nuts by jonny
	A few weeks ago I had a baby and we named him Huck. Since that glorious day I’ve discovered that being a parent is a lot like having a mental illness. Like a split personality disorder. There are moments that are so heavenly and precious and I want Huck to forever be a nine pound three week old. Then he cries as if he’s being tortured and I want to leave him in the woods so wild dogs can eat him for dinner. And within a few minutes after that he calms down again, flashes me a movie star smile and the next thing I know I’m giggling and kissing him and making disgusting baby sounds. It’s a sick cycle. I feel like my love is conditional. I love you as long as you don’t cry like a baby. I’m telling you, I can go from feeling terrible frustration and hopelessness one moment to feeling on top of the world the next. This isn’t healthy. This is bipolar illness without medication. And it’s not just us. The baby is also very crazy. He goes from angry to happy in a blink of an eye. Often he looks like Jack Nicholson in “The Shining” and you don’t know whether he’s about to be funny or frightening. Every time I witness this behavior I think to myself yes, we’re definitely related. Another way I feel mentally unstable is that everyone is extra nice to us these days. People expect Troy and I to be bad at returning phone calls and emails and everyone encourages us to take lots of naps. They sort of tip toe around and give compliments over the smallest things. “You took a walk? That’s great!” they shout in high-pitched voices. Their standards have really dropped. They’re very easy to please these days. I started feeling crazy a few months ago when we were frantically trying to find an apartment that would fit us, our dog, our furniture, our baby and our baby’s furniture. We were living in a cheap one bedroom apartment on the fifth floor of a walkup building. We were having trouble imagining ourselves staying there much longer. But our neighborhood had secretly become very expensive and we couldn’t afford any of the two bedrooms with elevators. We couldn’t afford any of the two bedrooms without elevators. We tried to talk ourselves into the possibility of hauling a stroller and a diaper bag and oh, yes, the baby up and down all those stairs, but deep inside we were panicky and emotional about it. Finally we found an apartment that we fell in love with, told the broker we wanted it, and then after 24 hours of daydreaming about our new home, we were told there had been a mistake and someone else got it. A few days later the same thing happened with another dream apartment. We were getting bitter. And then a good friend called and encouraged us to come look at an apartment in her building that overlooks the Hudson River. It was bigger than a normal one bedroom, she insisted, and there was an elevator and some doormen with cute accents and a nice laundry facility in the basement and the apartment had lots of closets and a dishwasher. The rent was great and there was no broker involved. We looked at it, we loved it, we held our breath. Surely this wouldn’t work out. Surely something terrible would go wrong. But it did work out, and it’s a much better apartment than those other two we thought we wanted. The day I got the good news I was sitting in Tompkins Square Park on the Lower East Side reading a book. It was a beautiful November day and I was in a very good mood, feeling that finally all of our problems were over. Everything looked like something from a movie. Any minute I expected Harry and Sally to come around the corner teasing each other. And then I looked down and saw a very busy squirrel burying a nut. That sounds like a metaphor for something, but no, I’m talking about a real squirrel burying a real nut. His arms were moving very fast and his eyes were darting back and forth in a familiar, paranoid way. I looked around to see where all the danger was, but it was just little old me watching him and I sure didn’t want his nut. This frantic activity went on for a few more minutes until finally he decided it was safe to leave. He sort of scampered along and stood a few feet away, and within seconds another squirrel wearing a leather jacket and smoking a cigarette appeared out of nowhere, dug up the nut and ran off with it. My little friend actually looked like he was going to cry. He ran over to the crime scene and looked toward the thief, and I just sat there with my hand covering my mouth as if having witnessed something truly tragic. He shot me a very judgmental look like he expected me to guard the nut for him, like it was my fault things turned out so horribly. I didn’t know what to say. I should have pointed out all the other nuts scattered around the park and encouraged him to try again, to not take this so seriously, to relax a little. But since squirrels don’t understand English I said not a word, and finally he left with his tail between his legs. I think I may have seen a tear or two fall from his eyes. This really happened. I was not delusional. Maybe the leather jacket and the cigarette and the tears didn’t happen, but everything else did. Suddenly I wondered why this stereotypical day in the life of a couple squirrels was so interesting to me. I think it’s because it reminded me of apartment searching and other things, too. Remember that I was pregnant when this non-event happened, and therefore I was pretty batty. Life was growing inside of me and I saw everything differently than you boring non-pregnant types. So while it may seem silly to you that I spent any time at all dwelling on the squirrels, it made perfect sense to me. It still does. I probably should check myself into the state hospital tomorrow. You see, as we desperately searched for apartments and tried to make them ours before they really were, I felt betrayed and cheated. I was like that nutty little squirrel looking around expecting something to go wrong and then being devastated when it did. It’s like me looking up to God when I don’t like my circumstances, waiting for him to give me some kind of explanation that makes sense. (I realize this makes me both the God figure and the squirrel himself in my analogy, and I realize this does not help my standing as a mentally healthy person.) For that squirrel the world is a dangerous place, and that’s how it felt to me, too. The poor guy was just trying to prepare for his future when the weather would be cold and food would be scarce, just like I was trying to prepare for this little baby to have a place to sleep and get his diapers changed and store all his baby equipment. There was very little attention being paid to the here and now. My messed-up mind was working very hard to control the future. And yet I’m reminded over and over again that life isn’t for me to control. As soon as I begin trying to control it, things happen to prove me wrong. I can think of no better example of this than having a newborn live with you. Now that Huck is a real live human with about a thousand needs that only we can fulfill, I am constantly struck by how little control I have. I can sit down and write like I’m doing now because he’s asleep in his crib and not in my arms, but at any moment that could change. Soon I will hear this heartbreaking cry that begs to be stopped, and I have a choice about how to react. I can see Huck as messing things up for me and I can slowly go to him with my tail between my legs feeling sorry for myself, or I can pick him up and comfort him, remembering that there will be other times when he will sleep and I can come back to this later. (Please God, let there be other times when he will sleep.) For me, having a baby has been about learning to be in the moment and not so focused on tomorrow and the next day. There is so much down time with an infant, so much time to sit and stare and doze off to sleep. There’s a line in a Dar Williams’ song that goes, “And our days are slow and dear.” My days are definitely slow and dear, and some moments are slower than others. My personality wants to seek excitement, to jazz up the day with activity and plans, but Huck’s personality says, “Let’s just sit here and sleep.” It’s a great lesson for me. Wake up and don’t make any plans. Sit still. Don’t do much. This is how you raise a baby. You enjoy the little things like the smell of his head (which would be better if we ever remembered to give him a bath), his amazing smiles, gigantic eyes, the looks of recognition, the feel of his little fingers when they latch onto mine, his ridiculous laugh when I make a silly sound. He makes me feel like the world’s funniest person. Again, very low standards going on here. Oh, all right, I’m crazy in love with him. I have no idea how to relate this last thing to the squirrels. I’ve moved past the squirrels now and am no longer referring to them, except to say that life feels a little nuts right now. And sometimes insanity is really fun. The highs, for instance, are fabulous! The lows, not so good, but they pass. I am finding that every parent I know completely relates to my mental illness and insists that it never goes away, but it does change into something a little easier to live with. Like instead of schizophrenia I will just have Tourettes. Comforting? Oh, shit yes.