A brain needs to chew

On preparing for a new baby, revising a life, and I dream of Michael Chabon

Last week I dreamed that the Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Michael Chabon was in my house, getting his four children ready for school. I should clarify that they aren’t only his children; they’re also the novelist Ayelet Waldman’s children, and because I follow Chabon on Instagram, I know that they are no longer school-age. But in my dream, Chabon and the four children were in my kitchen, running the gauntlet of breakfast preparation and lunchbox-packing. Someone was tying someone else’s shoes, and a third someone was eating cereal at the table. A fourth child, a boy, was hunched in front of the microwave, waiting for it to ding. When it did, he flung open the little plastic door with all the heedless force of a teenage boy, so that the bowl inside sort of leapt out and spun to the floor, scattering chunks of a vaguely beige food — maybe spaetzle, I thought, or oatmeal. Chabon lurched around the room, tending to everyone in turn, his eyes huge behind his glasses. I knew he was harried, but I also understood that he did this every day. He would be fine. He’d get it done.