Before I had Klara, I never knew what it meant to be really tired and really want to sleep. I’m not saying it in a dramatic way. I like having this experience. It’s new and refreshing.
It’s strange to be discovering at my age how refreshing sleep can be and how one can actually need it.
Ah, Clarissa, in my entire life I never had a child or siblings — or was ever responsible for anything else in the world that I could consider half as precious as your obligation to Klara! (Yes, as a doctor I was responsible for the welfare of my patients, and as a military commander I was responsible for the lives of the personnel under my command — but that was never the same ultimate, personal-above-all-else bond that a loving parent feels with his/her child, or that a sibling feels toward a brother or sister.)
I often wondered what that feeling was like, and still do, though I’m not sorry that I chose to let that opportunity pass me by. I had my own goals in life, and I’ve met them to my satisfaction.
But you have the ultimate reason to “be really tired and really want to sleep,” and then to “[discover] at [your] age how refreshing sleep can be,” and how rewarding it can feel to wake up for the sake of caring for the single most important being in your life.
Don’t get me wrong, I don’t envy you. But you have a purpose to wake up that should shake off any fatigue that some of us spent a professional lifetime fighting,without having the same penultimate reason to wake refreshed every day.
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Absolutely! I really enjoy getting up at night to feed her. She’s so cuddly, sweet and aromatic! It’s the best thing ever.
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A conservative literary critic and college professor
Clarissa's Blog 
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