Wednesday, May 22, 2013

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






11 comments:

Joanna DeVoe said...

Oh Allison- my sincere sympathies, but you're LOL funny when you're sleep deprived!!!

How you ever found time to make me this most magickal, kickass ring is beyond me. THANK YOU. THANK YOU. THANK YOU.

Sybil Ann said...

LOLOLOL.

Hang in there. Humor from frustration - you made something very good from this frustrating day.

veee said...

quite, quite beautiful

Christina said...

I love you! You're doing it right... :D

pencilfox said...

....sigh....

i LOVE this day.

xo

mairedodd said...

mothering can be brutal, there is no doubt about it... i remember times like those well -
you accomplished much even on such a day - you got the wee one (and yourself) through, while he railed and while he grew. fed him, bathed him (even more than once)and, most of all, loved him...
anchors can feel like they are drowning, like they are weighed down by more than they can shoulder...
you did good, a -
i only offer this up - it's all temporary... the cycle itself is of change and plateaus... it is exhausting, bone wearying, head imploding work...
get yourself another latte - i insist!
big love to you -

Allisunny S. said...

Ladies, here's to the perfect Latte today!!! :) xoxoxox

I was laughing while I wrote the entry, so I was already in a better place, but a good night's sleep did wonders for the rest of me.

Thanks for taking the time to read and respond!!

xoxoxo
A

Allisunny S. said...

Candace:

I too am often so smug in my thought that I will do it SO right... and then not only does it all go to hot hell, it's normally in the same 24 hours.

God has excellent comedic timing ;)

xoxox
A

Lesa said...

I have never made a comment on any of your posts, but I read them daily/weekly and I always love and relate to so many of them--this one especially and the way it was written. You're an amazing woman...so talented...so full of life. I have two sons, although they are now 10 and nearly 13, and this post brings back vivid memories of those days so clearly. It was so challenging, and so frustrating, and sometimes so damn hard (I was brought to tears many times w/the challenges of being a stay-at-home mom.Regardless, at the end of each day when they were FINALLY both asleep, I laid my head down on the pillow, exhausted and sometimes feeling sorry for myself, and I still looked forward happily and longingly to the next day, to seeing those lovely sleepy heads waking up in the morning smiling at me and melting me so ...poop, pee fountains, drool, meltdowns, pulling all of the pots out of the lower cabinets, and all!!
-Lesa

4starrchick said...

The exhausted poetry of your dailyness is always a joy to read! However I think Mama is ahead of the Fussiest. ;-)

Amanda said...

Lovely to read!