Too Young to Feel this Old

“So how much of an old lady am I?” I asked a friend the other day, as she came back from putting the kettle on. “I brought my own teabags.”

“Well, that depends,” she said. “Do you also have packets of sugar in your purse?”

Heh.

For the record, I am not in the habit of making off with fistfuls of free sugar packs from restaurants. Well, not yet at least.

But lately it’s not just my teabags that are making me feel old. My lower back has been seizing up in the middle of the night. Waking me up and requiring me to spend several minutes just trying to roll over or move my legs to stretch out a bit. It’s excruciating.

Even my chiropractor wants to throw in the towel. And I’ve formed a twice-a-week habit with him.  But he suggested I see my primary doc for an MRI, and thinks I should get some physical therapy.

Add to that this cold—this loogie-laden, dull-headed seasonal cold that’s persisted now for well over a week. It saps my energy, leaving me lifeless by early afternoon, to the extent that I push aside soul-sucking guilt and plop Kate in front of TV while Paige is napping, so I can get some rest myself. By the time Mark gets home I’m a dishrag, stumbling through the day’s final acts of Mama-hood grumpy, impatient, and having slim hope I’ll feel any better the next day.

And Mark, my sprightly hubbie nearly five years my junior, even he’s coming undone lately. Ever the weekend warrior, he can hop on his bike after several computer-bound days and conquer a mountain with impressive ease. But suddenly, without even falling or wrenching it, he’s got a jenky knee. His body is letting him down for the first time ever, and it’s utterly infuriating. Digging an ice pack out of the freezer last week he grumbled to himself, “Is this is just what happens when you get old?”

But my bad back and his bum knee aside, it’s nearly Halloween. And no holiday makes me feel more young at heart.

For a week or so I was bereft, lacking a brilliant costume idea. For myself, that is. I feared I was losing my edge. I was coming up with possible get-ups that were both obscure and impossible to implement.

“Paige will be a piano… And I’ll be Liberace!” I declared to Mark one night.

“Liberace?” he said, making a face like he’d sucked a lemon.

It wasn’t very supportive of him. But really I had no idea how I’d make Paige into a tiny grand piano anyway.

Then an idea came to me. Something kinda funny and doable that’s not lowering the bar over my past twisted, sordid, or absurd costumes. Something that won’t make me feel like the mother of two who had to hang it up.

What is it? Well, like the names of children I’m pregnant with, I don’t reveal anything until the Big Day.

Anyway, I set out for one of those pop-up Halloween superstores to forage for supplies. Inside the shop I tracked down a salesgirl, likely a student from the nearby Cal-Berkeley campus. Even though I’m making Kate’s requested dog costume (I know, BO-rrrring!), I’m curious to see what they have by way of props.

“You know,” the co-ed says, twisting a long lock of hair around her finger, “We don’t have animal costumes here. But we have another store in Emeryville. You might want to check there.”

“So wait,” I say. “What you’re saying is, you all don’t carry animal stuff, but another branch of the same store two miles away might?”

“Yeah. Weird, right?” she says. “I mean, when I got here I was like, where are all the animal things? Those are pretty standard costumes, right?”

“So do you think, it’s some sort of Berkeley thing?” I say, getting a little amped up with the absurdity of it. “Some kind of vegetarian-minded animal-cruelty type thinking?”

“Huh,” she says, looking out of the corner of her eyes, thinking. “Yeaaaaaaaah… Probably.”

Okay. So I feel old.

My Good Egg

I’ve not always been the best bed mate.

Mark may not often admit that, the dear, unless you catch him on a morning when I’ve had what he refers to with restraint as “a particularly active night’s sleep.”

You see, he’s a light-as-a-feather sleeper. And I could slumber heavily alongside a train track. I’m a deep deep sleeper who’s also on the move, stretching, flopping over then back like a fish, pedaling an imaginary bike, or curling fetally into what Mark calls my “comma position.”

I do sleep as a high-impact sport.

