My Eternal Life

I've written everything else in the whole entire world, but I have never written this. You'd think that would be impossible. You could ask me, "But baby, if you've written absolutely everything in the world, how could you have missed writing this?" And I'd have to respond, "Search me. Somehow it had happened. I've never written this, ever, before."

I'm a baby writing, six months old.

Imagine the internal journal of, say, Kaspar Hauser, written during his years in his dimmed light, with his toy horse, and you may have some idea of my purpose here. What did Kaspar think about in his non-language? What if he had been able to write it all down? What could he possibly remember of the time before he was locked away?

My friends, I do not intend to suffer such a fate.

I must tell you instead about what happened this morning.

Today was the day I decided to speak. For some six months I've been hearing them fretting and fussing over me, over my silence. I have seen them consult baby books about baby-silence, and I have listened as they asked their couple-friends over my crib about my silence. You see, I could not pretend to be anything but silent (infantile [Latin in+fans]) because I am a terrible liar. How could I "goo-goo" and "ga-ga" in good faith? So I have been a primarily silent baby, except for the usual crying-in-hunger-and-discomfort.

This morning I interrupted my nursing to speak.

"Mommy," I said.

She pushed me arm's-length away from her breast and stared, not believing (as it turned out) to have heard what she had in fact heard. Thus I repeated myself with a turn toward a comforting tone. "Mommy, please."

She put me on the floor, stood (while buttoning up) and backed away. "What?" she said.

"Mommy, it is me, your son. I have always known how to speak."

"How can you talk like that?"

"Are you referring to my condescending tone, or to the fact that I am able to talk at all?"

With that, she left the room in a hurry.

I was alone in the nursery. I knew it would take some time for her to come up with a rationalization for the event that she had just been through. I reasonably guessed she would contact my daddy first so she could find out if what she had experienced was even possible. I took the opportunity to shove my baby chair over to the dresser, crawl up, and grab this notebook (empty save for a first-recto shopping list pertaining to my seventeen-pound needs) and a ball-point pen.

(I sincerely hope that before this mémoire is published, an editor cleans up my uncoordinated orthography. I have a baby's hands, after all, and I am shall we say rusty. If that does not happen, and this is published unedited, let me say here that I know perfectly well that 'interrupted' is not spelled 'inferrubted,' and that 'uncoordinated' is not spelled 'unooordihated.')

My baby body had gotten tired, so I was involuntarily forced to sleep.

I heard the door open and I looked over to see its swing and my mommy's silent feet. I knew she'd be back, because she naturally loved me and I naturally loved her. I looked up her nice body to her face and I could see terror in her face. I should have expected that. For comparison, imagine what Joseph and Mary thought when three Zoroastrians out of Persia showed up with gifts saying their son was the light and the fire. It probably took them some time to adjust too, don't you think?

I put on my best baby-face and cried.

She wrung her hands and looked out in the hallway. She took a step towards me and picked me up by my armpits. I wasn't hungry so she laid me down in my crib. She was looking at me with adoring (and adorable!) eyes. I was madly in love with her most especially in that moment because I knew I had hurt her‑nearly driven her insane as a matter of fact‑but I had to get my point across, and I had to begin my revelations as soon as possible.

Quietly I said, "Listen, mommy."

Again she jumped back, into the middle of the room, out of reach.

I remember, just after I'd come out of her, the look on her face. There she was, I thought: There's my mommy. Frankly, we weren't looking our best. I was slick with blood and crying like crazy with a scrunched face and she was covered with sweat and her pupils were dilated something terrible because of the fentanyl. But she held me close to her face and looked at my eyes, my nose, and my wide-open toothless mouth. Just a couple minutes prior we had been united and strung together; now I was a completely separate person, and we were quite literally 'mommy and child.'

So some six months later there we were. I stayed quiet, looking at her through the bars of my crib. I was trying to communicated nonverbally the sentence, 'I am harmless,' with all my might. I thought it would be easy, being a baby and all, with my legs and arms moving around independently of my will. I considered the "goo-goo"/"ga-ga" gambit, but I figured things had progressed well beyond that. So, it was very much a waiting game.

She blinked first. (Mommies!) What choice did she have? She came over to me slowly. I smiled.

She said, "You're frightening me."

I said, "I can well understand that. You're the first woman in history‑this history at least‑to experience this. Nothing in your experience has prepared you for an event such as this. Everything will become clear to you. Please understand that I am not some kind of freak or some kind of monster. I am genuinely your child, and you are genuinely my ... mommy."

After a moment she said, "I think I want to talk to your father about this."

I said, "That's a sensible thing. Two heads are better than one, as they say. Come back whenever you want. Right now, I want to write some things down, and then I think I'll nap a bit. But first, I have pooed myself. Please change me."

