late night shower in the dark

Although the title sounds erotic and intriguing it's not. Actually, erotic and intriguing got me into this whole parenting thing in the first place.

It's no fun when your kids are sick. Imagine, for those of you kidless, how awful and just worn down you feel when you have a terrible, terrible cough. I remember my freshman year in college having a really bad case of what turned out to be bronchitis, and pneumonia, and just not being able to lay down in any sort of position without coughing, let alone sitting up. Just total exhaustion, your chest hurts, your stomach hurts, you need sleep so badly but can't--you'll just cough. Luckily for me, a friend took me to the college health center where I got some antibiotics, and after Christmas vacation that year I was as good as new.

When your kids are sick it's like that, but both of you are feeling the pain. You sit, as I did, at 11:30 pm (after going to bed at 9:30 because you're sick, too, and the baby was sick the last week so you did this then too), and you feel pain. Pain that you can't take away the hurt your kid is going through. Pain that they are hurting at all. Also, a little pain that your foot has fallen asleep while trying to hold your child in a sleeping position, and a little pain as your back is slowly turning numb because the steam in the shower is making the back of the toilet so cold and clammy. But anyway, it's pain.

You can't imagine feeling that way about another person until you do. I remember last summer--well, now two summers ago--when Helena began to fall down our outside steps. We live in Pittsburgh and there are only hills here, hills everywhere. We live in an "up/down" house, where you either park in the alley and walk DOWN the steps, or park in the front main street and walk UP the steps. One day I was walking up the back steps to reposition a sprinkler that I had set up to try to salvage some grass seed, and Helena followed me up. She was about 2, and a pretty great walker/climber, but I said, Helena, be careful.... As I turned around to look, she was (in slow motion) falling backwards down the concrete steps. There are about 15 of them.

I had no thought except "save her." When Ben came around the corner of the house he saw what he later described as me "falling face-first down the steps." It was a total mom moment--if it had been Ben falling I would have gasped, reached, run...but with Helena, I literally threw myself down, just hoping I could get to the concrete before her. She was fine, by the way, and I had a great time later on telling my neighbors "Oh, -sigh-, I just fell down the steps," while they looked at my scrapes and bruises and pretended to give Ben sideways glances.

Ben has a gift of sleeping, and he can sleep through anything. If the world were ending, or the house burning down, I only hope I have the wherewithal to not only save the children but to remember to wake him up. So tonight, minutes and then hours pass as I alone lay awake listening to Helena cough and cough, a dry, hacking cough that I know means going to the Doctor AGAIN this coming week, and think about how it just makes me ache that she's not feeling well. I think of my parents a lot during times like these, and although they've been divorced for 20 years I think about how they must have lain awake listening to me cough, taken me together into the bathroom to turn on the shower and hold me in the steam. I think about the countless hours they must have lost sleep and worried and prayed for me during the tough times in my life. It's hard when you get older and your parents stop taking care of you, and start taking care of themselves again. Or not taking care of themselves. Or not in the ways you'd like or agree with. It's so easy to forget the years they spent with sleepless nights or counting pennies for Christmas presents, and remember the little annoyances that exist as we get older. I sit in the steam with Helena and think of what it must be like to have older kids, kids with kids of their own. To have given so much time and energy and love to someone and just let them go, into the world. It's so scary, on one hand, and so thrilling. It's like most of being a parent: terrifyingly beautiful.

The steam helped. She's back in bed. I'm writing this at a way late hour because I, exhaustively, can't sleep. So being a parent either wrecks your life or completes it. I still can't figure out which.

mars, venus

Women have it harder. Don't argue: you know it's true. Oh, we are cursed with the ability to multitask. It's not a gift.

To illustrate my point, I will paint you a portrait. Ben and I got in a huge fight the other day about me not being ready to go somewhere. We had a babysitter and when he got home he said hello, went upstairs to shower and shave, got dressed, and came downstairs. "Are you all ready?" he asked me, giving me the raised eyebrow which was either "you're wearing that??!" or "um, didn't you HEAR THAT I WAS HOME?!" And I raced upstairs to begin the process of getting ready. In the car we had the conversation we've already had countless times before: "why weren't you ready?" (This could be run with subtitles, which appear under his face in a little balloon. They say "YOU WERE HOME ALL DAY.") I'm very, very touchy about always being late, especially because in college all my friends would literally just leave me behind to catch up. Ben does it too, goes to bed without me, etc., and it's just something I never can get over. I'm never late for work, but ask me to be ready for a movie at 7pm and it had better start at 8:30, just in case. It's a family problem, I notice now: everyone in my family is consistently late, I suppose because somewhere deep down we all believe that the party doesn't really begin until we get there. I used to be cool with this, but being married to someone who would rather be 1 hour early than 1 minute late has totally messed with my system

I digress. Back to the issue. So I of course began to cry in the car, and explain what I needed to do to get ready. Let me explain what happened to get us to the car, and then, judge as you may.

Ben's night: arrive home. Run upstairs. Go to the bathroom. Shower (4 minutes). Decide not to shave. Look in mirror and decide that you're getting better with age. Walk to closet. Put on only suit and any random shirt and tie. Grab fancy "once a year" shoes. Make a face when you remember that they pinch your feet after a couple of hours. Tie up. Grab jacket. Go to car to "warm it up." Annoyed, wait as patiently as possible for wife.

