Infinite Time

It is early on Saturday morning. LL is sleeping. Outside the world is quiet, sunny, new. A couple of days ago it rained, heavily for eastern Washington, and now everything is ablaze in a green fire of tree buds and birdsong. The corkscrew willow, Russian olive, and catalpa trees we planted last fall have all pushed out new leaves, and under the carport a pair of swallows has built a nest.

On my chest, making occasional squeaks and grunts as he breathes against the Moby wrap holding him in place, is our new baby, our new world.

Shortly before this new world arrived, one of the PA's I work with told me to enjoy the infinite time that I had as a not-yet-parent. I smiled and nodded, as if I knew what he was talking about. I thought I did know. I thought that yes, becoming a parent would be a big, even huge adjustment. But infinite time? I did not have infinite time!

Sorry for the interruption. Be right back. Spit-up, need new burp rag.

The truth was I couldn't imagine being a whole lot busier than I already was. Now, looking back, I appreciate the small moments of time that I did have. Time for things like an evening game of Bananagrams with LL in which we'd make words like "discombobulate" and "scintillating". Time that I had but somehow failed to use to keep up on emails. Time to use the bathroom without--

Sorry, abnormal breathing pattern. Moby adjustment needed. Back in a minute.

Where was I? Oh yes, infinite time. I remember having a conversation about time, a scintillating conversation about time, in my residency training. It was during the taking of one of those Rorschach tests of the pysche, and the woman administering it explained that those of us like myself who were ENFP's tended to view time more loosely, and thus have a greater likelihood to, for example, be late for--

Excuse me. Fussing. Bordering dangerously close to squawking, which is usually followed shortly by squalling, then outright screaming. Intervention: a walking bounce while singing "Do-Re-Mi."

Actually, we feel blessed to have a generally very un-fussy baby. He seems to be a pretty happy little guy most of the time. As long as he's being held. And fed at regular intervals. And sung to. (He's a big fan of James Taylor, Greg Brown, and Stephen Merritt.) And as long as he has a clean--

Oops. Good news. Everything is working in the GI and GU departments. Change starts with your underwear; I'll be right back.

So yes, as I was saying, I'm starting to appreciate the time that I had in my former life. Not that I would trade this new life, this new world, for anything. And these things are pretty irreversible anyway. It does make me think, though, about the myriad ways in which I was wasting away all the--

Uh-oh. New pattern. ("The word 'pattern'", as the parenting book a friend lent me, "can only be used if one invokes chaos theory.") He's trying to eat my shoulder.

free time I had before having to wake up at 3am to burp someone. If I think about...

Serious rooting behavior now. This is the kind of thing that even the Creole lullaby that my mom used to sing to me, and which she's now taught me so that I can sing it to our baby, can't soothe.

...if I think about...what was I thinking about?

Now we've progressed to head-banging. Those little neck muscles are so strong!

Ok, I give up. We've managed to hold off the inevitable for a couple hours, at least, giving LL some well-deserved sleep. But now we're into realm in which dads simply have nothing to offer.

Which makes me realize, with an overwhelming wave of gratitude for LL: whatever else I may be doing, I am not breastfeeding for thirty to sixty minutes every two hours. I may have infinitely less time than I had before--but time being the relative thing that it is, I still have an infinite amount.