Author: noontide

It’s not by design that various impressions and thoughts from reading Ulysses are now woven into my memories of the first couple of weeks of the baby’s life. After all that’s all I do these days: watching him sleep and reading the book. Books actually, the Don Gilford annotation, the Bloomsday guide and the Stuart Gilbert study in addition to the novel itself. Staying at home gives me the rare opportunities to lay all four books open around me. Whenever I’m getting sick of it — reading a book like this feels like you are humoring the author more than anything else — I just lay down the book and walk over to his crib. I can stand there at length, my mind more or less blank, just watching him moving his hands and legs constantly in his sleep.

I try to contemplate whatever connection there is between us, to no avail — so far he’s oblivious of my existence but he doesn’t seem to like it when I hold him. He completely has his own thing, feeding, sleeping, kicking, not like to be bothered. I tried to get him to listen to Liszt and Oscar Peterson, figuring string might be too early for his tender ears at this point. He made no comment on either. Bloom did not try to be a father figure to Stephen, he just naturally “consubstantiates” him with his kindness and serenity. I worried that I would be too impatient and unrealistic when it comes to his growing process, somehow I don’t want him to listen to those music for baby CDs Dongdong’s friend sent. In the morning I shifted him to one hand, to free the other and pick songs on the ipod. I set on the obvious choice, Chopin’s cello suite by Shafran, and when it comes to my favorite passage I looked at him with earnest trying to find a trace of elation on his face. I know I’m being stupid.

• 

• 

The baby is almost two-week old. His feature starts to take shape: a dimple on the left cheek and double eyelids sometimes emerge, fleetingly, when he is making certain expressions. During the day still sleep mostly, but moving his arms and legs rather actively. And yawn a lot. I’d never seen anyone yawning in their sleep before.

After he came home I don’t have much to do, just watching him sleep ever now and then. As I stand by his crib I often think how different time must feel to him. In these 12 days of his life, even without a conscience, each must be so much more significant to him than to me. Each day he is getting stronger in his sleep, acquiring life at a brisk speed. It must be a very fulfilling feeling. He just eats and sleeps, wakes up and calls for his meal, and instantly goes back to sleep again afterwards, no one is more dedicated and focused on self-betterment than he does. Every move he makes is without any purpose but at the same time looks so determined, forceful, with all his might. He usually wakes up around 8 or 9pm for an hour or two, just lying there staring into the distance without an expression, like he has something on his mind, and can’t be bothered.

Two-weeks, which means my vacation is half over. I try to imagine life afterwards, go off in the morning and return at indeterminable hours at night, not being by his side every waking moment, like now. It’s unimaginable.

As I was driving home from the hospital at midnight, it occurred to me it had always been a sign: in the days and hours leading up to his birth, I’ve been reading Ulysses – Dedalus’ (Telemachus’) journey to search for his father, or rather, Bloom’s (Odysseys’) journey of the day leading to the meeting with a son he didn’t know he was going to have. In the hour before his birth, as Dongdong squeezed my hand the hundredth time driving her nails deep into my palm, I watched her thrashing the last bit of her strength into the baby as it inched toward the first second of his living day, I was thinking, I’m going to love her for the rest of my life. As at that time, the baby was still largely a murky concept to me, I didn’t know what to expect of it, all I wanted was for this pain to end soon for her. When I first saw his/her face, my mind went blank. Here he/she came, facing me with the eyes closed tight, oblivious of my existence. The nurse took hold of him/her, and I saw him, the full length of a being, still holding his breath. And intuitively I held my breath too, waiting to exhale with him, the first breath of his life. In a couple of second he opened his mouth, hesitated for a bit, then there it came. My son, living and breathing on a mid-summer night. And he was moving his fingers already, individually, surprisingly dexterous. The nurse put him on a tray. I stepped in to take a closer look at him, his face seemed a bit unfamiliar to me, as he opened his eyes, and I tried to take it in, this is the manifestation of my gene, my father’s gene, who was waiting thousands of miles away with equally bated breath. I called home and said “Dad, I got a son.” And Mom later called me back and said Dad’s eyes were brimmed with tears when he heard that. I went back to look at the baby again, not to search for any trace of the lineage, just to take a good look at him. For a baby he has distinctive features, inky pupil, an arc for a nose, rather big ears and smooth skin, nothing like the wrinkled skin I’ve been reading about. He cried a bit, but soon got tired of it, and when the nurse put him in my arms, he yawned.