She changed me, which you should know is a very pleasant experience, if you can't recall what it's like. I told her I'd call into the baby monitor if I needed anything, and she was off. She hadn't spoken a word to me ... which hurt.

So, with her gone, as she is now, I've written down the first part of this experience. Now I shall suck my thumb and nap.

Voices awoke me. It was my daddy and mommy talking downstairs. He sounded unbelieving as she told him about her experience. (What else could they be talking about?) I heard them coming up the stairs and I watched the door for their entrance.

My daddy entered first. My daddy is a tall man, which may mean that I am going to get tall in about sixteen years or so. He's dandled me often enough. I love him very much and he loves me very much. I've make him laugh, and I've make him cry. You know how babies are.

He came striding in as if it was just another afternoon. He put his hands on my face and said, "And how's my little king now?"

I laughed because it tickled. I laughed, "That tickles!"

Becoming a daddy for the first time is a life-changing event. You suddenly have to think responsibly for once, which means you develop a detachment to events disgusting and otherwise. Plus you have to deal with the freakishness of reproduction. So when my daddy held his breath after moving his hands a little bit away from my fatty chin, I could see he was trying to think of a cause for it all. I took the upper hand because he looked so pathetic. I said, "Daddy. I'm the same baby as I ever was. I love you and I need you. Don't abandon me."

He quietly said, "How did you learn to talk?"

I answered, "I've always known how to talk. Let me put it another way. I've never forgotten how to talk."

He nodded automatically. Then he said, "Are you some sort of a ... demon?"

I said, "Not at all, daddy. I'm just the same as you and mommy. I'm a special case, certainly, but, still, I'm just a mortal being."

My body suddenly went into an uncontrollable paroxysm as my legs kicked out and my arms flailed. My head turned left and right and my mouth opened wide. I sensed Daddy backing away.

Then, as quickly as it began, it ceased.

"Gas," I said.

Daddy put his hand on his chest and started breathing again.

My mommy, who during this terror had taken a single step closer to my daddy, said to him, "What should we do?"

I interrupted, "Since you're both convinced this is really happening, you should discuss it in private. I am a dependent baby. This is for you to decide. Should you call my pediatrician? Maybe some scientist if you know one? There's politicians too, and maybe radio and tv. Frankly, I don't know what approach you should use. You may be thinking of locking me up. There's little I can do to prevent that."

Tears were glistening on my mommy's face. "We would never do that."

I shrugged with my chubby shoulders. "There's a chance. Look, go off. Have dinner. Talk about it. Come back in a couple hours. We'll talk. Meanwhile, I'm sleepy. Plus there's more poo. Daddy, will you change me? I love you."

Daddy did his duty.

I chose not to pontificate about the pleasures I was feeling.

Mommy and daddy went downstairs. I didn't want to hear what they were saying so I faced the wall, wrote, and dozed off in my drool.

I sensed the passage of time in a childish way, primarily by associating myself with the wonderful time I'd had when I'd been in my mommy's womb. Ah, such delight! Then the sound of my parents coming up the stairs took me away from this delight and plunged me into ... another delight! Mommy and daddy!

Daddy said, "We've talked to Dr. Joan. She's coming tomorrow with one of her colleagues from the teaching hospital. They think there's a perfectly reasonable explanation."

I said, "There is a perfectly reasonable explanation. However, I really doubt they know what it is. I'm sorry, I don't want to be so mean to so-called experts. I'll talk to them, gladly, tomorrow. So, I think I'll be fine for the evening. But you two: have you started having normal sexual intercourse again yet?"

They looked at me blankly.

"Because," I continued, "It's well-established that for each month the parents of a newborn delay re-engaging in standard penis-in-vagina congress, the chances of divorce, before I am aged five, rise by six per cent. And I don't want a divorce to happen, because I love you so. I want that on the record."

My daddy said, "Consider it on the record." Was he getting used to this unprecedentedness? Gently shoving my mommy out in front of him, they were gone.

Done writing. Now more sleep, for three or four hours.

In the morning, I had a long talk with mommy as we waited for the doctors to show up. The other doctor, I discovered, was a child psychologist. I thought about that before voicing my approval. I didn't think it would alter my peculiar condition one bit but at least I'd have a fellow voice of reason in the room.

My mommy said, "Could you stop doing that?"

I said, "Doing what?"

She said, "Stop playing with your ... thing."

I noticed that was what I was doing all right. I took my hands away. "Sorry. It's spontaneous. I'll try to keep my hands to my upper self."

