Confusion is commonplace. Here’s what’s strange: moments when everything happening suddenly comes together and makes sense. Do these last long enough to be dissected, their meanings recorded? Not very often. They mostly lead to action of the sort that isn’t even advisable.

I don’t know if what I write will be coherent, but I can’t think of what else to do right now.

Imagine a night like scented babyhood, an unrepeatable perfume of flowers smelled for the first time mingling with the earthy odors of a family’s flatulence in a warm room. Awareness is a tunnel slowly widening in front of your eyes, swathed with the hazy colors of skies, carpets, entrancing objects. You love your parents desperately. Your teeth are edging through your gums. The truth you learn about the world thrills and frightens you.

Every day something scary happens, usually only one or two things but it makes you wary just the same. You get mad because people don’t understand you. Sometimes, when your anger makes you babble in a frantic tone, your family laughs at you. This makes you happy and sad at the same time. You know they love you as much as you could ever want to be loved, but they are separate from you. You have feelings they can’t share.

This separateness drives them to hold on to you more tightly, prize you more enthusiastically, but still, it makes you nervous.

You are afraid of being alone. Yet you find that your mind wanders to secret and interesting places when nobody’s talking to you. This is partly because you are young and old at the same time. Every glimpse of this world brings back memories of everywhere you have arrived from. You almost remember those places, but you get distracted when the present compels you to join it. The present’s call is irresistible as soon as you start to feel like part of the team.

Your family, your parents, these are your people now. Yes. You notice the stars for the first time and decide to cling to the ground. You make your decision right now.

This milestone in human life fascinates me. Tonight, as I sat in my front yard admiring the dim shapes of lawn chairs and contemplating the possibility of failure, a vision of a very young person came to me. I saw myself, as a baby, watching my mother play the piano. I pondered what hurts I’d accrued that day, and was perplexed by the language that fell all around me. But I was carried away by that thing babies feel when they hear music, when music is brand new and completely personal.

The tightness in the heart for a second, before the mind relaxes. The blood singing in the veins. My baby self was grateful for it, and said Yes. I will stay here and play this part, and I will even (usually) believe there is nothing else.

That vision tonight was accompanied by a strong feeling of merging, though with what I’m not sure. I didn’t care. Such a feeling of mysterious closeness was a relief. Remembering babyhood returned me to a time before separation had calcified.

This is not quite as insane as it sounds. It was triggered by being around a real baby. Not that I can read his mind or anything, it’s just that the expressions on his face made me remember. At some point, I agreed to be here, and hands reached out to pull me in. If I had chosen something different, would I have been born somewhere else? How much did I know about this place when I signed my name on that line?

Why do I continue to say Yes to all of this?

That last question, though appearing ominous, is nothing to worry about. I will never be able to answer it, which makes it safe to keep asking. For a split-second, every once in a while, I know why I agreed to stay here. Then memory flees and I greet the present again, that layer of confusion in which the truth may or may not be hidden.

Possibly not the picture you’d expect to see at this point.