Wonder of the Waves

by Jim Lombardo

  Brian leaned over and carefully placed his brawny arms around his wife and child. “I’m so proud of you, honey. You did it. Just look at her.”

  “You made us wait, Babycakes, didn’t you?” crooned Monica. “Now, you’re Hannah, okay?”

  The new mother shifted towards the doctor. “Is it alright she’s not crying?”

  “Totally fine, Monica. Congratulations,” he reassured her before beginning the suturing process. “She’s got excellent color and response. You have a beautiful, healthy baby.”

  Hannah surveyed everything in her sight with acute interest, shifting her eyes side to side, up and down, never stopping at a single object for more than an instant. The world was comprised of numerous fuzzy things of different size, quality, and texture. Some of the objects had moving parts, which caused a vibration in her ears that she could interpret. Up to this point these sounds had always been muffled and drowned out by the rush of gurgling water and a rhythmic thumping. But now, the sounds were far more crisp and easy to distinguish. She was well accustomed to the feel of the world around her, physical pressure and pain, and the ability to move her limbs and fingers at will. However, she was now bombarded with sensations wildly foreign to her.

  One brand-new experience for Hannah was the rushing of air into and out of her lungs, which occurred whether or not she was thinking about it. Instinctively she gagged on water in her throat, and the reflex caused a sound to emanate from her mouth. She quickly learned that by expelling air in combination with tightening her throat she could amazingly generate her own noises.

  Her brain was a parched sponge, absorbing every single sensory input, every experience, sorting the details, and storing them permanently. It was as if someone had dumped a 10,000-piece jigsaw puzzle into a big pile in front of her, while offering no clue as to what the assembled picture would be.

  Hannah didn’t know why, but she felt there was something very special about the two glistening dark orbs, arranged symmetrically on the object close to her head. She tried hard to focus her blurry eyesight on them. A thin, semi-circular shape hung above each one, and this intrigued her. Then from a hole underneath these shining circles came the most pleasant sound she had ever heard, as Monica began talking tenderly to her baby.

  Brian pulled out his iPhone to take pics and videos of his new family.

  “So perfect. Look at the little fingers.”

  Hannah’s eyes darted towards Brian as he spoke, staring intently at the thing that was interrupting her mother with a louder and deeper noise. She recognized the similarity of these two large objects nearest her, each having the same characteristics — two eyes, two eyebrows, nose, and mouth.

  “Happy birthday, Hannah,” he said, gently squeezing one of her fragile hands. “March 16th will always be your big day.”

  “That means she’s a Pisces like you, Brian. The sign of the fish.”

  The nurse was reluctant to interrupt the family, but she needed to attend to the newborn checklist. With the promise she’d return Hannah after a few minutes, she took the baby over to another area of the operating room. The infant was wiped down with a towel and warm water, and her temperature, heart rate, breathing, reflexes, and skin tone were evaluated and found to be normal. The nurse then administered eye drops intended to prevent infection, which caused Hannah’s eyes to sting and her vision to become even more blurry. The child was not happy about this at all. As part of routine metabolic screening, the nurse then pricked her heel to get a drop of blood. Hannah glared at the gigantic thing hunched over her that had caused her pain, and she wanted to go back to the other entities.

  After spending a long, peaceful stretch in the arms of her mother, and getting her first experience with nursing, which she took to with ease, it was time to go to the nursery so that her mother could get some rest. Still wide-eyed and feeling no urge or need to cry, Hannah was wrapped in a fresh blanket and placed in a plexiglass bassinet on casters. Her head was fitted with a pink baby cap, of a size more typical for a month-old baby, and she was rolled into a different room with other babies lying in bassinets around her.

  Chapter Six

  Experimentation

  Hannah lay in the maternity ward nursery on her tummy looking out the side of her bassinet while replaying all of her experiences thus far outside of the womb. She noted that she had heard particular noises more than once, such as, “han-uh,” “mon-i-kuh,” “sheez,” and “bay-bee,” as well as the closely related ones, “yoo” and “yohr.” She repeated all these sounds over and over in her mind, until eventually a nurse came to return her to her mother’s room to be fed.

  Monica and Hannah remained in the hospital for five days as Monica recovered from her caesarian. During this time, Hannah’s unusual behavior wasn’t easily discernable to her mother because this was her first child and she wasn’t experienced with the subtle differences between how an ordinary newborn would be acting compared to her daughter. But to the nurses, it was obvious. For example, Monica had assumed that the baby was sleeping during her daily stays in the nursery, but the nurses had all noticed, and even whispered amongst themselves, that none of them had ever witnessed Hannah Blake sleeping. Nor had they ever seen her truly crying. The only sounds of displeasure she had ever voiced seemed to be a deliberate grunt or holler, to object to something, or to ask for something. For example, if the nurses rolled her onto her stomach, thereby limiting the view of her surroundings, she might grumble until she was turned back. Immediately after wetting or filling her diapers, she would feel uncomfortable, and would begin to whimper, alerting those around her that it was time for her to be changed. But to the nurses, it always sounded more like she was mimicking crying. They also thought it highly odd that the child’s eyes appeared to be tracking movements of people and objects on the other side of the room, since the primary focus of newborns was only in the range of about 15 inches.

