I’m a little afraid, she whispers, won’t you tell me again, tell me what you’re most excited about. It sounds odd, he says hesitantly, but I think… mostly hearing him breathe. I’ve so often listened to you, breathing in your sleep, and now he’ll be there as well, his little short breath with your long calm… No, I can’t imagine what it’ll be like. Or when he discovers his hands, but - I’ve told you that one so often. I’d like to hear it again, she says. Alright, then; I always imagine it will be an early morning, early but we’re both awake to see it. It will be winter then, and the light will have that colour it gets when there’s snow outside. And we’ll lie there watching him raise his hands up in that light, how he turns them and twists them and stretches out his fingers. We won’t say anything to disturb him, we’ll lie so quietly watching. Just think, the first beginning of a being. I think that’s what I most look forward to… or when he starts to name things, you’ll be the first he’ll name, he’ll try to say your name like he hears me saying it…

No, she interrupts, you’ll be first, I say your name more than you say mine, it’s easier to say, and I’m like a part of him, I’m always around him, but you, you come and go. So he will know little sounds and signs that tell him it’s you, and when you come he will call you to show you he knows. And when you bend down over him, he will reach to grab something that is you. Maybe your hair, because it’s so dark and shiny…

She kept talking as if to show she was still awake, and to keep something down and the darkness away. But soon she felt that there was no real sense to the words anymore, and her pauses got longer. Her forehead was damp, almost wet, the palms of her hands too, she tried to concentrate on him talking, he was at the point where the boy was learning to walk, in summer, on the lawn, where he wouldn’t get hurt. She tried to see the bright green grass, but it was sort of a lawn in twilight. Now he fell down and disappeared, got up, walked a bit again. Then he stumbled and fell again. She lay there waiting for him to appear again, but the grass was dark, it had taken him and was all dark now.