Jun
8
She had gray frizzy hair pulled into pigtails on either side of her head and a slightly twitchy demeanor, and she glommed onto me the minute I walked through the doors. The room had a sad little shelf of beat-up books—mostly romances and self help tomes—on one wall, a few pieces of exercise equipment on the other, a buzzing Coke machine in the corner. No windows. A TV boomed from a rickety-looking metal mount on the ceiling, and the floor was dominated by a large ping pong table.
Picking up a worn wooden paddle, the nubbly plastic peeling away in sections, she pointed it at me. “Want to play?”
“I haven’t played in years,” I said, feeling awkward. The other women in the room were mostly clustered together chatting, one plugging change into a vending machine, another lying on the floor doing quick, grunting pushups.
She shrugged, and tossed me another paddle. I assumed the position at the other side of the table and we played for a bit, before I knocked one too many balls into the corner of the room and waved my hands, laughing. “Thanks,” I told her, “that was fun.”
I rifled through the books for a while, then gave up and sat in a hard plastic chair and waited. The gray-haired woman came over and sat nearby, putting both of her hands on her knees and leaning towards me. She talked and talked and soon I realized something was more than a little wrong with her, evidenced not only by the “there are people in Cuba listening to everything I say because they put some metal wires in my head” topic of her conversation but also the tall stony-faced woman standing behind her catching my gaze and twirling her index finger against her temple, shaking her head slowly and meaningfully.
A blonde-haired woman learned she was going to be moved to a facility in Spokane, and she began weeping in great hitching sobs. The lady on the floor completed her pushups and began curling hand weights. The woman across from me kept talking but stopped making sense altogether and soon she appeared to forget I was there and trailed off into silence, staring blankly.
The TV blared on and on.
Eventually the door opened and we were ushered out, the women to their shared quarters and me to a tiny gray-green cement room with a metal door and a stainless steel toilet. They put me on my own because, as one of the cops said, “I don’t want to stick you with those dirty women”. I would have given anything to be with other people, and no one seemed dirty to me, but I had surrendered all choices when they admitted me and dressed me in the tattered cotton scrubs.
There was a cubby-like area on one side of the room that served as a bed, with a thin itchy blanket and a flattened pillow. I lay down but the cement hurt my hips, thanks in part to my swollen pregnant belly, so I alternated: on my back, on one side, on the other, sitting up. The fluorescent overhead lights never went off. There was, at one point, a tray of food that included a small paper carton of milk that so reminded me of childhood it was the only time I cried.
It may not have been the absolute worst night of my life—so many moments of regret in my past—but it was surely the longest. I didn’t sleep. Once I pressed the buzzer to ask what time it was, and the answer was so discouraging I never asked again.
The next day, I went home. The sentence was only for 24 hours, after all. I sat for a brief time in a waiting room with another girl who was going in for the same amount of time. “Was it bad?” she asked nervously, her foot jittering up and down. “Was it bad?”
I considered my answer. Had I been hurt? Treated poorly? No. Was it bad? “Yes,” I said.
I have written about drinking before and the fallout I caused myself and others. The DUI and its long-reaching effects—the months of legal fees, court appearances, the night in jail, the classes, the community service—was probably my rock bottom, and the fact that I become pregnant so soon after that selfish, shitty night was surely the catalyst for the changes I had to make, once and for all.
I have no new perspective on those old scabs, except this: lately, I have been so grateful my parenthood experience does not include alcohol. For all the reasons you might expect, of course, for my kids and my health and my marriage and our future, but also because if I had spent any time self-medicating the myriad stresses of parenting with drinking, it would have been even harder to stop. It would have been a no-brakes car hurtling down a hill with no end in sight, and the collateral damage would have been unspeakable.
If you’ve ever had a glass of wine after a grueling day of kid-wrangling and felt your body unwind and your mind finally start to be at rest, imagine multiplying that feeling into an all-consuming need. Imagine not being able to stop at one glass. Imagine coming to rely on it, craving it more than oxygen, while bit by bit, everything else falls by the wayside.
I know that’s what it would have been like for me. It would have been a thousand times worse than one night in jail. A million. If every mistake I made led me to here, I am glad for it. I am ashamed and sorry for the things that happened, but I am so grateful to be where I am now: glancing at the smoking ruins of what might have been, while still standing in the light.
