"Changing Table"

"The thing about children is:they disappear. They disappear as they appear.More themselves, less yours. Here the baby is on the table,kicking his silken, pillowy legs, looking you in the eyes, squirming,farting, smiling. Their past, leaving them for good,is ever more with you- a kind of distributedemptiness fills the rooms Bins of plush, sticky animals,a grimy wooden stove, silence where the current of playonce flowed. Now"

"is on the table,kicking his silken, pillowy legs, looking you in the eyes, squirming,farting, smiling. Their past, leaving them for good,is ever more with you- a kind of distributedemptiness fills the rooms Bins of plush, sticky animals,a grimy wooden stove, silence where the current of playonce flowed. Now I hear traffic streaming into the futureand the lost birds, the cardinal and the mourning dove, too."

Children disappear as they appear, becoming more themselves and less belonging to their caregivers. A baby is present on a table, active and intimate—kicking, squirming, farting, smiling, engaging eye to eye. The children's past departs from them and remains with the home, creating a distributed emptiness that fills rooms. Toys and sticky plush bins, a grimy wooden stove, and silence replace the current of play. The present hearing shifts toward traffic and the future, and the absent birds—the cardinal and mourning dove—register loss and movement beyond the domestic interior.

Read at The New Yorker