Out of nowhere

I didn’t answer with a typical “hello” but instead pressed accept and answered, “Out of nowhere? Hiiii.”

Sobbing on the other end. The huge gulping for air kind. Uh oh.

I put one finger up to my daughter to signal a pause to our puzzling.

More sobbing.

“The problem NOW is he is SUCH a light sleeper. Every time I put him down he wakes up, and I’M not sleeping AT ALL, and I have to go back to work next week. I am freaking out.”

I hadn’t seen my cousin Parya in eleven years – since my wedding in Puerto Rico, where she arrived from California with her sister Neela to a San Juan August, humid and soupy. She had happily hopped into a car with my husband and his friends, though they had never met, when he picked her up from the airport. She had rallied for me in celebration of my new beau and our fused cultures, Iranian and Puerto Rican, dancing hard to salsa and taking on the Persian knife dance too. I flashed back to a very young Parya, living with abandon, taunting Jonathan with a decorated knife until he dropped dollars in her palm, as is traditional for wedding festivities.

I was about to say: this too shall pass. It all whooshes by in a blink. It becomes an ash of memories, a stew left to simmer on low.

“And everyone keeps telling me each phase ends soon,” she sobbed. “But what do I do NOW?!?”

I paused before responding. What could I tell her that would make her feel better? That would feel useful and practical and help explain perspective? I could see why she thought I was the right person to call. I’ve had four kids and nursed or been pregnant for ten consecutive years. A whole decade. And in our cousin cohort, I’m the one who had babies first.

Here’s what I wanted to tell her:

It’s a blur. Each issue that arises gives way to another. You worry about sleep but then it’s food. Was it enough? Was it balanced?

You worry about food but then it’s transition to school. You worry about developmental milestones and then habits and relationships and bullying.

Those baby sleep woes fold so quickly into wonderings like, ‘Will they correct the pronunciation of their names when someone butchers it? Will they remember where they came from? All that we sacrificed for them, all our parents sacrificed for us?

But now was not the time to say those things.

Instead, I told her a story about baby Eliana – our first daughter – who refused the bottle. I would have to race to the babysitter’s house during my preps to nurse her. She would wail until I arrived and I remember ripping open my shirt buttons before I even rang the doorbell because I could hear her screaming as I pulled up.

I told her about the time when, because of language confusion, the babysitter fed Eliana chocolate cake that I had baked for the babysitter (not the baby!), so I missed my opportunity to memorialize eating her first food (which was…chocolate cake!). I had called my mother, who lived in Dubai at the time so it was the middle of her night, crying hysterically because my 6-month-old had legitimately eaten chocolate cake with who-knows-how-many ingredients in it as her FIRST FOOD. Without me.

And I told Parya what my mother told me then: Har kari bayad bokoni, bokon. Bacheh bozorg mishe yadesh mireh. Then she added, “Nawal, oxygen mask on yourself first.”

“You promise he won’t feel abandoned if I put him in the crib?” Parya asked.

No promises, but pretty sure my mom’s Farsi phrase rang true:

“Kids grow older and forget, honey. Do what you need to do to be sure YOU are okay first.”

Slice of Life, Day 9