Good to be here

  
About 6 months after Liv was born I read a book. A real book. Hundreds of pages and full of things that had nothing to do with either of my children. I stayed up late three nights in a row while we were in Vermont, glued to the book. After we got home I started looking up videos on YouTube of speeches and events detailed in the book. It was just about the best book I have ever read... possibly because it was the first "real" book I have read in what, a year and a half? Doesn't food taste that much better when you're starving?

Some weeks back I also started noticing that I was thinking again. Nothing earth shattering of course, but it was like I had rejoined the world. I watched chess players in Washington Square Park and had this little epiphany vis a vis I can stop feeling bad, deep down in the place where feelings are never clearly articulated, that I'm not a part of all New York's wonderful subcultures. Old guys who love to play chess. Chinese immigrants who dance in Chinatown's parks. The West African guys who play soccer on the weekends in Prospect Park. No one can have every experience. Knowing that these other groups are here, that's enough.

I woke up a couple Saturdays ago and a voice was screaming in my head: "Make all the food! Make it!" I've got a list on my fridge now of things I want to cook. Because I want to cook again! Who knows how much I can actually do (a teething Liv does not usually make me more productive), but who cares. It no longer seems hopeless. It seems do-able.

Oliver and I went out on an actual date too, which was, just like Passage of Power, mind-blowing. We had a conversation. We didn't rush off in two different directions to take care of two different problems. First date in um, 8 months? And my goodness, there's a whole city out there! Stuff happens at night! Stand-up comedy, jazz concerts on side streets, Katie Holmes sightings. Food... better... starving.

Good lord, my children have owned me these past few years.  Hormones? Nature? Just me? Whatever the cause, those first 6 months or so (and the nine that precede them) just wipe me clean. Greatly diminished mental capacity, no familiar sign posts. Just babies and some weird, primal drive to serve. It's lovely and I'm glad I can drop everything to care for them... but maaaaaan. Is it good to be coming back.