The morning after

Waking up the morning after a colicky night - and yes, it's official, the Boychen is colicky - I have to scrape away the night before like a clean-up crew shovelling away the sludge that stays behind and fouls the house after a flood. Close my eyes. Breathe. Scrape. I walk Boychen to the hospital for his hip ultrasound and the cold morning air and fine drizzle help clear my mind. Breathe. Get the alpine air into my lungs. Let go of the night before.

In the waiting room Boychen is awake and content, pulling the entire room into his blue eyes. I murmur to him, play with his soft hair as long as a one year old's and as pretty as a girl's. The night before is gone now, left behind on the side of the road, and it's just the Boychen and me and I can see through the colic, past the colic, to the soft place that is my Boychen.

Getting ready for the ultrasound Boychen charms the nurse, holding her hostage with his eyes, his funny crooked little mouth - oh God I am dying for my first kiss from that crooked little mouth! - and his ernest expression. Waiting for the technician he is patient, staring around, waving his arms, accepting my kisses as his due. During the ultrasound he is skeptical, then suspicious, then alarmed and finally cries during the imaging of his left hip.

Then it is over. I quickly dress him - as quickly as one can dress a distressed seven-week old - and comfort-nurse him in the waiting room. I watch his eyes for the moment they flutter, roll back into his head milk-drunk, and then bundle him back into the snowsuit, the hat, the blanket, the stroller bag, and walk home again by a different tangle of streets than the ones that took me here. One tiny step of intention today, walking a new way, choosing a street rather than letting my feet mindlessly follow the same old path like migrating herds. At home Boychen sleeps in the stroller and I write by the dull grey daylight with a Mandelgipfeli - a croissant filled with sticky sweet almost paste - and a cup of coffee at my elbow.

It will pass it will pass it will pass. Every morning scrape away the night before and find my way back to the Boychen, the sticky sweet center of my Mandelgipfeli days.