Closed Door


























2:00 am: I'm rocking my five month old baby to stop her fussing, which she is threatening to turn into a full-fledged shrieking. I'm in the living room with the door closed and I keep giving it furtive glances to check that it stays closed. It is important that it stays closed. Because if that door is closed, then so is his - the kids' bedroom that he took to sleeping in.  He cannot be woken. Please God he cannot be woken.

2:30 am: It's hot in the living room, and I'm feeling stifled with all the energy coming from the TV. The sound is turned down and the baby is not fussing anymore but she's wide awake and expects all the attention in the world. If I get too absorbed in the show, she makes sure she is loud enough to regain my focus. It's getting harder to stay awake…
Focus on her, I tell myself, stay awake, keep the doors closed, hang on, she'll get sleepy soon.

3:11 am: I changed her diaper. Again. Back on the couch, she's in her bouncy seat.

3:14 am: I must have dozed off, shit, what's with all the shrieking! Stop it please. I'll breastfeed you, but please stay quiet.

3:17 am: It's hard to keep my head up, it keeps rolling to the side and I wake with a start. My arm and neck are burning from holding the baby as she nurses. Everything sways, I need to hold it together for a little bit longer, till she's gone to sleep. Then we can go to our bedroom.

3:35 am: She's asleep finally. We are in bed and I immediately feel like I'm sinking into a pit of drunken exhaustion...

3:47 am: She is wailing, loud and sharp. I wake up with a start, thinking I can't do this anymore. I grab her rougher than I would like and put her on my left shoulder to calm her. Maybe she just needs to burp, and maybe I will make it through another night.

3:51 am: I'm crying and she is still fussing. She actually wants to play; it's not hunger keeping her awake, its boredom, I can tell. I start getting louder, I'm desperate to get some sleep. I look at my door, I'm pushing it by crying out, but I can't do this alone.

4:07 am: I'm bitter and sour and she can feel it. I can barely feel my extremities as I walk out with her on my left arm. I decide to take us to the open living area because the thought of being trapped in a tiny living room with red furniture all around and a huge TV is maddening. I put her on her back on the couch among the pillows so she doesn't fall off and run to the living room to get the bouncy chair.

4:09 am: She is mad I left her on her back and is making it heard. I have to rock her harder as I look at his closed door. I have to sing, but my lyrics are angry and my voice is choked. "Stop it!", I yell at my baby. I'm mad and scared and tired out of my mind, and she cries louder. Then I hear him shuffling to the door and making disapproving sounds. I clamp my mouth shut and start swinging her back and forth. She likes it at first, and it quiets her, then I could tell it scares her as she closes her eyes and contorts her face in fear against the growing G forces. But I'm swinging her still, I put my upper body into it and go for it. She is quiet at last, and clinging to me.

He is suddenly behind me, and asks, "What are you doing?!"
"I'm calming her, can't you see," I say as I slow down and put on a smile I know looks crazy.
"Keep her quiet, that's all you need to do, so I can get enough sleep to get to work the next day, how hard is it?"
The baby is subdued now, she is scared. I'm scared. With rigid steps and tears streaking down my face, I take the baby and myself to my room and shut the door. I plop down on the bed and look at her face. She knows. We cuddle and fall asleep.

6:41 am: breastfeeding

8:07 am: breastfeeding

9: 51 am: breastfeeding

11:33 am: My throat is parched and I wake up to the baby grizzling. She needs a diaper change and the day needs to start...I’m already tired. I lay in bed wondering if there was enough sunlight in the world to cheer my soul.

I look into his room on the way to the bathroom, make sure he’s gone. He is. The doors can stay open for now.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

My Ghost

Image
It took years to get here. And a lot of thinking, stumbling, and getting up again. I don’t know if I’ve ever known myself to be a woods person, but I honestly don’t know what I could’ve done without the McKintosh Trail in K’jipuktuk. The leaves today had more red in them, the stubborn vegetation leaning into the new season and finally giving in to the inevitable cycle of change. Fall. It’s a sad season for me; reminds me of my birth and the death of romances. To me, September has always symbolized a certain end to possibilities. As a child, I’d hate the end of summer vacation - a time when I’d have to go back to Dubai for school and leave Cairo behind. To my childhood and teen self, Cairo was the pinnacle of all meaning, where things and characters and drama got created. Dubai was small and unassuming, no matter how prettier and cleaner it was.  The connection with the family, the land, and the existential roots during the summer was what I lived for during the school year in Dubai...
Read more

Stockholm Syndrome and First-Generation Immigrants in Nova Scotia: A Quick Reflection

Image
Stockholm Syndrome among racialized immigrant communities in Canada has always been a thing, but I got to taste a very real version of it at a recent one-on-one conversation with another first generation immigrant in the Nova Scotian Muslim community. The unsaid gist of what he was telling me - in relation to my equity-seeking posts - was basically, “how dare you be so free when my colonized mind never allowed me to be?”  There are depths to this trauma manifestation, this syndrome, in the colonized psyche that go beyond idolizing the oppressor and adopting their language and logic. There is also a sense of wanting everyone else who fits the category to be shackled by the same disease; a desire by the oppressed for the perpetuation of the cycle of oppression so as not to be alone in their trauma. “If I’m not free, then neither should you,” kind of thing.  Another psychological layer for this desire for perpetuation may be guilt. Oppression trauma involves a very real layer of ...
Read more

Invisible Leavings

Image
August 2017, Halifax, Canada: There are energies associated with places, I have come to believe. The character of a certain venue may not be simply about the light quality, decor, finishing, colors or its smells. I think an important component is its energy, it's own specific vibe. And that is not merely the charge you get off the people that are in that place at the time you're in it; it may also involve the energy left by people who were present in the past. The "invisible leavings" of people, I've star ted to call it in my mind...the ghosts of the place.  Not in a horror movie kind of way, but in the way that you enter a quiet tidy coffee shop and you're struck by an intuition that it was loud a few minutes ago. Or when you go into a room full of coworkers who greet you with perfectly pleasant politeness, but you can tell you've been dissected with their judgement just before you walked in. And in that way that old cities such as Cairo and Alexandri...
Read more