October 9: "Baby Listening," Jody, John Lennon

I remember those nights when my daughter and son were infants, and I would lay in my bed, unable to sleep, listening, listening, listening for any sound--a whimper, cry, burp, or (most frightening) nothing at all.  Even now--with my daughter living with her significant other in a town 20 miles distant, my son a high school junior and secretive as an oyster--I still worry about them every day.

Billy Collins gets into baby listening . . . 

Baby Listening

by: Billy Collins

According to the guest information directory, 

baby listening is a service offered by this seaside hotel. 

Baby listening—not a baby who happens to be listening, 

as I thought when I first checked in. 

Leave the receiver off the hook, 

the directory advises, 

and your infant can be monitored by the staff, 

though the staff, the entry continues, 

cannot be held responsible for the well-being 

of the baby in question. 

Fair enough, someone to listen to the baby. 

But the phrase did suggest a baby who is listening, 

lying there in the room next to mine 

listening to my pen scratching against the page, 

or a more advanced baby who has crawled 

down the hallway of the hotel 

and is pressing its tiny, curious ear against my door. 

Lucky for some of us, 

poetry is a place where both are true at once, 

where meaning only one thing at a time spells malfunction. 

Poetry wants to have the baby who is listening at my door 

as well as the baby who is being listened to, 

quietly breathing into the nearby telephone. 

And it also wants the baby 

who is making sounds of distress 

into the curved receiver lying in the crib 

while the girl at reception has just stepped out 

to have a smoke with her boyfriend 

in the dark by the great sway and wash of the North Sea. 

Poetry wants that baby, too, 

even a little more than it wants the others.

Worrying about your kids is a lifelong habit.  Tonight, I hosted an event at the library that included the son of one of my best friends.  Jody (my friend) sat next to me for the entire concert, listening to her son sing John Lennon tunes, play piano, and strum a guitar.  He even recited a poem.  She cried several times during the show.

Jody and I are the same age, with just six months separating us.  She has three grown children.  I have one grown daughter and one almost-grown son.  We both worked at the same bookstore in the 1990s.  Eventually, we both earned advanced degrees in English and taught college composition courses.  In short, we are each other, even though Jody has a Southern accent thicker than Andy Griffith.  

I've known Jody's son since he was four or five, I think.  Jody was at the hospital when my daughter was born, and Jody was also one of the first people to hold her.  We're both amazed at how much our kids have grown while we've remained exactly the same.

Jody and I sat and listened to her son sing "Strawberry Fields Forever," and it was both sublime and disconcerting.  Sublime because I remember the day John Lennon was murdered, the outpouring of grief that followed for days.  Disconcerting because I remember the day John Lennon was murdered and the ensuing display of collective grief.

It was a really good night, made better by the presence of Jody and Jody's son.  But friends always make life more joyful.

And Saint Marty didn't have to listen to any baby's, either.