The Color of Awe

The Color of Awe

by Beckie O'Neill

“It’s a girl!” Meg said to the couple who lived deep in the Adirondacks.

The mother’s face was flushed, blonde hair matted from perspiration and pressure on the pillow. Ray, who helped catch their newborn, handed his wife their crying, naked miracle.

Jackie peered into her infant’s gray eyes which suddenly turned sky blue then back to gray. She had heard that because fetuses live in darkness their eyes, upon birth, are gray or blue and eventually change color but over months, not seconds, and certainly not back again just as quickly. Startled by what she thought she saw, Jackie chalked it up to her post-partum exhaustion.

“Hello Grace,” Jackie purred. She lay the baby on her bare chest. Then the parents, guided by their midwife Meg’s instructions, began to gently massage into Grace’s skin the vernix, that greasy layer covering every newborn.

“I have to give you about four stitches to repair your episiotomy,” Meg told Jackie. The new mom, in her reverie, barely noticed the pinpricks.

In their geothermal cabin, Jackie and Ray had established their off-the-grid lives, working remotely as sales reps for a large solar panel manufacturer, tending their organic vegetable garden in the summer and swerving through woods on cross country skis in the winter. A root cellar kept their harvest cool and dry and a collection of panels, populating the southwest corner of their field, provided plenty of electricity.

Mid-morning, two days later, Meg returned to check Jackie’s incision site, answer her breast-feeding questions, and show the couple how to safely bathe their little one. “Even though this is your first, I think you’re going to be all set,” she said as she slipped into her green down parka and Sorel boots.

“Yeah, we’ve gotten lots of practice raising houseplants and a dog,” Ray joked.

“Well, you have my cell number. Don’t hesitate to call. And if you’d like, I can stop in at the end of the week when I’m back in this area,” Meg said to them before heading out.

After she left, the couple experienced a rare moment when neither was napping, fixing a meal or laundering cloth diapers. Grace slept nearby under a yellow quilt. Jackie turned to her husband, “Hon, it was the strangest thing. When Grace was born, I looked in her eyes, and could have sworn they turned sky blue for a few seconds.” Jackie dipped her crunchy biscotti into her coffee and raised it quickly toward her mouth. “Have you noticed any changes these past coupla days?”

“Hm, they’ve been that beautiful gray. But yesterday when I was changing her, it felt like she was gazing at me with the eyes of an old soul.” Ray scratched his light brown beard, usually close cropped, a bit shaggier since their baby’s arrival.

“What do you mean?”

“Like she’d come from the other side with a message. I put these fingers,” he extended his index fingers toward his wife, “in her hands and she squeezed them tight. From what I’ve read, that kind of grasp isn’t supposed to happen for another three months. Then I thought Are her eyes blue? But I figured it was just the light coming through the curtain.”

“Or we have a special child,” said Jackie with a grin.

Ray’s cell phone beeped. “It’s Mike,” he told her.

“We’re taking the next six weeks off together,” Jackie groaned. “Remember?” She picked up their dishes, set them in the sink, checked the time on her Fitbit, and sought the couch. Grace’s night feedings were taking a toll.

“Did you explain our rationale to him?” Ray demanded into the phone. “Dammit, the numbers speak for themselves! I’ll produce the figures for a two o’clock conference.”

Ray stood by the sofa and whispered, “I gotta go in the office. Ralph is insisting we stick to the original plan even though it doesn’t make sense. It’s gonna cost us.”

“Good luck but don’t let him lean on you. You’ve earned this time off,” she said. He bent down and kissed her neck enjoying her faint scent of vanilla.

Jackie pulled a fleece blanket up over her, welcoming a needed rest. She considered how Ray was ultra-conscientious in ways but laid back in others, meticulous with the maintenance of their cars and keeping the driveway plowed but slack when it came to remembering her birthday or their anniversaries. She worked at not taking his slights personally.

When Grace began to whimper, Jackie stirred, stretched, and glanced out the window at snow-laden trees and the rust light slanting across hoar frosted hills. She stood up to get her daughter whose shape looked markedly longer. When Jackie pulled the blanket back, Grace’s white booties were visible from the bottom of the nightgown that hours before had draped past her feet. Curious, Jackie picked her babe up and noticed more heft than she’d sensed before. Plus, Grace’s eyes were stuck closed with sleepy bugs and her nose was streaming mucous. How could she have caught such a serious cold so quickly? Jackie undressed her infant, put her on the scale and looked at Meg’s records...a two-pound gain since that morning.

