How to Change Your Mind

begin to reconstitute themselves: the dimensions of time and space
returned first, blessing my still-scattered confetti brain with the cozy
coordinates of place; this is somewhere! And then I slipped back into my
familiar “I” like an old pair of slippers and soon after felt something I
recognized as my body begin to reassemble. The film of reality was now
running in reverse, as if all the leaves that the thermonuclear blast had
blown off the great tree of being and scattered to the four winds were
suddenly to find their way back, fly up into the welcoming limbs of
reality, and reattach. The order of things was being restored, me notably
included. I was alive!
The descent and reentry into familiar reality was swifter than I
expected. Having undergone the shuddering agony of launch, I had
expected to be deposited, weightless, into orbit—my installation in the
firmament as a blissed-out star! Alas. Like those first Mercury astronauts,
my flight remained suborbital, describing an arc that only kissed the
serenity of infinite space before falling back down to Earth.
And yet as I felt myself reconstitute as a self and then a body,
something for which I now sought confirmation by running my hands
along my legs and squirming beneath the blanket, I felt ecstatic—as
happy as I can remember ever feeling. But this ecstasy was not sui
generis, not exactly. It was more like the equal and opposite reaction to
the terror I had just endured, less of a divine gift than the surge of
pleasure that comes from the cessation of unendurable pain. But a sense
of relief so vast and deep as to be cosmic.
With the rediscovery of my body, I felt an inexplicable urge to lift my
knees, and as soon as I raised them, I felt something squeeze out from
between my legs, but easily and without struggle or pain. It was a boy: the
infant me. That seemed exactly right: having died, I was now being
reborn. Yet as soon as I looked closely at this new being, it morphed
smoothly into Isaac, my son. And I thought, how fortunate—how
astounding!—for a father to experience the perfect physical intimacy that
heretofore only mothers have ever had with their babies. Whatever space
had ever intervened between my son and me now closed, and I could feel
the warm tears sliding down my cheeks.
Next came an overwhelming wave of gratitude. For what? For once
again existing, yes, for the existence of Isaac and Judith too, but also for
something even more fundamental: I felt for the first time gratitude for