Exhaustion

I used to get tired from long nights at work or from partying til the wee hours, even after a four-day hike through the Andes in Peru. But I never really knew anyhing quite like this permanent state of exhaustion that I find myself in right now. You can get used to not sleeping, even waking up every couple of hours, but it is safe to say that when someone wakes you up every hour between 11 pm and 5 am then that is a form of torture. My irresistible little baby (not my word but those of a middle-aged man with very bad breath who cooed over Elias at the Tea Lounge in Park Slope) has been doing exactly this for a few days now. Like all mothers, I think that my baby just happens to be the most beautiful and perfect little thing on the face of the earth. Like all mothers, I know this to be really true. At 4 am though, after having seen 12, 1, 2 and 3 on the clock already that night I tend to forget this. New mothers (or fathers) rarely talk about the anger and frustration that you can feel towards your adored little baby at times. I myself am overcome with guilt as I am writing down these words. When I get angry and (god forbid) I swear at Eli I duly apologize to him immediately afterwards. These feelings do not seem appropriate or acceptable especially because I know full well that he is not trying to make my life difficult on purpose; he is just a little baby, who has bad days or nights and he doesn't know better. I am pretty sure though that at one point or another all parents feel these and it would be nice to talk about it sometimes.

(For the record: Eli is truly irresistible and for the most part pretty happy and calm. Exhaustion notwithstanding most of the time I am overcome with those feelings of love and adoration when I look at him that mothers find hard to describe...)

Adventures

To make life more exciting (for me, if not Eli) I try to get out of the house as much as possible during the day now that it is not freezing outside. Yesterday we went to the Museum of Modern Art, not because I could not live without getting to know the works of the celebrated Venezuelan artist, Armando Reveron (which, by the way, are quite lovely: http://moma.org/exhibitions/2007/reveron/); rather I decided to act like I had imagined motherhood would be: going around town with my cute baby, taking advantage of the freedom from corporate slavery and doing interesting things that I never get to do when I have to work all the time. Of course, having a tiny little baby is also a kind of slavery, but one that you take on voluntarily and at any rate a much more emotionally fulfilling.

At the museum I walked around the main galleries that exhibit all this amazing art and in my half-delirious tired state all the Kandinsky, Matisse, Bonnard and the like paintings seemed like an amalgamation colors and shapes that I could not quite make out, but it was still somehow a pleasure for the soul. A lot of people looked at me kindly when they noticed Eli in the baby carrier on my chest and a French couple approached me and the man made a strange comment. After stating that the baby was very cute and asking me what his name was he said, in French by that point: "He will be an artist if he is exposed so early to art or if not an artist then a rabbi, he is a little Jew, isn't he?" He said this with kindness, almost complicity, like he is Jewish too, and I just smiled at them, but afterwards I found it quite bizarre; after all, how was he to know? He did not look at his little penis to know for sure...

Anyway, today we are going to see the Park Slope ladies and their offspring and I am sure I will find out more about being an organic Mom.