For the last couple of weeks, I’ve been giving a lot of thought to identity and how we discern who we are based on what we do. For some people, that might be their career. I have many friends who have pursued one ambition doggedly, and with success, for years or decades. Other friends find their passion in one cause, or maybe two. Some dabble, collecting little pieces of interests that create a mosaic of themselves.
I still have dreams about the NICU. Two years out and I find that to be one of the most surprising remnants of Rowan’s birthday. Most of my dreams are stress dreams anyhow, though they tend towards scary wizards and plots Steven Moffat couldn’t come up with in his own wildest dreams.
The cold I thought I had turned out the be Strep. The nice thing about that is a couple of doses of antibiotics and I feel almost completely back to normal! Last year I had mastitis on her birthday. My body seems to remember that April 8 is a day to feel pain.
Lorelei is such a curious kid. She wants to know the hows, whys, whats, and wheres of everything. To an annoying degree. I don’t know why keys are shaped like that or how balloons are made. No, I cannot tell you the exact details of everything we are doing, going to do, or have done. I am not sure what year Obama was born.
Rowan slept through the night last night. This is not a drill. I repeat — Rowan slept through the night last night. This is the first time in many, many months that he has slept all the way through. On those occasions, my body was so used to waking up 29384029348 times in the night that I did not sleep well, anyhow.
I was thinking I hadn’t felt all that depressed this winter. Then I realized that everyone else is also depressed so I’m only less depressed by comparison. It’s difficult to wallow in this temporary darkness when we are all engulfed in an existential muck. We are all Artax and we’re walking through the Swamp of Sadness. Even the most optimistic among us are Atreyu, at best — doomed to keep up that grim determination lest The Nothing descend upon us all.
I no longer know when one illness begins and another ends. In the last month I had a cold, Zach, Rowan, and I have all had a stomach bug, Lorelei had a high fever, both kids got pink eye, Rowan had an ear infection, Rowan got another stomach bug, Zach got pink eye, Lorelei threw up, and this morning Zach and I both woke up with sore throats.