Sunday, February 23, 2014

20140223.0722

Now that the girl is home and things can actually begin to take on some semblance of normalcy,* I can actually take a few minutes to sit and write, if not so many as might be hoped.  I have wanted to do so over the past few days--I feel something of the Good Doctor's dictum about reasons for writing--but the frenetic pace since Wednesday has prevented me from doing more than a very little.  And not only in the sharp limits on the amount of time that I may spend in writing amid feeding and changing the kid have I felt it; my mind has been, appropriately, otherwise occupied.  (How much better now do I understand Woolf's discussion of one's own room!  I had intellectually engaged with the idea before, but the taste of things I have had in the past few days...the visceral experience matters.)

One thing that the past few days have shown me is just how delicately balanced daily life is, how contingent upon things being just as they are and "ought to be."  Being away from things for the few days I was left much undone or done badly because done in extreme haste--and the things normally done by others, such as my wife (not because of any demands I place upon her in my own person, but because she decides that they are what she wants to do for me and for us, as I do such things for her and for us), were in similar state.  Realignment from them and returns to smooth operations, adjusted for the presence in the household of another (and it is strange and terrifying to find myself a parent), will take some time.

Even so, it is happening.  With the help of a great many people, we are getting adjusted to this new way of living, and I am well aware that we will be doing so for the rest of our lives.

*I know that there are going to be...adjustments made with the newborn at home.  But it is far better to have to deal with those adjustments here than to try to do them running between Sherwood Cottage and the hospital.  That we need not do so is what I mean by the semblance of normalcy.

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