{sullivan's room}

I ordered Sullivan's crib online from Best Buy. When the guy came to drop it off, I was home alone. He had an orange beard. He appeared perpetually confused and exorbitantly bored and looked over my shoulder instead of at my face when he talked to me. He said, "I got a crib or something in the truck for you."  

I smiled. "Awesome," I said. And then we stood there.

He shifted his weight. "I'm going to need some help carrying it in. It's pretty heavy."

"Oh, I'm here alone," I told him apologetically.

He didn't look surprised at this information. "Well, yeah. I just need a little help. It's, like, really heavy."

I looked down at my belly, which was roughly the size of a watermelon. "I'm not really supposed to lift heavy stuff," I said.

Now he looked surprised. "Oh. Are you pregnant?"

I nodded. "That's what the crib's for."

Setting up a room for someone who doesn't exist yet is a weird job. It's not like hosting an exchange student who arrives with bags of clothes and junk to unpack into your drawers and shelves and posters of their favourite bands to hang on your walls with sticky tack. You're getting ready for a naked, possessionless person who doesn't even have a favourite colour yet. You get to decide what their favourite colour is.

So Barclay built bookshelves and I loaded them with all of my favourite books; ones that I grew up reading and ones that I wished I'd grown up reading. We painted little pictures of all the bosses from Megaman II (Barclay's favourite video game) for the wall. We drew wallpaper and I made a mobile and Barclay hung a picture of Rush so that Sullivan will know who Geddy Lee is. I went to the thrift store on Dewdney and bought tiny 99 cent shoes and sweaters to fill the closet. Friends made stuffed animals and blankets for him and added to his miniature wardrobe. We didn't have a rug so I laid down the quilt I made for picnics instead.

Nurseries are more for parents than they are for babies, I think. Hopefully he digs it too, though.