Jackie used a small soft cloth to clean her baby’s face then sat down to nurse her. “Alexa, play ‘Lake Street Dive’ on Pandora,” she said. She rocked and she wept while their golden retriever Roxy snored.

Ray barged in from the office, his height barely squeaking under the door frame. “Mike tried to throw me under the bus,” he said before she got to voice her concerns. “He told Ralph I’d screwed up the ‘Merchim’ account and that was why our projection was off,” he added.

“Did you straighten it out?”

“Yeah, I produced the spreadsheet and we could all see the expenditures.” Ray smacked a roll of papers in his hand. “In fact, Mike had overshot his Florida cap.”

Jackie resettled Grace against her shoulder, tapped the baby’s back until she heard a burp then put her on the other breast.

“Why would he do that? You’ve worked so well together.”

Ray sat down next to his wife on the couch and placed his hand on his daughter’s downy scalp. He felt a deep calmness overtake him. “He mentioned last week that his Mom’s in Hospice. I think he’s really stressed. I’m gonna let it go.”

Though late afternoon, the eastern horizon out the kitchen window cast a curious blend of dusty pink and blue hues.

Now that Ray had settled down, Jackie tearfully vented her observations about their child’s cold symptoms and rapid growth.

“Mom used to tell me I came down with every cold there ever was,” Ray said. “And that I literally grew when I napped. Maybe Grace got those genes from me. I hear babies can be off the chart in different ways.”

“But two pounds in one day? Something must be wrong, Ray!” Jackie cried.

 “Look, we’ll pay close attention,” Ray said slowly, “keep track of everything and have Meg come back on Friday. That’s the day after tomorrow. Do you want me to fix turkey burgers and mashed potatoes for dinner?”

Jackie wiped her eyes and managed a smile.

Ray had always been the calmer one between them. She relied on his steadiness to offset her sometimes ill-thought-out impulses.

Behind him, through the French doors, thick forests of pencil thin trees cast dark blue shadows across the snow.

Grace coughed all night and at 4:00 a.m. she spiked a fever. Ray googled what to do. Jackie gave Grace a lukewarm bath and put a cool, wet washcloth on her head. “I think we should call Dr. Johnson,” Jackie said to Ray.

“Hon, we got the baby’s temp down. Let’s wait till morning. His office doesn’t open till 9:00. We can call him then or be at the hospital within forty minutes,” Ray said.

Jackie set their sleeping child in the bassinette and the couple crawled into bed. Roxy rose and circled twice before curling back down at the foot of their bedspread.

By 9:00 a.m., Grace was not only all better, she’d grown significantly more and had even rolled over.

Jackie lifted her daughter and peered into her face. “Hi Grace,” she cooed. Grace’s eye lids opened to reveal sky blue irises that held her mother’s stare.

“Ray, she sees me! And look how she’s holding her head up all by herself!”

“Your breast milk must have a magic potion,” he teased. Jackie lowered their daughter into the crib and approached her husband, shaking her head. “No,” Jackie said, “Grace truly is special.” They studied one another’s faces for several minutes and hugged for a long time.

When Roxy didn’t answer Ray’s calls or show up in the late afternoon, Ray went outside. A navy cloud hovered over a maroon mountain to the north. Ray found Roxy lying by the barn with a deep gash in her hind leg. Coyotes. Ray carried Roxy inside, placed her by the electric fireplace, cleaned her wound and applied an antibiotic salve. Too injured to lick it clean, Roxy’s baleful eyes watched Jackie rock Grace who now stretched as long as a Miss America sash across Jackie’s chest. Grace wiggled to get down. Jackie set her on a play pad on the carpet and briefly closed her eyes.

Grace crawled over to Roxy and placed her dimpled hands on Roxy’s head. Within minutes, Jackie felt a wet swipe across her hand and opened her eyes. Their dog, completely healed, wagged its tail. Grace stood. Her nightgown barely covered her lower torso. Jet-black hair fell past her ears. “Mommy, outside,” she said.

Ray, having witnessed it all, squeezed Jackie’s shoulder. She looked up. They half smiled at each other and nodded. Worry had morphed into wonder.

Though it was mid-winter with Grace ill-prepared for the cold, Jackie rose and opened the door. They watched their little girl float off the stoop and fly toward the western horizon backlit by the sun, clouds blazing orange.