What seems to be the problem, Officer?

First thing today, I was face to face with a suspicious policeman with a flashlight in the freezing darkness. Also, hopping from foot to foot because I was still in the tee and chuddies I’d worn to bed. The saving grace: I only had the top half of the Dutch door open, so hopefully he didn’t see the superman logo on my undies--my superhero identity is safe.

A few minutes earlier, the security alarm had gone off and I hadn’t responded promptly enough because I thought it was just Big A letting himself in after work.

A few months earlier, Big A started grumbling about how installing a security system in a college town where crime is non-existent “is a waste of resources.” He still occasionally grumbles. But little A’s bedroom is on the floor below us and the baby’s room has a large window, and I’m paranoid.

And the policeman--he was so disappointed when I told him it was a false alarm. A few minutes earlier, he'd looked as eager as Li’l A at three, who would describe how he would “pachack” the bad guys as i put him to bed.*

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* This was in Oxford, in the tiny little two-story flat the college had given the two of us. The sad, cold, cell-like, lonely flat that for some reason I just made myself really nostalgic about.

My daughter is a fighter not a lover

The first day, before i realized Baby A was sick, i was congratulating myself on having changed a squirmy baby most likely to push you away before you even got to the beginning of a satisfying hug into a champion snuggler. Because all she wanted to do that first day she was sick was collapse on my chest and sleep there like she hasn't done since she was a mewling infant a whole year ago.

And then the next day when Tylenol couldn't tamp down her fever of 105 and i rushed her to the Urgent Care Clinic, she still clung to me, but she was all, "I'll cut you, beyotch" to any nurse or doctor who even dared to look at her. And she fought them on everything. Not just intrusive stuff like droppers of medicine, or the temperature thing they stick in your ear, but everything. Even the stethoscope. I really never thought anyone would object to that. 

It took two nurses plus me to hold her down while another nurse... checked her ears. At the end of which, my daughter was still yelling curses in toddlerese and i was crying snottily, and the nurse said: Well, it's a good thing she's a fighter.

And i think i was crying not not just because my baby was sick and i had to hold her down while strangers did something she didn't want. It was also because my head is sick with the things i read and hear, and holding her scared, fighting body reminded me of all the terrible things that happen to babies and children and girls, because you can get three other people and hold them down.

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I thought i would dream about the dead bird

I didn't dream about the dead bird. 

But i kept on and on thinking about it. Because although i try not to believe in signs and portents, my attempts at rationality disappear when there's a very sick baby in the house. 

Long ago, before i had--or even thought about kids of my own--i knew a Tamizh teacher who told me that she got pregnant after/because a house sparrow built a nest inside her house. And a couple of years ago, i even blogged about how house sparrows were trying to nest in our home, but i didn't think about any connection until i was well and truly pregnant with Baby A. 

So now we are at the point where i have a very sick baby lying face down on my chest and a dead house sparrow lying on the window sill with its legs curling upwards pathetically. And i keep on returning to that equation and assuming the worst. Later on, my mother part coaxes, part bullies me past this image. 

My mom: Did Big A dispose of the bird?

Yes.

Oracle Mom: I think that means you've just rid yourself of any danger stalking Baby. 

I'll take it.

FTW Mom: Also, remember that your first house sparrow didn't actually nest or hatch in the house. It wanted to, you chased it away, and you still had a baby.

I love her. And i have to admire the way she can turn anything on its head with the best contemporary theorists.

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It's my party

I'm a sick puppy. No, really--i'm sick. And  i haven't been sick in what seems like years now, so this flu-like discomfort makes me want to cower with my head under the sheets and cry. But i can't because it's the weekend and the kids are home from school but Big A--my crucial partner parent-- is off working a late night shift. And my phone is dead so nobody knows or can come around with soup. Or hug the kids. Because my babies didn't get hugged very much as i spent a lot of time trying not to hold them and breathe my germs on them too much. 

But i think Baby A is sick anyway. I've put her to bed five times this evening and each time she's woken up having barfed on herself from coughing. So that's five times i've changed the sheets. Although, i gave up on giving her a bath after the second time and instead merely sponge her down, change her jammies, pat her all over with hand-sanitizer and call it clean. She's upstairs now coughing in her sleep and whimpering without waking up because she's frustrated that she can't fully fall asleep. That in itself is enough to make a person cry. 

Li'l A is in bed after what's got to be the lamest weekend ever--one where he tried to wait on me: Do you want Vicks? When your throat lozenges are gone JUST tell ME, I'LL get them for you! And played with "his baby" for hours on end while i mostly sat limp and dizzy on the floor. He also entertained the low appetite baby while i spoon-fed her mashed up fruit --in retrospect, i really wish we hadn't done that.

But all the baby barfing gave me a guilt-free pass to hold her all i want. And while i'm ready to cry from exhaustion, it also makes me laugh when i get to her room and sure enough, she's sitting there in barfbarfybarf--but when she sees me come in, turn on the lights, and pick her up: she's ready to party. 

I want my Amma too.

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TODAY

Li'l one

we're the first ones awake and we

walk to school in feathery snow

you glance up at me all twinkly eyes

and warm, knitted hat: "My feet have a beat

and now so do my teeth."

Baby

I scramble you some eggs and cheese

and sing you, "There was an Old Lady who Swallowed a Fly"

I really wish i knew what you think that song is really about

because you bop along to it, yelling periodically,

with most approving enthusiasm: "Eat CAT!!"

Love

you drive yourself to the doctor

i've turned uncharacteristically quiet

so you run your palm over my hair, my shoulders

the knife is minutes away from you. But it's me you ask:

"Baby, are you alright?"

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He dreams of lesbians

I woke up extra early this morning to call college admin in England and intuiting my absence in our bed, Big A's subconscious threw up this dream:

For some undeterminable reason* i was mad at him so i invited all the lesbians i knew over for a huge party and served vegan tomato-spinach soup. So that when Big A turned up wanting to eat some Honey Bunches (HB being his favorite cereal) there were no bowls to be had! The lesbians had taken all the bowls! It made him feel very unloved! Waa!

This kept me giggling all day because i would keep flashing back to this woebegone look on his face when he was telling me that "but there were no bowls!" 

And i really don't want to get into the gritty analysis of what "Honey Bunches" and "bowls" imply in the context of the much feared "lesbians." And if you're thinking this has something to do with this--Just. Don't. Even go there.

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* And of course i resourcefully (and ever so usefully) asked him *what* he had done in his dream to make me so mad at him. Because i'm so much more rational these days and don't get mad at him anymore for stuff he did in *my* dreams. 

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Illusions. O Bummer.

My cousin N sent me the article titled, "Obamania: The factory of illusions," in an attempt to temper my Obama euphoria. It makes a fair enough request, although much of it (and this could simply be the the effect of translation) seemed unconvincingly and ploddingly argued and is frequently fallacious. The gist of the essay being that this recent election is not "the most relevant single event in 2 (sic) million years of human existence."

I take the view from my sometimes favorite philosopher, who incisively argues that 

[the] reason Obama's victory generated such enthusiasm is not only that, against all odds, it really happened: it demonstrated the possibility of such a  thing happening. The same goes for all great historical ruptures--think of the fall of the Berlin Wall. Although we all knew about the rotten inefficiency of the Communist regimes, we didn't really believe that they would disintegrate--like Kissinger, we were all victims of cynical pragmatism. Obama's victory was clearly predictable for at least two weeks before the election, but it was still experienced as a surprise.

Full text from LRB here. Arguably, there is a translation lag in the latter quote as well, but it's one that is swept away by the sheer energetic conviction of SZ.

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