Day 20

I write this with a growing mix of love and dread, mixed perhaps with some fear or fear-like emotion–possibly just extreme nervousness and a bit of flatulence, which–let me tell you–can sometimes turn perfectly ordinary mild fear into full-blown terror. Please let it be the gas. Just the gas. I write so that those who read these words might begin to understand, or at least approximate an understanding, of the heavy @#$% that is going down in the lives of two very normal parents. Okay, mostly normal. Also, what is normal, anyway.

My wife’s pregnancy was uneventful enough, so it seemed: there was some nausea, some glowing, some elation, some very uncomfortable sleeping, some dizziness, some delusions regarding fictitious characters from 1950s sitcoms. All to be expected. Delivery was normal. Everything was normal–delighfully, gorgeously normal–or so I thought at first, and why shouldn’t I? Who expects anything to go wrong, especially something completely foreign not only to his own experience but even to his imagining? Looking back, of course, I can see irregularities. Do they mean anything, or are they merely the hiccups of a genetic heritage that ate too much bratwurst yesterday? Are they omens or the effects of a sleep-deprived new father’s distorted memory?

My beloved’s nausea, first of all, was anything but even. Not even… that’s an understatement; it was not divisible by anything but itself and unity. That’s right: the number of days during which she experienced nausea was prime. Prime. And there were the cravings, which is to say, there were no cravings. Is that normal? Television would suggest it is not. Also there was that time in my wife’s second trimester when I woke up in the middle of the night to find her levitating a couple of feet above the bed, surrounded by a faint greenish light, but that was probably just my imagination. And the snoring. Is it common for pregnant women to snore? I mean, really loudly? Perhaps so, but I swear those snores sounded exactly like a slightly out-of-tune double-belled euphonium. I can’t count the number of nights I woke up mumbling about horse platoons, trombones, pool halls, and shy librarians. The wife did not like me mumbling about the librarians, by the way. Finally, perhaps most tellingly, were the swollen ankles. I have surreptitiously asked a dozen women about this, and my love’s ankles were not in any way normal. If only I had known this at the time. Or is this all in my mind?

The day of delivery was when the true signs, the clear signs, began to appear. My love’s breathing rhythm matched almost perfectly an ancient Aztec chant I once heard in Oaxaca; I was told it was a prayer for mercy from Atlacamani, goddess of hurricanes. When I cut the umbilical cord, I could barely focus on my task, compelled to notice that the cord lay, beyond the cut, in the Celtic rune symbol for “fire.” A slight shift of a nurse’s hand as I severed it curled the cord into the Celtic rune for “game.” Coincidence? This same nurse told me that the three ominous thunderclaps as my beautiful daughter cried her first querulous cries–all but drowning out her new voice–were not out of the ordinary for late spring, but I pulled back the blinds from the room’s only window a few minutes later to see nothing but sunny blue skies, clear to the horizon.

And now we are alone, we three, in this small, comfortable home. Tomorrow it will be three weeks since Sam’s birth. I cannot stop staring at my darling little girl or her beautiful mother; the wonder of what has happened in our lives transfixes me when I ponder it. But the strangeness continues, and I think the… what shall I call them?… phenomena… are accelerating in frequency. Last week I heard our cat

I write this with a growing mix of love and dread, mixed perhaps with some fear or fear-like emotion–possibly just extreme nervousness and a bit of flatulence, which–let me tell you–can sometimes turn perfectly ordinary mild fear into full-blown terror. Please let it be the gas. Just the gas. I write so that those who read these words might begin to understand, or at least approximate an understanding, of the heavy @#$% that is going down in the lives of two very normal parents. Okay, mostly normal. Also, what is normal, anyway.

My wife’s pregnancy was uneventful enough, so it seemed: there was some nausea, some glowing, some elation, some very uncomfortable sleeping, some dizziness, some delusions regarding fictitious characters from 1950s sitcoms. All to be expected. Delivery was normal. Everything was normal–delighfully, gorgeously normal–or so I thought at first, and why shouldn’t I? Who expects anything to go wrong, especially something completely foreign not only to his own experience but even to his imagining? Looking back, of course, I can see irregularities. Do they mean anything, or are they merely the hiccups of a genetic heritage that ate too much bratwurst yesterday? Are they omens or the effects of a sleep-deprived new father’s distorted memory?

