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 Dalai Mama Weekly BlogCatherine Newman chronicles life parenting Ben, 8, and Birdy, 5
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September 10, 2007
In the Dark
 Ever wonder what Catherine sounds like? Listen to her read this blog entry. I'm realizing that I know a great deal about my weaknesses as a parent. I mean, really, I could write a whole book about them (Oh right! I already did!), and if you were one of my kids they'd be all too familiar. Impatience, for example: the way I will flash you a tight-lipped smile and say, "I'm not really looking to spend all day in here," when you want to study the leaking nozzle of the soap dispenser in the gas station bathroom. Distraction: the way I will glaze over while you imagine aloud a new board game (Will the mozzarella keep better wrapped tightly in plastic wrap or covered with water? Will that tooth ever fall out or is it just going to hang there at a crazy angle forever? Do I look more like I'm listening or more like I'm staring at the crazy tooth?) so that when you finally get to the part where you ask if the game should be called "Sneak, Peek, and Lose Your Turn" or "Money Drawers," I will say, "Ummmm," in that obvious, stalling way of distracted parents everywhere, and then I will say, "What about 'Peek in Your Drawers'?" which at least makes you laugh. Fear: the way your memories of childhood will be dominated by my wincing and saying "Careful!" and covering my eyes every time you, say, walk near the top of the staircase or balance a spoon on your head. But I'm good in the night. I'm actually even kind of great in the night: easy to wake, friendly, glad to see the children again when they stagger into our bedroom in the dark. Which is funny because, a) I am not always even totally happy to see them during the day ("Yeah, yeah, that's hilarious. Poop right into your own poopy butt. Very funny. Look, if you want to stay in the bath with me, can we talk about something else?") and b) If you had told me three years ago that I was ever going to miss them in the night, I would have laughed the hysterical laughter of the sleep-deprived, then fallen, laughing, asleep at the table with my deranged forehead resting on my empty coffee cup. But now the sound of their little feet in the hallway floods me with happiness. (Assuming that it's not the sound of running little feet attached to a green-faced child who is about to barf all over me, of course.) Last night I heard the feet approaching, and then retreating, and then approaching again, which means Birdy, who always gets halfway before turning back for Ruthie Doll or Pansy Chimpanzee, or whoever. And then there she was with the dolly clutched under her arm, clambering warmly in beside me. She had a stomachache, she said cheerfully, but her eyes were so big and shiny and smiley in the moonlight that I did not even lurch up to shove a wastebasket under her chin. "What about some crackers?" I wondered, and she thought yes, that would probably do the trick. And so she lay propped up beside me, munching noisily on Saltines, slurping noisily from her water bottle, and conversing in her deafening whisper while her father dreamed peacefully beside us. It was like a really good date, but in another country, with a person who thinks that shouting will help you better understand their native Portuguese. "Mom?" she said, when she was finished. "Mom? Mom? Did you think I was going to eat, like, cracker cracker cracker, water? Or like I did do, which is cracker, water, cracker, water, cracker, water?" "Mom?" she said. "Mom? Is that grapey stuff that made my cheeks so shiny — is it lip blass or lip glass? "Or lip bloss?" The early days with a baby — maybe it's so insanely hard to get you in shape for the rest of parenting: it's like a kind of discipline, and once you've done that, you can do anything. Only now I find myself getting soft and out of shape; I expect more, expect it to be easier, find myself frustrated by daytime's minor parenting dramas and crises. But the night? It's more like baby time, only rare now. I'm not pulverized by exhaustion, I don't have any particular expectations, and there's nothing else I'm supposed to be doing, no distractions. Just me and this Birdy, who nods when I ask if I can turn out the light now, curls into a ball beside me, plunges her hand down the front of my shirt, and sleeps the sleep she never slept as a baby. Her night face, though, that dark-lashed little peach of a face, remembers everything about its babyhood.   
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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