And then I fall into a small depression, a hole that's shallow enough so I can still see the world over the edge. It's more like an indentation in the ground of my daily life, one I have to climb out of every day, several times, to accomplish the slightest task. It's exhausting at first, but I find that I can build up some muscular or psychic endurance, as if my day begins with a brisk run up a hillock or a twenty-minute session on a treadmill adjusted to a seven percent incline. After a few weeks, it seems normal enough—easier, of course, than waking up in the middle of the night to rock my baby back to sleep. Because this is surely the bigger challenge. The initial stages are easy: pick up my bawling baby and hold her in my arms, her tiny head nestled between my chin and neck like a violin. Then slowly and deliberately lower myself into the rocking chair. This is a delicate stage because my baby is always about to enter a calm state, and if I jerk down too quickly into the seat, she'll wake up. This usually happens because it's a very low and tiny seat, probably owned by the small old lady, the wife of the organist—the former inhabitants of this house. All those days and weeks of climbing out of my depression are helpful in this regard'—my thigh muscles are more toned than they've ever been and I view this lowering as a controlled squat. Once seated, the rocking begins, slow and rhythmic like all rocking, always leaning a little forward for reasons which I can only attribute to genetics. It's as though my rocking is actually some sort of dahvening, something I imagine my grandfather and his ancestors enacting, even though my very limited exposure to religion and my father's total rejection of religion confuse matters. I've only seen Orthodox Jews dahven in movies, and I've always been struck by the awkwardness of the gesture--compared to the svelte, sleek, controlled movements of yoga practitioners. I wonder, though, if they had prepared for this kind of rocking-back-and-forth prayer by doing squats—making sure to bend their knees and not lock them in place, which is what they all seemed to do. Or if they had allowed themselves to fall into the kind of mild depression that I often slip into, then they would learn to keep their knees loose as a way of preserving energy, making it easier to climb out of the hole so many times a day. But I suspect that their strict adherence to the Law made them view both depression and uncalled-for physical exertion as violating God's promise to them. I, on the other hand, think about mountaineers and their permanently bent knees, their perpetual ascent and descent. I have become a master, then, not at prayer, but getting my baby to sleep, itself a kind of prayer.