Tuesdays With Peaches
My weekly daycare stint has in many ways already had the effect I hoped for. I wanted to feel a part of her life; I wanted to get to know her one-on-one; I wanted to get comfortable with her, and know I could take care of her all on my own. As iDaddy pointed out, the benefits really came into play a week or so ago, when Peaches got sick with bronchiolitis and couldn’t go to daycare, and Nutmeg was alone with her while Southpaw was off on a reporting trip halfway around the world. So I did my regular Tuesday, and then I turned around and did a Wednesday, too. And it was no big deal for some of the babysitting to involve taking her temperature, and just sitting around holding her — the moments of mothering I still remember with some of my greatest joy.
Yesterday I did a Tuesday stint, too, but it was different this time. A few days earlier, Nutmeg and Southpaw moved into a new house. It’s a bit further from us on the subway and even by car, but it’s a lovely house — at least it will be. At the moment it’s something of a construction zone, the workers having failed to finish things up as quickly as they were supposed to and Nutmeg and Southpaw just figuring they would get the bedrooms finished adequately enough to move their stuff in and camp out there while the downstairs gets finished. Who knows how long it will really take to finish the downstairs. From the look of it, it will still take many more months.
They’re such an easygoing couple, and such easygoing parents, that Nutmeg and Southpaw are just going with the flow on this one. But it was harder to spend time with Peaches in the cramped, boxes-strewn bedrooms upstairs than it had been to hang out with her in their apartment. The move required a new daycare center, too — that’s where I picked up the baby yesterday — and the arrangement is a little different, so it might not make sense anymore for me to have her on Tuesdays. Though maybe I can have her on Tuesday afternoons and evenings, at least at some point in the future. When Peaches got home last night, eager to play with her baby, nurse her, and put her to bed, she didn’t really want to talk about the future in that way. I know enough to give her space when she asks for it. I collected my books and my coat and walked the new route to the new subway station for the one-hour ride home.
