as she’s all limbs and angry mouth and her skin is peach tracing paper before it tears and she is the not-me that I’ve been dreaming about since her conception and even before, the not-me that can be all the things I could never have been and will no longer be.
Serious eyes and perfect fingers, lips that sharpen into ‘O’ and the mock surprise of raised eyebrows. This little bundle that fills heavier and heavier, this reach of flesh apart from myself. Personality out of nothing, out of gestures, out of a nervous system that still doesn’t know the difference between night and day.
This past Sunday I had not slept the night before on shift, nor throughout the following day. I could not, too excited and forward looking, the day with my daughter after missing her for so long, missing the not-me that she can be, the not-me that I can pour myself into and keep pure of the mistakes and fears of my own.
Even the first nights in the hospital and home, she cried in her sleep. So little time on this earth and already the nightmares have begun. Who was it that said that the normal state of the human mind was one of anxiety’ I held her close to my chest through the shudders wondering how much of my sadness have I already passed on’
Washing dishes over the sink, my wife wept today. We’ve been unbelievably strained. We miss each other, but I think we are also different to each other. How much of it is has to do with change, with the arrival of our daughter, or fear of own future together, a sense of anxiousness about how long will this center, as if, now having brought a child into the world, no longer just a couple, but now a ‘family’, the clock is suddenly ticking to an end.
How ridiculous to fear an unimaginable future.