The glider is still

R and I have a simple bedtime routine with Small Boy. It doesn’t take very long, and R does most of it – he washes Small Boy’s hands, face and feet; cleans his teeth; does the final diaper change; and puts Small Boy in his pj’s. There is usually, but not always, a pull-cord music box playing and R plays with Small Boy as he gets him ready. From the next room I always hear Boy Giggles and when they reach their peak I know that R is smelling Small Boy’s feet and making faces and saying peeeee-eeeeeew! Only at the very end, when Small Boy is all ready to go to sleep, do I come in. I take Small Boy, sit in the glider in the corner, and nurse him before I put him to bed.

I always knew I wanted a rocking chair. Before I got pregnant I always imagined myself rocking the baby in some old handmade Shaker rocking chair. After the infertility diagnosis it was the one concrete image I allowed myself to hold on to, that I would one day sit in a rocking chair in a darkened corner of a quiet room rocking a baby. In the event, I did get pregnant and we bought a glider, rather than a rocking chair, which to my mind is the same thing and I don’t have to worry about pinching the cat’s tail. My glider is nothing fancy, no handmade one-of-a-kind chair, but if you put it in a row of identical gliders I would find it. The frame is blond pine, and the arms have been burnished warm by my resting forearms. It is upholstered in a speckled blue, the blue of approaching dusk, of certain deep lakes, of Small Boy eyes; it has a matching footstool, and Small Boy and I have spent countless hours in it.

In the beginning I only nursed him in the glider. Even in the middle of the night, for reasons that made sense at the time but now seem like the decisions of the sleep deprived, I would take him to that glider and nurse him, even though he slept in a bassinet one inch from my side of the bed. Small Boy’s room back in Small Village was at the back of the house and it was always perfectly still, and we would sit in the glider and nurse and I would stroke his hair and his ear and his fingers. For perhaps two months, day and night, I nursed him in that glider in his room that he didn’t use yet. R had painted the walls sky blue with fluffy white clouds; along one wall, arching over the crib, a rainbow bloomed from one corner to the other. The ceiling was a rich dark blue, the blue of night, of crushed velvet, of Van Gogh, and scattered with plastic glow-in-the-dark stars forming the constellations – Orion, the Big Dipper, Cassiopia. I would sit in the quiet room with Small Boy in my arms, rocking, listening to the stillness and nursing my son. At some point I started to nurse him in bed overnight, and at some point – certainly by the Giro d’Italia in May – I started nursing him on the couch, but that glider has always been our special chair; Small Boy won’t sit in it with R.

In that glider, Small Boy and I end the goodnight routine. When he is ready to go to sleep I come into the room; Small Boy is in R’s arms and he leans towards me, holding out his arms. I take him and we go to the glider where he nurses briefly before I put him in his crib. Recently, however, he hasn’t wanted to nurse. He points to the glider and we go sit, but then he pulls my shirt down as if to say, put that thing away! After sitting there a minute or two he points to his crib, and I put him to bed.

Wednesday night, when I took him from R, Small Boy pointed directly to his crib. I made for the glider anyway, but he protested and pointed again to his crib, so I put him to bed. It happened again last night. I put him straight to bed with a glance over at the glider in the corner, still, waiting faithfully to be set into motion.

My boy doesn’t want to nurse before bedtime anymore. My boy doesn’t want to rock in the glider anymore. He is outgrowing these things of his babyhood.

My glider is still.

Waiting.