Our triad
chase · Sat, Feb 6, 2016Milo is on the cusp of crawling, which means it’s almost the last time we’ll ever be able to leave her somewhere and be reasonably sure that she’s going to stay. We’ve been telling people how excited we are that she’ll be able to crawl soon, and they tell us we’re going to miss these days — the days we didn’t have to be vigilant.
We probably will? But so far every new development has made Milo a bit more of an active participant in … our triad? I guess I can say “family,” but I worry that that word conjures the same notions here as it does when you see it emblazoned across the bottom of a picture frame, or in kitschy cut tin letters on some anonymous HGTV living room wall. That kind of family is what you get for free when a couple has a baby: the three of you are linked forever, and unless something goes very wrong, it’s a constant that you love and support each other.
That’s not what I think of when I think of our triad and how excited I am for Milo to join it. Think instead of two people who are deeply, deliriously in love. They’re just two people, so they’re not a family, but over time the space between them fills up with something that is new and different and better than either lover alone. Jokes become inside jokes, of course, but every time someone makes the same face again or cooks the same dish again, or they visit a place they’ve been before, it also becomes an inside face, an inside dish, an inside place. A whole world is created.
Misty and I live in my favorite world, and while Milo has had privileged access to that world since before her first day on earth, she hasn’t been able to understand or appreciate it. And she won’t, not fully, for many years. But when she crawls, she can crawl to us, and we can crawl with her, and the world between Misty and I will make a little more room for three, and it will be new and different and better than our world was alone.