1) His neural pathways. I imagine his brain to be like the hills around Palm Springs, which are covered as far as the eye can see in wind turbines. It's a spectacular sight, one I find quite beautiful, but apparently some locals consider them an eyesore. At any rate, there they are like a big origami forest. I imagine each turbine as a neuron, and each austere blade a dendrite, and then I imagine the blades festooned in white sparklers-- a chemical signal flaring up in one place and then spreading like an ocean wave as the wind carries it on to the next sparkler, the next blade, the next turbine, until you can see the path of the wind across the valley. Fingers of light, waves of it, roll from one horizon to the other. His brain will never be this quick again. Unused turbines will disappear from the landscape. As his mom, I'm the wind. I am responsible for stimulating him, feeding him, protecting his sleep, watching for signs of illness, not turning him into a sociopath. When I slump onto the couch, defeated, and flip on the TV while he nurses, I decide the wind sucks.
2) I suffer form post-partum depression. I am back on medication. These two statements make everything in my life, though much improved as of late, feel like a commercial for Eli Lilly. I pause before the camera on my vintage bicycle, its front basket full of freshly picked flowers, and slightly out of breath, my cheeks ruddy with vitality, I say, "I asked my doctor, and we decided Prozac was right for me. Ask your doctor. Isn't it time you started feeling better?" In the shower this morning, I decided that Prozac might be the water wings I just can't shed to swim in the deep end of life. Maybe I am Martin Short in the synchronized swimming sketch from Saturday Night Live. At least he looks happy, right?
3) Pants is deployed again, and the experience is entirely different with a baby around. In a way, the boy is like a wonderful little cattle guard attached to my front grill. He shunts obstacles out of the way with his disarming little giggles. People hold doors for me and smile, and I have an iron-clad excuse for wearing pajama bottoms into the drugstore (not that I do this often-- I have few standards for myself these days, but daytime clothes during daylight is one I try to uphold. In the early days of little to no sleep, it helped me keep track of the passing dates). Anyway, it's great-- people don't really see me and instead address the question of paper or plastic to the baby strapped to my chest, happily cycling his legs and cooing. I could probably shoplift giant things and pass notice, like Obi Wan doing the Jedi mind trick.
4) I am shocked at how thoroughly I dislike our cat Linus these days. He and I used to be tight, but now all I can see is the double box of turds I will inexplicably pack up and tote to Nevada to set up in our new house, just so he can track litter and microscopic particles of fecal matter around. Highest on the pet felony list: he wakes me up at night. Repeatedly. Pants points out that it's because Linus loves me, because he wants to purr and rub his whiskers against my cheek and snuggle up under my arm, and I used to agree that this was endearing, but now I have dark visions of opening the front door and punting Linus screeching into the night. I hope this will pass.
5) Despite everything, I am still considered legally sane and capable of signing Pants and myself into a 30-year mortgage. I stayed up late one night and squandered precious hours of sleep to parse legalese on a VA appraisal, a 19-page document which a very nice man prepared in painstaking detail, writing clearly and cogently about the exact degree of risk in the move we're about to make. In a way, this was more sobering and terrifying than if the thing had been dense and jargony and made no sense at all. I wonder if the title company and the real estate agents will mind if I take a puke break during the closing.
6) Back to babies. The one next door is heart-breakingly adorable, but he doesn't sleep. Like, at all. He catnaps, if held like a claymore mine in his mother's aching arms, for a half hour at a time. He is older than my boy, and his mother and I are approaching the sleep issue differently, and we are all separate and unique beings bouncing through this life like charged particles in space and blah, blah, blah, but some superstitious part of me fears that sleeplessness might be catching, like Jose Saramago's Blindness, and so at 4 a.m., when I am up with my boy, I pray for the one next door and strain my eyes to see if I can see a light on in their windows. Then I picture our town, and then the state of California, like a giant circuit board seen from space and I wonder if all the sleepless baby houses could light up on the board, what would it look like. And then I wonder if I might be a more tolerable person if I read fewer Latin American magical realism novels.
He is sleeping now. If I were to go in there, which I do some nights, holding my breath, I would see him lying frog-legged on his back with his face tilted up and to the left, half snuggled into the rolled fuzzy blanket that forms an arc around his head. He may or may not have one arm flung up next to him, like he's leaping through the air to high five someone. His chest will barely move with each breath, but if I lean over him oh so carefully I can see it and I can smell the soft scent of his skin. I am terrified of waking him, but like I said, I'm superstitious, like how pitchers get on a winning streak, and I have to whisper to him, call him by name, and tell him that I love him.
He is sleeping now. Thank God. I'm going to finish my beer and watch TV because even the wind needs a break.
