re-entering blogosphere

one immediate impact of having triplets is that i have given up capitalization most of the time. they are releasing my inner e.e. cummings, I guess.

disrupted sleep is an attack on the foundation of our self. i think i know a little bit about it from past experience. interestingly, currently luciana and i are in a permanent state of sleep-deprivation, which varies day to day from minor to moderate to occasionally major. but in many ways it has proved much more tolerable than anticipated. everyone was predicting for months that this time with newborns would be dreadful. quite to opposite. there is much that delights, much that provokes meditation and peace, and much that brings me close to the Great Simplicity. in the nursery there is no clock, and there is no room or time for worries about anything beyond finishing a bottle, adjusting a sleeve around a tiny hand, fluffing up little hairs on a little head, and watching eyes open and begin to track around the periphery of your face for the first time, the tenth time, the hundredth time. isn't it funny how we find that any activity appears to be intentional. evelyn thrusts her hands about, and they come to rest on her bottle, and it looks like she's trying to hold it for herself. how pleasant these midnight fantasies can be.

luciana has been recovering very well from her surgery. she seems to me very healthy and energetic, and also quite anxious about handling the babies and taking care of them, which is a surprise. she's already raised for of these little packages. but something about their prematurity and precariousness, perhaps, and something to do with the huge hormonal tides rushing in and out of her body, has her -- not unhinged, but swinging pretty wildly on her hinges at times. she wants to sleep on the floor in their room, wants to take care of the 24 hours a day, leaps up from the table in alarm if one of them fusses in the nursery. we have been talking about it. apparently i have a higher tolerance for the sound of fussing babies and crying babies, and i'm willing to sit a bit and wait to see if the fussy girl will settle herself down. (they often do). during the long pregnancy we had both agreed that one problem would be my anxious and irritated reaction to the sound of babies' crying. she predicted, and i agreed, that i would need to take a lot of time out from the girls because we both anticipated me finding their cries like nails on chalkboard. but not at all. i can listen to a crying girl and patiently suss out if this is hunger, crampiness, irritation, waking up, falling aslseep or any of the other variations on consciousness that the girls currently can muster. doesn't seem to bother me. last night i was feeding cecilia and jessie began wailing three feet away from my ear, and I calmly helped cecilia finish her bottle, wrapped her back in her blanket and tucked her in, then turn to ms. jessie and took her up to feed. well, it helps to be 54 years old, I guess.

my daughter continues to suffer and writhe about the situation, and can't seem to find a way to make herself comfortable. as far as the babies are concerned, she can't stand them and can't stand to be around them, so she has discontinued her every other weekend stay at my house. this means i have to go into town on Friday nights to take her to dinner in order to have some ongoing contact. she can be quite unpleasant. a lot of it is 'thirteen-ism.' some if it has to do with her adoption, her feelings of being abandoned (or stolen away) at birth, and her envy of these little babies who have a biological family willing and able to keep them. and some of it has to do with her mother's ceaseless envious and hateful complaining about her ex-husband, his indifference to her needs and wishes, his arrogance to go and start another family -- which she interprets to her children as my indifference to their needs and wishes and my wish to abandon them and forget about them. there's nothing that can be done about her. i think that she has been getting worse the past two years, and currently she seems quite crazy. i keep my distance, mail the child support checks on time, and try to see the kids when i can.