No "I" in Team

I was going to liken pacing with Zinnia in the mid-late evening hours as my own personal Bataan Death March, but after a little research, I decided to compare my hyperbolic struggles as a father to this sordid epoch in human history would besmirch the memory of those men who lost their lives during the march. Let me say, instead, that when one returns home exhausted from the day and one's four month-old requires one to have some extra pep in the step, one begins to feel as if one is wearing leaden house slippers.

We weighed Z. today. She came in just shy of of 15 pounds, the same weight as three 5 pound sacks of sugar, 10 dozen eggs, two gallons of water, or a sperm whale's brain. It would not be un-apropos--that is, it would be extremely apropos--to compare Z. to the famed children's toy, the water wiggler ...

... only if said wiggler were two feet long, hated to be put down, and cried the moment it didn't get its way.

Irrationally, when swimming through the late night quicksand, I sometimes resent (albeit briefly) baby and mother alike. And I've noticed the more I pray for Zinnia to go to sleep, the more her body is infused with the caffeine of life. During these moments, I am decidedly not in my happy place. I look down at this baby who, as far as babies go, is actually quite easy and delightful, and feel a grim resolution to walk her into blessed slumber.* Not quite the picture of joie de vivre that a father hopes to strike.

I have been hitting the parenting wall in a number of ways of late. And the husbanding as well. And also the professional wall. I sometimes find myself sitting across from a client whom I aspire to inflame towards being more open-hearted while I myself am straining to keep my own personal feelings of asshole-ishness at bay:

"... so take a few breaths," I coach the client, "and notice what you're feeling in this moment."

I can't believe Jenn started to fucking clank the dishes around last night while I was trying to walk Zinnia to sleep.

"Good. Now, with your eyes closed , notice where you feel that in your body. Breathe into the heart of the emotion ..."

I mean, I'm trying to get our kid to go to sleep, and she's running the fucking garbage disposal? Then decides that that would be the perfect time to start a load of wash.

" ... no need to push away or change it somehow. Just breathe and feel."

I get that she 's doing most of the late night duties--alright, all of it--but still, my job is ... well, what am I, chopped liver? I'm already fucking exhausted and trying to calm Zinnia down and ... and... and...

" ... now what are you noticing? Calmer? Good, let yourself experience calmness, merely because that is what's going on in your body in this moment ..."

Shift. Need to shift. Zinnia is a sponge and absorbs my negative energy. Love, love, love ... Get present ... But how can Jenn not get that when Zinnia is going to sleep, I want our home to be a sensory deprivation tank.

"Your noticing some tension in your back?" I say leaning forward. "Wonderful. Now breathe into it, fully experience the tension. No need to judge or analyze. Just breathe and feel ... "

Still, I can't believe that ...

The esteem in which the reader no doubt holds the author aside, these are not my finest moments. Resenting my four month old daughter for not going to sleep is a sure recipe for Asshole pie a la mode, with a scoop of resentment toward my wife for not reading my mind. And yes, yes, I understand this is the overreaction of a new parent learning the ropes. Of late, however, my irritability has been more pronounced.

At a friends house last Friday, I snapped at Jenn--quietly, but pointedly--when she tried to put a blanket on our nearly-sleeping daughter. It was a very reasonable thing for a loving mother to do, but also in stark relief to my dictum: "Always let sleeping babies lie."

There's a Buddhist parable: If a dove were to fly over the highest mountain once every thousand years carrying in its beak a long, sheer silk scarf, the number of years it would take for that scarf to wear the mountain down to dust is the amount of lifetimes we have lived, as we reincarnate over and over and over again.

Here's what I want to know: How is it that Zinnia can sleep through the clanging of pots and pans, semi-trucks steaming by, the rattle of the dryer, and Duma setting off an industrial-sized air horns I carelessly left on the cat tree, but my lovely daughter will stir at the slightest rustle of silk-upon-silk when I pull back the covers in an attempt to work my way into bed?

If it were 11:59 p.m. on the 364th day of year 999, and that Buddhist dove decided for the first time in history--just for a change of pace--it would soar over Sandia Peak, well, if Zinnia were napping in that miraculous moment, I have little doubt her eyes would fly open from the racket, and she would rain bitter tears from the horrible, horrible disturbance.

Thus, when Jenn started to cover Zinnia with a blanket, as soon as she felt the fabric floating down upon her like a blessing, Z. shifted and stirred. I looked at Jenn and said with a quiet snip, "You can futz with her when you're holding her," and pushed the blanket aside.

Jenn put on a good face, but she looked as if she had been slapped. I felt terrible, but hid it beneath a soap box built of exhaustion and self-righteous indignation.

"Hey," Jenn said the next day from the kitchen. "We're on the same team here. I'm trying to do what's best for Zinnia just like you."*

True enough, and I felt a wave of gratitude (and a smattering of shame) for her honest confrontation.

I have very little memory of my parents ever working as a team. It seemed to me that, early on, they went from a kind of fragile truce to frequent skirmishes, to all out war; only it was war of attrition, where my mother, in her pain and fear, was always on the offensive until my father finally wore down to a passive-aggressive nub. It is quite possible that in my desire to not be a punching bag like my father, I have overcompensated in the other direction, invoking the spirit of--yikes!--my mother. I sometimes hear her harsh, judging voice broadcasting in my brain on radio KFUK and subtly play out some of the hard lessons I learned as a child.

Several weeks ago, I was holding Zinnia while she fussed about something or other, and I looked down at this baby, the picture of total innocence and trust, and repeated to her the paranoid mantra under whose banner I was raised: "You're just doing this to spite me!"

I uttered the phrase tongue firmly in cheek, but it was such and absurd thing to say to this beautiful little girl, that I laughed until I cried. I felt sense of release wash over me as this demon, my life long companion, shrunk to the size of a walnut.

*Note: The last two nights--not entirely successfully.

**A wonderful thing, to have a wife and friends who love me enough to call me on my shit. The trick is to find compassion for myself in the place where, as one friend said recently, one feels devastated and helpless about one's reactions to life. She actually said this in relation to the fertile and excruciating ground that hating someone can provide in ones life, but still applicable.