Paint my eyelids and call me tired
escape has many disguises
Hello to those of you who are new to KAFKA’S. It’s nice to have you! <3
The pupils float fully dilated in a powdery sea of white, the eyelashes angle up like shadows from a late-afternoon fence, the irises are simply gone. These are unhinged eyes, MS Paint eyes, the color-fill escaping lines that don’t close, the kind a baby might later draw itself in its first attempt at a face.
The eyelids are a blind drawn between the baby’s laser-focused consciousness and the parent. The baby … doesn’t notice?! They can’t tell the difference between their mother’s doting eyes and two eye/nipple-resembling smudges, if the pics of parents drawing eyes on their eyelids so they can nap are to be believed.
Along with ✧・ﾟ: *✧・ﾟ:* *:・ﾟ✧*:・ﾟ love ✧ ‧͙⁺˚*・༓☾ ☽༓, one of the sensations of early parenthood, as captured by Rachel Cusk, is the “disconcerting regard” of a baby watching you back: “I find something eerie in it, as if the baby were absorbing information from me at high speed while I slept,” she wrote in A Life’s Work.
Finding a way to escape your baby’s gaze is the early mission you repeat on a cycle. One of the baby books I read said to AVOID EYE CONTACT for night feeds lest the baby get “excited.” It can’t be a mistake that the most prominent thing you’ll see on the baby monitor is the possum-lit eyes of your baby searching for you in the dark.
Scout was still night-feeding at the six-month mark, and had gotten very adept. I was attempting to lower her asleep into the crib one night when I heard and felt the thwap of her relatching herself to my tired, bent-over, stretched-out boob. She had swum back up out of herself and onto me through sheer will.
I felt actual fear at putting her down at times, because I was desperate for my shift to be over. I can remember entering her room with my eyes in a squint, less she get a juicy eyeful of my soul in the dark hours. The eyeball pictures—which owe a debt to jurist Homer Simpson—definitely capture that feeling.
Look at this one, of a dad (the phone playing white noise, the tissue stuffed in ear):
The father was covered by Indian news outlets; the mother, above, I’m not sure the origins of, since I only have a shitpic copy saved to my IG. I suspect it is not American either, since the self-consciousness of American parenthood, and fear of being caught performing an unsafe sleep practice, are absent. Same with this one:
I think the reason these wound up in my camera roll, something I pull up every now and then to marvel at, is they show a parent who has found a way to leave … without leaving (well, I suppose the mother in the last one did leave, good for her!). They are a perfect, shitpic-y representation of the bifurcated maternal soul. A tone poem of doomscrolling while someone sucks long enough your bones turn to salt. (Also a comment, stay with me, on the bounds of consent in motherhood! !!)
The reason you won’t see an American parent post one of these photos is because we can’t endorse the behavior—there is no knowing who will see it and miss the context.
“I feel frightened for her,” writes Cusk of her baby. “We could be people who didn’t care for her.”
I am now thousands of nights on from that time, and was sitting at the dinner table the other night when Japhy looked at me, caught my eyes, and then did two crooked eyebrow raises at me while smiling. I did two eyebrow raises back, then he returned the volley. We went back and forth silently giving the “hubba hubba” until he collapsed from giggling. Idk, man, it gets better.
Children being wrong about things
Japhy: Look! A baby deer!
Goodies
I got a chance to read The Glow by person-I’d-get-steamrolled-for Jessie Gaynor, and it is legit the funniest novel I’ve read in a longgggg while. It comes out in June and you can preorder it here. Titter with me at wellness culture!!
Happy almost book bdays to Virginia Sole-Smith (Fat Talk—it’s great), and Sara Petersen (Momfluenced—thought this essay from the book was really a goodie)!!
on being defensive—Sarah Miller
this is the kind of Savannah trip guide I like to see!
Bijan Stephenson on the 'we are all babies' piece (yes, I'm late and have just been piling up good tabs)
Crabb gets a mammogram—great one from an Aussie legend I suppose you've never heard of
Nah, Team Japhy, that's a baby deer.
Thank you for sharing these pictures. I had no idea. And thank you for the shout out. You are very generous!