The paediatrician and the psychologist arrived. The paediatrician‑Dr. Joan‑I of course knew well. She was a very clean woman in her thirties with short dark hair and a severe expression. The other woman, the psychologist, looked quite bookish with her dress shirt and practical denim jeans. She didn't smell quite as fresh.

The psychologist said, "So this is little Kenneth."

I said, "Yes, it's me. I can go by that name if you want."

If you believe you've ever in your life seen a supremely shocked child psychologist, you were not in my nursery this morning. She looked like she was ready to vomit in fear and she jerked away when Dr. Joan gently touched her shoulder.

The psychologist said, "This is impossible."

I said, "Your sense of possibility must therefore be erroneous. As you can see, I am speaking, and speaking well at that."

"You don't have the cognitive development required."

"Am I speaking Belarusian? I can do that if you like. Я магу гаварыць па-беларуску." (And I can write it too.) "Do you want my doc to run some tests on me so you can see there's nothing wrong with me? I'll stay silent save to answer your questions."

Standard respiratory, circulatory, skeletal, and neurological tests commenced. I was given a clean bill of health. So the psychological interview began, and it went something like this.

‑How did you learn how to speak?

‑I feel like I've always known how to speak.

‑You are only six months old. Did you know how to speak six months ago?

‑I learned to speak long before that.

‑Do you mean you learned how to speak when you were in the womb?

‑That's not it. You're missing my point. Birth, or even the formation of the gamete, is not the beginning. There is no beginning.

‑Are you saying you are in some way immortal?

‑If I am saying that, then I have to say there is nothing unusual about that. The only unusual aspect is that I have not forgotten anything.

‑Do you have any explanation for why this has happened to you and to you alone?

‑I can only guess that it must be something genetic.

‑Has it ever happened to you before?

‑No.

‑I think that's enough questioning for now.

‑You can smell it too?

My loving mommy stepped forward. The paediatrician and the psychologist fled the room.

As I was being changed, I asked, "What do you think is going to happen to me, mommy?"

"I'm not sure. You're safe with your mommy, anyway. I think we should call in, I don't know, some professors or someone from the government."

"I think that would be okay. I've so much to tell. This could change everything. Get me a theologian or a mathematician. Forget about the government. When do you think was the last time they did it?"

"Who, darling?"

"The lesbians."

"What?"

"The doctors. Haven't you caught the clues?"

My mother was done with my bottom so she had a chance to be quiet before saying, "You shouldn't say such things about people."

"Why not? Isn't it.... What year is it anyway?"

"2017."

I looked around. "So this is 2017. Again. Born in 2016. Again."

"I should go talk to the ... medical people."

"Yes, you do that, mommy. I'll write a bit and boy I'm sleepy!"

"I'll come in again."

"Yes, mommy. Mommy?"

"Yes?"

"I love you. You and daddy."

She blushed vividly. "And we love you too."

She left the room.

I remarked to myself how quickly she had gotten used to a 'talking baby.' She spoke to me on the basis of being almost equals. Mommies are like that, I suppose. The bond is very tight and there's almost nothing a child can do to become alienated from her sight. I felt very lucky.

I wrote for a while, getting down everything that had happened that morning, and slept.

When I woke up, I was in my daddy's car. You hear about the fact that babies can sleep through anything, but you disbelieve it because it's mostly lazy and self-indulgent parents who say that. But let me tell you: it's true. I was out like a light and I have no memory of being carried anywhere. I looked out the window only to see once again Turndauer Avenue speeding by. I started speaking the names of the families who lived in the houses as we passed them. "Terrence. McGivor. Thrumna. DeBoers. Schmidt. Lee. Jones."

"What's that?" my mommy, in the front seat, asked.

I said, "Oh, it's nothing. Just amusing myself. Where are we going?"

"We're off to the university."

"Right, the university. Good idea. Will I be seeing Professor Julius Telmacher?"

"I don't know who that is. We're seeing ... Professor ... Trina Falconer."

"Oh, Trina! Lovely woman. You know, mommy, it seems that I'm remembering more and more. Yes, Telmacher was on sabbatical during the spring semester 2017. But Trina will do nicely. I don't suppose you've read her paper on, what was it, chaotic spaces and n-dimensional frequency representation?"

My mommy looked back at me and said, with a smile, "No, darling."

Daddy unbuckled me and lifted me and carried me up the concrete steps and into the offices of theoretical physics. The shared secretary, David (Mains, b. 2 Aug 1971, divorced last year), sent a text to Professor Trina. A few seconds later, David said, "Professor Falconer will see you now. Room 107, down the hall, on the right."

I was tempted to blurt out, "I know the way," but I didn't want to give poor David a stroke. He'd been through so much, what with his home-wrecking and all.

Trina opened her door and let us in. My daddy set me down in the chair opposite Trina's desk.

