Dictionary: lu-lu (loo loo) any remarkable person or thing
For whatever reason—as in, I have no idea—when I was pregnant with our second babe—gender unknown—we needed an in-utero nickname for her or him—him—and so we called the bump Lulu. Lulu has going for it, as a name, pleasing ease and fun for the tongue.
Thinking back—twelve years (!) now—I didn’t know how depressed pregnancy happened to make me, so that period of time was pretty foggy as it occurred and remains pretty hazy in memory. I didn’t realize that one could experience depression during pregnancy. I wanted the baby. We’d planned—nominally, sure—on the baby (which is to say, this was a very-first-and-jammed-into-busy-travel-schedule-try pregnancy; we didn’t think our rushed and frenzied attempt would work). Our prince of a firstborn—at that moment, only—was turning two. Three years seemed about the “right” spacing. Twelve years later, I am fairly certain “right” and spacing mean just about nothing—I most certainly did not imagine two more children, and over a span of a dozen years start to finish—and I couldn’t wrap my head around the notion that something so cherished as a child could be so hard won.
Until I understood that a woman could experience depression during pregnancy, I always felt vaguely guilty about those emotions rather than matter of fact. Even when pregnant (and depressed), I remained clear on how fortunate I was: it’d been easy to get pregnant and my healthy pregnancy outweighed nausea and unnamed depression. I got that. But I felt terribly lonely.
What I remember a bit more clearly was this: how worried I felt just before Lulu was born. How, I wondered—seriously—could I love any child as much as my first? It’s a wholly beguiling memory, because this guy—warm, smart, funny, challenging, glorious—knocked that question away with the astonishing ease of someone making a grand-slam home run with his very first swing, EVER.
Sure, he took some getting to know. My cousin so beautifully said of her second: “She’s a really nice baby. We just keep wondering when her parents are coming to get her.” Adjustments, that’s what second babies bring. The earth moved—or one’s place on earth, more specifically—with the arrival of the first or the arrival of the parents on the parenthood section. I know that was the case with Lulu. He provided all the different than and same as comparisons we knew. Ezekiel seemed such a little old soul and Lulu was decidedly younger, fun loving. He changed the shape of our family, from triangle to square, rectangle, or diamond, something moveable and a bit more complicated.
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It wasn’t on purpose—not even a thought, actually—that Lulu would be a nickname for Lucien. Lucien means light, and our Lucien was born a minute after noon on one of those perfectly warm, golden sunned, blue skied days in May. Light was so fitting to his entry, and light continues to characterize him (although, he is, indeed, New England: mercurial and changeable and able to display beauty and challenge in myriad ways). When that guy smiles, it’s noontime the day he was born, that flawlessly bright.
How did we know?
And how did we not know the heart has infinite capacity to expand with love?
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No question, for all the rollercoaster riding and learning and re-learning how to hold open heart and maintain steady firm hand and still have big embrace and practice delicate give-and-take in the kitchen or at the homework table or in about endless other ways, this boy, this lulu, he’s the absolute best May ever offered us. On Wednesday, along with happy birthday wishing and artisan locally made chocolate buying and teaming up to make granola and walking home from town in the cool dark after his big evening out with the quiet toddler in stroller, I felt exceedingly grateful.
