Drive-By Psychic

"Oy, these bones, Jenn, these bones ..." I said, working my way to my feet.

She smiled and waited.

",,, I wouldn't say I feel 51, but for the first time in my life, I feel 45."

Zinnia has a new routine. It's called, "Every-time-you-try-to-get-me-to-go-to-sleep-no-matter- how-tired-I-am-I-will-arch-my-back-and-cry-until-you-let-me-do-as-I-please-by-which-I-mean-stay-up-long-past-the-point-of-exhaustion ... and-then-some." Our daughter no longer slumbers when I have her cradled in the Baby K'taan, nor will she deign to let me lie down with her with a bottle and a fuzzy blanket. Only mama is allowed to do that.

Sigh. They grow-up so fast.

Zinnia advances by leaps and a number of bounds, and will no doubt be walking in a few months. She has learned how to wave in that clumsy baby way that looks like she swatting at flies, and her baby babble has begun to take on the pre-verbal intonations and lilt of actual, viable vocabulary. The good money is riding on "kitty" or "mama" for her first word, but every once in a while a curse crosses mine or Jenn's lips (okay, mine), and this has inadvertently inserted "fuck" and "shit" into the running.

When one of the cats strolls by, Zinnia's face lights up, and she bolts after them--not on hands and knees-- but on hands and feet, her baby butt high in the air like a puppy. Even with her constant fur-pulling and cat chasing, Zinnia has sustained only two cat scratches. Undeterred, she is ever hot on the feline trail.

Of late, Jenn has been her usual uncomplaining self, and only occasionally surrenders to exhaustion and crankiness at the never-ending neediness of our lovely, smiling daughter. Yesterday, when I informed Jenn that I didn't think I would be able to do her job (i.e. be a stay-at-home dad), she said with all due humility: "We're her favorite people in the world. When I'm hitting the wall, I just remind myself of that and how much I love her, and then surrender to the moment."

However, Jenn (aka Zinnia's Amusement Ride) has been sorely tested the last few days. The wear-and-tear of caring extra weight--first during pregnancy, and now in the form of our 18 pound squirming bundle of joy--has taken its toll. Jenn's necked has locked up to the point where she has to pivot her entire body to look in another direction. Thus, she resorted to chiropractic and had her spine violently cracked back into place so she can learn the womanly art of self-care. And by self care I mean not hauling by herself (as is her wont) hundreds of pounds of compost and sod that we just this day laid out in the oval shaped sandbox we call our backyard. We did this so our little princess could have green lawn upon which to crawl ... and graze. For Jenn, gardening is how she feeds her soul, and after working outside for any period of time, her eyes shine with the glow of one who has engaged in the luminescent.

I, too, have had a number of peak experiences recently, mainly with Zinnia as the conduit, and by "peak" I mean anything that cracks open my heart, floods me with joy, and makes me utterly grateful to be alive. Last week I was raining what we call papa kisses on Zinnia's neck, head and cheeks. At first she simply let it happen; then she started to giggle, which quickly turned to peels of delight. At last, she lifted up arms, threw her head back, and fell backwards into the down comforter, as if to say, "Go ahead--ravish me with love." It was such a human gesture, so innocent and ancient and  completely delightful, that I couldn't help but wonder at the archetypal forces at play.

There is a man, Paul Ekman, who is a pioneer in the science of facial expressions. He studied cultures around. the world and categorized all face expressions reflecting the following emotions:

1. Amusement
2. Contempt
3. Contentment
4. Embarrassment
5. Excitement
6. Guilt
7. Pride in Achievement
8. Relief
9. Satisfaction
10. Sensory Pleasure
11. Shame

Each of these categories have a wide array of "Micro Expressions" all of which he mastered, and he was one of the earlier psychologists who proposed that face expressions were not merely a learned, cultural phenomena, but were cross-cultural and universal. Here's a brief clip from Malcom Gladwell's interview of Ekman:

Ekman recalls the first time he saw Bill Clinton, during the 1992 Democratic primaries. "I was watching his facial expressions, and I said to my wife, 'This is Peck's Bad Boy,' " Ekman says. "This is a guy who wants to be caught with his hand in the cookie jar, and have us love him for it anyway. There was this expression that's one of his favorites. It's that hand-in-the-cookie-jar, love-me-Mommy-because-I'm-a-rascal look. It's A.U. twelve, fifteen, seventeen, and twenty-four, with an eye roll." Ekman paused, then reconstructed that particular sequence of expressions on his face. He contracted his zygomatic major, A.U. twelve, in a classic smile, then tugged the corners of his lips down with his triangularis, A.U. fifteen. He flexed the mentalis, A.U. seventeen, which raises the chin, slightly pressed his lips together in A.U. twenty-four, and finally rolled his eyes--and it was as if Slick Willie himself were suddenly in the room. "I knew someone who was on his communications staff. So I contacted him. I said, 'Look, Clinton's got this way of rolling his eyes along with a certain expression, and what it conveys is "I'm a bad boy." I don't think it's a good thing. I could teach him how not to do that in two to three hours.' And he said, 'Well, we can't take the risk that he's known to be seeing an expert on lying.' I think it's a great tragedy, because . . ." Ekman's voice trailed off. It was clear that he rather liked Clinton, and that he wanted Clinton's trademark expression to have been no more than a meaningless facial tic. Ekman shrugged. "Unfortunately, I guess, he needed to get caught--and he got caught."

