When Mapes was wee, and we lived in our first home in Viroqua Wisconsin, she attended, for several years, a Waldorf Kinderhaus. It was magical. In all the ways. I was wide-eyed and naive, just like my then toddler, and was easily influenced. The children’s teacher, Ms Sarah, was incredible. She was kind yet firm, patient while keeping to the rhythm, and exuded love and peace. Basically, it was the perfect place and she was the perfect person for whom the 2-4-year-old crowd could safely and freely explore the world with wonder and imagination.
At our first parent-teacher tea, I remember being struck by something Sarah shared about her own parenting. She was a single mom, her kids 7 and 9- which seemed so big to me at the time- and the kid’s dad lived in another country. That lens was important for what she shared, perhaps much more so than I gave it credit for at the time. But I was so little myself, and she seemed like everything she was doing with the children, hers included, was so right.
What she said, that has stuck with me since, is that after 8 pm, mom is gone. It is Sarah after 8. And I took it to mean, I think, exactly what she intended, which is that after that time in the evening the kids need to be asleep or at least in bed and on their way. She needed time on her own at the end of the day for herself. Of course, she did! Just as so many parents do. Just as I did.
Now, this is not a post about the wild ride of parenting Maple from 0-6 years old. I will save that for another day. It is more to say that I worked to cultivate a family rhythm in which I found ‘me time’ independent of my children in the evening. I wanted to just be Meg by the end of the day. To shut the rest of it down and do my own thing in my home. And for the most part, save the occasional illness or bad dream, I’d say I got there. For a good many years.
I don’t know how things changed for Ms Sarah when her own kids reached adolescence. It would be cool to know. But for us, everything changed as our kids, especially Maple, got older. She has always been a bit of a night owl, but once she began going through puberty she was sleeping later and spending much of the time in the day during which we were all home together, doing her own thing. I didn’t see her much during the day. Not like I had when she was little, and I wasn’t connecting with her like I used to. I began to understand why so many parents had shared with me that they loved driving their kids to activities or sporting events or whatever because they were forced to hang out. And talk.
I also began to notice that she was trying to engage me in the later evenings. Well past the time that “mom” had gone offline. It was in these late hours that she started reaching out to me in real and big ways, baring bits of her growing heart and mind to me in ways that she wasn’t ready to share during the day. I was well beyond my own best time of day, far from my cleverest and most attentive self. More selfish and tired and ready to wind it all the way down. Maybe knit a few rows, or read of few pages, and then turn out the light.
So I resisted. I pushed back. Mom is gone after 8! Remember?!
And yet, there are no hard and fast rules to live by, especially when it comes to parenting, and I quickly began to see that this was most likely a now or never opportunity for me with my daughter. And I could either shut her down or open myself up. So that is what I did. I pushed through my own fatigue and learned about everything that I could that was alive in Maple. Truth be told, it wasn’t really that big of a deal. Both she and Eider were sleeping later and later in the morning and I found easy time to myself on the front end of the day.
That is, of course, until Wilfie. Now, and for the last year and a half, it is more like we have two different family realities that overlap in the middle portion of the day. The baby is up a good hour and a half to as many as 4 hours before the bigs, and it is essentially the reverse on the other end of the day. And I am more tired than ever. More worn by 8 pm, let alone 9 or 10 than I can even express.
But Maple comes online, like really ready to engage and share with me, after 9 pm. Oh. My. God. And I want what she has to share. So bad I want it in the face of all of my awareness of the clock that is ticking on my time with my girl left in my home.
She corners me in the bathroom when I am washing my face and brushing my teeth. Earbuds OUT for a change and eyes wide and words spilling forward from everything that has grown inside of her over the course of the day. And as much as it feels like my face is literally melting off I am so tired, I rally. I am communicative with her. She knows that I have essentially powered down and there isn’t much left of me. She takes what I can give and I try to give it all. Just 15 minutes. Sometimes more if I am amazing- or I had some afternoon tea. Sometimes less if I am barely hanging on. She’s even said to me before things like: mom, what is happening to your face? or: mom, your eyes really aren’t looking good. She sees what it takes for me to stay up for her. And I see her.
Now I know that Ms Sarah was wrong. Not about much but definitely about mom being gone after 8. Cuz now I know that mom is never gone. From the moment my first kid tore into the world and until my final breath, mom is most certainly not gone. So, I will do what it takes. Even if it’s a little bonkers right now and I am burning a candle down to the nub on both ends. Even if it means fantasizing about caffeinated eye drops and long afternoon naps in a breezy beach cabana. I’ll do it. Cuz babies don’t keep but neither does any of the rest of it.
