Some Days Are Like This Part II

Some Days Are Like This:

Your husband cannot sleep under the weight of a deadline,

of days eaten up with meetings

and so he rises before the sun and sets out for the office.

You somehow scrounge together some brushed teeth, two contact in your eyes to see

and a shower that took place thanks to the mercy of the Peekaboo Gods (Praise Be (ka-boo))

.

You slept too little again after the again and again of days like wildfire

so hot and fast that you cannot remember the date and you panic over future events

as though they've snuck up

imminent

like a surprise partygoer from behind a couch.

Phew: it's not two weeks from now. It is today.

A trip to the grocery store goes like it should

and as a treat you buy yourself a rare expensive latte because you are so very tired

and it is deserved

dammit

Setting it on the bedside table and readying the room for your sweet little's nap you turn around to find it on the floor in a fawn colored lake beside the bed.

A tangle of cords and plugs mere inches away, centimeters above.

You put your son in the crib so that he will be safe and he wails and rends his garments and gnashes his teeth so biblically that you might at certain points have expected to see some sort of avenging angel above, taking up his plight.

One thrice-soaked-and rinsed towel, some Mrs. Meyers and the dust of a few years has been cleaned from everything within a five foot radius of the spill. Though the cleaning was thorough the room smells tauntingly like a really good latte.

Dammit.

Now completely riled up, small person's nap is fitful and brief.

Having entered a new phase of sleep-related woes and victories

one does not know the terrain of this new place

and feels queasy at the prospect of losing routine....

again.

**(Shut it, seasoned moms...I know. I know.

Never get used to anything...

Appreciate every moment 

it will pass too quickly.

I hear you

I hear you in my sleep

I hear you and listen in these challenging days and I take my cranky son and smell the top of his head

and close my eyes. Breathe.

Tick tock tick please stop, clock...yes, even the fussing must last.

I catalogue the moment in honor of you.

And I love it.)**

Taking stock of the day you 

realize that everything is a wash. You are bloated, tired and weepy.

Head to the kitchen.

It is the land of math.

It is the place where x + y = x + y

and balance restores itself in tin cups and binding proteins.

You make a cheesecake. Crustless. With Farmer's Cheese. It turns out shitty but that doesn't even matter.

2/3 cup of sugar

16 ozs. cream cheese (it was the substitution that did me in, texture - ick)

some other stuff

Bake at 350 for some amount of time

and voila....

cheesecake

.

A something to show for the day.

I was here.

I made this.

No matter that during the final diaper change of the day

your son will take a handful of poop

and spread it like Johnny Appleseed over the whole continent of every cloth within reaching distance,

effectively creating a desperate load of laundry

and an impromptu bathtime for you both

and that after you will find yourself 

using your baby to cover your nakedness having forgotten that the picture window 

that opens to the street is still unshuttered

from before the Poopening.

No matter that his normally peaceful nighttime slumber is replaced by nearly a full hour of recriminations before blessed sleep descends

or that on the scoreboard of your motherhood experience the home team lost hard today

and looked disheveled as all hell while doing that

because

during a pocket of sweetness

you sang Joni Mitchell songs to your son while he tossed

recipe cards in the air

and he showed you those two bottom teeth that will have lots of compatriots soon.

Too soon.

You put aside your to-do list and betterment books

and read a Woody Guthrie novel while waiting for the fussiest to give in to that apparently unconvincing Sandman...

You chucked all the 'shoulds' and made an awful cheesecake

with your favorite person under thirty six inches

and when grey licks your temples and cartwheels turn to car wheel through the town

 instead of the spills and grabs and failures you'll remember

The wonder of the mixer through fresh eyes

sunlight on milk amber curls

the comforting weight of sugar in a cup

sweet as a sigh

and gone just as soon.

xoxo,

Mama