Mornings, the volume of my hair snarl and the intensity of Mark’s bloodshot eyes are the indicators of  just how fervidly I’ve thrashed through the night. Usually without ever pulling out of my corpse-like slumber.

I am not a night-time tinkler. (In fact, I hold mortals who speak of “getting up at night to pee” in mild to moderate disdain.) Before kids became part of our traveling show, I’d fall asleep on planes prior to take-off, and be nudged awake before landing by flight attendants insisting I “return my seat to the full upright position.” At the dramatic height of a movie or TV show, I could suddenly nod my head, let my jaw hang lax, and conk out cold.

Sleep is my super power.

Of course, I’ve been pregnant twice too. So Mark’s also suffered through months of me engaged in nighttime aerobics, but wielding a large inner baby and scads of assorted pillows I’d pack around myself like I was some fragile teapot being sent through the mail.

I suddenly discovered what it was like to wake up in the night, uncomfortable with a hip that seemed it was being crushed in a vice. Add to that, I was having to pee. (Me!) My pillows were my desperate effort to defend my long-cherished run of failure-proof sleep. They were my mental and physical support. Like a full-body nighttime bra.

Yet even they failed me. Because whenever I rolled over I’d need to reconfigure the innumerable group of them on the new side.

As if that weren’t bad enough, once I’d finally get settled the skin on the soles of my feet would feel dry. (My own personal crazy-lady pregnancy thing.) So I’d reach to my bedside table for lotion, sweeping my glasses to the floor, clanging my glass of water, and ultimately, upsetting my strategic pillow array. Waah!

Poor Mark. A frat boy after a night celebrating his 21st birthday couldn’t sleep through that.

Often, understandably, Mark would give up and schlep to the couch. And as long as his pillow and blanket were gone by daybreak, so friends or house cleaners wouldn’t question the health of our marriage, I was admittedly happy to be alone. Doing snow angels in the sheets with my immense baby-filled body. Not worrying about moving too much and keeping Mark up, I’d fall asleep nearly instantly.

Alas, it’s likely Mark’s days of pregnancy-induced couch sleeping are over. (Sniff!). But this week I’ve had a cold. I NEVER get sick. My take on colds is akin to the mortal weakness of night peeing.

And Mark’s been so horribly busy at work. At night he gets to crawl into bed with me sniffling, snorfling, coughing, and worst—doing the Bruno triple throat clear. From my lump on the left sife of the bed I radiate germs and self-pity like rays from the sun. And my already unsexy cadre of nighttime attire has bottomed out with the cold-weather return of my flannel Lanz of Salzburg granny gown.

Let’s just say I’m no Betty Draper.

But through it all Mark’s been the attentive tough-love nurse. “Have you even taken zinc? Or Vitamin C?” he’ll ask, then sigh, trundle off, and return with a handful of pills and a tall glass of water.

This morning he delivered a cold pill and some decongestant or other before I even got out of bed. I mean, at least that’s what he SAID he was giving me.

But seriously, if you haven’t met my husband, let me tell you. He’s a good egg.

When the girls were wee babes and I was getting up a lot at night to nurse, since Mark holds the title of World Featherweight Sleeper, he’d be up too. In fact, he’d be the one shaking me to consciousness when the monitor was blaring baby cries and crackling static at Volume 11, right at my ear.

“Uh, honey? Kristen? The baby is up.” And I’d've been on such another stratosphere of deep sleep I’d walk heavy-legged and dull-faced down the hall towards the crying.

But when I got back into bed, without fail, he’d have fluffed my pillows.

I know it seems like a small thing. But it was such a sweet act of I-wish-I-had-boobies-and-could-help-out-more kindness. If I weren’t so damn tired, I’d have taken his face in my hands, planted a big smooch on his forehead, and blubbered happy words of appreciation.

Turns out having one’s head drift down into two perfectly fluffed pillows is an exceptional simple pleasure. Especially when you’re months into no more than three or four hours of sleep at a stretch.

