This is not the biggest room in the house, there are bigger, but I chose this one because it gets the best light. Live and die by good lighting.
I painted the walls dark green because I wanted it to feel like a forest. I wanted to be able to look out at the yard through the window, the green walls fading into the outside trees and garden, like one big scene, like one big forest. It is a small room, two windows (one facing east and the other facing north) and a small closet. My furniture, antiques handed down from family, are creaky and old and need to be repaired.
The east facing window picks up the morning sun as it makes its way over the front yard, softly warming up the room.
And on an afternoon in early May, my daughter was born in the green room. She came fast, too fast to do anything other than go into my room and lay on the bed. The animal part of my brain took over, like it had some sort of sacred, hidden knowledge. It… I, knew what to do in that moment.
I greeted her into the world in that room. Just me and her. The green walls just as surprised as me. I think the first thing she probably saw was the ceiling, then maybe my husband's face as he ran into the room, shocked, and then probably my face.
I was calm in that moment, in a trance-like state. She didn’t cry when she was born, she just opened her big eyes, awake and aware.
Then we lived on that bed as permanent fixtures. The walls watched that too. I got to know every inch of the room with the baby affixed to me. I knew where I fucked up the paint job in the corner near the window with little streaks of dark green on the ceiling. I added to the list in my head of all the improvements I needed to complete
I've got to do something about that small closet, maybe built-ins?
I need to put wallpaper up.
I should fix the paint job.
I became a student to how the light moved through the room during the day - warm in the beginning and cold blue at night.
She went from the little, barely moving lump to crawling, to almost standing. We learned how we would nurse, together, on that bed. She babbled, crawled, moved around. The bed, those walls, all sites of firsts - is and was our world.
I think of the million more ways that she will grow and change, this person who will have her own world and all the things I won’t know about it. But this part, this is the part that will always be mine, this room, this will always be the part that we both know.
<3<3<3
An exquisite piece. I love how to use colors and light/dark woven into your description of your daughter coming into this world...really beautiful. This line spoke to me: "I became a student to how the light moved through the room during the day - warm in the beginning and cold blue at night. "
Just lovely