8/7/2019 Afterthoughts: The H-1 Lullaby

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/afterthoughts-the-h-1-lullaby 1/1

152 march 2009 www.onolulugzine.o

 afterthoughts

I

i live overlooking—or, more accurately, over-listening—

the H-1. Our apartment is perched high enough that the reeway

isn’t a noisy nuisance; it’s just a background shuush sound, not

unlike the ocean. An urban sur.

My vantage point over this asphalt ebb and ow makes

me an excellent amateur trac reporter. I can tell when rushhour is particularly bad, or i 

the raging car re tying up

westbound trac has been

extinguished.

But with the birth o my

daughter, the H-1 has be-

come a trusted companion.

No matter how ungodly the

hour, there’s motion on the

H-1. Taillights glow red in

one direction; in the other,

headlights are a squinty,

golden bright. This streamo cars is a comorting 

assurance that I am not, in

act, the sole human awake.

Where y’all going at 3:17

a.m., by the way? To work, to

sh, to party, I suppose. To

7-Eleven and Hungry Lion.

Our amily sleeps in

 Venn diagrams these days:

One adult at a time clings

 joyully to a pillow, rarely

intersecting with both a

sleeping baby and a spouse.

During my shit, I linger

at the window, counting 

the vehicles as they pass

through the night, and inhale

the breeze coming down of the mountains. The middle o 

the night smells green, like erns and leaves. The air is almost

tangible, a mossy velvet.

Shuush, says the green wind.

Orange city lights dot the dark hillside along the H-1. It

looks as i a constellation came home late one night, emptied its

pockets o loose stars and stumbled of to bed. They lie scat-

tered, these pretender stars, creating a glow perectly illuminat-

ing my laps around the living room. I pace, jiggling 12 pounds

o swaddled, heavy-lidded baby. She’s contemplating dozing 

of—seeming suspicious o rest despite her obvious atigue.

Shuush, I say to her.

I attempt a lullaby, but I’m araid that, at this hour, I can

conjure one song and one song only: “Lola,” by the Kinks. “Well,I’m not dumb but I can’t un-

derstand/Why she walked

like a woman and talked

like a man …”

I can tell when my

daughter is alling asleep

 because she starts to

instinctively smile, a REM

cycle going through her

little brain. And then, i I’m

really lucky, she will laugh.

Not a giggle, but a deep,

almost masculine chortle.Heh-heh-heh. It’s like

she is dreaming o being a

Catskills comedian, circa

1957.

Or maybe she’s laugh-

ing because she just got the

punch line o “Lola.”

It’s 5:06 a.m. The H-1

grows busier, the cars more

evenly spaced. Through the

window, I see my neigh-

 bor’s shadow sipping cofee.

I hear trash trucks belowthe apartment, clattering 

as they back up. I think o 

the sleep I’m missing, and

the bags that are going to be

under my eyes, and the 9 a.m. meeting I need to attend.

“Shuush,” I say to mysel. Soon enough this baby will sleep

through the night, then be too big to cradle in one arm, then be

too big to carry at all.

So I savor the night and the tiny girl who laughs in her sleep.

I listen to the sur o cars on the H-1.

Shuush.

BY KATHRYN DRURY WAGNER

executive editor

   i   l   l   u   s   t   r   a   t   i   o   n  :   j   i   n   g    j

   i   n   g    t

   s   o   n   g .   p   h   o   t   o  :   l   i   n   n   y

   m   o   r   r   i   s

The H-1 LullabySteering my way through the night.