And another thing about that man, because I’m on a roll now. When he’s cooking? And cutting up carrots for something? He chops off a little nubbin of one and brings it over to me wherever I am. You know, like where I’m setting the table, or digging in the bottom of the closet for my other clog.

I don’t even remember how it is that I told him about this, but the reason he does it is it’s something my mother would do. She spent 70% of my childhood cutting up raw vegetables to set in front of me. Or handing me a piece of celery off the cutting board, before dumping the rest into a pot.

Speaking of her, I had that phone thing happen today. The thing people talk about when someone close to them dies—still getting the impulse to pick up the phone and call the person, then having the realization that you can’t.

Google really should work on that.

Anyway, what’s weird is that it’s been ages, like, over five years, since mom and I have had one of our meandering, sometimes only mildly-interesting daily phone calls. So I’ve been over that phone call habit for a while now. Or so I thought, at least.

But earlier tonight, after Kate’s dance performance and before dinnertime, I was tired. I’d been on Mama duty all day, with a ragged voice, goopy cough, mounting headache, and two young unsympathetic charges. I was summoning my last bits of patience and energy to get a bare-bones frozen ravioli and salad dinner on the table.

I was cutting up carrots to steam—’cause it turns out my mother’s veggie-pushing got passed down in the genes—and as I turned on the oven to warm some bread, it started. Not that I thought I wanted to call her per se. It’s more that this string of thoughts about feeling worn out, and the girls arguing over books in the other room, and it starting to get really cold at night here now that it’s fall—this series of thoughts I was running through in my head were things that were somehow sort of customized for her. The kinds of things I’d be telling my mother if I could.

And then that one part of your brain that can be sitting back when another part is doing something else, it prompted me with the thought, “Hey, seems like you want to be calling your mother right now.”

Which had the potential to take me to the brink of feeling far worse about the state of things than I already felt. I mean, feeling sick and tired is one thing. But the dead mother trump emotional card always beats out everything else.

But blessedly, before I could even go there, the lock on the door clicked in that barely audible way it does when Mark comes home. And Kate sprang off the couch with an amped-up need to tell a story, and Paige, from her spot on the floor stretched out her arms for her tragic pick-me-up-you-don’t-KNOW-how-much i-missed-you act.

In a snap, that little door click redistributed all the energy in the house. And when the door swung open, it was like all the thoughts swirling around in my head got sucked outside in the back draft.

Sometimes that man has just got perfect timing.

Songs about Stars

A few hours ago Mark staggered through the door, finally home from his European business trip.

It was uncanny how Paige decided to start barfing just hours after his departure Tuesday morning, and maintained a steady stream of miserable maladies straight through to today, when I had to arrange a weekend doctor appointment for her inconsolable (and uncharacteristic) bawling.

Oddly, the doctor couldn’t find a thing wrong with her, which I could tell was bugging him. Diagnostic performance anxiety, I guess. I should have just told him she was trying to maintain a high level of drama and neediness up until her father got home.

When she wakes up tomorrow I’ll bet the college savings she’ll be pink-cheeked, perky, and all smiles. Daddy’s little girl.

The temptation to swan dive into self-pity when I was mopping up vomit while Mark dined in a room hung with Picassos and Chagalls was great at times. I won’t lie. But I know Paige didn’t set out to make my solo parenting stint extra challenging. (That’ll come when she’s a teenager, right?)

And through it all I did manage to find the silver lining to a week’s worth of Just Us Girls. The one thing I learned about myself is that it’s my instinct to move a puking child. Why do I do that? While holding a baby who is spewing forth, whatever reason would I have to want to walk her through other rooms of the house? Oh wait, honey, you didn’t get any on the hall carpet, let me quickly usher you through there!

On two occasions, instead of limiting the, well, splash zone, I took long circuitous pathways through the house to eventually get to a toilet. By which point Paige was essentially dabbing at the corners of her mouth with a napkin and giving me a well-I-feel-MUCH-better-now-that-that’s-over look.

