Flying Across the Country with a Baby

this is our Book of Exodus

5:03am EST — The baby is awake. He has a stuffy nose and has coughed through the night. Not a constant cough, but an intermittent cough. Not a cough that worries us but one that wakes him up, pissed-off and pitiful, every hour-or-two. It’s a last-day-of-a-cold cough. Across the bedroom, the suitcases are piled with clothes but not packed. You wouldn’t look at this state of affairs and say we’re packed.

The baby goes from grunting to huffing to screaming. He is carted upstairs, handed off to his grandparents who won’t see him again for months. They’re sad, he’s sad, everybody is sad except for me. I am already stressed.

In our bedroom, the sound machine is still going loud. White noise like an airplane engine. And this is the first trying moment of the day — the moment when I look at the hills of clothes in the center of the suitcases and think to myself maybe we shouldn’t do this. Maybe we shouldn’t fly across the country with a baby. Most people don’t do this. We could just stay here. No no no no no — put those thoughts away. Pack the suitcases. Don’t forget the medicines, my laptop, K’s laptop, the manuscript, running shoes and Red Wings. And baby clothes. So so many baby clothes.

6:49am EST — The hills of clothes have been flattened, the suitcases shut and weighed. One is overweight. Redistribute some of those baby clothes. So so many baby clothes. Why did I pack six books? The Collected Short Stories of John Cheever and Sakhalin Island? Surely I don’t need to lug both of those across the whole country.

K goes for coffee and returns with a status-report. The baby is in the high chair, surrounded by the chaos he’s caused. Yogurt on the carpet. Cheerios in his diaper. Banana smeared into his hair.

8:25am EST — The grandparents go to work and the baby comes back downstairs. He’s tired and angry about it. K turns the lights off, she turns the sound machine on. White noise like an airplane engine. The baby sucks down a bottle, rolls over and passes out.

The sign of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposing ideas in your mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function. I look at our passed-out baby and think he’s basically just a tiny little drunk and think I have never loved anything this much.

10:35am EST — The baby is awake. We have two settings in life. Either the baby is asleep or he is awake.