Fly Chasing

It's 4:30 on the dot. The it's-dark-outside, I've-gotta-get-up-in-three-hours side of 4:30. 

Mostly, my world has spun back into place from it's topsy turvey space-wobble of last year that left me slightly off center. Okay, slightly more off center.  Arms again cradle, milk flows, and I have refined my wickedly-cocked eyebrow to the extent that even the boldest of three year olds dare not sass. I work the long hours of my former glory, juggling loads of wash and scurried outings with the precision of a knife thrower. I have even managed to eek out some poetry and painting along the way. The rhythm of my days has pretty much fallen back into sync, and sinks, and the occasional toilet. 

But it is nights like tonight that reach into my chest like a callous hand into a birdcage, grabbing hold of my heart to rattle it. Nights when everyone else lay sleeping and I keep vigil, checking my leg every hour or so to see if the tingling and twinges, the chills from hip to toe, and the flushes of cold and heat have gone from phantom feelings to something else. Something to be seen. Red skin, purple patches, swelling maybe. Proof. 

They don't come too often, these nights. But tonight one came and has stayed.  And so Sleep picks up her pillow and blankie and shuffles out the door to somewhere where her sweet release will be more appreciated. I lay in the dark, the whispered breaths of baby and the grizzly snores of her papa like two clocks ticking in separate time.  I chase at the thoughts that come like flies, successfully shoo-ing most away. But some land. The ones of fluoroscopic images of nothing, because where no blood flows, no images appear; just veins, like branching trees abruptly pruned halfway to the sky. And other flies, more pesky even, memories of hours spent gasping for air that never gave relief. Flies that take the forms of funeral plans and orphans with my children's faces. 

I talk myself down off of a thousand ledges. I pray. I reach for love and peace and memories yet to be made. 

A bit ago even dozed off... for twenty minutes. A nightmare that I can't  remember called me back to my solemn watch.  

Guy surfaced from his log-sawing a moment ago and asked why I was up. "I'm a little freaked out. My leg..."

"Get an ultrasound," he most practically suggested before returning to his lumberjack sleep. 

I will, in the morning, which will be here soon.  Though not soon enough, what with all the flies. 

In the Still of the Night

It is around 1:00 AM  

when I head off to bed, working late on Valentines for the kids.  Silly notes and little treats to put into their "mail boxes".   It is my goal to bribe them with sugar often enough that they not remember that I was "da mean mama" that made them pick up dog poo.  I definaltely think its working.  Maybe.

I wearily waddle to my room (yes, at night I waddle.  It's easier than bending my knees) and find my side of the bed occupied by a little person.  Correction.  A not-so-little-anymore person.  He is practicing his famous Diagonal Rib Crusher, a sleep circus-manuver that falls somewhere between a cartwheel and a high speed yoga move.  I am too tired to lug his rag-doll bod to his little bed nearby, so I spin him around and skootch him over close to Guy.  Alas, as soon as my head hits the pillow, Jonah-boy slides right back, wraps his chubby, cool arms around my neck and mumbles "mama".  I let his cheek stay right where it lands on mine, and smootch his squishy face, then I nudge him down a little and tuck his head under my chin.  He nestles into my side and sighs contentedly.  I lay there listening to him breathe and smelling his hair.  The sounds of the house meld into a steady drone.  The slosh of the dishwasher, the hum of the faraway dryer, the faint squeek of a hamster wheel.  Guy's deep slow breathing is echoed in doubletime by the light wispy breaths of Jonah.  It is the nightly song of our sleepy house.  I shut my eyes.

A thump in my belly calls my attention and coaxes a smile from me, but before my hand can reach to feel the spot, the thumping stops.  A trickle of chilly air sneeks between the frames of our tired old windows, and I burrow down into the covers and finally begin to drift off...

My eyes pop open at the familiar thud of heals hitting the hardwood floor.  I wait, and the footfalls soon tell me it is Tessa; partly because of how faint and quick they are, partly because there is suddlenly a running sound into the livingroom.  I slide The Acrobat off of my arm, flop my big-ol' self off the side of the bed and head out to find The Sleepwalker.  She is standing in the kitchen.  She starts telling me about a bunny on the floor that only she can see as I take her by the shoulders and guide her into the bathroom.  When she is done, the dull blur in her eyes disappears and in a moment she hugs me sweetly and says "nigh-night", heading back out to the livingroom.  I spin her around like they do in cartoons and give her a nudge down the hall toward her room.  Back in my room, I bump my shin on a laundry basket in the dark.  I begin to lay down only to find a diagonal Jonah cris-crossing my pillow.  The 3 seconds it takes to get my spot back makes my tired head feel so heavy.  I slump under the blankets.

Before I have time to take Jonah's feet back off of my hip for the second time, I hear a big thump on the floor.  This time there is the jingle of a dog collar along with big boy footsteps, and Adam's bedroom door opens.  The toilet soon flushes and then I hear the sink turn on.  I smile in the dark over a boy who washes his hands in the middle of the night.  Good job, Addy, I whisper.

