This Is What I Do All Day

A Nightcap about the beauty in perceived mundanity, which is really just radical contentment about my new state of being as a mother.

Mar 25, 2025

This is what I do all day.

I sit and stare. At everything.

The dog curling up at my feet, transforming into a sheep croissant. The melted window screen, warped by the heat of the grill from the summer my husband and I got married and cooked 50 hotdogs for our merging families.

My daughter stares back at me, I stare at her with starry eyes, goopy drool dribbling down her onesie of colorful fruits and veggies that reads, “Yummy in my tummy.”

This is what I do all day.

I name bottles. I treat them like a sports team lining up in the refrigerator before the Big Game. I rile them up!

I place pacifiers in formation and call them cadets, ready and willing to be of service at a moment’s notice.

I blow kisses. I paint invisible pictures on bellies. I freestyle lullabies and I call my debut collection Tales From the Rocker.

I pick up the banana teether. My daughter drops the banana teether. I pick up the banana teether. My daughter drops the banana teether. I pick up the —

This is what I do all day.

I am a koala, then a kangaroo. I am a tree, likely eucalyptus, or oak, sometimes. I am a jungle gym, a playground, a sandbox. I am made for scratching, swatting, pulling, tugging, kissing, hugging. I am a pillow, a blanket, an old fuzzy teddy bear in faded tye-dye who once had a velvet nose.

I roll like a soccer ball down a grassy hill. I dance like the worst interpretive ballerina you’ve ever seen. I screech, I chirp, I bark. I turn my living room into theater. I contort myself into shapes that I will only accept hearty belly laughs as currency for making.

This is what I do all day.

I hold tiny hands and cheeks and toes. I hold naps like they’re rare gemstones. I look in the mirror and see two of me there. I crawl like a lion on the prowl. I ask for a kissy every time I blink. I comb lavender-scented infant hair. I take giant whiffs like my daughter is a memory garden.

I fall through wormholes. I rest my chin on a mini shoulder and close my eyes, imagining I’m lucky enough to have wrinkled and softened at last. I am an octogenarian reminiscing on it all, long white hair billowing with tinsel, wrapped in my husband’s waxy arms. We are standing on a balcony. The air smells like sea salt. We remember the sea salt walls of the home that built us; the cottage yellow walls of the nursery where I once rested my chin on a mini shoulder and wrote something about it.

I open my eyes. I have returned to my body.

This is what I do all day.

I time travel.

💌

Xo,

Violet Carol

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This Is What I Do All Day

A Nightcap about the beauty in perceived mundanity, which is really just radical contentment about my new state of being as a mother.

This is what I do all day.

Thank You for Reading 🩵

On Call for the Mothers Assemble series — Body Image (In Pregnancy) 🗯️

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