Mendolonium

I do not understand how the time change works.

Of course, I understand that at the appointed hour we all set our clocks one hour forward and for the next seven months of our lives donate an hour to the gods of daylight savings time only to get that hour back this fall.  I think such shenaniganas are rather antiquated, but whatever; there are lots of things that still exist that should be banished to the history books (checks, phone books).  I will deal.

It is my children that are incapable of dealing and I do not understand how a one hour change can work to wreak such havoc with their sleep.  Logic dictates that if my children are usually asleep by 8:00 pm (Pacific Standard Time), then given the recent “spring forward” in time they should be asleep by 9:00 pm (Pacific Daylight Time).  Well, my children are nothing if not illogical.  Annie was utterly incapable of falling asleep last night without heroic measures.  Then after waking up three or four times she decided she was AWAKE from 12:00 am to 2:00 am nattering on in her baby speak and randomly signing “cookie” and “dog”.  She was happy; looking quite pleased with herself actually, as I lay next to her doing the tired math of “When do I have to get up in the morning minus what time is it now?”  She finally acquiesced to sleep only by sleeping on my neck.  As you might suspect I did not exactly find such sleep restful.  Then Theodore was up with the sun and decided not to take a nap today.   Thomas didn’t fall asleep until after 10:00 pm last night, was up and cranky this morning for school.  I expected him to fall into bed like a log tonight but no such luck.  It is currently 11:02 pm and I can hear him singing in his room.  He is going to be most unpleasant in the morning.   The worst part of it this whole affair is that Thomas’ wakefullness is making me postpone my nightly ice cream sundae.  Thomas keeps getting out of bed to inform me that he “is having a hard time falling asleep” and I can only imagine how indignant (and awake) it would make Thomas to see me chowing down on a giant bowl of ice cream.  It would totally ruin my lie to him that all we do after he goes to bed is clean up the house.  Little does he know that we eat dessert, order takeout, watch movies, read books, and once I even built a space shuttle out of his Legos after he was in bed.  (Of course, I also do dishes, study, fold laundry, prep meals, clean up, and pack lunches).

Of course, Jeff has no such issues with daylight savings time – he is currently curled up on half of the couch with me – sound asleep.

I don’t work on Fridays; I spend the day at with Theodore and Anna; baking, doing housework, and reading stories – generally enjoying the life of a part-time stay at home mom.  This past Friday afternoon I had made plans to go to Thomas’ school to give a long-planned talk on the solar system to his kindergarten class.  I had a power point presentation, solar system objects for each child to hold in a interactive activity, and planet coloring sheets all ready to go.  I was excited when Jeff came home early to take over the care of the little ones.  Before I left Jeff asked whether or not I had heard any news that day.  We don’t ever watch the news in our house and I rarely get a chance to read the happenings of the world on the internet until the children are asleep so I hadn’t heard anything.   Jeff briefly told me what had happened in Connecticut and I walked out of the house to Thomas’ school in a daze.  I didn’t really know how to even process the news of what Jeff had told me but I felt tears springing to my eyes at the thought of such horror and pain.  I could logically think about the issues of gun control and mental illness; but I could not emotionally understand how such a thing was possible.  I took a deep breath before I walked into the school and tried to focus on the excitement of outer space.

As I was walking to Thomas’ classroom I found my pace quicken.  I was taken by the sudden urge to hurry and I practically ran into the room to gather him up in a big hug and plant a kiss on his cheek – right in front of all his classmates.  Thomas’ face broke into a big grin.  I smiled back with the appreciation that he is still at an age where it is cool for your mom to give you a hug and a kiss for all to see.  We talked about the solar system for 40 minutes; the kids were excited and asked all sorts of (mostly) intelligent questions.  The presentation was at the end of the school day so after we were done I simply took Thomas by the hand and headed home.  These days, I don’t often hold his hand when we walk together but I took it and didn’t let go until we got to the car.

We had a good weekend together as a family; the carousel at the mall was ridden, Christmas presents were made, and cookies were baked.  But late at night as I nursed Annie to sleep I read the news of the massacre on my iphone.  I read the names and birthdays of the children, all of them with birthdays within days or months of Thomas’.  I just felt so sad and so vulnerable.  Deeply sad for the families who lost their loved ones and for the survivors who must deal with the aftermath.  Vulnerable for my children and all children really.  I am not worried about my kids at school per se; not really concerned that we any of us will be the victim of random violence.  But as a parent, you want to believe that you can protect your children; that if you are vigilant enough somehow they will be immune to anything bad happening.  I think we can, and should, enact greater controls over weapons of mass murder such as assault weapons.  I think we can and should do more to treat mental illness.  But I also know that all the gun control and psychiatric care and car seats and vaccines and fire drills and talks about stranger danger and hand holding will not necessarily keep my kids safe.  And I when I think about that I feel physically ill.  Thomas, Theodore, Anna, and all those perfect, beautiful children in Connecticut; children who sound just like Thomas and the kids in his kindergarten class – right down to many of the same first names – are all innocent and we must do better to protect them.

