Eyes Renewed In Infinity

Notes on having a 6 month old child

What if some day or night a demon were to steal after you into your loneliest loneliness, and say to you, "This life as you now live it and have lived it, you will have to live once more and innumerable times more; and there will be nothing new in it, but every pain and every joy and every thought and sigh and everything unutterably small or great in your life will have to return to you, all in the same succession and sequence" ... Would you not throw yourself down and gnash your teeth and curse the demon who spoke thus? Or have you once experienced a tremendous moment when you would have answered him: "You are a god and never have I heard anything more divine."

- Friedrich Nietzsche

Notes from the first 6 months with a baby

• Six months in I feel that I’ve adjusted to the sudden lifestyle change that’s having a baby. This is my life now. I am a mother now. It’s been the most violent, and forceful, and yet natural job transition I’ve ever had. I can’t really remember who I was before I had Samantha because it’s like it was another person.

• I didn’t know that a smile could come so easily, and be so beautiful. Samantha stirs in bed, and I awaken with her, and no matter how early it is, she meets my eyes and her entire body quivers with a smile.

• I never understood before how special it was to watch a human grow consciousness. I rolled my eyes whenever parents talked about their kids sitting up, or eating food for the first time, or their first word. But now I get it. You only get so many chances to watch life unfold. Every day more light seems to pour into her eyes. She becomes more prescient, more aware. It’s the history of the universe rewritten over and over again and there’s nothing more fascinating.

• I had grown so tired of life I wasn’t sure that anything could truly excite me again. It turns out all you have to do to see it anew is to see it in a child’s eyes.

• I often think of Nietzsche’s idea of eternal recurrence when I see my child struggling with something. Pain and frustration has been a constant presence since the beginning of life, and it’s never truly diminished. If you’ve never been hungry before, or been submerged in water, or bumped your head on the ground, these are all consuming and existential threats. Pain becomes fresh with each renewal of life. Sometimes when I see the pain in her eyes I ask myself, “Is this worth it?” And then I always think, “Yes.” In that sense eternal recurrence is real. Each moment plays itself out, over and over again, in an infinite loop. Life repeating itself is not a demonic punishment, but a chance to see glimpses of heaven from every angle until the end of time.

• Samantha has her father’s fine, brown hair. It stands straight up like his does when he doesn’t take a shower for a day or two. And she has her father’s big eyes, but they have my shape. This must be what love really means. Two strands of genetic code intertwined forever, and your family and his family, together.

• I always hear a clock ticking in my head now. A child is a child for such a short amount of time, and a baby for even less time. Each moment counts. There is no reset or redo. Everything that’s been done is done forever. It makes me more conscientious of my movements and actions. Each minute takes on a new significance.

• To be a mother means to stop reaching for mother. It means to stop looking up with my eyes toward heaven, toward an imaginary parent, asking for help. Because that person is me. I am the one who has to step into that role, that eternal archetype. The old weak self must be consumed by something greater. Samantha has me to look up toward. I have myself.

• A lot of women say they hate breastfeeding, but I’ve never felt so at peace then when my child is in my arms, eating, eyes heavy, drifting off toward sleep. I cling to it because I know it won’t last long. All the inconveniences - takes too long, breasts big and leaking, not able to go out by myself - seem like nothing compared to the closeness that we get in return.

• I have a lot of nightmares about Samantha dying or being injured and I suspect they'll never stop, because our dreams reveal what is important to us and what we fear losing.

• I once took a hit of acid to try to “cure” myself and instead got locked in a bad trip for twelve hours where I saw animals dying and screaming in the pit of my stomach, all covered in blood. It took years to stop hearing them scream inside of me, but the noise has been replaced with the soft, rustling sound of arms reaching down into a cavern and rescuing the soft mammal trapped underneath.

• The first time Samantha played with another baby her eyes lit up with wonder and I imagine what it’d be like to be so curious and unafraid. This is what it must have felt like before joy was leached out of me. Before I learned to shrink from everything’s touch. When even the picture of the angel above my childhood bed seemed to be scowling in disapproval instead of smiling in a peaceful, wane way. I think of all the things I could have done if I didn’t waste so much of my life fighting mental illness and self-hatred. 

• Maybe “Inner child work” is just a poor substitute for actually having a child.

• At six months of age you can really see your child becoming. They are opening up to the world and stepping into their personality. It's difficult to believe in tabula rasa/blank slateism after having a child. You don’t mold their personality so much as discover it.

• Samantha seems most at peace when we are traveling, on the go outside, observing, experiencing life. I spend as much time outside of the house as I can so that her new eyes can see all that there is to see. And in that way it also strengthens my own courage and self-determination.

• You won’t know what it’s like to be a parent until you get there. Don’t plan for anything that could go wrong because it’ll drive you crazy, and there’s plenty of resources online for anyone addicted to paranoia if you want to waste hours researching rare childhood diseases and conflicting studies on child development.Just try to make yourself into the person who can deal with anything.

• Samantha’s favorite music seems to be Sarah Mchlachlan, but really any soft female vocalist seems to put her at ease. She also enjoys dubstep.

• The first few months of having a child didn’t really feel extremely difficult, but I realized that I was in survival mode. I’d prepared for years to have a child and was expecting the worst, so I was not expecting the warm and soft and happy moments that came. I did not think of myself as a maternal person because it came so easily. It’s only now seeing that Samantha is a bit more independent that I realize how much of a lifestyle change and how difficult it was. It’s like how sometimes I can only see that something in my life was horrendous or difficult based on other people’s reactions. Maybe it’s a little bit of disassociation from my own emotions, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. I never developed postpartum depression or felt some of the extreme suffocation that some other women report to feel.

• I know as a parent I'm going to make mistakes. I know that one day Samantha will look back and see that I'm outdated and a little silly. That I have odd beliefs and bad behaviors that need to be corrected. That is the nature of life. To be replaced by a better version of you.

• There are so many things I don't care about anymore. Having a child has refocused my priorities. Robert and I are moving out of Austin and back to the country in Oklahoma this month. I want to never forget what an open sky feels like. A cool breeze. A dark world tipped on the edge of light, humming with all of nature's mysteries. A child's shadow outstretched near sunrise, dancing in the palm of my hand.

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