My beloved’s nausea, first of all, was anything but even. Not even… that’s an understatement; it was not divisible by anything but itself and unity. That’s right: the number of days during which she experienced nausea was prime. Prime. And there were the cravings, which is to say, there were no cravings. Is that normal? Television would suggest it is not. Also there was that time in my wife’s second trimester when I woke up in the middle of the night to find her levitating a couple of feet above the bed, surrounded by a faint greenish light, but that was probably just my imagination. And the snoring. Is it common for pregnant women to snore? I mean, really loudly? Perhaps so, but I swear those snores sounded exactly like a slightly out-of-tune double-belled euphonium. I can’t count the number of nights I woke up mumbling about horse platoons, trombones, pool halls, and shy librarians. The wife did not like me mumbling about the librarians, by the way. Finally, perhaps most tellingly, were the swollen ankles. I have surreptitiously asked a dozen women about this, and my love’s ankles were not in any way normal. If only I had known this at the time. Or is this all in my mind?

The day of delivery was when the true signs, the clear signs, began to appear. My love’s brediary-of-the-spawn-athing rhythm matched almost perfectly an ancient Aztec chant I once heard in Oaxaca; I was told it was a prayer for mercy from Atlacamani, goddess of hurricanes. When I cut the umbilical cord, I could barely focus on my task, compelled to notice that the cord lay, beyond the cut, in the Celtic rune symbol for “fire.” A slight shift of a nurse’s hand as I severed it curled the cord into the Celtic rune for “game.” Coincidence? This same nurse told me that the three ominous thunderclaps as my beautiful daughter cried her first querulous cries–all but drowning out her new voice–were not out of the ordinary for late spring, but I pulled back the blinds from the room’s only window a few minutes later to see nothing but sunny blue skies, clear to the horizon.

And now we are alone, we three, in this small, comfortable home. Tomorrow it will be three weeks since Sam’s birth. I cannot stop staring at my darling little girl or her beautiful mother; the wonder of what has happened in our lives transfixes me when I ponder it. But the strangeness continues, and I think the… what shall I call them?… phenomena… are accelerating in frequency. Last week I heard our cat howl when I left our baby in the next room for a moment. I rushed back, expecting to see a scratched hand or a tuft of fur. I saw nothing but a broad smile on my daughter’s face. I did not see the cat again for two days; he did not start eating again for another day after that, and now he seems to be reluctant to be in the same room with the girl. Three days ago, as I cuddled my little snookums on my lap, I used my silliest voice and talked about recent behavioral neuroscience research I had read from the most recent issue of a professional journal. Suddenly, I gasped in pain and shock, my disbelieving eyes finding my finger with her diminutive digits wrapped around it. The pressure only lasted a second, but I still have baby-sized, finger-shaped bruises on my right index finger. They make typing this account difficult. The look in my baby’s face as she crushed my flesh can only be described as fury–dark, unrelenting fury of the type usually reserved for her mother if feeding is a few minutes late. Thinking back on the incident, I noticed that I had been summarizing a positron emission tomography study. She squeezed at the exact moment I said “positron.”

