I wrote this April 25, when Strudel was six weeks old and I was so tired I felt like my brain’s record kept skipping.

I am exhausted physically so I send out psychic entreaties that go unfulfilled. I will the baby to bathe herself; I will the schmutz next to the garbage can that comes from a careless four-year-old tossing out oatmeal and jammy crusts to stop stinking; I will the groceries to shop for themselves and put themselves away. Mostly, I will the baby to sleep for ten more minutes so I can have the fleeting satisfaction that comes with actually completing a task. I am fooling myself though: the tasks are all completely circular and will need to be done again in an hour, day, or week. Somewhere these brain waves are being received, perhaps. Somewhere, in Akron, Ohio, or in the middle of nowhere in China, a child has the overwhelming urge to clean her room right, the first time. Or the laundry somewhere does its goddammed self for once. Maybe a baby stops crying somewhere and smiles. Maybe my psychic brainwaves just have lousy aim.

Most of the time, despite the fatigue that comes with being a new parent, I enjoy taking care of Strudel. When I was gleefully childless, I watched other parents suffer and struggle with their children, and thought that being a parent meant joylessly proceeding from one unpleasant phase to another, beginning with being vomited on repeatedly and ending with bailing junior out of the clink for grand theft auto. I watched these parents, suffering along, victims of their horrid, self-centered children, who were spit upon one minute and turned the next to encourage other people their age to experience the wonder of spawning.

Now I can see there are other sweet rewards. Franny is smart and strong and loves me, even though I tell her that we are having rocks for dinner or that I am going to start keeping her in a cardboard box. Strudel smiles when she sees me and is getting fat and gigantic through hours of dedicated boob ranching, and snuggles into my neck on the rare occasions she is not pulling my breasts down to where she thinks they ought to be, which is around my navel.

At lunch with my sister the other day, I had the realization while we talked about family history that I had no memory of my mother taking care of me–performing mundane tasks like dressing me, bathing me, or even hugging or reading to me. When I left my grandma’s at almost six years old to go to finally live with my mother, I was independent in many ways and too big to be coddled by her. I know she took care of me when I was very small, I just don’t remember.

Taking care of your own child is like remembering or even learning for the first time how loved you were. I’m sure my grandmother loved me as much as I love my own children, and she knew how fleeting the time was. She knew that someday, sooner rather than later, my mother would come to collect me again. Time is collecting Franny away; she pushes me away when I cuddle her and call her my baby. Maybe parents want other people to have children partly so they can gain the compassion that comes from seeing the other side of parenting. Or maybe they just want someone else to talk with about the weirdness of finding rocks in your pockets or walking in on a potty-trainee painting the mirror with her own poo. I don’t know.

In Other News

Coolest thing evah…I just discovered that my blog has something called “power editing.” So I have republished all my old entries, way back to the far-out year 2001. However, they are going to be chockablock with broken links. We must take the good (Men’s Pocky) with the bad (Bertie Bott, you dickhole).