twenty days old

Dear Miriam,

You are sleeping right now, your head turned to the right, your hair a soft, standing-on-end dark halo about your head. Every so often you twitch your feet in their pink footie pajamas. You stretch and murmur, lick your lips. Your hands are hidden in your sleeves, pink ruffled sleeves with bows.

You are twenty days old.

Twenty days ago you burst into this world with all the gusto of a formed human being, astonishingly present. You arrived with an appetite, with a voice, with an avidity for the world that shocked me. Once you opened your eyes to the world, you sought to keep them open--wide. You resisted sleep, after birth, for more than twelve hours, taking in all the hours of daylight left in that first day, gazing up and out until you finally succumbed to sleep.

This is still your way in the world, nearly three weeks later. You are not a sleeper. You are a watcher.

Welcome. I already see that I have much to learn from you.