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 Dalai Mama Weekly BlogCatherine Newman chronicles life parenting Ben, 8, and Birdy, 5
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March 31, 2008
Poor Comprehension
 Ever wonder what Catherine sounds like? Listen to her read this blog entry. Here's what I don't understand: daylight savings time. Not the principle, which I grasp: you're already grouchy in the morning so you won't even hardly mind the extra hour of frigid darkness, but then later when you're happily drinking your nice glass of beer, you get to enjoy the last of the bright evening out your window. Fine. It's the math that baffles me. If x is the time the children usually go to bed, and we're springing forward so that x is now the equivalent of x-1, then one might reasonably expect the children to go to bed at x + 1, which would really be x. At our house, that might mean 8 o'clock, say, instead of the usual 7 o'clock. Which really does not explain the way time folds up on itself like an origami portrait of my own exhaustion, such that the children can't fall asleep until x + ∞ , otherwise knows as never o'clock. They toss and turn and they're not even tired. But they are a bit thirsty! That's better! Oh wait — but now they have to pee again. Mama, Mama, wake up. You're sleeping! That's so funny, because you're putting me to bed, but you're sleeping! Ho ho ho. Then they do fall asleep but wake up, wired, an hour later, the way you do when you get somebody's after-dinner espresso by mistake instead of your own sensible middle-aged brewed decaf. They stagger into the big bed to complete the remainder of their tossing and turning (and chatting) while I read with the headlamp on. Then they doze and wake up again at 5 (If x is when they usually wake up, wouldn't one expect them to wake up at x + 1? Am I missing something here?). And then fall back asleep at 10 minutes to 7. Which is when the alarm goes off. At which point, their relationship to sleep is like that of chewed gum to hair. There is no disentangling them from it. And then, actually, they do mind the extra hour of frigid darkness, the poor tiredkins, thank you very much William Willett with your pre-breakfast horse-ride stroke of democratic everybody-should-enjoy-the-sun-not-just-us-cheerful-English-early-risers genius. Here's what Birdy doesn't understand: races. "You know what's weird about a race?" she says, in the half-awake half-light of the breakfast table. "It's all, like, cutting. I mean, you're not supposed to cut people? But then that's just what a race is." There is some quiet chewing of her oats and dates, and then a follow-up: "And you know what else is weird about a race? It's your friends? But you can't say wait up." Not to get all Kids Say the Darndest Things on you, but really — could there be a more astute observation? I mean, here the children are, busy learning the principles of kindness and cooperation, and then a minute later, they're hyenaing past each other, choking on everybody's dust, and it's all totally sanctioned and legitimate. Birdy feels the same way about "winning games" which she will play only if you can find a way to translate competition into the kind of cuddly cooperativeness that will further Birdy's Peace and Love mission. This is not possible in the game Sorry!, where our family's schadenfreude spins around, shining, like the very Lighthouse of Sadistic Glee ("Oh, did I bump you? Sooooooooorrrrrrrrry."); but it is possible in the game Blokus, which you can play by the original rules, just changing around your attitude, so that what you feel like you're doing is actually snuggling everybody else's pieces — even as you are, coincidentally, preventing their advancement. (Sooooooooooorrrry.) Here's what Ben doesn't understand: infinity. "I mean, the universe either goes on forever, blackness and stars, on and on, for ever and ever, which twists my head upside down. Or it doesn't, which I just can't even bear to think about. What's outside it, then? And is that infinite? And what if it's not?" Yeah, okay. Real good then. That's enough. Here's what Handyman Hank doesn't understand: the water situation in our basement. If x equals the amount of water in our basement, and y is a sump pump then shouldn't x + y = 0, instead (kill me) 3x? "The hydrostatic pressure of the. . . [insert head scratching]. Well, the seasonal water table? [scritch scritch scritch]. It's just, like, wet under there." But, hey -- at least we've got more daylight to enjoy it in. Editor's Note:   
Catherine Newman is the author of the memoir,
Waiting for Birdy: A Year of Frantic Tedium, Neurotic Angst, and the Wild Magic of Growing a Family, available online and in bookstores nationwide. Post a comment
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