The Rainbow Connection
“Sing them a song.” says Alice. “Maybe they’ll stop crying.”
We’re on a 17 foot green canoe with our babies on a big lake three hours North of where we live. The red-winged blackbirds are flying over us, the turtles are basking in the afternoon sun on the rocks, and the tulsi grass is high above our heads growing along the edge of the water. It’s our first time taking our children camping.
When Alice and I realized we were having kids we spent a lot of time lying in bed and talking about our dreams and priorities as parents. We are both passionate about the natural world and making sure our kids are comfortable in the wild. Silas’ name is from the Latin root silvas, “wild plant”, or “of the forest”. We figure if we do the things we love with our kids, at least we’ll be enjoying it, and hopefully they will learn to love it like us.
So we took them camping. They are 8 ½ months old. Lots of our friends thought we were nuts. It was Alice’s idea to buy this enormous canoe off craigslist from a guy in Stinson Beach, but it strapped in the top of our car, and here we are, with the crying babies zipped into puffy yellow life jackets in pouches on our backs while we row. From somewhere deep and mysterious in me that old Kermit the Frog song from my childhood rose up in my throat and I started singing:
Why are there so many songs about rainbows
and what’s on the other side?
Rainbows are visions, but only illusions,
and rainbows have nothing to hide
So we’ve been told and some choose to believe it,
I know they’re wrong wait and see
Someday we’ll find it, the Rainbow Connection -
the lovers, the dreamers and me…
It turned out Alice knew all the worlds just like I did and we sang the whole song together, rowing with our babies in the afternoon sun. They stopped crying after the second line or third and it felt like the best magic you could ever hope for. So much love, a family of four in a big green canoe on a lake in the wilderness. How did my life ever get this good?
*
When the sun went down that’s when things got rough. Why did we think the babies would just fall asleep in an unfamiliar place when our routines are so solid at home? We figured there was a chance they’d have a hard time sleeping but it was worth the shot to experiment. As it turned out, Lilah slept…like a baby, through the night well until after the sun rose. Silas, on the other hand, was crying and screaming unless he was held and rocked by one of us.
I have to explain something to you about twin babies and sleep. I have a lot of friends who have one baby and they sleep with their baby at night. It sounds very nice. It’s really hard to do that with two babies. It’s too much to try and coordinate, two squirming babies looking to nurse, waking up all through the night. We never even tried. So from the beginning our twins slept in a bassinet next to Alice in the bed. I slept alone on the other side of the house so I could get a decent night’s sleep. Eventually we moved the babies into a crib in a separate room (and eventually two cribs so they didn’t kick each other in the face), and I moved back into bed with Alice which was really awesome after all those months of sleeping alone. We sleep trained them around 5 months, it only took a few days, and now when we’re at home they sleep through the night. But one thing it means is that we’ve never slept with our babies.
Now I have to explain something to you about bipolar disorder. Whatever you think of the diagnosis or if you’re just like me and use it as a shorthand for inherent sensitivity mixed with developmental trauma, people diagnosed with bipolar often really struggle with getting enough sleep. If we don’t sleep we can get destabilized and end up on the manic depressive schizo-coaster. It’s only fun when you’re going up, believe me. One of the main keys to my success in life is that I figured out early on that I needed to sleep regularly at all costs, even if that means taking sleeping pills to do it. When I realized I was going to become a father the thing I was the most scared of was that I would lose my mind from sleep deprivation. So far it hasn’t been so bad because Alice has spared me the worst of it with her stronger non-bipolar constitution.
So there we were in the tent and Silas was showing no signs of sleeping. I was rocking him in my arms and every time I thought he might be passed out I put him down and he’d start screaming again. After a while I told Alice to go to sleep so at least one of us would be rested. She curled up with Lilah on the other side of the tent and I sat up rocking Silas and whispering to him in soothing tones.
It was a long night.
I slept for maybe 2 hours. It got cold and I didn’t have layers and the sleeping bag I borrowed was lighter than I expected. I would try to put Silas down but he’d scream every time so I just held him in the dark. I held him. I held him and rocked him. At some point I must have fallen asleep sitting up because I had a series of very vivid dreams/visions:
I’m speeding down Broadway on the Upper West Side of Manhattan where I grew up. Am I in a car? I think I’m just flying. All the buildings are so vivid and enormous. The sky is the color of a Grey’s Papaya drink. Everything is so fast. In the dream I am the buildings. I am the flashing lights. I’m am the traffic. I am the whole city and the electric orange sky. I feel the energy of New York coursing through my body.
Now I’m on the beach and I’m a child. I’m picking up seashells and putting them in a bucket. There’s a voice that tells me to look closely at the shells. The shells are glistening with ocean water and full of spiral patterns. Everywhere I look is full of spiral patterns. The voice says: remember these patterns. Every time you see them remember you are taken care of by us. We are here on the other side waiting for you to join us.
In the dream I am filled with a deep inner peace.
Then I see myself in my room in my mom’s apartment and I’m a young child with a bowl cut. I have a pile of seashells that I brought with me from the beach. They are dry and dull looking and sitting on a shelf of books and magazines. They are out of place in this Manhattan apartment. The little boy can’t remember the lesson of the spirals. He is upset and crying.
Now the sun is starting to rise and I’ve managed to get Silas to sleep on the floor of the tent, his little body curled up next to me. He has dried tears caked down his little cheeks. I’m watching the rising and falling of his breath. He looks so delicate and peaceful in the morning light. He is so beautiful. I stare at his face for a very long time. I feel like I have memories in the past of lying next to people I loved and staring at their sleeping face in the morning light. It’s not dissimilar. Love is fucking mysterious. It’s beyond us. It’s in the clouds, it’s in the sea shells. There’s no way to capture it but you can cultivate it, create the conditions for it to arise. There is so much love, so much love I have for Alice, for these babies. How did this happen? Maybe it’s something about spirals.
Just listen to the old Muppets songs, they are full of wisdom:
All of us under its spell
We know that it’s probably magic
Have you been half asleep?
And have you heard voices?
I’ve heard them calling my name
Is this the sweet sound that calls the young sailors?
The voice might be one and the same
I’ve heard it too many times to ignore it
It’s something that I’m supposed to be
Someday we’ll find it the Rainbow Connection
The lovers, the dreamers and me
The next days we went back out in the canoe and then drove back to Oakland. I was fine, I didn’t lose my mind, even on my two hours of sleep. But I took 25mgs of Seroquel last night because that’s my reset pill, so that I can keep the magic to a manageable level. Thanks for reading this post. I’m writing to keep a record for myself. And I hope it is useful or enjoyable for you in some way.