A few days ago, I was making lasagna, my hands covered in ricotta and mozzarella, when Sylvia trotted out of the bathroom, her pants around her ankles. “I pooped and peed!” she announced.
“Don!” I yelled. “Can you wipe?” I spooned tomato sauce atop the cheese and noodles, and thought, This is how it’s different.
Since I have begun parenting full-time, vacations have been hard for me. I still count down the weeks until school’s out, but once the vacation is underway, it’s hard for me not to feel a lurking disappointment. After all, vacation or not, life on the home front proceeds pretty much as usual. There is still the daily laundry to do, the meals to prepare, the small fires of sibling bickering to put out. On a regular day, if I get three loads of laundry put up, the floor swept, and the dinner made, I feel productive. But on a “vacation” day, the same ordinary tasks make me feel as if I have squandered precious time with the usual household drudgery. I have to make myself appreciate the little ways my life gets easier: I can finish making dinner uninterrupted instead of breaking to wipe a bottom.
I can see Don reveling in the down time he has at home. Every morning he makes a pot of real coffee instead of his workday mug of instant; an egg or two on toast replace his usual bowl of cereal. He stands with his coffee cup in hand, watching the squirrels’ acrobatics on the bird feeder, or warming his jeans in front of the fire. When Clayton asks, “Will you play with me?” or Dee Dee holds up a book she wants read, he immediately answers, “Sure!” When the kids ask me the same question, I am constantly putting them off. “Let me just put up this basket of laundry,” or “In a minute. I just have to finish....” Don just reheats his mug of coffee and settles in. He plays pirates with Clayton, holds a giggling Sylvia upside down, reads Dee Dee book after book. Effortlessly he transforms the chaos of our home into a vision of domestic bliss.
It’s not that he’s immune to the frustrations, either. The expletives have been flying around our house this week in an unprecedented manner. When we watched the little boy in A Christmas Story stand in the bathroom with soap in his mouth as punishment for his foul language, Clayton asked, “Did he say ‘Goddamn it?’” Given the words he has heard regularly this week, I was relieved that it was only that mild expletive he had chosen to parrot. But despite the intermittent swearing, Don exudes a peacefulness about being at home that so often eludes me. He doesn't rush the kids off to out-of-the-house activities; hour bleeds into hour, until, amazingly, dinnertime is upon us and the day winds down. When I return from a run or a morning out, I ask, “What have you all been up to?”
“A whole bunch of nothing!” he says cheerfully.
How hard it is for me to relax into that contentment! I can’t always quiet that voice in my head, urging me to go, do, move, accomplish... And then, of course, there is always something that needs to be done. I am amazed at the number of children’s books that feature some variation of the tension between a child’s desire for mom’s attention and the chores that claim her time. Maybe it’s because the sparsity of his time with them motivates Don to engage more readily with his children. Maybe it’s because he doesn't care quite so much if the house is deteriorating into a cluttered mess around him. Maybe it’s because, by the end of the day, I’d usually rather wash the dishes than play pirates. Whatever the reason, I am grateful both for the father Don is to our children and the way he inspires me to turn down the must-do-it-all mania and say “yes.”
Don’s brother’s son and his new fiancee are staying with us for a few days, and on the afternoon of New Year’s Eve, we showed them around downtown. “I have to use the potty!” Dee Dee announced as we wandered through the Grove Arcade, admiring the ornate architecture and the gingerbread houses on display. Taking both girls to a public bathroom has, for me, easily topped the list of the challenges of having twins. I’ll be helping Dee Dee with her pants, only to see Sylvia belly-down on the floor, army-crawling into someone else’s stall, or examining the water in a toilet bowl, both hands on the rim. I’ll be wiping one bare bottom while the other one is streaking out the restroom door.
This time, when the three of us entered the restroom, a young mom with a baby stroller was waiting for the handicapped stall. The stroller was regular sized, not the double behemoth we used when the girls were infants, and the baby inside was invisible and silent. I might have made the kind of smug comments mothers of older kids always seem to make to those with infants: “Oh, enjoy that time! It goes by so fast!” or “Just wait until he’s moving! Then you’re in for it!” But what I felt seeing that mom with her infant stroller was not wistfulness. It was relief. Sure, you gets lots of long naps and convenient immobility. But then there’s the constant low-grade, useless anxiety; the baby luggage that must go everywhere; the gauntlet of wakeful nights and exhausted days; the yoke, however sweet, of being the one with the breasts.
As the mother maneuvered the stroller into the stall, Dee Dee disappeared into the one next to it. I heard the lock slide into place.
“Do you need some help, Deeds?” I asked.
“No,” she said matter-of-factly. “I've got it.”
All that afternoon, I continued to be awed by the ease. Incredibly, all three kids kept their hats and their coats on. They stayed on the sidewalk; they listened when we called for them to stop; they held our hands at the crosswalks without protest. Sure, Sylvia fell down, burst into tears, and would not take another step on her own power until safely inside the warmth of the ice-cream parlor. But what a wonder to walk around downtown, without a single baby worry of any kind, all of us pointing and exclaiming in unison: “Look at that Santa! See that sock monkey! Look!”
The Prius had never felt so cozy as it did on the ride home, with Sylvia immediately asleep in her carseat, and Clayton and Dee Dee chatting to each other peacefully beside her. When we arrived home, there was still an hour and a half until dinnertime. The manic voice inside my head roused itself from its stupor: “Just enough time to squeeze in a run!”
But I didn't. Instead, I watched while Don helped Clayton put together his new Lego spaceship and Dee Dee watched Beauty and the Beast for the sixth time-- “Mom, the Beast gave Belle a library!” I sewed new eyes onto the blue-footed booby that Howard had chewed off so many months ago, chatted with our neighbor at the mailbox, read a long letter from my sister, sauteed vegetables for quesadillas. The Christmas lights still sparkled on the tree, the fire flickered, the baby monitor hummed...
The snugness and peace that I’d felt in the car had crept into the house with us. Miraculously, it stayed. After dinner, I didn’t watch the clock, pushing everyone towards bath and bed. Instead, I helped Dee Dee write a book about a Christmas mouse, while Clayton played with his new spaceship and Sylvia dragged her comforter into the living room to cover Howard, who was sleeping in a chair by the fire, then climbed up to cozy in next to him.
When we did, at last, begin the usual routine, I didn't feel as if I was tapping into my last reserves to make it through until bedtime. Instead, I felt buoyed up by a quiet peace. As the day-- and the year-- wound down, I took a hot bath with the girls instead of washing the dinner dishes. Afterwards, it was my turn to read Clayton’s books. “Can you make Pooh and Bo talk?” he asked. He wanted his stuffed bear squad to meet his new Lego aliens. Usually, that question makes me whine with exhaustion and impatience; I am desperate to be done. Clayton’s brow furrowed. I could see him anticipating my resistance. But that night, the force was with me.
“Sure,” I say. “Let’s do it.”
Here’s to another year of saying yes.