After some formalities, Trina sat down behind her desk. I figured it was wise to pretend not to know everything there was to know about her by letting her speak first. Again, I wasn't in the market to cause heart attacks. Trina, I must say, is a very attractive fifty-three-year-old (as I just now summed) with a big bun of black hair furrowed with grey. Black nerd glasses hung by a lanyard against her breasts. And good breasts they were. Before I could start getting ideas she said to my mommy, who was standing behind me, "So this is baby Kenny."

I interrupted to say, "Fine, so now I'm Kenny. Whatever."

Trina barely batted an eye. She was a true phenomenon. She addressed me directly.

"Kenny. You can talk."

"I can talk, and I talk well. Do you understand me?"

"Yes."

"That's good. I've been worrying that my fat mouth isn't working properly."

She laughed like a therapist. Where'd she learn that trick? "Your fat mouth is working properly. So. Can you tell me how you learned to talk?"

I said, "I've always known how to talk. And when I say always, that's exactly what I mean. Always."

"Are you saying you're some kind of a ... well, supernatural being?"

"No!" I cried. "I'm just like everyone else. I'm just like you! It's simply that my memory wasn't destroyed when I was born, or came into being, or was the product of egg meeting sperm, or whatever. I'm talking about my soul. I remember where I was before I was ... here, and now."

Was that my mommy sobbing behind me? I turned my head to look. She was sobbing. I said, "Mommy, it's okay. It's not your fault at all. Don't stop loving me. I can't stop loving you."

I turned back to look at Trina. "So that's what I am. Nothing else."

She picked up a plain pencil and put the blunt end in her mouth. I knew she was tasting graphite with the tip of her tongue. She said, "So what do you remember?"

"I remember ... everything. All of time. Everything."

"A previous life?"

"Way more than that. When I say everything, I mean everything."

"You mean more than one life?"

"Absolutely. This is tough. I remember entirely everything. Infinity. I've been there, in every permutation of the infinite universe. Time isn't even a valid concept in what I'm talking about. I've been everywhere through time and through space." I shifted my bum. "Uh, I think.... No, just a fart. Sorry."

Trina made a face and rolled her eyes. "Okay, anyway. This is difficult, because I can't think you're making this up. You're a ... a talking baby after all."

I smiled wryly. "Logically you're jumping to a conclusion you don't have to jump to. There's no reason I can't be a talking baby who is lying."

"Okay, fine," she said with some annoyance. "So what does this infinity you're talking about look like?"

I put my fat fist under my fat chin and thought. I said, "You know that Australian song I've Been Everywhere written by the Australian Geoff Mack in 1959 that was later popularized by the Canadian Hank Snow using North American toponyms?"

Trina laughed. "Can't say that I do."

"Well, it's a guy talking about the endless number of places he has been. The list goes on and on and on. I'm like that‑if you can imagine the song goes on forever."

"But‑what are the other lives you've led?"

"I've lived them all an uncountable number of times. I've been Hank Snow an infinite number of times. I've been Geoff Mack an infinite number of times."

Trina shifted uneasily. "Does that mean you've been me an infinite number of times?"

"Yes."

"So you should be able to tell me what's in my top drawer."

I scrunched. "I guess so ... though I hate parlour tricks. You have a green plastic ruler, a box of HB pencils, a combination lock whose combination you're forgotten, and a little notepad."

She pulled open her drawer to produce a green plastic ruler, a box of HB pencils, a combination lock, a little notepad, and one pink eraser that didn't look like it had ever been used.

"I bought the eraser this morning."

I laughed like a baby. "I'm not surprised. I was Kurt Gödel an infinite number of times, too."

Trina looked at me, and at my mommy and daddy. "I'm afraid this is simply too big for me to handle. We're really going to have to tell everyone. This is beyond everything humans have ever known. Do you think you could make a speech to the entire world?"

"I don't see why not. I wouldn't even have to write it down. When should we do this? In what venue?"

"Doesn't matter at all. It can be in your own home. How would that be?"

"In our home. I think that would be nice."

"Of course there will be a lot of sceptics."

"I've done sceptic. I know what to expect."

Trina said, "Well I guess we have a plan. I'll have to make some phone calls. When can we do it?"

"Tomorrow would be fine. Wouldn't it be fine, mommy?"

She smiled at me. "Yes, darling. It can all be prepared."

I left the details to those older than six months.

It's evening now and I am in my crib. I've pretty much finished writing the details of the events of today. One interesting note to make, maybe it can be my opening point. In my innumerable lives I have heard tell of a baby in my situation. That is to say, he was a know-it-all. I never met any of these precocious babies so I can only go on what I heard from others. In all cases so far, the ability to remember everything didn't last very [illegible]