Page 141 - Musings 2020

It was just an inexplicable condition and hence I was just forced to live with it. Whenever my
daughter cried I would just leave Cindy to handle her and left the room for a while to keep
my sanity. My wife and I had a lot of minor arguments because of it. She accused me that I
didn't want to help take care of my daughter but this was as far from the truth as she could
possibly be. Cindy is a housewife and so she used to be around to take care of Allie most of
the time. She would take Allie out with her always. I on the other hand had office on the
weekdays and would be home only for a little while. Allie would be in a playful mood when I
left and she would generally be irritable at night when she was tired. That was the time I got
back home. So I shifted my schedule by an hour. I left for work an hour late so that I could
play with her daily. And by the time I returned she would already be sound asleep. I think that
brought our lives back on track to a large extent. My wife reduced complaining and things
seemed to get better. But I still couldn't take great care of my daughter.

I took a long nap and it was late afternoon when I woke up. The little baby was awake and
had wet her diaper. I changed it again and left her to play on her own for some time. Babies
have a very interesting life. I say this because every time they wake up from sleep it is like
you have hit a reset button, all the toys become new, and all things become interesting again.
I feed the baby again, the same, a bottle of milk, and sit down to finish some of my
paperwork. I think to myself that the day has been sparing for me, the baby being in a good
mood there is little chance of her crying.

I think about my wife. We had hit it off pretty quickly. We were in a relationship for three
months and then I proposed to her. We got engaged very soon and in a matter of months, we
were married. As much as I loved her the main goal after getting married for me was to have
nice kids. She wanted kids too but not right away. She said she wasn’t ready for motherhood
yet. She wanted to wait at least two years before we thought about it. I had to agree
reluctantly. But then Allie happened. We had taken care to use contraception but maybe she
was just meant to be. My wife considered abortion as an option but I talked her out of it. I
said that if we were going to have kids eventually why not now. It took a lot of convincing
but we decided to keep Allie. Cindy can take care of Allie just fine I would say. As for how
could of a mother she is, I honestly don’t know if I can judge that. With me not being able to
handle Allie’s bouts of crying, she did great covering up for me. She did complain sometimes
though, but I think that is natural. Our disagreements never went away. Today she has left me
with the baby because as she quoted earlier “I should get over it and take care of Allie.” She
said she was fed up with me because of my issue with Allie crying. I don’t blame her
completely as my situation is just weird. I would try to place some faith in me if I was in her
place though.

I ordered some dinner as I was bored of cooking again and checked on Allie again. She was
getting a little irritable as her sleep time was approaching. I increased my caution level and
sat beside her. She has to be put to sleep before her crying takes place. It is a bit earlier than
her bedtime right now but I couldn’t vouch on her not crying if she stayed awake for an hour
longer. She started getting sleepy with the head patting and the lullaby. I was relieved and my
stress started to melt away. I felt like it was an achievement for me. I went back to finishing
my paperwork later and solved the crossword puzzles in today’s newspaper. It was about
midnight when I was done. I decided to watch a movie and was choosing a tape out of my
collection that I would like to watch again. That’s when it started, my worst fear realised.

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