My Fart

Today I am still finding myself randomly brought to tears thinking of my high school friend, Lisa, who lost her little baby girl Sunday night.

After a raucous night of meatloaf and Jeopardy at The Padres house we brought The Dude into bed to snuggle for a bit (which we can only do when he falls asleep in the car, because he's a no-snug zone when he is concious) and I took some time to smell him. That may sound weird for you Freebirds aka unparents, but when they are brand new babies, we spend hours and hours sniffing their new baby heads. The scent is absolutely intoxicating. It's like olfactory Oxicontin. As Don Draper's ex-mistress, turned beatnik, turned heroin junkie said, “It’s like drinking a hundred bottles of whiskey while someone licks your tits.” Ok, quite frankly, I don't like whiskey and having my boobs "licked" kind of just makes me think of nursing our special needs dog, Poppy, but it's the hyperbole that's important here.

Well, The Dude doesn't smell like he used to. It's not so much the heroin-like baby deliciousness. He kind of has this milky, Cheerios, wet dog, sweaty, pee smell by 8:00pm and if we have been at Grandma Steve's house for dinner and skipped bathtime, well, he goes to bed nasty. Call me unfit. Call me gross. Call me tired. But last night, last night, I held him as close as he would let me before wriggling free. I breathed in the stench of that sweaty little boy's scalp so deep that I thought my lungs would give out. And then he thrashed about until he positioned himself as the little spoon to my big spoon, and he yawned a huge yawn. It was gorgeous. It brought tears to my eyes. And then he farted on me.

I love that fart. I will always remember that fart. It was a fart just for me, and I'll take it.