After a long day listening to demonstrations by my colleagues, doing sample writing, reading some of my own, and offering critiques to others, there is a little drag in my step as I walk in the door, knowing what awaits me. This is exacerbated by the fact that Baby Jack has started teething, so he is up often at night. I am the lighter sleeper of the two, so I have assumed the responsibility of being the one who attempts to soothe his nightly “fussing.”
I enter the house, kick off my shoes, empty the contents of my pockets – a billfold and car keys – into a basket resting on the microwave oven, and take stock of the situation. Baby Jack is crying very dramatically in the room to my left. Straight ahead, I see my twin daughters running around in circles singing “ring around the rosy …” I realize that there is dinner to help with, baths to give, teeth to brush, PJ’s to struggle on, beds to get little girls into and hopefully asleep in. There is even a pile of dishes from the day’s depredations to wash and a rampaging horde of toys to pick up.
I look into the room on the left and notice my mother in law attempting to change Baby Jack’s diaper. He has entered that curious phase of life in which he is not old enough to understand that he should help with tasks such as the dreaded diaper change (as the twins now do), but big enough and dexterous enough to really make the event extraordinarily difficult. I walk over to the changing table with its soft mattress on top. As I enter his field of vision, Baby Jack’s eyes lock with mine, and a huge grin pops onto his face. A hesitant “da … d … d … da” barely escapes his lips before he continues his crying fest. The diaper change effected, my mother-in-law quickly hands him over with a “you want to see da-da” before rushing off, a harried look on her face from helping Ann do the day’s shopping with the kids in tow. I look after her with some envy as she drives off to the quiet sanctuary of her now childless home.
I carry Baby Jack into the other room, ideas for comforting bouncing around in my head. A call comes from the kitchen “he’s hungry and I’m running late on dinner, feed him some Cheerios.” I sit down with a box and one by one, feed him the apparently delectable bites. He makes a great smacking show of downing the tiny toroids and calms immediately. When there is enough in his tummy to temporarily prevent him from returning to his anguished state, I set him on the floor with his toys. He has just recently discovered how to reach virtually any interesting object on the floor via a series of twists and rolls, no crawling yet. Amazingly, with all the brightly colored toys scattered on the floor, he zeroes in on a writing pen I accidentally left on the floor last night. I hurriedly snatch the pen from the floor and his attention quickly drifts to the next most interesting object a pile of oversized Lego blocks the twins like to leave all over the house.
As I sit there, tired, worn out, anxious about the possibility of another long night, his eyes lock with mine and he breaks into one of his signature huge grins. I’m sure those grins are going to cause me no end of trouble as he gets older and notices girls, but for now they just bring an equally huge grin to my face. At that very moment, the twins really notice me for the first time and come rushing into the room with screams of “DAAAA-DEEEE.” One of them begs to sit in my lap emitting a stream of amazingly well connected words about her latest discovery, while the other bends down next to Baby Jack and very accurately imitates the soothing phrases and sub-vocalizations that we use to calm him.
Yes, the nights are long. But I can endure … I have endured … and somehow … they are worth it.
"Recollect me darlin, raise me to your lips, two undernourished egos, four rotating hips"