  Meanwhile, Hannah was trying to make the most of every second of consciousness in her new environment. One morning she found herself in the nursery inspecting the inside of her plexiglass bassinet when another one was wheeled right next to hers. In it was a smallish entity facing her, wearing a pale blue cap. He was positioned on his stomach, with his eyes partially open. Hannah was captivated and tried to vocalize to get his attention. “Uhhh, uhhh, uhhhh!” she groaned, but his eyes just sluggishly closed to Hannah’s profound disappointment.

  When Hannah was around the other larger entities she usually kept completely silent, because this was her optimal opportunity to learn from observing and listening. Then, when in her bassinet in the nursery, shut off from conversation and most visual stimuli, this was her time to review and ponder all the clues to the mysteries she was trying to solve.

  Something of interest to Hannah was how things kept changing size. She observed that an object standing still remained the same size, but as soon as it moved, it either grew larger or smaller. And the faster something moved, the quicker it would change size. She also noticed that even if objects were stationary, but she was in motion, they would change size. It was fascinating to her that objects possessed these size-changing qualities.

  Although it was virtually impossible for her to secure an intellectual foothold regarding her surroundings at this stage, she was still managing to win tiny toeholds of knowledge with each passing hour of consciousness.

  Towards the end of her hospital stay, while lying alone in the nursery, Hannah was experimenting with her personal instruments, using her throat, lips, tongue, and the roof of her mouth to completely change the sound of air being forced out through her vibrating vocal chords. She was delighted to realize this was exactly what the entities were doing, just in a far more complex way. The baby found that by closing her mouth, she could also force air out the two orifices at the base of her nose, but discovered there was no useful way to change the sound in any way beyond a hum, so she gave up on that as a means of communication.r />
  Using her own primitive system, Hannah was keeping a tally of the number of times that she had been wheeled in from the nursery to see Monica since she had seen light. She figured out that when she was in a different location, that special person did still exist, but was simply residing in another realm of space, outside of her field of vision.

  An odd health episode occurred during the baby’s final night in the hospital. While alone and unattended in the nursery, Hannah’s body suddenly went limp. Her eyes became fixed and then rolled up until all that was visible were the whites. Then, her head began to lightly vibrate with her gums rubbing together. The muscles around her temples tightened, and there was a slight outward bulging of the fontanels, the membranous gaps in an infant’s skull. After about 90 seconds, she returned to normal. A nurse stopped over her shortly thereafter and casually readjusted her cap before moving on.

  The following morning as Monica and Brian were packing up their belongings in her room and preparing for the ride home, Hannah already knew that the sound “mon-i-kuh” meant the entity Monica, and “bry-un” meant Brian. She knew that these two entities — people — cared about her, and she stared keenly at them while being belted into her portable car seat on the hospital floor, a distinct smile on her angelic face.

  Chapter Seven

  Homecoming

  The older model car crept along the upward sloping driveway, heading toward the back of the Blakes’ duplex. It edged into its intended parking spot, and the engine shut off. Monica was in the back sitting beside Hannah, who was strapped into her car seat. Her head was secured in a soft, yellow, foam halo that ran from one shoulder to the other. For extra support, Monica had added a U-shaped neck pillow. She had also wedged a baby blanket between Hannah’s tiny torso and the side of the car seat to further safeguard her tiny child. Hannah just sat there, pinned. Knowing that these two people cared about her, she wondered why they weren’t letting her move anymore. Brian assessed the scene in the rearview mirror and considered the overprotective trappings to be comical.

  “Jeez, are we taking our kid home or blasting her off into orbit? She looks like the first baby in space. Anyways, we’re home,” he said with satisfaction.

  The new dad jumped out of the front seat and opened up the back door. He waited impatiently as Monica completed the lengthy process of extracting Hannah from her car seat, cautiously removing the various supports, latches, and belts before removing the child so delicately that Brian couldn’t resist teasing again.

  “Is this a baby or a giant egg?”

  “Just handle with care, buddy-boy,” Monica replied as she passed Hannah off to Brian. She grabbed a bag of baby care giveaways from the hospital and began gingerly making her way out of the car.

  “You okay gettin’ out, honey?”

  “Yeah, I can do it. Being home’s a painkiller. Oh, balloons!”

  The Blakes’ downstairs neighbors, the Silvas, had tied pink balloons to the railing of the back deck, and hung a colorful handmade ‘Welcome Home’ banner, complete with a backwards “L” and five exclamation points. Tony and Marie, along with their identical five-year-old twins, Leah and Sophia, and their aging mongrel dog “Pudge,” emerged from the rear entrance they shared with the Blakes to greet them.

  “Congratulations,” gushed Marie, giving Monica an extra gentle hug, well aware of what it felt like to be only five days out from a C-section.

  “Hi, everybody,” said Monica warmly. “Thanks so much. You did an awesome job on that sign, girls. It’s so pretty! It’s nice to be welcomed back.”

  “She awake?” Marie asked, lowering her voice to a whisper.

