Enter Bill: man of boundless energy. He would lift her up and walk with her until she fell asleep - long after I had collapsed.
It was a strange period in our lives. Emma was our first baby -and she was a mummy's girl from the very beginning. Bill sometimes felt unnecessary and, unfortunately, I did not help the situation. I think I managed to make him feel like a second class member of the family - Emma always came first.
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On nights when the weather was bad and Emma wouldn't go to sleep, Bill would do 'laps' of our first floor. Slowly, he would increase the angle of her seat until she was in a horizontal position in the stroller. The dining room was right under our bedroom - and I would listen to the stroller wheels hit the wooden floors after rolling silently on the carpet. Bill would also sing to Emma to help the process and the monotony. I understand that normal people sing lullabies to babies. Not Bill. He preferred leafing through his memory banks of jazz standards. The song that worked the best was "Good Bye Pork Pie Hat", Mingus' elegy to Lester Young. It is, shall we say, a somber tune. Bill is a great musician but a lousy singer - however, this song, with its limited range was mastered by Bill. Even with a floor separating us I could recognize those plaintive notes.
Today, whenever I hear that tune, I envision that stroller wearing wheel treads into the dining room carpet while a blissful Emma is lulled to sleep by her adoring father. And Bill, no longer superfluous to the baby raising process, has found that his love of jazz a very useful tool.