My night: get kids dressed in appropriate clothes. Get kids fed. Welcome sitter. Brief sitter as to what happened today and what to expect at night. Show sitter where everything is, including emergency phone numbers and Mr. Yuk magnet in case kids get poisoned. Give kids time to aquaint with sitter. Go upstairs while sitter is hanging out with kids. Turn on night fans. Turn on nightlights. Turn off main lights. Turn on little lights. Lay out 3T pajamas for Helena. And Pull-up. And washcloth (Nemo). And soap. And toothbrush. And special young-child toothpaste. Lay out 9-mo. pajamas for Lilly. And washcloth. And hairbrush. And diaper. And diaper cream. Remember she's been peeing through her diapers at night. Climb into closet for bigger size diaper. Find 4 different Nuks. Strategically place them around room. Lay out second set of clothes for each child "just in case" but make sure they're not too close to first set so as not to confuse sitter. Remember Lilly's medicine. And she's been teething. Go downstairs. Tell sitter how to make a bottle. Realize how complicated this sounds. Just make one myself. Put in Fridge. Show her how to warm up newly-made bottle. Tell her what time kids go to bed and all steps in reverse up to this very minute. Get out Lilly's acid-reflux medicine. Tell sitter how to give it to her. Realize it's not too early and give it to Lilly herself. Give it to her myself. Wipe girls down from dinner. Get appropriate DVD or movie or game or toy out to play with sitter. Remember after giving Lilly her meds that it is time for her next appointment with the GI specialist. Call them, leave a message being careful to spell her name, my name, (all in army "ALPHA BRAVO CHARLIE" phonetics so we don't get a call for Hilly Billings), her birthdate, our phone number. Twice. See that we are low on her prescription meds so call pharmacy. Leave same information along with Rx number. Try to remember how much they cost last month and realize I don't know how much is in our joint account because we haven't done the bills in a week or so, so sit down on the computer and check our balances online, and look through the checkbook quickly. Realize we haven't paid Helena's tuition for the upcoming month and so write a check for it, thinking we can drop it off in the mail on the way out. Visualize outfit that fits me upstairs while making smalltalk with babysitter. Ben arrives home, is downstairs in 10 minutes. Go upstairs. Try on the 3 outfits I pictured. Realize I am still 15 lbs. too big to wear them. Weep silently to myself while slipping on stretchy black pants and "hide it" sweater. And nylons to pull it all in. Run nylons with split nail I forgot to file. File nail. Paint hole in nylons with nail polish. Throw on shoes. Realize there's no way I'm walking for more than 5 minutes in these heels. Find another more "sensible" pair. Lament that when I was younger I was sexy and didn't have to worry about "how high" my heels were. Realize my other shoe is in Helena's room because I didn't check on her for 5 minutes when she was upstairs. Make many mental notes. Throw hair up in barette, grab makeup bag for car (!), Run downstairs, realize appropriate coat is in attic, throw on too-light jacket, wish it fit better like it did last year before I was pregnant again, run out the door.

It's a good thing we're so much more beautiful than men. Because it ain't easy being a woman.

being a mom

Well, it's two weeks 'til Christmas again and the snow is flying here. I figure at this point in the year if it's going to be freezing cold it might as well be snowy, so I'm waiting happily for some accumulation. I have absolutely no gifts for anyone (**am seriously considering wrapping Helena's old toys up for Lilly--who would know?!) and just can't even bring myself to the mall to do any of the shopping. What about homemade play-dough for everyone?

Right now both kids are "in bed," "taking naps," although I use quotations because I can hear little pitter-pats of Helena's feet running out of bed, then back to bed. Who knows what she is doing--all I know for sure by now is that I had better go check in a few minutes because with a three-year-old there's only one certainty: never be sure of anything. Like, "I'm sure she won't play with the toilet paper, she's never done it before...." Sometimes she'll go potty "all by myself" (actually, I didn't like her yelling "GET OUT," so now all we get is a yell downstairs "I'M GOING POTTY, AND I NEED SOME PRIVACY."). When she's done, she'll be up there a few more minutes, and when I yell up "Helena, what are you doing?" She might come down wearing any number of amazing outfits--tights, perhaps, with a turtleneck and underwear over the tights, or perhaps sweatpants with no shirt at all ("I was too hot in my shirt." It's 26 degrees out). Sometimes she'll dodge me, so when I go upstairs she's on my bed, holding up my journal that she's been coloring in, or something like that. I tell ya, they sure keep you on your toes.

She's really excited about Christmas, and I notice a general sensitivity about being 3 and a half now that she didn't display before. Sometimes she asks if Santa won't get cold in his sleigh? or, What we should leave for the reindeer? The other day I hurt my eye, and she said "What's wrong, mom?" Nothing, I said, I just got a boo-boo in my eye. "Oh, I wish I was bigger," she said. Why, honey? "So I could hold you."

Being a mom has so many ups and downs it's like a prison camp--sometimes it seems like you're just hoping the captors show you a little sympathy, notice you've been doing a good job breaking rocks. Oh, of course, it's not always like that: there are definitely times it's all rewarding and good-feely. But there are also the moments you just are droning on and on thinking, I hope someone somewhere is noticing the cooking, the cleaning, the endless patience displayed when saying the same thing a million times, all in different ways. And then your little girl says, she wants to hold you to make you feel better and this world of love (and inexplicable guilt?) reigns down. And you think, oh geez, okay, hand me another rock. I can still do this.

And the gift goes on!