To Sleep, Perchance to Dream

Last week, I started dreaming about sleep.  Those who know me and have heard me describe my more Technicolor dreams know that sleeping dreams are strange, even for me. 

After sharing my dream with my astute co-worker, he asked,

“Does that mean you’re doubly rested for having slept twice?”

Rested is not a word I would use to describe the past twenty plus years of my life. 

When Madison was a baby, I put two scoops of formula between two slices of bread for his 3 a.m. feeding. Lucky for him, I realized my mistake halfway up the stairs—it’s no wonder he loves carbs as much as he does. 

Thankfully, I don’t have insomnia; in fact, I think I may have the opposite.  It’s almost unnatural how quickly my body succumbs to sleep.  Sleep for me occurs sometime during commercial breaks.  As soon as my eyes glide shut, my mouth falls open. 

Sometimes sleep occurs mid-peanut butter sandwich and is discovered only by its fossilized remains when I make the bed the next morning.  For me, sleep is not illusive.  Once my body stops moving, my mind isn’t far behind. 

But for now, extended slumber is not meant to be.  This past weekend, my alarm clock sounded to the unmistakable ring of thousands of Legos being dropped to the floor, sometime around 6:30. 

The first avalanche I ignored.

The fourth expelled me from dreamland.

As I assessed Max atop his mountain of mess with a steaming diaper of excrement, I could only shake my head and wander down to the comfort of my coffee pot.  

As I passed Madison and Stancey’s room, I felt twinges of jealousy as I heard their duet of slumber from opposite sides of the hallway.  Madison’s soliloquy persevered until early afternoon.

Later, when I cleaned up the mess from Max’s early morning, I began to analyze my dream of sleep.  I’ve read that sleep in dreams is a sign of contentment.  Whoever thought up that one obviously wasn’t the mother of six, because I have my own analysis. 

I’m guessing that my sleep bank is overdrawn and it’s going to take more than one night of uninterrupted slumber a week to yank me out of the red. Realistically, Max is at least a decade away from reaching the sleep stamina of his siblings.

And until then, I’ll try and not analyze my dreams too much. 

And who knows, this weekend may just be the weekend.  And if it isn’t, at least I have my coffee pot to console me.

Burger King Burned Down - And Other White Lies

Every parent has a super power, or at the very least, a secret weapon.  Some parents can successfully reprimand with a look, while some parents have the parental consistency of leading child psychologists. 

I have neither. 

My cognitive influence peters out somewhere between “Don’t make me stop this car!” and “Because I said so!”  What I lack in super powers I make up for in secret weapons.  In my house, softness of voice is a liability.  If nothing else, my parental edge has been sharpened by the boom in my voice—it can be heard through house walls and over running lawn mowers.

But sometimes, a booming voice isn’t enough.

Now that Max has discovered the great outdoors, it’s nearly impossible to get him back indoors.

“Are you ready to go in?”  I’ll ask for the 50^th time.

“No-ah!”  He’ll grin back.

It’s then I dig into my supernatural bag of tricks.

“Max, you better come in,” I’ll say worried-like.  “I think the monsters are coming.”

His already wide eyes grow wider as he hurriedly gathers all his toy trains from his pile of dirt.  You can see he adrenaline pumping as he begins to whimper and then cry in despair.

I’m not completely heartless—I do hold the door open for him as he scampers inside.

Sometimes effective parenting just can’t be achieved with complete honesty. 

Take the tooth fairy.  She runs fairly well the first or second time.  By the eighth or ninth tooth, forget it.

“Oh, Sam!”  I’ve been known to say; “I think she left your dollar in my wallet last night.”

And the Lorain County Fair (or Chuck E. Cheese or Burger King play land) have all been known to “burn down” after multiple nags from the kiddies to go there.

Mostly, my lies are just a type of inexpensive humor that I draw upon when reality parenting is overwhelming at best. 

Is it ethical? 

Probably not, but as an underpaid parent, I kind of feel a sense of entitlement. 

After all, with this job, I figure my kids get what they pay for.

A Weekend State of Mind

“Bye!”  I yelled after Stancey as she stalked down the driveway and descended the Morgan Street hill.

“You guys are the worst!” she had called back without even looking to see if I was still standing there. 

But I was still there, holding the shovel I had been using to scrape chicken poop off the bottom of the chicken coop floor.

“And you are demanding and ungrateful!”  I hollered after her.

With a freakish smile on my face, I began to seriously question my ability to mother these children of mine, as were the handful of pedestrians who carefully crossed to the opposite side of the street hoping to avoid eye contact with me.

Max, nonplussed, stood at my side and waved a cheeky goodbye to his sister, before heading back to the chickens and their semi- clean and nearly poop-less hut.

This particular Monday happen to follow the longest weekend imaginable.  A Friday sick day chased by two longer days mostly in and out of the car made me grateful I had a job to head back to when the Monday morning alarm went off.

Not helping my weakened and weekend state of mind had been Saturday night’s homily where Deacon Tom fondly recounted his youth as the middle child in a family of eight.  He appreciated his mother and he proved it by forcing himself to stay awake on nights when his parents had entertained.   Helping his mother had been his privilege.

Somehow, my kids waiting up past their bedtime to help me seemed more farfetched than my chances of winning the Mega Millions.  If my kids happen to cross my path during the night, it would be on their way to the fridge for a midnight snack.

It was pretty clear that I was annoyed with my kids, and I was pretty confident that they were annoyed with me too.  How, I keep asking myself,  have I raised six only children?

While I have learned that even though I can say goodbye to my children (sometimes secretly hoping they run away) I still love them unconditionally.  Conversely, my children only seem to love me when conditions are right.

Have I failed them as their mother or have they failed me as my children?

When Stancey finally returned, just around dinnertime, the chicken coop was no longer clean and the remnants of a homemade dinner made by my loving hands lay on the table awaiting her return. 

One look and the chirping of the microwave to the tune of a Stouffer’s frozen dinner made me believe all was not forgiven.

Maybe one night, without prompting, I will find her at the kitchen sink, waiting for me.  

But if not, I hope one day she'll at least appreciate me enough to pay for housekeeping services to cover all the nights she never came down.  Because, although I may be the worst, I am her worst.  And she, mine.