Forgetting

Today, after I dropped Munchkin off at daycare, I drove right back home. I staggered up the stairs yanking shut the curtains as I yanked off my skirt, grabbing my earplugs and shuffling over to Pynchon's side of the bed. I have a terrible sinus infection, you see, and all. I. want. to. do. is. sleep. And Pynchon's side has the alarm, which has a nap function to assure I don't sleep longer than two hours. I set it. I crawled in on this not-my-side of the bed and snuggled myself down.

And felt immediately, unbearably sad. You see, I'm forgetting things I thought were etched in my memory forever, acid-burned grooves on the brittle tin surface of my consciousness that are, it seems, rusting over into something softer, less distinct.

Pynchon and I change sides of the bed every six months or so, mostly because he has a tendency to sleep on top of me. On his back. If we change sides, it takes a couple of months for his subconscious to change direction. Since Munchkin's been born, we've changed spots a couple of times, and the first night that I sleep on the 'wrong' side I'm struck hard by a sense memory of my last tenure in that location: "Wow," I'll think to myself, "last time I was here was the night I went into labour," or, "When I was on this side of the bed, I had to get up twice every night in the cold to feed her? Do you remember the screaming?" It wasn't a recollection, not like I was thinking back. It was more a forceful collision of the now with what my body had come to expect from a certain sleeping position, on this side or the other, near to the window or near to the closet. Like both now and then were real and coexisting, like suddenly Munchkin was six months old and a newborn.

Today, though, today I lay down and I just felt ... tired. Sick, and headachy. The pillow and the sheet smelled like Pynchon. The quality of light was a little different on this side than on mine. But Munchkin was still a toddler, and I was assaulted by no overwhelming physical sense of a different time for us. No suddenly being in the moment of going into labour, no sense of those first three months, no shiver of long and dark winter nights, sleeptraining and sleep-deprived.

I'm losing that time. I can feel it slip through my fingers, time that was so raw and intense and all-consuming. I don't really remember what it was like to be pregnant. I don't remember what it was like to stay home with my newborn Miss Baby. I look at the pictures now and they seem to be of other people. I wonder, "What did I do all day with her?" and think, "Gosh, she sure was cute." I know (in part from what I've written here) that I felt housebound and desperate, and that she cried a lot more than the photos suggest, but I don't feel it like a punch in my stomach the way I used to. The way the four-song rotation on her travel mobile used to make me anxious and nauseous, even if she wasn't in the house? It's all gone. I'm forgetting.

You know how I really know? The one really clear memory I retain from those early months is my incredulity when people would fondly pat Miss Baby and say wistfully, "Ahhh, it goes so fast." "No it doesn't," I wanted to shout. "It's terrible and long and gruelling and terrifying and dull and isolating and nervewrackin and I've never slept so little and done so much." But now? Now I kinda feel like it's gone so fast. And it's never coming back.

Mama? Wake up! Let's go play.