ManicDDaily

I have taken a little break this week and gotten myself to an apartment where there is a baby who seems to have magically trained herself to sleep through the night. (Yes, I know–hopefully, writing of it won’t jinx it.)

I am very happy for the loving parents.  Unfortunately, however, I seem to have trained myself to wake up in the extremely early morning, at which time I pant, in Pavlovian fashion, for strong tea.

It is quite a spacious apartment, but the guest room, the parents’ room, the baby’s bassinet, the roaring kitchen faucet and a kettle that tends to scream are all in close proximity.

And so I wait in the darkness. Yes, I meditate a little, but then just wait, dry-mouthed, for murmurs.

Life is so amazing.  Here and here and here. Persistent. Smiling. Tea-full. (Soon enough.)

I have recently been working on a poem whose first line is “Step Aside, Sorrow.”  The reason I’ve not posted it is that every time I revise the poem, I end up with a completely different one. (There are just so many ways to tell sorrow to step aside, honestly; a ton of rhymes for it.) ( And in the versions, I’ve written, Sorrow always gets invited back in at the end, because of its ties to memory.)

But when you are in an apartment with a healthy baby, Sorrow simply steps aside. Without being told and without bothering with rhyme. There’s just no room for it: a baby is little but fills the space.

Anyway, it is nearly 6 am now and I may try, at least, some very quiet stepping aside of my own, that is stepping aside of doorways, tiptoeing into the kitchen, hoping that the kettle already has enough water for a cuppa.  And maybe if I stand right by it, it won’t scream….errr… whistle…. (For some reason, my family members have frequently complained of my poor attendance of kettles–)

Or maybe I can just wait here a bit more, rely upon the baby, and dawn—

(The above is a drawing supposedly of a kettle pouring four-leaf clovers.  I’ll settle for Yorkshire Gold.) 

This entry was posted on February 17, 2022 at 7:00 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. You can comment below, or link to this permanent URL from your own site.