I was alone in Providence, two weeks ago. I read the first chapter of my book into a microphone, had dinner with friends, went back to my hotel early. In the morning I hooked myself up to a breast pump and watched a Keurig secrete coffee. Milk sloshed in my bag as I ran for the train. It was raining, and water leaked through the ceiling above my seat as the train passed coastal towns, boats bound for Block Island. I’d had enough of being alone. I will spend nearly my entire life not packing breastmilk on ice, not knowing when my daughter last ate or how she slept. By the time you leave your baby for a night, you almost don’t have a baby anymore.
Being with the baby is a way of being alone, sort of. When I’m with the baby I compulsively smell her hair and press my mouth into her cheeks, lift her onto my shoulder, lower her to the bed, the changing table, the floor. I make myself a sandwich with one arm. I walk mile after mile with her body strapped to mine. I pick up a pacifier with my foot. I read nine pages of a novel while she sleeps on my chest. I search the sheets for my phone so I can text my mom a new picture of the baby. I do not write, grade, teach, sleep, run, respond to e-mails, shower, clean, or cook. I often don’t go to the bathroom when I really need to go to the bathroom. My loneliness is acute. Joy surges and recedes at least once an hour, sometimes more.
Normally I run alone, or with the dog. But a week ago I discovered my eight-year-old can run three miles at a sub-ten-minute pace. Simultaneously I discovered I couldn’t run three miles at a sub-ten-minute pace—not that morning. Later, driving home from Wes’s riding lesson, Wes asked if we could stop at Dunkin so he could order “something I’m really interested in,” which turned out to be a bucket of munchkins. Desperately, rapidly, and feeling like I could fall asleep at the wheel, I ate ten munchkins. Still I did not ask myself if I was feeling alright.
While sick, I slept alone in the guest room. Dan brought the baby to me to nurse each morning around 1 and 6 a.m. Was I alone in the guest room? Sweating into the sheets and breathing through my mouth? Again, sort of. Monday morning Wes faked sick. His performance was medium-convincing until 3:20, the minute school let out, when he made a miraculous recovery. “Would you expect me to feel well enough to jump on the trampoline?” he ventured. With restraint, I said, “No.”
Thursday, nursing the baby, I misinterpreted something Dan said as something that would have been, at most, mildly insensitive to me. I did not hesitate to make my accusation. He explained that I was wrong about what he’d said. He was right, and already I wondered why I’d leapt to the random and uncharitable conclusion in the first place. My weirdness had something to do with having not been alone since Providence. Something to do with feeding Ramona while Dan got dressed to deliver a lecture. Mostly, I missed him. I wanted, as I often want, to remind him that he can hurt me. I wanted him to not leave the bedroom. Did he understand what I wanted? I don’t know. Either he forgave me instantly or didn’t need to forgive me at all. I suppose someone else could love me, if necessary. I don’t think anyone could ever love me with so much grace.
That afternoon, I had one hour to get myself dressed and made up, the baby changed and fed, Wes into semi-normal clothes, and the three of us downtown and the car parked so we could arrive on time to the hotel conference room where Dan gave a talk and won an award. I stood in the back and swayed while Ramona slept in her carrier. There is no award for showing up to a thing with children who are not yelling. If there was, I would win it. At the reception, a woman touched Ramona and told me, “You have a beautiful son.” Then the woman touched Wes and said, “And a beautiful daughter.” Panicked, and with his mouth full of fries from the buffet, Wes said, “She’s a girl! The baby is a girl!” The woman apologized and drifted away. “Wes?” I said, as I say one hundred times per day. “Wes. Why is it important that everyone knows the baby’s gender but not yours?”
“I guess I’m selfless,” he said. “And Ramonaful.”
Friday. Dan had dinner with colleagues. Wes was about to be late for his piano lesson, so as I paid for parking I sent him down the block and into the music building alone. After I’d buckled Ramona into the carrier, I went to find him. The studio where he usually has his lesson was empty. Most of the studios were empty. A few rooms contained pianos, and a few of those pianos were being played by children, but none by Wes. Had he been unable to find his teacher? Had he panicked and left? Forgotten where we parked the car? Had he been intercepted by, as he would say, a Bad Guy or Woman?
I found Wes in a practice room hidden behind the stairs. His teacher was apologetic. For dinner we went to Shake Shack. In the booth, Wes pulled his T-shirt over his knees and the baby gummed a fry with an expression of subdued reverence. I closed my eyes. Closing your eyes at Shake Shack is a way of being alone. Or, it’s not, but it’s a way of having your eyes closed at Shake Shack.
I am sleep-training the baby, which means instead of hovering near her crib and doing everything I can to comfort her every time she cries, I let her cry for ten minutes before I do all that. It’s not a proven method. (Don’t send me proven methods.) Friday, she fell asleep easily, thank God. I wandered into Wes’s room and, as if possessed, cleared his bed of clothes, blankets, three hundred stuffed animals, horse figurines, a flashlight, and a butter knife so I could change his sheets for the first time since Ramona was born. That’s correct. When Wes saw his bed freshly made and behorsed, he put on his Grammy acceptance voice and said, “Thank you so much. This looks beautiful and organized.”
Before he went to sleep, we played Deep Questions. I asked him, “What are the three things most important for happiness?”
He said, “Before you can feel happy, you have to feel mad, sad, and embarrassed.”
I was incredulous. “Every time? You never feel happy unless you feel awful first?”
He nodded and asked if it was true for me, too. It’s not true for me. That it’s true for him feels like my fault. It must be my fault. I haven’t had time to figure out what I did, or how to fix it.
This morning, I went running alone. So alone I listened to Kings of Leon’s first album. I thought about my oldest brother’s green JanSport backpack in 1998. I thought about the metal studs my friends and I pushed through our clothes in middle school. I wondered what it would take for the people who loved me then to love me again—or at least text me. Is it an Indian Summer if it never actually cooled down? Should I ask my friend Catherine about religious innuendo on the new Sabrina Carpenter album? I finished a slow 5k as fast as I could. Tyler Childers sang, brother, I ain’t slept in days. Springsteen sang, I got debts no honest man can pay. I remembered I hadn’t come to the woods alone. I came with Sammy. Where was Sammy? At full speed I threw a nauseating glance over my right shoulder. There he was, running up behind me, a blur of fur. My own white flag.
ooooo loved this! my husband often jokes that i need 87 hours of alone time a day to not be a total crank, and it's true. and i also think people don't talk enough about how hard parenting can be for people who recharge when they're alone.