C O N T E X T

C A U G H T  

Moments I am caught off-balance, mid-air trembling. I don’t know where to put my feet. I want I want I want life to be rich and rolling. I want to speak and adventure. I want to dive deep into the lives of my children.

I am sitting at my desk waiting for work. My children are gone to the park. I can’t even move.

C O N T E X T

Letter to a friend

D E A R  L I S A

It’s raining today. No summer to speak of this year. 2 or 3 hot days thrown in to punctuate the cold. And to make us sick. Night before last, Jake got a fever at about 1am. 101.4 under the arm, which is comprable to 102.4 in the mouth. So I gave him a little tylenol to bring the fever down. I nursed him as best I could. His stuffed nose gives an odd, panicky rhythm: suck suck suck GASP GASP. He ate pretty well and then threw it all up. My nightgown and his blanket were soaked. It’s the only nigh tgown I’ve got. Recently I realized that one of the reasons I was happier at night than during the day was because I liked my nightgown. This realization made me bite the bullet and look to acquiring some new clothes. Catalogue shopping. I picked out some things that would all go together and little by little I’m buying them. On friday I ordered a turtleneck that’s a soft brown “coco” color. All weekend long I dwelt on that color, amazed that it could give me such pleasure. I was so proud of myself for not buying anything black. All beiges and golds and browns. Watt nearly fell on the floor laughing when I told him. "Fear of color" he calls it. Anyway the promise of this brown is exceedingly pleasant. I was probably thinking about it just before Jake threw up on me. Jake sleeps in the middle room on the second floor. Do you remember it? 3 slightly bayed windows. Nice shadows, day or night. His crib is in there and a dresser a rocker and a futon on the floor. The futon’s becau se so much of the time he won’t sleep unless I’m lying with him. If I get him to sleep on the futon then usually I can sneak back to my own bed. If I sleep with him too long, I go numb from not moving. So when he wakes at night (3-4 times usuall y) I sit in the rocker to feed him and think about brown, or about my novel. If it goes on too long sometimes I start to think about more serious things (taxes, groceries, Sumalia) then I have trouble getting back to sleep myself, so I try to keep my mind drifting while he eats. Three weeks ago we retired Gus’s pacifier, Dr.’s orders. It was the thing which made it possible for him to sleep. The first night without it he was up all night, wailing. It was heartwrenching. “I no want get bigge r,” he said, “I want be little.” Nothing I did helped. He didn’t want to be held or stroked or sung to. So I just sat with him, saying, “I know, baby. It’s hard. I know.” That was Saturday. Not until the following Friday did we achieve sleep without tears. And even now I have to stay with him until he’s asleep, lying beside him, the great weight of my own stillness pulling him down into the dark dream currents. He’s learning how to let go all over again. Watt t hinks I over indulge him. And maybe I do. But I think it’s my job to help him get his balance until he can get it himself, to help him learn how to get it. He is actually sleeping much better now, once he is asleep. I used to have to go to him a coup le times a night, lie him back down, tuck him in. Now he pretty much sleeps through. Sometimes he’s even dry when he wakes up. Which is his other leap out of babyhood. We’re starting to be able to actually leave the house without Gus wearing dia pers. I take his potty in the car in case of emergencies. It’s lovely how unselfconscious he is. Willing to pull down his pants for a pee in the back of the car in the grocery store parking lot.

C O N T E X T

September 28, 1992

T H E  E D G E

Some people drink and drive, or cheat on their wives, or go bungi jumping; some people really have to push to find the frontier, chaos licking at them through the thinning skin of order. For me, I find enough ferocity in the piles of unread junkmail, a misplaced mortgage payment, children’s non-sleeping patterns, large deposits entered twice and spent. There is chaos enough in meal plans, the daily terror.