I will remember this time - the time when you were learning to talk - fondly. You were learning to talk as your brother was learning to read.

It always seemed like I was defined and described in relation to him. And that’s ok. The familial landscape changed when I arrived, but they still had to raise him first. And the growing they had done with him couldn’t be undone by me. They could no more lose him - and unlearn the lessons of parenting a first-born child - than they could lose themselves.

But I had the benefits of experienced parents, and a friend on the day I was born. If I got less attention, well, I enjoyed my moments: Dad reading me books after work, Mom giving me morning baths in the kitchen sink on school days.