Not Reading

With a newborn, time changes, or at least seems to change. A day is no longer a story, with a beginning, middle and end, but a series of nested cycles: the cycles of the feed and nap, which nest inside mornings, afternoons, and evenings, which nest inside days, which loop serenely on while, frantically, I attempt to keep the house clean within them. I know that eventually I will feel the pull of linear time—the aging of the child; the weight gain day-over-day; the mysterious advances in the way the baby’s eyes, hands, and legs move—but for now, I seem suspended in time, and I’m happy to be here. Suddenly, it is seven o’clock in the evening, or nine o’clock in the morning, or noon.

There is plenty to pay attention to—a baby is a poem you can close-read forever—and there is plenty to think about—health insurance maneuvers that approach the complexity of two planes refueling one another in mid-flight. There aren’t so many books at the moment, though. Eventually, there will be. But for now, other responsibilities are more urgent: meals to cook, house to clean, slow walks to take with my healing wife, soft little pink cheeks to smooch. (Reader, they are very soft.)

On the one hand, it seems to me that reading has never been less important—has never seemed more like optional leisure—but when I think of the child growing and learning, and when I think about being the kind of person I would like them to imitate, reading has never seemed more important. I want to give this child everything that’s good in the world, and of course that means stacks and stacks of good books. In time, though. There will be plenty of long afternoons, quiet family evenings, and swim practices where I can read or write poolside. There will be time to progress toward goals, to complete tasks that will stay completed when they’re done. For now, there is a series of nested cycles, and the quiet portion of this nested cycle will soon end.