Zinnia did not throw her head back in abandon from anything she learned from Jenn and I. She was hardwired with that reaction, just as she is hardwired with an expression of pure tragic injustice at, say, having a sheet of paper wrested from her grasp just as she is starting to take the small baby bites of pulp and store them on the roof of her mouth like a chipmonk.

Her gesture also gave me cause as to what else is hardwired into her 78 percentile brain; what karma has she burst into the world with? Surely she was placed on this earth to be more than the H-Vac queen of Albuquerque. Does her love of plastic hangers indicate a future as a renowned fashion designer or is it simply the right shape and weight for a tactile-driven infant? Does her love of cats reflect a future as a veterinarian or a more sordid path down the dead end road of a Marlborough-smoking, housecoat-wearing, cat lady?

Two years ago, Jenn and I had Zinnia's future illumined for us at an annual retreat we attend in the east mountains of Albuquerque. The gathering is called the Long Dance. It is an elevating gathering of fellow travelers gathered for the purpose of community building and to be remind of who we truly are. Each year, the couple who host the event invite one or two soothsayers--psychics who use tarot, palmistry (or other psychic talents) to guide and inform the attendees as to what may be coming down the pike and what they/we my want to consider for the future.

Before I go any further, I should probably clarify: Yes, I do believe in this stuff, and yes, I do read tarot, and if I sound a little defensive, I am.

Anyway, Jenn and I were washing and drying dishes in the kitchen of our lovely hosts, having a pleasant conversation about this and that, when one of the soothsayers, a thick framed man with graying temples and a penetrating eyes approached us unbidden. He wrapped an arm around each of our shoulders and looked at us with sincere grimness.

"Your child," he said at last, "will be born healthy, but will not speak for the first five years of her life. People will think she's retarded or autistic. You will be sorely tested, but at around age five she will begin to talk and start to manifest into what she was put on the planet to be--an Indigo Child. You both will struggle ... " He looked at me. "Especially you. But you'll get through it."

He gave our shoulders one last reassuring squeeze and left. Jenn and I were speechless from the psychic kidney punch we took from this drive-by psychic.*

Now the superstitious part of me hesitates even today to relay this story for fear of coming across as glib or Fate-testing. However, over the past year, this reading has become a point of humor and a running joke. I mean, for fucks sake, what kind of asshole tells two future parents, "Hey,  every body's gonna think your kid's retarded, but don't worry. She'll be okay"?

Answer: A Really Big A-Hole.

Two days ago, Jenn and I were in the kitchen and we could hear our daughter vocalizing word-like sounds with a quality heretofore unbabbled. "I feel like we're witnessing a developmental milestone even as we speak," I said with awe.

If we pay close attention, this could probably be said for each and every day we share the planet with Baby Z.

I'll wrap up with this: I realize my blog entries have slowed to a trickle. Jenn and I both have hit a wall of late. She, due to illness and lack of sleep; me, due to the intensity of starting a new and fairly high-stress job, combined with lack of sleep and ... blah, blah, blah. Really, who cares?  We are not reinventing the parenting wheel here. Being a father is incredibly rewarding and incredibly draining. I still suck at soothing our little daughter (let alone Jenn) when she's reeeally upset, and over the weekend even felt an irrational pang of resentment toward my wife for getting sick.  

"I mean, I know you have a a temperature of 101.8, but a) You can't trust those crappy digital thermometers, and b) What, now I'm expected to go to work, see clients after work, and then take care of the two of you?"

Yes. The answer is an unequivocal Yes. The next day, I owned up to the lack of perhaps the tiniest smattering of compassionate on my part from the day before.

Jenn did not, in her wisdom, disagree. "I'd rather have you not take care of me at all then do things for me and resent it," she said without bitterness to her voice.

"My mother taught me everything I know about comforting others," I said to her with a smile.

She wouldn't have it. "I know," she said in seriousness, "but you need to work on being a soothing. Zinnia needs this from you."

*He approached me later on at the gathering--again uninvited--patted my back and said, "Don't worry. You two are going to make it through this." 

He turned to walk away--another drive-by. What was this guy's problem? I went after him this time and caught up to him as he headed toward the Kiva. 

"Look," I said "what do you mean 'we're going to get through this'? I know Jenn and I are going to get through whatever comes our way."


He looked decidedly uncomfortable. I had the feeling he wasn't used to being confronted on his bullshit.

"Oh, I didn't mean anything by it," he said. "I know you two will be fine."

"I know we will," I said. "But you just said a moment ago that we would 'get through this.' What did you mean by that?"

"I was just kidding," he said and scurried off.