Jan
3
Even when Dylan stopped waking up at night to cry lustily every few hours — a stage I thought was never, ever going to end, by the way — he was what you might call a difficult sleeper. It wasn’t until he was maybe three years old that I could be reasonably certain he’d sleep through the night, and even then it was sort of a crapshoot. Even now, actually. He’s almost five, and he often wakes up late at night with a sort of confused, blurry sound of increasing frustration, and when you go in there to see what’s the matter, he can’t say. I once overheard him talking to Riley about a dream he’d had, which he described, darkly, as “I was going swimming but I had all my clothes on,” so I suspect he’s still having bad dreams on a regular basis. Thankfully, they aren’t the utterly awful-looking night terrors they used to be (a toddler having a night terror is a deeply fucked up thing to observe, as I’m sure some of you know first-hand), and he certainly doesn’t seem bothered by them, but his wake ups happen frequently enough that I lie there, every night, with one ear humming like an amateur radio antenna.
Have you read Catherine Newman’s Waiting for Birdy? I really cannot recommend it enough, without maybe grasping the front of your shirt, yanking you close, and hissing in your face that EVERY WORD OF IT IS TRUTH AND BEAUTY AND JESUS JUST READ IT, but anyway, I particularly love this line of hers about sleep:
Nothing can prepare you for the Sleep of the Parents. If sleep is an ocean, then I used to sleep on the floor of it, a sunken thing among the catfish, bubbles blooping from my dreaming mouth towards the surface. Now I sleep in a little rowboat. In a thunderstorm, during a war, with cannons going off all night long. And also sharks.
God, yes. Sleep seems to have changed forever and ever for me, even though my children are no longer tiny diapered poop-monsters constantly going off like squalling alarm clocks. I jerk and twitch at every sound, despite the earplugs I so dutifully squish into place each evening before turning off my light. Dylan’s occasional dream-murmurs, a gunshot-loud cough from Riley: I float all night from huh? to whew, back and forth in Catherine’s rowboat.
The kids have spent the last two nights with their grandparents, and it’s been a wonderful little break to jump in the car and see a movie (we went to Django Unchained one night and Life of Pi the next, and I loved them both) or go out for dinner or simply relax in the living room without hearing two demented hooligans racing back and forth making that awful GI Joe laser sound, somehow even more annoying than the more sibilant gun noises (pzzzew pzzzew pzzzew!), but maybe the best part has been the sleep. The peaceful, startle-free, guarantee of it.
So, tell me, parents of older kids. Does the roiling war-torn Sleep of the Parents ever change? Or is that the forever of it: the nightly business of ear-craning, breath-checking, and jolting-awake-at-3-AM-because-someone-cleared-their-throat?
Dec
29
For the last several years, I’ve set aside some time at the end of December to fill out a sort of year-end quiz, and then I post my answers here on this website. I did this in 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, and 2011. This year I sat down to do the same, then I … didn’t want to.
I guess it speaks to how things have changed with me and blogging — I don’t feel the same desire to document my life that I used to. This is surely in no small part because I already spend hours each day typing words into a glowing screen, throwing bottle after tiny disposable bottle out to sea, and by the time my deadlines are met I’m ready to do something, christ, anything, else.
But I also feel like I have less to say. When I think of my life now, I think of words like quiet, and small, and contained. None of these feel like the right terms, exactly (god knows there’s nothing quiet or tidy about my household), but it’s the closest I can come to describing the peace and contentment I often feel. The grasping sense of wanting to be somewhere else is gone. We live where we always dreamed of living. I have the work-at-home freelance job I wanted. My children are happy and healthy and so much easier than they used to be. I spend my days doing wildly unexciting activities that are by turns teeth-grindingly tedious and please-let-me-remember-this-forever pleasant.
You could say my life is boring, but I’m not sure that’s always such a bad thing. I feel settled, not stagnant. I feel like after years of trying to turn things around and fix what’s off-kilter and chafing, the pieces have mostly clicked together in a satisfying, smooth way.
This was the year that was largely defined by our move to Eugene, and looking back, it was a process that started nearly 12 months ago exactly. It was such a momentous, difficult decision, and it came with new challenges that we’re still working through. But if it was a gamble, and we certainly believed it to be so, I feel like it’s already paid off in a thousand wonderful ways.
I don’t have an impressive list of worthy personal achievements this year. I did virtually nothing in the way of ticking off life list boxes or exploring my own boundaries or furthering my career. And yet here is my biggest, strongest wish for 2013: I want more of the same. I want more of this unspectacular, unassuming life. I want more messes, screeching voices, and floors strewn with foot-stabbing Legos. More laughter, eye-rolls, and ridiculous jokes. More wrestling matches, more campfire smoke clinging to dirt-smeared jackets, more foggy mornings spent gazing out at the river from the cabin. More checks sent to me because I may not be curing cancer but goddamn, I get paid to write, and how awesome is that? This is all good enough. This is all I could ask for.
Maybe next year I’ll get back to the business of writing down what we did and when it happened and what my goals are and what things I need to do less of and what things I need to do more of. This time around, though, I feel like the most important thing I can say about 2012 is that I’m grateful. Just so, so grateful.
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