Category: Kids

Sweet Spot

I am sitting here on a screen porch on a breezy, cloudy, 70-degree day, in the center of this sand-swept New England town. Strangely, all is quiet except for the chiming of church bells, the murmur of voices in one of the nearby houses (screened windows and doors are always open here this time of year), or conversation from cyclists on the street, their voices rising and fading as they pass. Dishes clink from the small inn next door. Cars and mopeds do venture up this narrow, one-way lane leading out of town, but today, at this moment, the loudest sound is the wind rustling the leaves. And, now, a propeller plane in the distance pricks the silence, and is gone.

This is rare, this moment comprised of sounds that have nothing to do with my voice, with the yelling and calling and cajoling of my three children (and yes, sometimes my husband). How can a house in this bustling summer town be so close to that town, actually in that town, and still be so quiet? I am aware of the neighbor behind our rental house whose back patio I look down on from my kitchen window. There is a large blue and white surfboard propped up against the gray-shingled house, and I see her at her own kitchen sink, wisps of aging yellow-white hair visible, as I do dishes at mine. Is she a renter too? I’ve decided that she is the mother and there is what looks like at least one teenage girl, a long-haired brunette in cut-off jean shorts, and a man–but I can’t figure out if he is the husband or the son; lean and clad in a polo shirt and striped bermuda shorts, he looks too young for one and too old for the other. And who is the surfer? Who wears the wetsuit hanging from the tree out back, drying in the wind?

Who are all these people crammed together in this quiet and bustling little town?

We are the loud ones, I notice. If you don’t know who the loud one is, to paraphrase a saying, it’s probably you. Yes, I had my daughter walk out with me to the street and listen while I instructed her siblings to talk loudly from inside the house. How much could we hear? Not as much as I thought. But then, they weren’t yelling, because of course I asked them to, and that was the end of that.

These quiet, peaceful moments … it’s hard to really inhabit them and fully appreciate them because of the anticipation of their ending. Any second now, the twins could burst through the door, having walked back from their friend’s house where they’ve spent the night. My son could clamber down the creaky back stairs from his bedroom, where he has been reading all morning, and ask for breakfast at lunchtime.  Even if I tell him to get his own, there will be conversation, help needed, and the moment (in my mind) will mostly likely be gone. But for now…

Yes, this is a rare sweet spot–this place on the back porch full of intermittent sounds that mark the silence between. I contrast this moment with the same one two days ago, when I was walking into the charming and distraction-filled town with my twin daughters, age 10, and my son, 12. He was lagging behind, having brought his book so he could sit on a bench while I took the girls inside a clothing shop. The girls, on the other hand, were walking so close to me, I was consciously sticking out and slightly waving my hands to keep them from walking on my flip-flopped feet. They are experts at “the box-out”–one on either side of me, slowly nudging closer to each other until I, exasperated, come to a dead stop, quickly scoot around them and run forward a few steps to snatch three seconds of free walking until they run and catch up with me, and the cycle starts again. I remember when they were younger that they often clung to me so successfully as we walked down the street that I felt like I was “wearing” my children. For someone a bit claustrophobic, that’s not a good thing.

I guess things haven’t really changed that much. Yet.

I see the shift happening in the soon-to-be 13-year-old. He is sleeping later, more reluctant to do “kid” things like go the pool for no reason or take a long bike ride. Yet he is the least high-maintenance of the three in some ways, not complaining as I drag him into town with the girls, as long as he has a “Ranger’s Apprentice” volume to read. He stayed home last night when my husband I went to dinner, perfectly content to watch sports on TV, not afraid to be alone. We gave him money to go grab a slice of pizza.

When we got home, he was watching a movie and I asked what he’d eaten: “Two Luna bars,” he replied. I caved and made him a PB&J. Then I settled in next to him on the couch and we watched the rest of “Swindle,” a Nickelodeon original.

He’s still a boy.

Ten and 12-year olds. The sweet spot, I hear my friends say. That time when you still have your kids as kids but can give them enough independence to give yourself some independence. It goes quickly, I hear these friends say. Suddenly all that independence you’ve been waiting for them to get, for you to get — “please stop walking on my feet” — arrives, and you are walking freely, waving your arms ever so slightly at the phantom children closing in on you.

A lone plane slicing through the cloudless blue sky of summer.
A lone plane slices through the cloudless blue sky.

The Stealth Napper

In this entry I randomly select a song title from my itunes library as a writing prompt.

Song title: “Never Gonna Leave This Bed” by Maroon 5 

I can’t say that I enjoy NOT being a morning person, but I also have come to realize that I cannot fight my “bio-ribbons,” (as one daughter calls biorhythms.) Contrary to what I used to think — as a teenager, college student, employee, wife, then mother — you don’t necessarily morph into a morning person when you “grow up.”

It’s kind of like growing up itself, actually. Over time, as you gradually adopt all the accoutrements of adulthood — a job, a professional wardrobe, a rent payment, a husband, a house, a dog-as-first-child — one day you find that everyone thinks you really are a grown-up. And you think, “I’ve fooled them.”

So it is being a night owl who must moonlight as a morning person. You wake up at 6:30 a.m., rouse the kids, make breakfast, rush out the door, and weave and bob through traffic to get to school on time. You go to that meeting about making snacks for the teachers and race to yoga so you can squeeze in your de-stressing and detoxing. You feel energized enough to go make that stultifying grocery store run. You walk the dog in the sun-filled park. You perk up just in time for the afternoon carpool.

But sometimes, after that morning carpool … you go back to bed.

Yes, on rare occasions, when I have that little pocket of time after morning drop-off and no appointments or responsibilities (glaring ones, at least), I’ve driven back home, beelined upstairs and flopped into bed. This is particularly the case if it’s been an unfortunate “no-coffee” morning — if my husband, who usually makes the coffee, is away and we’ve had a searching-all-over-for-the-math-homework-that-was-just-in-the-backpack kind of mornings.

This return to sleep doesn’t happen nearly as often as I’d like. But I like knowing it’s in the universe of possibilities. It feels illegal, in a good way.

Further confession: I’ve even found a quiet place near my children’s school to park the car, set my phone alarm, and tilt my seat back for a 10-minute catnap. Yes, I feel like those cabbies you sometimes see catching winks in their car, and I can relate.

Once, when the twins were infants, I remember arriving home bleary-eyed from an afternoon of errands with them both sound asleep in their car seats. A friend’s car was temporarily occupying our one-car garage, so I parked in front of our house, cut off the engine, cracked the windows, and reclined my seat for a siesta. Why fight it?

A few days later I ran into my neighbor, who smiled a little as she said, “I saw you in the car the other day. You and the babies — all asleep.” Her eyes widened.

Trying not to show how embarrassed I was, I just smiled back and murmured something about “If you can’t beat ‘em…”

I think our world would be a more peaceful, serene place if we openly embraced the idea of the catnap. Luminaries such as John F. Kennedy and Leonardo DaVinci apparently did. In fact, how about adding napping rooms to every Starbucks? If that tall, grande or venti latte’s not doing the trick, you could order up a 10, 20 or 30-minute nap. Extra dark. Eye pillow included.