4:30 in the morning. The dark silence of sleep is torn in two by a shrill cry. My eyes open, but the view is pretty much the same. Darkness. This is not morning yet, not how I would define it. Another cry. Find the faint green numbers on the clock face, and confirm my conclusions. Another cry, another conclusion. The baby is hungry. Not a bad night’s sleep, really, as I was asleep before midnight last night. Missus’s head lifts off her pillow with the next cry. She strains to look at the clock. “Four thirty,” I say.
“Oh.” Tired, she pauses to think. “Not really that bad then. Do you need the loo?”
“Yes, actually. Do you want me to go ahead and do the bottle while I am down there?”
“Do you mind?”
“Be right back!”
Passing by the cot, two little dark spots look out in anticipation of who is going to end the wanting. Another cry.
A few minutes later, missus is downstairs for her wake-up, and I am sat on the bed holding a doll-like figure in my arms, those same two dark spots looking up, over the bottle in my hand, as if memorizing the outlines of my face in the faint yellowish hue of the nightlight.
Little eyes, looking up. Tummy filling up. Her little mind is forming synaptic connections, learning the shapes of things around her, trying to figure them out for what they are, memorizing the ones she sees when her tummy fills up, learning what to rely on, what to trust. Little eyes, searching the world around her, inputting data faster than any other sense.
Two hours have finally passed, the bottle is empty and cold on the shelf next to the bed. On my left arm lies a head with two little eyes struggling at last to stay open. Her restless body twitches. Finally the little eyes close. A deep sigh. Dreams of shapes she does not understand pass through her mind, reinforcing the newly created synaptic connections. Her mind filling up. The visions of her little eyes.
Kelsey J Bacon