The Clock
When our daughter was born, we lived in a converted horse stable at the back of a battleaxe block in Rozelle. Bougainvillea clung to the bars on the windows and grew up and over the roof, home to colonies of huntsman spiders.
At night, I peered through the thorny vines to see if the neighbours’ lights were on. It was comforting to know other people were awake: shift workers, maybe, or students, or other mothers being driven mad by insomniac babies.
The baby actively defied sleep. She lay in my arms and peered up at me, challenging me with her big, brown eyes. Sometimes, in desperation, I held her next to the quietly buzzing fridge or the ticking clock, hoping the white noise would soothe her.
I tried rocking her, patting her, wrapping her, cuddling her and letting her cry, but nothing ever worked for long. I was often awake to watch the clock tick over at 9pm, 10pm, midnight, 2am, 4am and 6am.
When she was about 8 months old, we moved to a fibro house in Lilyfield. The foundations were sinking, and slugs oozed over the threadbare carpet at night, but the baby had her own room to not sleep in.
The crumbling house let the cold in. One wintry night, I covered her with my fluffy dressing gown and she didn’t wake up until the morning. Every night for weeks, she cuddled my gown and slept soundly.
After a while, I cut up the leopard-print dressing gown and made a little blanket. It became her constant companion, and she called it “Beebee”. I liked to think it gave her the smell and warmth of me, but without me.
Now the baby is nearly 8. Though Beebee stopped coming everywhere with us years ago, my daughter only recently stopped needing the blanket to sleep. I started finding the ragged little square jammed between her mattress and the wall, or under her bed, or tossed on her floor.
The first time I noticed she was moving away from me is captured in a favourite photograph. It was taken after she finished her school fun run. She is holding a grape flavoured ice-block and grinning, her lips stained purple. She is wearing a pink baseball cap, the first thing she ever picked out for herself at the op-shop. She is looking down at me, through the lens, eyes alight.
Her life and imagination are now filled with things that have very little to do with me. For one, she loves wearing bike shorts. At the shops recently, she rushed up to me and thrust a black tie-dye tracksuit at me, gushing: “Mum, please, this is EXACTLY my style”. She knows all the words to Taylor Swift and Post Malone songs. She had her hair cut into a thick fringe, which she wears long, hanging over her eyebrows. She loves video games, computers and LEGO. She interrupts us constantly, bursting to tell us a new fact she’s discovered about volcanoes or bees or Japan. She shuts down our encouragement to learn how to ride a bike, but loves basketball and bombing at the pool. She has found her “own place” on our favourite walk: a bend in a fast-flowing creek, shrouded by shrubs and branches where she can hide and explore. She hates vegetables — her favourite meals are huge serves of meatballs or cheeseburgers, which she inhales with satisfied grunts.
A few weeks ago, she lost the ability to fall asleep. She started appearing in the living room well after bedtime, saying she was scared of something she’d seen on the news. She wanted back scratches, or water, or bedtime stories. One night she burst into our bedroom at 11pm, wild with sleepless frustration.
Eventually, we figured out the clock in her room was keeping her awake. As she watched the hands move, she worried about not getting enough sleep. It was a constant reminder another day was on its way.