I hear a train, and a confused little bird calling all alone.  In the other room, Toby falls off the bed with a kerplunk that shakes the floor.  Jonah's breath scudders.  Guy coughs a little.  My heart burn kicks in and I grab for the chalky tablets by the bedside. Ellie murmers in her sleep.  The baby thumps around, reminding me of my low bladder capacity.  I smack my shin again on my way to the bathroom.

Back to bed,

heart pounding in my ears.

Baby bumping. 

 Heater clicks on. 

Jonah throws his leg over me. 

I leave it this time.

The bird again. 

 

In the still of the night.

Still awake.

 

 

Sleeping Like a Baby

Takes on a whole new meaning, doesn't it?

*****

When I was in High School I read the bible cover to cover.  

It mostly went over my head.

Before I go to sleep each night, I read.  It has varied over the years, but lately I am reading the New Testament.  Paul confuses me.  I have read the same chapter every night for four nights, trying to get the deeper meaning there.  He repeats himself over and over, and I have to believe there was more to it than that he figured the listener needed to have the message drummed into their skull.

I am also trying to read all of the classics I pretended to read in High School, and a few others that people I really respect have recommended.  I started with The Lonesome Gods, and about 50 pages in, I found myself daydreaming while reading.  I have a hard time not completing a book, and almost always will see a book through to the end, even if I hate it, but this time I decided that what made this a classic for some people didn't necessarily speak to my soul.  Not like To Kill a Mockingbird did, or Snow Flower and the Secret Fan.  Then I tried Patriots, but was utterly lost in the deep politics and history of the Founding Fathers.  I got halfway through John Adams and put it down.  I decided I should go with a book I had heard the name of often over the years.  In fact, that was the very reason I had never read it... I never have liked doing things just because everyone else liked doing them.  

Jane Eyre.

The first night was a doozy. I got four pages in and put it down, confused, and completely unable to follow the old language style used in the writing.  I felt rather stupid, frankly.  I closed the book and set it down, and suffered a little while in the darkness of my room.  Maybe, even though I really want to be a well educated, well rounded person, I haven't got the grey matter.  

What I lack in cerebral substance I generally make up for in an utter sick-to-it-ness.

Night two went better.  Way, way better.  I figured out who all the characters were and the impossibly eloquent language slowly began to congeal in my corpus callosum.

Now I do not sleep at night.  

Not like a baby, 

not before 2AM. 

Wow.  What a book.  What a writer.  What a story.

I wish I had a story to tell.  I wish I had words like that,

 that kind of passion and genius.

I may not sleep well till the book is done, and then I must remember what it did to me when I read Death of a Salesman, and could barely function for 2 weeks afterward.  Books can change who you are at your core.  Will this be that kind of book?

Oh, Miss Bronte.  

What have you done?

    

"Go to sleep, little creep..."

I am often asked the question, "How is Jonah sleeping?" I usually answer, "Pretty well." but a better answer would be, "Pretty well in my arms, or not at all."

.

That's how his naps are, anyway. I have never been the mama who beat up the mailman for rustling the mail too loudly while baby is napping.  I think that sometimes a light sleeper is created by the hiper-vigilance of well meaning parents who defend the sleep space like it was the Hope diamond. So we vacuum, talk on the phone, and play musical instruments while our babies sleep right in the same room.  Mostly it works out great, and our babies sleep soundly while search helicopters circle the neighborhood after several rounds of gunfire.  But Jonah is like Adam was. When Addy boy was younger and I would slip into his room to do my nightly rounds, just the sound of my pants swishing would wake him up, and I don't even wear corduroy.

I hear the sleep gurus out there who have their babies sleeping through the night by six weeks. Yes, you are right, if I let him cry it out, eventually he would fall asleep. Sorry, ladies, but I just ain't that kinda' mama. My kids all sleep in my bed with me until they are about two, and guess what? Contrary to what popular myth would project for my cramped nocturnal future, not a single one of them is still sleeping in my bed.

But somehow Jonah has a radar detector that senses when I am thinking of putting him down so I can visit the little girl's room.  Unassisted, Jonah sleeps for...count 'em... five whopping minutes.  The other day I decided to slip away as he drifted off.  In five minutes he was up, and he stayed up for the next 8 hours.   By the time fatigue finally put him into a coma, we were all fried.

So he sleeps. 

In my arms. 

And I am so OK with that. 

Because he is my last baby. 

This is the last time I get to do all of this, so do it I will, and with quiet gusto.  Amazingly, he saws logs while I nibble his ears, snores while I toodle my fingers through his hair, and even stays in dreamland while I clip his nails and clean out his ears (and other crusty parts).  It's actually nice to have a while every day when I can just love on him, appreciate the miracle that he is, and remember to stop and smell the roses. 

I mean, the toeses. 

Hold a sleeping baby? 

Twist my arm.

*****

"Go to Sleep, Little Creep" (sing to the tune of Lullaby and Goodnight)

Go to sleep, little creep

or I'll punch you in the melon

sleep snugly little ugly

or I'll poke you in the eye

Nighty-night or I'll bite

off the end of your nose

go to sleep, little creep

or I'll snap off your toes.