The specialist I've been seeing for my insomnia has me undergo a sleep study. I spend the night in a room equipped for this purpose, where I am hooked up to an elaborate array of instruments, designed to measure my every eye movement, muscle twitch, heartbeat, breath and brainwave. By the time the technician has finished attaching wires, tightening belts and pasting on electrodes, I resemble a sputnik monkey. Plugged into all this paraphernalia (plus a video camera peering down from the ceiling), Rip Van Winkle would have a hard time sleeping. I manage about 90 minutes.
Statement
"Liz and I became first-time parents as we entered middle age. Our daughter was born three weeks after Liz's 39th birthday and four days short of my 42nd. Our decision to have a child was the result of four years filled with discussion, negotiation, second guessing, threat and counterthreat, outright battling and, finally, agreement. We would both take this journey, Liz reassured me; the distant glow of our destination was sunshine and not the headlight of an oncoming train.
These are page reproductions, excerpted from 'The Kid' an unpublished, unabashedly biased and self-involved chronicle describing how we allowed our lives to change in a way that is at once commonplace and extraordinary.
All text in 'The Kid' is from my journal entries. The tale is told in my voice and seen through my eyes. I make no claim to objectivity. Hope and fear go hand and hand." (Karl Baden, May 19, 2007)