Jun
6
On Friday night we had a new babysitter come over, a wonderful lady we found through SitterCity.com (cannot recommend them enough based on my experience thus far*). The kids instantly fell in love with Diane, and Riley didn’t even whine as we left. “See you later!” he shouted, clinging adoringly to her pantleg while he waved a careless hand in our direction. “Don’t hurry back!”
We had a great evening watching Up in 3D (you may be tsk-tsking over the fact that we saw a kid-appropriate movie without the kids, but let’s be honest: it was more fun this way. Also, I know my preschooler and he would have filled his pants over those dogs) and when we got home the house was peaceful with the kids tucked in and asleep, which was a nice change from our last babysitter who routinely let Riley stay awake—half out of his mind with overstimulation and tiredness—until we returned.
Diane was full of smiles and said everything went well, and she’d even kept notes throughout the evening of when everyone ate and pooped and what books they read and when they went to bed. I had liked Diane from the moment we met her last Sunday, but I think her perfect cursive handwriting which so neatly outlined a comprehensive** play-by-play of the night sealed the deal—not that I expect or need such a thing from a babysitter, it was just the delicious little maraschino on the confidence-sundae she gave us.
We’re trying out another sitter tomorrow afternoon for a couple hours in order to go on a bike ride together, which I guess is kind of a lot of kid-fobbing for one weekend but next weekend we’ll be traveling and who knows what will happen after that, since eventually we will ALL die!*** The only way she could be better than Diane is if she gently floats down from the sky holding an umbrella, but I feel pretty good about her too. After nearly four years of not having a reliable sitter and being so far from family, it’s exciting to think we might actually have some regularly-scheduled date nights coming up. I’m not sure it always has to take a village, but it sure is nice to have backup.
* By the way, I keep seeing blog posts that seem to indicate there’s some ongoing Troubling Concern over whether or not the writer is discussing a product they received for free instead of paying their hard-earned cash for said item, hopefully by means of gainful employment that’s universally accepted as Hard Enough Labor to have deserved the purchase in in the first place because the only thing more abhorrent than a free product, of course, is one bought with funds earned via unsavory methods, such as, oh, I don’t know, maybe running blog ads. I don’t share this all-consuming desire to know how exactly a person who claims to like their SuckaDick brand vacuum came to acquire the Dick-Sucker in question, as long they’re being truthful about how much they truly enjoy the way the appliance does such a bang-up job of sucking dicks. Whether they paid for it by laboriously turning in filthy saliva-coated beer cans over the course of a year or Big Fattie CockBlow Co. sent them a brand-new model via UPS, if the review is honest, I don’t give a shit. But since I keep seeing so much hand-wringing over how blogging is being corrupted by the evil forces of marketing I’ll go ahead and tell you I’m recommending SitterCity.com because their service, which I paid for (by stripping, because don’t let anyone fool you, only like .0001% of bloggers make actual bank from ads), is awesome, and don’t worry, if I ever rave about something I got for free I’ll provide full disclosure so those who wish to disapprove may easily do so. Of course, the last freebie I got from a PR company was a press release about a pie-eating competition in upstate New York, but you never know when I might find myself on that exclusive Dick-Sucking list we all covet so dearly.
** Hilariously, the last note read, Cat suddenly appeared when I put Dylan to bed??? and we eventually determined she had been in Dylan’s room putting him down for the night when she heard a door open—she came out to discover a large fat yowling cat had seemingly materialized out of nowhere, thanks to Riley unlocking the front door and letting her in. Riley explained that he was trying to let her in the “kittycat room”, our utility room which has a nearly impossible to turn door handle, which she assumed was locked, and thus she had to spend the rest of the evening listening to the nonstop howls of an outraged cat who was trying to get to her food, when she wasn’t even 100% positive it was OUR pet.
*** A cheerful little phrase I like to shout at random moments, thanks to comment #94 on this post, which I think is maybe the best thing on the internet next to that weeping Leave Britney Alone guy. Just remember, folks: we will, someday, be alone with nobody who loves us unconditionally. GONE IT WILL BE FOR US ALL, amen.
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