3 weeks

Ah, my son, it is three weeks now since you were thrust outside this body.

I think you have a curious nature for you extend your periods of watching daily. You watch without anticipation, fear, suspicion. What comes, comes. What goes, goes. This, I suppose, is what is called innocence.

It is different, here, to have a son. I have a son of my lands and now you, a son of this flesh. He is fiercer than you, more of me and less of these other mothers, and the heart of his father which seizes upon things deeply. You are more at ease as long as your belly is not empty. You like to sleep where he has always fought it, waking with abrupt cries. You wake slowly, stretching and making these faces, and you do not like to be rushed.

It is odd for there, there is always time. Here, it flows and you take up much of it, to eat, to be soothed, to be gazed upon. Yet you are the calmer of the two. I am glad to have learned comfort for you require much of it, not in wails and cries but in the way you startle or look pained if you do not receive it. You do not like abrupt change and need to have the ways smoothed for you. It requires long days and much attention.

You have the look of your sister. It strikes me in the night and then I check that you breathe. You are good at this breathing. May it continue.

I notice that your hair has grown and the plates of your head seem more knitted together, except for these fontanels. Your fingers are long, and your palms squat: hands for the doing of things. I flatter myself perhaps you will play the piano, and well. You like music, I think, for it lulls you to sleep in the night and rouses you to wider eyes in the morning. But perhaps it is the passing fancy of childhood.

We will see, for I will be here. It surprises me a little, that you join the brother you will likely scarcely know in my heart. One of many revelations to come, I think.

ML