4644 square inches

(99% written on November 9th on my so-called smartphone; last 1% written right now)--

I am standing at the kitchen sink with our four month old baby asleep on my chest in the baby carrier. Straight ahead of me the window looks out onto fall. To my left is the oven, from which I have just removed roasted red peppers, tomatoes and carrots. To my right, cupboards and countertops form an "L" punctuated by the refrigerator. I walk between a 5 by 4 and a 3 1/2 by 3 1/2 foot shock-absorbing wellness mat, and these 4644 square inches define my current existence.

In the crook of the "L", Israel Kamakawiwo plays Ka Huila Wai on the ukulele; Sam often tolerates much more mellow music once he's actually asleep. This arrangement allows for remarkable accomplishments. Together we can remove roasted vegetables from the oven. We can core and slice pineapples. With a bit of a stretch we can even wash dishes. There are a few things that are hard to do. I cannot, for instance, go to the gym. It's pretty hard to go through the mail. Email is difficult, not because it's impossible to respond to things using voice recognition software to type, as I'm doing now, but more because it's hard to occupy the mental space needed to confront things such as Medicare payment reform, global warming, job interviews. Those things exist in a world far outside of these 4644 square inches.

At the very time when outside forces seem to have conspired to make our lives busier than ever, Sam, even more so than Felix before him, has forced us as parents to slow down and examine what is important to us.

More important than anything is our family. Felix. Sam. Mama. Dada. When I say these names aloud to Sam, the world’s biggest smile lights up his face. We cannot get this time back later. I can’t go back in 4 years and spent more time with my 4-mo-old. As our outside world spins into ever greater dezord—the Creole word for disorder, and the other word besides baggai (stuff) that I retained from my Haitian birthplace—these few square inches of soft, bouncy, supportive floormat seem ever more comforting. The most important job for me to be doing right now is to hold my sleeping baby.