Letters to Dannica: Back to Work (Month 4)

 Dear Dannica,

As the leaves shed during autumn and the days give way to the rain and chill of winter, it becomes an emotionally tough time for me. During Thanksgiving week in November, halfway through your fourth month, Mommy kisses you goodbye every weekday morning to return to work. It’s discombobulating to mentally shift gears from becoming an expert at translating your cries to your needs, entertaining you, and nursing you at any leisure time, to being re-immersed into the world of work, in a big building filled with other people speaking a litany of different languages, dragging along my pump and parts and carving out time in the day to make milk for you.

Pumping in the sparse New Mother's Room at work

My days are no longer punctuated with your cries; I have the liberty to go to the bathroom without watching you flail your limbs and call for me from the bed; I could eat with both hands and not have to wolf down a meal and a drink for enough energy to tend to you. And yet I miss the smell of your Johnson & Johnson shampoo, how you’d look up and smile your gummy smile at me, the feel of your weighty body in my arms, the softness of your hair that I’d stroke so often. 

Last picture of our time together before first day back at work

My heartache at being apart from you is mitigated by Daddy’s paternity leave; I know he is taking good care of his little girl and often sends me pictures to ease my longing. He even brings you by on Wednesdays when we could enjoy a meal out together near Mommy’s workplace.

With Daddy at home

Lunch date with Mommy at Fugetsu

 Daddy drives you to visit Grandma and Great-Grandma so they could see you more often.

With Great-Grandma, who always loves to hold you

This month, your giggles are getting more pronounced, and you know when we are trying to make you laugh. You start splashing quite a bit in your bath tub. We enjoy Thanksgiving feasts together with Noi’s and Ngoai’s side of the family. 

Feast at Noi's house

Chilling with Ngoai

 You are becoming interested in toys, which Luc insists are all his and that he is lending them to you.  

We attended your cousin’s birthday party.

We went to BYTON Night at Mommy’s company, where you and Luc learned about how electric vehicles are made. 

We also went to the German Holiday Market, where you mainly slept on Daddy and Luc had a better time looking around. 

You are very observant of us when we eat and would mimic our chewing. I gave you a first taste of avocado with breast milk. You are not too keen on solid foods yet, but next month we will introduce you to more.

First solids: avocado mashed with breast milk

As Christmas approaches, we ready our tree, the first time we got a Noble Fir, veering from our usual Douglas Fir in honor of the special year you’ve joined us. 

Mommy bought a ticket to the Vasona Park lights show, where the entire park is decked out with holiday lights and we could drive through it in the warmth and comfort of our Subaru. 

 

To get there, we drove through the city of Los Gatos where we buried your sister Thi. I thought about the last time we visited Thi, back when the days were long and summer stretched before us, before you were even born. It’s been too long since I came to her last. She is air and clouds and sky, while you are flesh and blood and bones, a weighty realness within arms’ reach of me. I reminded Luc of the last visit when we got her flowers for her grave. He babbled on about flowers for a while as I said a mental hello to the baby girl whom I love and miss so much, especially every winter. I slipped my fingers in your tightly closed fists, watching you tucked under a fluffy pink blanket and sleeping comfortably. I held you just a little tighter that night as the cold winter air slipped through the car’s open windows and across our skin, and the park enrobed us in a surreal medley of colorful lights and holiday songs.

Soon, dear Dannica. Soon it will be Christmas Day.