The Theology of Parenting At some point you can't take it: when the baby won't go to sleep, rolls around tired like a drunk who doesn't know they should just go home to bed, whimpering, bawling, throwing her head at everything in the room. So everyone tells you: let her cry herself to sleep. It makes sense because you're slipping because it feels like you're going to find your bags packed and a ticket to Crazy folded in your pocket as that baby drops her head against the floor and howls, smacks her head on a chair leg and howls, cracks her head on your head and howls. Here's what everyone says: Put her in a crib. She will cry. Be strong. Poke your head in every five minutes. Be strong. Don't pick her up. Just assure her you're still there, you're still rooting for her, and one, two nights later, she'll know how to go to sleep. And it makes sense, as you pace, baby squirming out of your hold, you need to be up for work in five hours and fourteen minutes, you've got composure piled in your hands like a dozen loose eggs, when one goes it all tumbles in a hell of a mess, so it makes sense. But you can't do it. Can't sit watching Conan as if nobody's screaming, can't let her cry like a kitten outside your window being tortured by pirates, you barricade your sanity, pray and build the walls up high, whimpering like a, well, like a parent at 11:58 p.m. watching news on TV, image and image and image of full-color tragedy and folly, of foreigners weeping, of neighbors hugging their thighs and shaking, of everything falling apart like storm clouds into rain, all of us, all of us pounding the bars of this crib, all of us left to cry ourselves to sleep.
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And there are also poems from past periods
Return From Whence Ye Came