I'm wiling away the minutes, waiting for Elspeth to fall to sleep so I can finally become a REAL ADULT again. But wait--which is REAL? If children love you very, very much, do you then become REAL? If they wear wrinkles into your forehead and give you heartburn and drive you to deep breathing exercises, will you finally achieve immortality as a REAL PARENT?
It's been another warm day but now darkness finally obscures the garden beds--orange and pink lilies, blue and white bachelor buttons, the star-puckers of cosmos seedlings. Our window fan blows the heady scent of honeysuckle across my arms as I type. During the long, grey winters, I forget the humidity of summer, the way it drags my limbs down into the stairs as I climb, climb, climb, into the ever-warming heights of our old house, bearing laundry, a child, a cup of water.
Today my mother and a friend sat on the adirondack chairs having some scintillating discussion; the wind was blowing; the children were running around in various states of nudity, covered in sand; and I was climbing over garden beds, trying to capture the miracles of flowers and young vegetables and swollen sugarsnap peas with my camera and failing miserably in the bright afternoon light. On the way up the stairs to shake some supper out of the weary, hot kitchen, the wind blew hard and all the trees bent to the left, ruffling a whole sea of varying greens: young black walnut leaves, the tiny cottonwood, the old grand tree at the bottom of rose-covered Thistle Hill, and it was so beautiful that I shouted out loud.
I need to remember that moment of transcendence now as I wait, wait, wait, impatient with Elspeth's legs, which move restlessly over the covers. Ah! A yawn! Hope springs eternal!
All I want, people, is some time at the end of the day: a few hours filled with nothing more than TV, my mother, Sleepytime Tea, and something sweet. Has it truly come to this? Yes, yes, I'm afraid it has. Martin has been gone now for seven days and the children are all off school, every day! My desires are simple at this moment--
Ah! Another yawn! I see a firefly--soon the entire hill will be pricked with their tiny lights--every night before I go to sleep, the darkness outside my window moves with a hundred white sparks. . .
I am tingling all over, at this moment, with frustration. I have become a REAL PARENT, ragged, well-kissed, thrown under beds where I collect dust bunnies until someone yanks me out to hold me in their hot, fevered hands. If only the skin horse were here to give me some wisdom and tell me that though becoming REAL hurts, it is worth it to feel the night breeze on my ears, to jump and run with other REAL parents, to stay up long enough in the hollow to watch the fireflies come out.
If you are still with me, thank you for allowing me these minutes of lunacy. I believe sleep is imminent. You have been faithful, though silent, companions.
