Making a Quilt

I just drank the swill from my dehydrated pad thai noodle soup lunch. I'm reading blogs, catching up on the lives of people I've never met when sadness comes down on me like a wet towel.

I miss my little boy.

I'm working three days in a row now. And, while I know T Junior's okay at day care, I'm sick with jealousy that someone else is enjoying his smile, his voice, his hugs and kisses while I'm sitting at a wood laminate desk giving all my attention to a computer screen and occasionally sneaking peeks at a two-dimensional photograph.

The picture is of all three of us, actually. It's from my birthday last September. My grin is giving me a double chin and my hair is pulled back, revealing the sapphire studs I opened from Mr. T just that morning. I am holding up my 4-month-old son, who has a Charlie Brown head and chubby flushed cheeks. A smiling Mr. T in his Fivebucks Coffee t-shirt has his arm around us. I wish I could poke my finger in the dimple in his right cheek. He hates that.

T Junior didn't get his dad's one dimple, but he did get his beautiful lips and sweet chin. The nose is a mystery, but T Junior has my eyes. My dark and squinty, hooded, down-turned, almond-esque eyes that become slivers when I smile, and that I've never grown to love. T Junior's aren't as small, but they are definitely mine. I think these eyes suit a male better. I wonder if he will like them when he starts middle school and becomes aware of such things.

But is that something boys even notice? Girls do. I was hyper aware of my eyes (still am) and my height (not anymore) when I was growing up. Why couldn't I have had baby blues? Even green or hazel would've done. Anything but my boring brown color, which is so dark that my friend's 4-year-old once pointed to my face and said, "You have black eyes." Why couldn't I have had long mascara-friendly lashes and creased lids that look great with a splash of sparkling emerald shadow?

And, as long as I'm lamenting my genes, why couldn't I have been cute and petite? There's nothing feminine about being 5'7" in the fourth grade and owning the nickname "hightower." Having the height advantage in tetherball does not make the oafish feeling worth it.

What will my son be like when he grows up? I think about this when I see a high-schooler shuffling along, his shaggy-on-purpose hair in his bumpy red face, an iPod plugged into his brain, his eyes fixed on the sidewalk. I think about this when I see a confident 18-year-old quarterback get smashed into the turf. I think about this when I see pictures of a 3-year-old neighbor on his first day of preschool.

But I can't think about it too much or that wet towel turns into a heavy, suffocating quilt.