Skip to main content

3. Fluctuations

Soleia 0.8

Einstein wrote that what can be seen by the light of knowledge is inconsequential to the magnitude of the ignorance represented by the surrounding darkness.  I feel that when I look at you, when I talk to your mother.  When she talks about sore nipples, or tenderness where you exited her body, I shake my head at how I could have gone so long without knowing any of these details.  When I look at your face as you sleep and see expressions fluctuate between deeply pained expressions to serene, carefree smiles in the span of a few seconds, I wonder how come I've never read of such things, of the magical experience of observing the newly born.

What could be happening behind those eyelids, I wonder?  You were like a seed growing in the fertile soil of your mother's body and now you are a seed again.  But this time the seed is your mind: we fertilize it with kisses and touch and words, and in another way with breastmilk and formula and sunlight and vitamin D drops.  To look at your face as you sleep is to easily imagine just how much is going on within that head of yours, but it remains frustratingly opaque to observation.  Like a seedling growing below the surface of the soil before breaking into the light.

Your breathing ebbs and flows, sometimes laboured, sometimes light.  Now you just giggled and sighed.  You are a universe unto yourself and I'd give anything to see how the stories within you are unfolding.  But alas, I can only be patient, and wait for the consequences of these fluctuations to run their course and reveal to me at last the woman reading these words.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

13. Summer's end

Soleia 1.85 The sun rose at 645 today.   You hadn’t slept long enough.   You had been set to bed late the night before.   We went to have breakfast and give Mama the morning to herself before she had to depart. You dipped behind the clouds on the way home, dimming the daylight.   Like I said, you hadn’t slept enough and this time you would hide your light all the way to noon. The ride to Nana and Grandpa’s was uneventful.   You ate Multi-grain Cheerios the whole way, making eyes at passengers and at your father for the entire journey. You were dimming again as Grandpa picked us up from the RT station at McCowan.   It wouldn’t be long before you’d need another nap and I readied myself to the task of finding a relatively quiet room in the house were you might go under. But once we settled into Nana and Grandpa’s bed in the darkened room, I could here the weezing and gasping that you made from beneath your pacifier on the bed beside me. ...
Post a Comment
Read more

9. Tears for the Sun

Soleia 0.106 I hope that you never think me heartless.  I can see how your mother is with you and I know what I must be to you.  She will be soft so I must be hard.  I must be hard so that you can be both. In your life, you will meet people and mostly be able to safely and quickly dismiss them as one or the other.  Wishy-washy people who go back on their word, dream without taking action, and consider an insult equivalent to a violation.  Boring, anal, impatient people set in their ways, conflating rudeness for confidence, volume for persuasion and proud of their pig-headedness, their stubborness, their ignorance. Learn from these people, Kwynn.  Learn from their faults.  Learn what not to do and how not to be yourself. Even in moments of solidity, liquids can form.  I like to think of myself as ice: cold and rational with respect to what must be done for you.  I've been ice since you were born - winter ice, the ice that doesn't melt ...
Post a Comment
Read more

7. General relativity

Soleia 0.61 It's this idea of supermassiveness.  You may not be very big in physical terms but in psychological and spirtual terms, you are the biggest thing in the universe.  Your life is this supermassive event, this supermassive object around which our lives now revolve.  With that supermassiveness comes the way that you warp the world around you, the dramatic pull that you have on those you meet.  You could call it your 'gravitational pull' - the way people are drawn to your sounds, your smiles, your little face. But as Einstein revealed, this gravitational pull and the way that you change our reality has tangible effects on both space and time.   Just taking a look around our little region of the house and your effects on our space is apparent: the room that we've made for you both in our hearts and in our environment.  A cradle, a crib.  Swings, playmats.  Bumble chairs, carseats, strollers, carriers, baby bathtubs, bottles.  S...
Post a Comment
Read more