The Birth and Early Bonding
Picture this: you're about to become a mum for the first time, staring at an empty Moses basket for weeks, desperate to meet your baby. That's exactly how the speaker felt before Matthew arrived in the "very hot summer of eighty-eight."
The poem uses brilliant imagery to show the intense physical closeness during pregnancy. Matthew was literally inside her - "foot against my heart, elbow in my ribcage" - yet she calls him her "close stranger" because she didn't know his personality yet. This oxymoron perfectly captures that weird contradiction of pregnancy.
She'd play him classical music and chat to him, calling him "Tumshie" (a lovely Scottish term of endearment). When he finally arrived - late, just like he'd be eighteen years later - she could hardly believe this real baby was finally in that basket she'd been staring at for months.
Key insight: The Moses basket becomes a powerful symbol of containment - first holding baby Matthew, now representing how he can no longer be contained at home.
