On the counter, an American impressionism art book lies open at one of Bunker's roadside cottages. There is a suggestion of yellow flowers growing in the backyard.

Suddenly it is half my lifetime ago.

Early winter afternoons, I write in my new diary, wonder is there anything for me beyond the page? How do I confuse afternoons, misplace mornings? Laced sunlight seeps through my windowpanes as I lie on my dormitory bed. How do I shift, lose my way?

From the Back Bay pantry window, I see one seagull, one mute swan, MIT crew team on the Charles this twilight blue day.

Do I lose my way?

Now in afternoon dusk, I am waiting for him, my son, to get in from New York City.

Or do I begin to find myself, and unable to recognize the beginning of myself in my son, think I have lost my way?

I tuck melancholy at the back of my bookshelf behind Miller and Nin, settle down on the damask-spread bed, gray flannel afternoons, reread passages in Women In Love. I warm my hands in the sunlight slipping through the ivory Venetian blinds.

Across my desk, drafts of letters stretch out, letters which are never sent, to authors -- Thank you for teaching me about desire. I, too, roamed night streets with a mother during her years of despair. I, also, am with child.

My oversized diary, its unlined pages smooth and creamy as the petals of a gardenia, invites. The diary's cover depicts a Boldini of a woman dressed in a black silk. She sits at the edge of a Hepplewhite chair, her knees slightly apart, and reminds me of the way I feel most of the time . . . saucy and dishevelled, melancholy, yet contented.

Words save, my folklore and literature professor says to me after class one morning, so why don't you write in your diary? I think you like writing in your diary.

Words save. I fill one diary. Then another.

These are poems on mother love, my folklore and literature professor says to me during afternoon office hours. Love of mothers for their sons. I think you are having a son. She gives me a volume of mother/son love poems and a small bouquet of jonquils.

In my soul, before he is born, when I am pregnant with him, I see him, my son, as a little darling . . . and as a cultured adult with fine looks and excellent bearing. Someone to sigh about. This is motherlove, I write in my diary.

Pantry window glistens in dusk light.

Each dusk, for two autumn weeks, after I know I am pregnant, I sit on a Kenmore Square coffee shop window stool, watch Hopper brick buildings -- windows curtained scantily, lighted here and there, yet void of Hopper's woman bathing, man reading; observe young black-booted men and women, long-haired, black gig bags slung across their backs, cross Massachusetts Avenue from Berklee College of Music on my left to red-awninged Daddy's Junky Music Store, farther down, on my right.

When do I stop watching, observing?

When he is born. 7 pounds, 7 ounces. 22 inches long. 6:45 A.M. A Wednesday in March.

He is brought to me to nurse frequently throughout the day each day of my three-day stay at Tobey Hospital in Wareham, Massachusetts. After he nurses, I place him upon my stomach so we can nap together.

Back home in New Bedford (I'm on college leave), he goes to my diner job with me every day. He is popular with the customers. They ask to see him in the kitchen when he is asleep. When he is awake, he rides in my left arm as I wait tables with my right.

At night, I nurse him. I place my hand over his downy head, walk home with him shawl-wrapped against me. In my journal I write he is giving me the happiest days of my life.

I read picture storybooks aloud to him because he likes to fall asleep to the sound of my voice; then I read diaries (other people's published ones). I cradle him in my left arm.

Sun streams pattern the linoleum around his crib. Curtained window frames mission chair, golden in sunlight. Across the block are red brick rooming houses, bare-windowed, stained wallpapers peeling.

He is four months old. Already he has laughed out loud for a good month, he has held two toys at the same time. He turns from his back onto his stomach. He sits unsupported for a moment. Early mornings, we walk the New Bedford streets past houses with cupolas and widow walks, past the Unitarian church, past dress shops and Portuguese bakeries. Clad in sunbonnet and sun suit, he rides in his Perego carriage. We rest in a schoolyard beneath a big shady tree. I take him from his carriage and hold him in my arms. Close.

Come to me, little monkey. Come to me, your Mama monkey. You in your side-snapped undershirt and plastic diaper, holding your foot in your hand, touching the tip of your big toe with your tongue for the first time, and finding toe's taste unlike that of my breasts and your hands. Come to me, little monkey, as you roll around. Don't ponder over what it's all about. For it's so nice being here in the world with you.

For weeks I lull lines for your half birthday. In the morning, I dance to Morning Pro Musica with you in my arms around and around on the linoleum in front of the Warm Morning in our apartment's parlor. We whoop with laughter, you and I. You hoot with glee. I swirl you to the ceiling. We are in babylove, you and I. How we whirl around.

Half birthday and one day. You creep your first two steps across my bed in the morning. Backwards! You hoot for my applause.

Half birthday and one day at night. You creep backwards across an area of three feet under the Hobart equipment at the diner. You talk incessantly, “Ba ga na ba ra. Da da da dee.” Parker has stopped by and hears you call out his name. “Da da da dee.”

A few hours later, you sit in the diner high chair. You have wished to sit for so long. You handle ice cubes and beansprouts and white eggplant. Grandpa stops by, says you look like an older baby now. When he leaves, you hoot for my arms.

Your restaurant friends call to you. They come to you, clasp your hands, murmur, “How are you, dear Baby?” When you grow up, I shall be able to say, “People like him, I think. . .”

Three days before Thanksgiving, as you play, you press your lips together, murmur “Ma-ma”.

On the day after Thanksgiving, you kneel against me, pull on my dress, stand up! You and I laugh and laugh. “Ma-ma!” you shriek.

Santa brings you the tip of your first tooth: lower jaw, right front.

You crawl-race after me from the bedroom to the kitchen, stop at the parlor bookshelf and rip the rice paper off the volumes of Waldo Emerson's journals. You pull at the philodendron tendrils too poisonous for you to eat. You kick your legs high in the air and show off your Stride Rite pre-walkers. You place a small red block within a bigger blue block. You hook red and green rings over your toy clown. You build a golden tower of two blocks.

Light lingers in ordinary things. The light is you, my son.

You turn one. Never in my life again shall I pass a warm March dawn without thoughts of you, newborn, being held out to me to grasp for the first time. You blow out your cake's single tall white candle. I hug you close. Darling, you are the best baby ever.

You are just as I imagined you would be before you were born, I say to him.

He has taken Amtrak from Grand Central to South Station to visit me this week during Columbia spring break.

“Just as I imagined. . .” I whisper as he leans close to me, his leather jacket smelling of train stations, Midtown clubs, starlit nights, snowy Soho streets, his photographs of Morningside Heights in the rain. I hold his hand briefly.

He's brought his Ibanez so I can hear his new song: not quite Pantera, not quite Sting -- but rather, his own voice, his own vision.

. . .Tall, lean, black-haired. Left-handed. Just as I imagined.

At dusk three days later, after he returns to New York City, I walk Back Bay. Windowboxes have been emptied of winter greens and are being filled with soil, pansies, and pots of jonquils. I cross Massachusetts Avenue, from Copley into Kenmore, stand on the Massachusetts Turnpike overpass, look down through fencing at cars racing.

First spring snowflakes fall.