If you go to bed with the children... (a medieval formula)

If you go to bed with the children

you will hear the birds sing twice

(in Greek)

Once when the day slips away

and once when it returns

Grey, and drawn, and tired

from wherever it is

that the day spends its nights

I wrote this little poem seven years ago, which is apparently how long it takes my life to catch up with my words...

Does that happen to you too? I say random shit sometimes, here and elsewhere, on bits of paper, through old-fashioned wired telephones, on long windy walks through the dunes, sometimes on screens too... I say shit and I hear myself say it, and I think (occasionally) 'Wow! this is deep shit!' (and deep it often turns out to be, in more ways than one), and then... 

then nothing happens, or so it seems, for a long long time, until months, or years, or decades later, the rest of me finally catches up with the weird futuristic prophet who occasionally visits my head. 

At which point I remember... and go 'Huh???!!!!', and 'Ahaaaa!!!!! That's what I was going on about in the summer of 2010!!' 

(The non-prophetic rest of me is not particularly eloquent by the way, as you can make out from the grunting)

I like to think of it as my Soul dropping shiny pebbles on my path, to goad me on, perhaps. Pretty shiny stones, in brilliant colours, that I collect in my pocket as I walk, and later, much later, take out and go: 'Oh my, but these are rubies!'

It's not a bad way to live. Garnering treasure. Sharing it with people. So here comes...

......

A few months ago, I felt compelled to write, organise and offer a workshop for moms of babies and young children, on sleep. It was called 'Sleep-training for moms 101'. 

I thought I was being funny. As in 'Ha ha!'. 

In a provocative mood, I threw out pronouncements such as 'Instead of trying to teach our babies to sleep, we should learn how to sleep from them.' And 'Babies are the best sleepers in the world!' and 'The baby phase is the time of your life when you can and should feel most rested!' and 'Would Mother Nature have gotten something this important this wrong????' (in reference to the fact that babies would be unlikely to survive for long in the wild if their mainstay dragged herself through the bush bleary-eyed, stuffy-nosed and dysfunctional from exhaustion). 

As I said: I was being provocative. 

The more so as I was feeling a little (tiny itsy bitsy smudge) superior to the poor women who would come to my workshop, bleary-eyed, stuffy-nosed and dysfunctional, since my own baby (the last in a longish series) was, and always had been, what the world would call a 'good sleeper'.

So I offered my workshop. Twice. To a reluctant audience of two.

(this is probably worth another post altogether, but I have noticed that whenever I develop teaching materials from that tiny itsy bitsy superior place, the throngs of interested participants I expect to show up politely ignore me and my offerings. Seriously, what is that??)

A few days after the second workshop, the shit hit the fan... the good sleeper (aka Baby), turned into a demon from hell. Just like that. Overnight, you might say. Except there was no such thing anymore. The night had been cancelled. The night was for wusses. We (the 'formerly good sleeper' and I), were not wusses, he assured me repeatedly. We didn't need no night... Relentlessly, night after night after bloody night, he required my services on the dot, every 45 minutes. I thought it would pass. It did not. I thought it was his teeth. It was not. I thought it was his belly. It was not. I thought it was his psyche (shit knows what goes on in there). Maybe it was... I swore. I prayed. I swore some more. I got tired. Then exhausted. Then bleary-eyed, stuffy-nosed and dysfunctional. In a matter of weeks. 

I cursed the gods. I felt justly punished for my sins (if only I had not been so arrogant teaching that stupid workshop, drawing down upon myself the wrath of the skies...). 

And more of the same. This went on for a month. Until I reached the end of my tether. (You'd think with age, and experience and all that, your tether would get longer. But no, mine grows shorter every year...)

And once I had gotten there, to the end of my tether that is, I did the only thing people ever do in the end: I gave up, and did something insane. 

I went to bed with the baby. 

At 7 pm. 

Not once. Not twice. Not three times. But every single night. 

This was back around Christmas time, an eternity away... and to this day I still go to bed with the baby. 

And this seemingly random, utterly desperate act has changed my mind and life in profound and diverse ways that I can barely begin to describe. 

(... 'barely' indeed... this intro is getting  so bloody long, I'm afraid I have to leave you hanging from a clifflet here, while I go and have some breakfast...)

(to be continued...)