From The Archive

Abuelita

Picture 1

By Krista Bremer Several years ago I spent a summer working in a crowded office in Delhi, India. Outside of the city’s rich enclaves, the electric system was overtaxed and unpredictable, and intermittently throughout the day our building would go dark. As our air-conditioning unit came grinding to a halt, my Indian co-workers would stop whatever they were doing and sink to the floor, surrendering to the awesome heat that rapidly engulfed the office. When power was restored—sometimes minutes, sometimes hours later—they’d slowly rise to their feet, rubbing their eyes. Years later, recovering at home from my second child’s birth in the middle of a sultry North Carolina summer, I was reminded of that summer in India: The hot, thick days blurred together, and my daily activities were constantly interrupted by my son’s insatiable hunger. When he needed to nurse, I collapsed into the nearest comfortable place, surrendering to his demands. Minutes or hours later, I peeled him off me

Baby Weight

Baby Weight

By Cheryl Strayed from the archives: fall 2008 As a child and teenager, I remember being mildly disturbed by the animal quality that overcame my mother while in the presence of babies. It was a quality she cloaked in a polite, seemingly offhand request—may I hold the baby?—and a nonchalant tone of voice, but I knew her intentions were indisputably vulturine at their core. She wanted that baby in her hands and she wanted it now. “Oh,” my mother would coo once she had the borrowed baby in her possession. “Look at this,” she’d moan to me, standing desolately witness to her mysterious rapture. “There’s nothing on this earth like the smell of a baby once you’ve had one of your own,” she would explain each time. “Nothing like the weight of a baby in your arms.” Over the years, I observed this same response in other women, all of them mothers whose own children are no longer babies. Inevitably—both