Thomas asks a lot of questions – we’ve discussed religion, war, alcoholism, politics, and where babies come from.  I usually enjoy his questions; pleased at how inquisitive and forthright he his.  This time, though it is my deep hope that Thomas does not hear about the school shooting; if he does he will ask and there will be no sugarcoating the issue with him, he will want details.  If he asks I have no answers to give him, only sadness and my promise that I will keep him as a safe as possible.  That doesn’t feel like enough.  I need to go give him and his brother and sister another hug and kiss now.

Sleep.  Sweet, sweet sleep.

With a baby who has been up to nurse multiple times a night for the past 360 nights I could sleep for days.  Anna woke up for, I don’t know – the sixth time maybe, to nurse sometime just after the sun came up this morning.  Mercifully, she nursed peacefully and then we drifted off back to sleep together with me curled around her tiny milk comatose little body.  Sometime after that, the boys woke up and played quietly together – for once, deciding not to wake their parents.  Lovely, really, except this is a weekday where we all have to go to work or school and the children are supposed to be our alarm clock.  Jeff, and Anna, and I were sleeping ever so soundly when Jeff woke up, looked at the clock, and said in a panicked voice, “It’s 7:50!”  We raced through our morning routine in fifteen minutes.  As I drove Thomas to school, hitting every red light along the way, I reassured Thomas that it wasn’t his fault that we were running late.  “Whose fault is it?” he wanted to know.  Of course he would ask that – so I blamed the baby.  I mean really, it is her fault I am so exhausted I could sleep forever.  We arrived at school three minutes before the bell rang and after politely shoving Thomas out of the car I flew back down the hillside.  I had a carefully scheduled doctor’s appointment on the other end of Pasadena this morning…carefully sandwiched between the time I needed to drop Thomas off and the time I had to leave for work to make it in to prepare for a 10:30 am meeting.  At the Doctor’s office they asked for a copy of my insurance card and I a realized with a sinking feeling that I had left my wallet at home.  So much for careful timing.  The doctor was, miraculously, running on 15 minutes behind schedule  (pretty much on time in my experience of the medical profession) and I got in and out quickly.  I murmured words of thanks to Happy Fun Bag (specifically the emergency $20 tucked inside of it) so that my forgetful wallet-less self could pay for parking.  Then I had to go back home across Pasadena; I have to have my wallet at work – it is a rule that we must have to have two forms of ID on us.

I raced home only to find myself being pulled over at what looked like a police checkpoint.  It seemed an odd time of day for a drunk driving checkpoint and I waited behind another car as a man in an orange uniform and a police officer talked with the car in front of me.  I felt the minutes oozing by, growing more worried about my potential lateness and wondering if the officer was going to ask for my license – which was in my wallet!  Orange uniform guy approached the car and asked if I cared about the environment.  Well yes I do…where was this going?  He explained that they were running an emissions checkpoint and that it would “only” take 10 – 20 minutes for me to participate.  I looked at him and said, that I couldn’t do it today.  He should have taken one look at the three car seats in the back of my car and realized his was a lost cause with me.  I find it hard to believe that any parent of three children would sit there for 20 minutes; if I’ve got 20 minutes to spare I am going either take a nap or get shit done.  Also, for goodness sake I drive a Prius.  I am pretty sure I don’t have an emissions problem.  Orange uniform man persisted, telling me that if I cared about the environment I would spare a few minutes.  Then I got angry (I am really not the person to give a lecture on environmentalism to), said no, and got out of there.  I continued home, acquired my wallet (but forgot my lunch).  I drove as fast as I could to work through heavy traffic and arrived seven minutes before my meeting – which my visitor had, of course, already arrived at.  I felt a bit like an unprofessional fool walking in later than the visitor I was to meet with.  Sigh.

Later today I initiated a process which is going to result in some unpleasantness, how much I do not know, but potentially life-changing levels of unpleasantness.  I cannot and will not write about the details here in public, however, I write, in part, because it is cathartic to me so it will be difficult to write honestly without mentioning it at all.  For the sake of conversation I shall simply refer to it as “The Unpleasantness”.  I will tell you that The Unpleasantness has nothing to do with my marriage or my children – we are all happy together.  The Unpleasantness feels to me rather like waiting for an hurricane; you don’t know if you’re just going to get some heavy rain that will clear and then all will be well again or perhaps your house will flood, the wind will rip the roof off , and a tree will crush your car.

