Summer Killian read this piece on Saturday, April 27, 2019, as part of the Tompkins County Public Library Readathon fundraising event.
See this photo of me in the kitchen with Teo. It is our first night home from the hospital, the third night of his life. I don’t know what I am warming up in the microwave, can’t remember what I ended up eating. In my face, see the softness, but the new edge, too. This is the face of somebody’s mama. See the pride: I grew him. I pushed him out. See the way he belongs. See the way the wrap I’m using to carry him is tied all wrong, though I practiced and practiced with a stuffed bunny while still pregnant. See how I don’t know it. See how I look like I know what I’m doing. See the way you just can’t know what’s to come. See me standing in the kitchen on Albany Street, believing I can fathom what it means to really love somebody.