Fool me twice! And as I was on my hands and knees maniacally Formula 409ing every visible surface, I started chanting an internal don’t-move-the-puker don’t-move-the-puker mantra. But it was like when someone always makes the same kind of nasty or hurtful or weird comment to you, and even though they’re a repeat offender you still find yourself so stunned you never manage to bust out a zingy retort. And then in the shower some morning you decide you’re not going to take it any more, damn it, and you craft a brilliant scathing response. But then you lie in wait to defend yourself and they never come back at you. Aaaargh!

Which is all to say that once I had my stay-rooted easy clean-up baby barf approach all mapped out, she moved onto other gastric issues and didn’t upchuck again. Figures.

And despite the weird role reversal of Paige workin’ some illness drama and getting all the attention, it was Miss Kate–the one who’s usually with top hat and cane doing jazz hands up in yer face–who stole the show this week in the sweetest quietest way.

I almost never put Katie to sleep any more. With Paigey still doing the pre-sleep boob thing, it makes Mark and my division of bedtime labor an obvious one. But on my own I put Paige down first, then Kate and I run through her bedtime routine.

Aside from the realization that, despite her overflowing bookshelf, she often wants the same books I read her during the day read again at night, I noticed for the first time the glow-in-the-dark stars Mark painstakingly mapped out on her ceiling. If you set aside your jaded they’re just those glowy star stickers mindset, and lie down on the bed, take maybe the first relaxing breath you’ve had all day and gaze up at them, they really are quite beautiful.

Our post-reading, pre-nighty-night moments only lasted a few minutes. But that first evening, marveling at the beauty of the stars and giving Kate a fresh interest in them, I realized she has yet to go camping and to experience the wonder of sleeping outdoors. (Something I regretfully never did myself until my twenties.) And so, whispering–as I was directed to so as not to wake her babies–I explained what sleeping in a tent that’s open to the sky is like, and promised her that we’d do that together soon, while assuring her that, no, there aren’t any tigers that come to eat you when you go camping, and leaving out the part about how maybe bears will.

The next night, Kate capitalized on her ceiling stars, an asset she knew at that point impressed me. The moment the light was out she pulled me down on the bed imploring, “Look at the stars, Mama. Look at them!” I had to remind her to keep her voice down for the barracks full of sleeping dolls lined up under small blankets all along her floor.

On Night #3 the stars were still cool and all, but what really moved me was having my little bundle of three-year-old energy in a rare sleepy snuggy mode. The girl who, understanding full well the power she wields over her adoring mother, rations hugs and kisses like bottles of bourbon during Prohibition. The same gal who recently made the weird world-weary “I have no love left to give” remark—odd and adult-like enough to make me wonder if she’s been Tivoing As the World Turns behind our backs.

Anyway, somewhere in the course of the week she determined that once the lights went out, after a brief period of admiring the constellations, she’d roll over, back herself up to get really close to me, and request I sing her a couple ditties. Namely, “Silent Night” and “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star.” (Note the theme she’s going with?)

Of course, I needed to whisper-sing, since God knows her babies are extremely sound-sensitive sleepers, despite what I’ve told her about having it be preferable to get them used to sleeping without having to tiptoe around them. But does she ever listen to her old-fashioned mother? Noooooooo.

Anyway, let’s just say that there are notes towards the end of “Silent Night” that I struggle with. And whisper-singing only seems to exacerbate my cracking voice. But Kate just burrows into my side quiet and listening. She doesn’t seem to mind my singing voice. And for the sweet few minutes of snuggles it affords me, I don’t either.

Kate and I are wired the same way. Whatever it is we’re doing we’re always busy busy busy. We’ve got things to do, places to go. But this week reminded me that I need to carve out more time for the two of us to stop and do some star-gazing together.

And while I’m at it, I should come up with a few more songs about stars to add to my repertoire.