Then at the end of this long day, there is the horrific traffic to contend with.  Los Angeles Metro decided to convert the carpool lanes along the freeway I must take to work (the 110) into paid, “express” lanes.  The lanes opened last week and charge a variable toll from $1 to nearly $15 depending on traffic.  Those with two or more persons in their vehicle can still use the lanes for free but everyone who wishes to use them must purchase a $40 transponder as well as set up deposit on their credit card and pay a monthly “maintenance fee”.  Most people don’t want to jump through all of these rather expensive hoops so the result for the past two weeks is that nearly everyone who formerly used the carpool lane are now in the general traffic lanes.  It’s been taking me.  two hours to go the 27 miles home.  It makes me get weepy just thinking about the sheer waste of time and energy.  I have ordered a transponder and will pay the toll to save the time but the idea of spending more on tolls than I do on gas brings on another round of sadness for me; it feels that we continue to lose ground financially no matter how frugal we are.

I called Jeff on my long drive home to warn him of my late arrival and to check in on Theodore who Jeff had taken to the doctor that afternoon to follow up on Theo’s ear infection.  The doctor was concerned about the length of Theo’s recent illness – he’s been sick at some level for weeks and was particularly troubled by the congestion in his chest leading to pneumonia.   If he is developing pneumonia it would be his fourth round of it in his three and half years.  She suggested that we go see a pediatric pulmonologist and get a lung function test.  Then after listening to Theodore’s heart she heard a possible murmur – he has a recheck in a couple of weeks as his labored breathing may have given the sound of a heart murmur when there is none.  As if that wasn’t enough Theodore hasn’t really gained any weight in months and months.  He grows taller, but noticeably thinner.  He’s so robust and rambunctious in so many ways and yet my adventurous boy, born three weeks early, has a hard time recovering every time he gets sick.  He throws up every single time he gets sick regardless of what germ it is; his colds hang onto him for months, and he looks near skeletal these days.  I worry about my sweet boy.

We’ve got a crazy busy, but happy week ahead, with two birthdays and Thanksgiving.  I am going to try my best to put my forgetfulness, The Unpleasantness, the traffic, and my worries about Theodore in a box and not deal with them unless I have to.  That and eat chocolate every day.  That helps too.

We sat on the back steps, basking in the sunshine, eating ice cream – reveling in the freedom of a warm afternoon on a day off from school and work.  Resting against the back doors of our snug little two bedroom house we talked about perhaps moving to a new, bigger house.  Thomas liked the idea of a bigger house and especially a bigger yard but looked out at our garden and asked, concerned, what will happen to all of our plants.  I have wondered the same thing.  I feel the pull of the roots I have, quite literally, put down in our little homestead.  I wonder what would become of Jeff’s painstakingly designed raised beds and irrigation system, our flourishing blackberry patch, and our fledgling fruit trees.  Would the new owners appreciate the tangle of blackberry branches for the quarts of fruit they produce every summer or would they rip them out; calling them a nuisance with their shoots that pop up everywhere?  I sighed and told Thomas that what we were talking about was “happy-sad”.   He looked confused so I tried to explain that, in fact, many things in life are happy-sad.  I gave him the example of starting kindergarten, happy with his new school, new friends, and especially his new teacher, but missing his old fiends and teachers as well.

We adults call it bittersweet.  It really took having children; feeling pure jolts of joy at their milestones right along side of the heartbreak of knowing that outgrow who they are every day to truly feel the concept of happy-sad.  I once mused to Jeff that watching a child grow up is  to experience a sort of death.  The death of their younger selves.  Jeff thought I was being overly dramatic and morose but the truth is raising children is a constant tug of war between happy and sad.  No matter how much I love sitting on the back steps with Thomas eating ice cream, it doesn’t take away from the fact that I miss nursing his tiny infant self to sleep so much it hurts sometimes.

That same night as I read bedtime stories to Thomas and Theo, Anna wriggled in my lap, babbling.  Thomas looked over at his baby sister and observed, “Anna is happy-sad.” He explained further as he looked up at me “Anna is so cute.  I am happy that she’s eating food and talking, but I am sad that she is not so tiny anymore.”  I drew him close to me in a hug, Anna sandwiched between us and said “Exactly.”  I told him that I feel, all the time, happy-sad about him, Theodore, and Anna growing up.  Thomas just hugged me back, and I knew that he understood, both of us feeling happy-sad together.