angst

I was lying in bed during Shaun's lunchtime. He comes home to eat lunch with us, and we all really like it. Marzieh is seven months old now, but every time I try to feed her "food" (baby applesauce) she vomits. It had been two weeks since her last "meal" and I wanted to see if she'd eat any more, because she does like the flavour of it, whether the teaspoon of apple mush would stay down.

It didn't. She vomited, over the bib and her onesie and the blanket she was sitting on. And I'm tired. Last night I barely slept, and this morning Marzieh woke up early, without warning, a banshee cry. She almost never cries. She wouldn't stop crying until I opened my eyes permanently. I wish I were joking: it was the one thing I didn't want to do to comfort her, and it was the only thing she needed. She kept on looking at my face with fear, I noticed through heavy-lidded eyes as I cuddled her, patted her back, shushed and sung prayers to her---crying at my unrecognizable face. Was she wondering where my soul went?

So I put all the soiled things in the washing machine, and then the fridge had a bit break off of it earlier, so Shaun took the baby out to the front office to deal with that, and I just threw myself onto my pillow and started to try to sleep while he was on his lunchbreak and could be with the baby.

I was so angry. Just, angry that Marzieh still wakes up several times a night, sometimes to eat. And it would help me if she didn't need me for all her nutritional needs any more, and I want her to start being able to eat things. Gnaw on a piece of bread, digest a teaspoon of pureed apple. Maybe she would sleep through the night if she were more full. It's frustrating that she doesn't.

And sleep. I think Shaun's getting to a point where all he hears is my complaints. And I try not to be only about the things to complain about, but when I'm this tired, it's hard. I think I need to be sympathized with. I want to hear that someone is sorry I haven't slept in seven months.

Part of it is my fault, even though I've tried different things, but I can't sleep immediately. It's always taken me a while, but now it takes hours. It's exhausting.

This lunchtime I was lying on the bed, seething and feeling hard-done-by. Not moving so I wouldn't disturb the comfort of the cool pillow against my cheek. And all of a sudden I remembered a smell of sodden earth. Camellia leaves and hedge clippings. Being so tired and angry, misunderstood and with my life controlled by another, had taken my olfactory memory back more than ten years.

There were the small pink flowers on my bedroom's cornflower-blue wallpaper. My single bed was wedged into the corner, the bay window to my right. I used to smoke out the windows and imagine that my parents didn't notice the smell. Or the butts I would insouciantly drop to the ground. Once my father was gardening outside my bedroom, and he called to me through the open window, "Leila, could you please put your banana peels in a rubbish bin? They don't look good lying whole among the daffodils."

I had a rough woollen blanket, mustard and persimmon colours, and I lay in bed reading "Crime and Punishment", crying through "A Tale of Two Cities", and trying not to let the sting in my eyes cloud my reading, out loud, of "Macbeth". If I ever did any real homework, I have no recollection of it. And I know I was often angry, at the world, my life. Others dictated the terms, and no one told me that they were sorry about things.

Marzieh is my choice in life. I choose this baby, I choose this life of deep sleeplessness and gummy smiles, pear-scented breath, a warm dry hand moving up and down my forearm while she nurses.

Remembering the smell of Wellington's wind---salty even up in the hills of Karori---and the refuge of my bed's cool pillows against hot and wet cheeks, I slept easily today. A little nap, just half an hour during my husband's lunchtime. I reminisced, I delved into the memory of childhood smells, the anger leaked away, and I rested.