Coop_ A Year of Poultry, Pigs, and Parenting - Michael Perry [66]
Later in the afternoon I find the glass lid of the cold frame smashed. I suspect Fritz the Dog. He was nosing around earlier. Fortunately I have a fair collection of old storm windows, so I gather the broken glass, install a replacement and prop it open again. When I see him lurking in the same spot again later, this time with a chewy dog treat in his jaws, I holler at him and shoo him away. But when the day cools and I go to lower the lid, all the dirt and most of the seedlings have been scraped into a mound in one corner. I realize now he’s been looking for a soft patch of dirt to bury his treasures—I’ll lay odds there’s a dog treat under that mound of dirt. The dog is nowhere to be found, so I can do him no harm, but I am ashamed to say I storm into the house and slam the door and say something very loud and forbidden. I can’t defend my rage, but it is tied to the fact that in the midst of all that has been going on, and all my absences, that little plot of dirt with its sprouts was a tangible manifestation of some careful moments spent with Amy. I don’t care about the stupid plants, but I care about what it meant to kneel down there with my daughter. Later, when I have cooled down some, I go back out and notice the dog missed about six radish sprouts. I lower the lid and figure maybe they’ve got a shot. Then I go for a cool-down walk. Along the south side of the granary, the rhubarb is up. The last time our family gathered, my brother John—a big bearded fellow who spends a lot of time on a bulldozer—said he eats an entire rhubarb stalk every spring just for the involuntary face-scrunch that transports him back to his preschool days. He also reminded me that having heard rhubarb leaves were poisonous, we would feed them to the chickens and then hang around to see what happened, but nothing ever did.
The baby has cried us awake. Fumbling in the dark to fetch her, I note the eastern horizon is a faint charcoal gray.
Early to bed, early to rise has never been my deal. Half of everything I’ve ever written was likely typed past midnight. Not so any longer. Age plays a part, but mostly I think it is a sequela of parenthood. Even before the baby, when it was just Amy, I had begun easing toward the early shift. Writing after supper, I’d take a break to read books with her at bedtime, and find it near impossible to go from that quiet moment back to the desk.
The new sleep pattern has been reinforced by the baby crying at night. After twenty years of going from slumber to blastoff at the first micro-beep of an ambulance or fire pager, I tend to spasm straight up and out of bed at Jane’s least whimper. Anneliese is bemused at the gymnastics, which is to say that while she appreciates my willingness to help (it’s less about helpfulness than doggish conditioning) she could do with more arising and less blastoff. Furthermore, in most cases the baby is looking for the drink I cannot provide, so although I wake to retrieve her, by the time she is nursing I’ve returned to unconsciousness. She howled at 2:00 a.m. and now she’s howling again. I consider the dim seep of light and decide I might as well begin the day. By 10:00 a.m. I’ll be nodding off above the coffee cup, but for now I want to get going.
In soft lamplight I place Jane at her mother’s breast and lean down to kiss them both on the brow. Jane’s cheeks are fattening, and when her eyes open I look for recognition but I still don’t quite see the person in there. I wonder if it’s just me or if mothers attach from the first instant while the man flounders around and waits for the fun stuff, like diaper farts and jibber-jabber. I poke my head in Amy’s room and in the glow of her night-light see her wrapped in a sleeping bag on the floor beside her made bed. She has taken to doing this since the baby came. Still impaired by a developmental psych class I was required to take in college, I momentarily worry that the change may be portentous; then I decide it’s possible the kid just wants to sleep on the floor.
Downstairs, and out the door. Eastward the gray