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Seriously. This has never happened before. Not like this. It’s been over two hours. I’m afraid to move. I’m pretending I’m not here. I DON’T WANT TO MESS IT UP.
I didn’t even realize how much time had passed. When they first started playing, I figured I’d hear screaming, crying, or whining within a few minutes, so I started Facebooking. (By Facebooking, I mean scrolling mindlessly while reading posts from people I don’t talk to anymore and then commenting on their posts as if they care to hear from me any more than they care to hear from the other kid they met in day camp arts and crafts in the summer immediately following third grade.) Mom-ears perked (you know, those ears that can hear your baby sneeze through seven closed doors and up two flights of stairs), I glean that they’re still playing nicely. Figuring it’s a weird fluke, I plummet further into the depths of Facebook and am now searching for guys I “dated” in the summer before I met my husband to see if the girls they ended up marrying are prettier than I am (probably), their kids are cuter than mine (definitely not), and they got a cute dog (kudos to any who did – dogs are the best). Now I hear the first-grader ask the preschooler if they want to play “Paw Patrol Screechers Wild,” and I don’t know what that is, but as long as it doesn’t involve taking apart the couch and throwing themselves face first into the cushions they’ve strewn all over the floor as per their usual witching hour routine, I’m cool with it. In fact, I am shocked. Elder child has decided that he “hates” Paw Patrol and it’s for babies, though he refuses to let his stuffed Marshall pup leave the room… Upon request, I help them carry all the Paw Patrol vehicles AND the My Size Lookout Tower, the 3-foot-tall centerpiece to our toddler-chic living room decor, into the kitchen, where they continue to play. We should have eaten over an hour ago. Bedtime is in a half hour. But my kids are playing together nicely and I have no idea when or for how long this will happen again. So then I do the unthinkable: I grab my laptop to start to write, thinking this would IMMEDIATELY put an end to the playing, and THEY ARE STILL PLAYING as I write this. They can stay up until midnight for all I care. This is the longest I have been able to keep up a single train of thought in about… the youngest is three… so three years. Oh, wait… I hear something… Is this it? Is this the end of my respite? What are they saying? “I love you. Best friends forever.” “I love you too!” ARE YOU KIDDING ME???? I just melted. I am a puddle on the chair. My husband just tiptoed over to me and asked, "Uh, are these our children?" "Right??? I have no idea what is happening." Now please excuse me while I go buy a Mega-Millions lotto ticket on my way to finding the Fountain of Youth. I’ll high-five the unicorns I see on the way.
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Ironically, my last blog post, dated April 15, 2020, was written about why, despite – nay because of – its challenges, remote learning was actually a blessing. I learned so much about my kid. We shared a sense of accomplishment as we reached our goals. Blah, blah, blah. That was before I knew schools would be closed for basically forever. I take it all back. Remember when we thought we’d be stuck at home for TWO WHOLE WEEKS and that would be SO HARD? Remember when we cried into our coffee, our wine, our vodka tonic (make it a double) as we came to the realization that the kids wouldn’t be going back to school until NEXT FALL? Remember when the fall became the NEXT SCHOOL YEAR - IF WE’RE LUCKY? I don’t know about you, but my mental health has been much like that crappy dragon roller coaster ride in the kiddie section of the amusement park. Yes, there are some ups and downs, but the whole thing only comes up about 8 feet off the ground, so the ups are only so up, the ride itself is a bit scary because the thing has been neglected for ages, and it’s run by carnies. I’m not a carnie, per se, but I do have very small hands. Being able to carve out some oh-so-important “me time” has always been a tricky task. But pre-pandemic, we could justify heading to the gym for a Zumba class because maintaining physical and mental health allows us to be better parents, better spouses, better people. Whelp, my gym just called me to remind me that they’re open and ask if I’m ready to unfreeze my membership. I laughed out loud. They asked when I thought I might be ready to come back. I think I replied, “ummmmm, yeah…..” and hung up. Now I occasionally manage to find a half hour during the day when I’m not teaching my first-grader how to log into his third Zoom meeting of the day, wrestling the permanent marker from the three-year-old’s hand, and remembering to feed the dog while my husband isn’t in a meeting and can keep an eye on the kids. I close and latch the swinging dog gate into the kitchen, roll the kitchen island to the side of the room, set up my laptop, and clear as much space as I can before finding one of my go-to dance workouts on youtube. As I salsa between the oven and the shoe bench while trying not to kick the poor dog in the head (he’s not always the brightest, but maybe that’s because he’s been kicked in the head… and thus, the cycle continues), my would-be preschooler yells for me with his face pressed up to the gate, little fists clutching the vertical white bars. I ignore the tiny prisoner and wonder where his dad is as sweat drips into my eyes and desperate “mamas” weave their way into my aching heart. Why is it that I so frequently have to ask the question, “Where is your father?”? Why is it that I can be pooping on the potty and a child will GET UP FROM SITTING NEXT TO HIS FATHER on the couch to come into the bathroom to ask a very otherwise engaged ME to get him a snack? Why is this essay so disjointed? Why can’t I finish one thought before going on to the next? Oh yeah, because the corona virus has eaten my brain. Not literally – thankfully! – we have managed to stay covid-free in this house due to being extremely careful and also quite lucky. But this pandemic and the chaos it has caused has directly resulted in my brain not really knowing what it’s supposed to be doing anymore, like a shopper who went into Target for a bathmat and finds herself standing in the middle of the cat food aisle, just standing there, confused, because she does not, in fact, have a cat. So what was I saying? Where was I going with this? Oh yes… Remember when we thought this would be a hard two weeks, and what would we do? Perhaps learn to crochet? Maybe learn to play the bassoon? Writing, along with most of the other things that are important to me, that bring me joy, that foster my sense of self, has been forgotten, just like real bras and pants with zippers. As two weeks has become a season and a season has become a year, I don’t think I can wait until this whole corona thing blows over to get back to my writing. It’s too important to me. Just as it’s important to YOU that I wear a bra, it’s important to ME that I lift, support, and separate my thoughts. Just please excuse any typos, omitted words, and other general f*ck-uperies. My brain isn’t what it was a year ago. But at least I’m wearing real jeans. |
AuthorDebbie is in no way an expert on the subject of parenting and only hopes that her children go to bed each night with love in their hearts and limbs still attached to their bodies. Archives
November 2021
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