  “Yeah, in fact it seems like she’s always awake,” Monica said as she pulled back a portion of the pink blanket that was shielding Hannah’s face.

  “You’ll be awake a lot more too,” chimed in Tony with a laugh.

  “Ohhhh, she’s beautiful,” Marie cooed, “and she already has some hair.”

  “Good going, man,” said Tony, slapping Brian good-naturedly on the back. “You’re a daddy now. Welcome to the daddy club.”

  “Yeah, I’m signed up for life.”

  “We wanna see too!” pleaded one of the twins.

  “Hey, girls, this is our Hannah,” Brian said as he lowered her down so they could see the baby better.

  “Hold the dog, Tony,” Marie warned.

  Tony grabbed Pudge’s collar to keep him back. The dog fought and whined against being restrained, trying to get closer to Hannah, panting loudly with his tongue dangling out wildly.

  “Good dog, Pudge. Easy boy!” Tony ordered firmly.

  The group continued chatting for a few minutes, while Hannah was deep in thought. The world was incredible to her, even though her brain was struggling to sync itself with the visual stimulation entering her eyes. Normally newborns require a few months to perceive depth, so they can only focus on objects in close proximity. And usually it requires several months of life to be able to distinguish and appreciate color. This is not because the eyes themselves don’t have the physical ability to see depth and color at birth, it’s because the brain and eyes need to learn to work cooperatively to develop these skills. But Hannah was already making significant progress, and she found herself overwhelmed by the beauty of her mother’s flower garden, which was ushering in the New England spring with a cluster of patchwork pansies.

  Still, the child was bewildered by almost everything she saw. She noticed that many things around her came in twos. People had two eyes, two ears, and two nostrils. Monica had two nipples. Looking at the rear of the Silvas’ car, she noticed that object had two eyes as well. Now observing the identical twins dressed in matching outfits and hair, she wondered if people also came in twos. Hannah was curious about the humongous empty expanse stretching across the entire view above her head. What was the super bright orb stuck in there, that made her eyes hurt? And what the heck was the story with the strange entity below completely covered in hair? There was a lot to figure out.

  “Let us know if you need anything,” Marie said as the conversation wrapped up. “We’re here.”

  The Blakes thanked their neighbors and made their way up the stairs and into their home. The apartment was quaint but comfortable. The rear entrance led into a small kitchen, followed by a bathroom and master bedroom, all facing the back driveway. Off the kitchen running towards the front end of the house was a modest-sized dining room leading into their living room, which was the biggest room in the house and overlooked a busy road below. There were two other bedrooms on the master bedroom side of the apartment off a long hallway that led from the bathroom to the front of the apartment. A wooden staircase at the end of the hallway led down to a private front entrance.

  Brian had earlier removed the remnants of the failed home birth, thinking their joyful homecoming might be spoiled by its memory. All the midwife’s medical refuse had been trashed, and he had scraped the candlewax off the nightstand and bureau in their bedroom. The new age music discs were now stacked on top of the CD rack, and he’d thrown the soiled sheets and towels into a laundry bag to deal with later. On his daughter’s first day home, he proudly carried Hannah into the master bedroom and laid her down in the center of the king-size sleigh bed. The new mother and father stood back, gazing at their baby in silence and awe. She seemed so tiny and helpless, nestled into the giant sea of their down comforter. Hannah stretched out her itty-bitty arms as far as they would go, arched her back, and let out a mighty yawn. Then she returned their stare.

  “We’re parents, Brian,” said Monica, admiring the miracle they had created.

  “Yeah….so what do we do now?” he asked.

  Monica and Brian looked at each other, and started giggling like teenagers.

  Chapter Eight

  Expectations

  Brian went into the kitchen and did his best Suzy Homemaker imitation, trying not to mangle
the creation of two grilled cheeses. His wife usually did most of the cooking unless they were barbequing. Meanwhile Monica snuggled up with Hannah in the parents’ bedroom. Mother and child were surrounded by a ridiculous number of puffy pink pillows for the first feeding at home. Hannah was a natural at nursing, and this was a classic moment for them. As she watched her baby, Monica thought of all her studying and worrying about breastfeeding problems, those funny articles she had read on how to avoid “booby-traps” and how to make a “bosom buddy,” but this felt magically effortless. At the same time, Hannah noted how taking in this liquid made the pain in her stomach go away. She thought of how this must explain the frequent disappearance of objects into the lower face holes of the entities.

  After lunch, and a couple of pain pills, and with Hannah now lying in a portable bassinet beside her, Monica couldn’t help but wonder.

  “Bri’, the baby’s been up for so long…shouldn’t she be sleeping by now?”

  “Well, I mean, she’ll sleep when she needs to. She’s not crying, so she must be okay.”

  “But when did she get wheeled into us this morning? That was like eight o’clock. I think I’ll check the book.”

  Monica had treated two books like bibles since her pregnancy had begun. The first was a guide on what to expect during pregnancy, which took the reader along month by month. That had been a godsend to Monica, so informative and helpful. The next, which she had already spent a lot of time with, was what to expect during a baby’s first year, also a month by month guide. She grabbed the second book and began leafing through it.