I should not dwell on these untoward instances (or, if you prefer, these quotidian events to which my exhausted, semi-hallucinatory mind has attached illusory meaning); we are happy. The days fly by in a blur of giggles and diaper changes, nursery rhymes and sleepytime. I go to work and come home as soon as I can, to find both of my darlings here and happy. I have hinted at my fears to my love, but she seems to notice nothing out of the ordinary. I’m sure she’s right. The random muscle movements all babies exhibit can surely explain the fact that mine lay for over an hour yesterday in the exact body position of Thoth purifying Hetsheput in the mural at Karnak. The same explanation likely applies to her subsequently moving her left hand in the symbol for the ankh, at least five times in a row. It is probably not even worth mentioning that exactly seven birds clustered at the living room window to stare at her as she stared back, arranged in the vines and branches of the bush outside our window in a nearly perfect six-point radial pattern with one in the center. They were not the same species of birds: the outer six were brightly-colored songbirds–a yellow and black one, a blue jay, and some others I can’t remember–and the center bird was twice their size, a jet-black bird with iridescent feathers and piercing eyes. Even when the cat (the one not currently terrified of my little girl) repeatedly flung himself at the window from which these birds were perched mere inches, they did not move. He eventually tired of his efforts and lay panting on the floor as the birds continued to stare, occasionally cocking a head for a better look. I don’t know how long they kept it up; eventually the dishes needed doing. However, from the kitchen I heard a sound exactly as if an avian beak were tapping on glass. It was almost impossible not to parse it into Morse code as I used to do when I was a youngster enamored of the 1800s railway scene. I nearly dropped the soapy plate in my hand when I realized that the tapping had spelled “Tunguska.”

I have had time to breathe deeply and realize how silly this all sounds. I’m sure it’s all nothing more than a terrible combination of too little sleep and too much science fiction. I will try to get some sleep. With any luck, this will be the end of my paranoid imaginings. With any luck.

howl when I left our baby in the next room for a moment. I rushed back, expecting to see a scratched hand or a tuft of fur. I saw nothing but a broad smile on my daughter’s face. I did not see the cat again for two days; he did not start eating again for another day after that, and now he seems to be reluctant to be in the same room with the girl. Three days ago, as I cuddled my little snookums on my lap, I used my silliest voice and talked about recent behavioral neuroscience research I had read from the most recent issue of a professional journal. Suddenly, I gasped in pain and shock, my disbelieving eyes finding my finger with her diminutive digits wrapped around it. The pressure only lasted a second, but I still have baby-sized, finger-shaped bruises on my right index finger. They make typing this account difficult. The look in my baby’s face as she crushed my flesh can only be described as fury–dark, unrelenting fury of the type usually reserved for her mother if feeding is a few minutes late. Thinking back on the incident, I noticed that I had been summarizing a positron emission tomography study. She squeezed at the exact moment I said “positron.”

I should not dwell on these untoward instances (or, if you prefer, these quotidian events to which my exhausted, semi-hallucinatory mind has attached illusory meaning); we are happy. The days fly by in a blur of giggles and diaper changes, nursery rhymes and sleepytime. I go to work and come home as soon as I can, to find both of my darlings here and happy. I have hinted at my fears to my love, but she seems to notice nothing out of the ordinary. I’m sure she’s right. The random muscle movements all babies exhibit can surely explain the fact that mine lay for over an hour yesterday in the exact body position of Thoth purifying Hetsheput in the mural at Karnak. The same explanation likely applies to her subsequently moving her left hand in the symbol for the ankh, at least five times in a row.

It is probably not even worth mentioning that exactly seven birds clustered at the living room window this morning to stare at her, arranged in the vines and branches of the bush outside our window in a nearly perfect six-point radial pattern with one in the center. They were not the same species of birds: the outer six were brightly-colored songbirds–a yellow and black one, a blue jay, and some others I can’t remember–and the center bird was twice their size, a jet-black bird with iridescent feathers and piercing eyes. Even when the cat (the one not currently terrified of my little girl) repeatedly flung himself at the window from which these birds were perched mere inches, they did not move. He eventually tired of his efforts and lay panting on the floor as the birds continued to stare, occasionally cocking a head for a better look. I don’t know how long they kept it up; eventually the dishes needed doing. However, from the kitchen I heard a sound exactly as if an avian beak were tapping on glass. It was almost impossible not to parse it into Morse code as I used to do when I was a youngster enamored of the 1800s railway scene. I nearly dropped the soapy plate in my hand when I realized that the tapping had spelled “Tunguska.”

I have had time to breathe deeply and realize how silly this all sounds. I’m sure it’s all nothing more than a terrible combination of too little sleep and too much science fiction. I will try to get some sleep. With any luck, this will be the end of my paranoid imaginings. With any luck.