Writing and The Upset Baby
There is nothing as excruciating as the cries of a distressed child, when the child is yours.
Your night may be going on like any other night, the comfortable routines playing out as they always do: books, dinner, a bottle, unwinding with more books and bed when she seems sleepy. You manage to play a board game with your wife, cook dinner, and be ready to watch TV and then do some writing to fulfill an arbitrary decision that you need to write so much each day as validation of yourself.
And that's when you hear the crying.
This isn't just the normal evening interruptions, when she calls out for a moment or two at 8:37 and 9:54, when she whimpers or talks to her stuffed owl for a few minutes. This is crying. This is pain.
You may have had a hard day in a hard week in a hard month, with an iron bar of tension lying sideways inside your shoulder blades, as you try to figure out how your well-intentioned efforts don't seem to be pleasing anyone, really, even though you are giving as much as you possibly can on all possible vectors, but all of that gets sliced away when your baby is upset. When she seems to be in pain, maybe from gas or something she ate, and the angelic sleeper you know, the little marcher who takes you by the hand and charges 100 yards across the park -- or is it 100 years -- in a single straight line, seems to be on a different plane all together, that's when you know you would forego anything and anyone if it would protect this creature. Life is carved away, whittled to the primal fathering instinct, and words no longer matter.
And yet you still think to yourself, in some recess of your brain, the same recess that says all the selfish crap you don't say out loud to anyone, well, how am I going to get my writing done now?
Doesn't it seem like there are more important things to worry about at that time? What sort of person are you? Maybe you aren't the good person you thought you are.
Then again, you are getting up at 10:45 at night to offer a baby a bottle and sing her soft songs, so you can't be all that bad.
When she finally falls asleep in your arms, and you hesitate to move, when you just keep rocking her for another two or three minutes, fearing at any moment that she might stir again and resume crying, that feels like the moment that defines the night. Is this the night where she falls asleep and feels better in the morning, or is it the night before you quit your job as so much meaningless sludge and run off to the Oregon coast with your baby so the sea air will do her good, away from the terrifying reports of city life, where victims of home invasions say they understand that the thieves were trapped in socio-economic circumstances, a de facto segregation, when in fact these thieves were just selfish pricks. That's when you feel all this welling up inside of you, and then it doesn't matter anymore, because you put her back in her crib, and she cuddles up to her owl, and the rest is silence, but in the good way, not the Hamlet way.
Good night. My writing clock for the day is at 19 minutes and holding steady.
Your night may be going on like any other night, the comfortable routines playing out as they always do: books, dinner, a bottle, unwinding with more books and bed when she seems sleepy. You manage to play a board game with your wife, cook dinner, and be ready to watch TV and then do some writing to fulfill an arbitrary decision that you need to write so much each day as validation of yourself.
And that's when you hear the crying.
This isn't just the normal evening interruptions, when she calls out for a moment or two at 8:37 and 9:54, when she whimpers or talks to her stuffed owl for a few minutes. This is crying. This is pain.
You may have had a hard day in a hard week in a hard month, with an iron bar of tension lying sideways inside your shoulder blades, as you try to figure out how your well-intentioned efforts don't seem to be pleasing anyone, really, even though you are giving as much as you possibly can on all possible vectors, but all of that gets sliced away when your baby is upset. When she seems to be in pain, maybe from gas or something she ate, and the angelic sleeper you know, the little marcher who takes you by the hand and charges 100 yards across the park -- or is it 100 years -- in a single straight line, seems to be on a different plane all together, that's when you know you would forego anything and anyone if it would protect this creature. Life is carved away, whittled to the primal fathering instinct, and words no longer matter.
And yet you still think to yourself, in some recess of your brain, the same recess that says all the selfish crap you don't say out loud to anyone, well, how am I going to get my writing done now?
Doesn't it seem like there are more important things to worry about at that time? What sort of person are you? Maybe you aren't the good person you thought you are.
Then again, you are getting up at 10:45 at night to offer a baby a bottle and sing her soft songs, so you can't be all that bad.
When she finally falls asleep in your arms, and you hesitate to move, when you just keep rocking her for another two or three minutes, fearing at any moment that she might stir again and resume crying, that feels like the moment that defines the night. Is this the night where she falls asleep and feels better in the morning, or is it the night before you quit your job as so much meaningless sludge and run off to the Oregon coast with your baby so the sea air will do her good, away from the terrifying reports of city life, where victims of home invasions say they understand that the thieves were trapped in socio-economic circumstances, a de facto segregation, when in fact these thieves were just selfish pricks. That's when you feel all this welling up inside of you, and then it doesn't matter anymore, because you put her back in her crib, and she cuddles up to her owl, and the rest is silence, but in the good way, not the Hamlet way.
Good night. My writing clock for the day is at 19 minutes and holding steady.
posted by Devin at 11:51 PM
2 Comments:
Great start! (or perhaps this isn't the first resolution-installment of 2015, I'll check when I have another minute) I admire the tension in an uneasy way that makes me hope this is "creative nonfiction" (no disclaimers necessary!) looking forward to the next one and the next,
Francesca
If you can write this much and this well in 19 minutes, that is all you need! Sorry you are under so much stress...you are a great father and brother!
Rosie
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