I am an unabashed peddler for the Sandman – sleep, sweet sleep, for my children is all I can ask for, or want, at the end of a long day.
A day full of the typical games of youth; of cubbyhouses and tea-parties, preschool and television time. Sheet tents erected in the lounge room; the putty-ish smell of crayons as they’re dragged across scrap paper and the occasional wall or tile.
This is what I want, have ever wanted, to be with my children all through their formative years and yet, as 5pm rolls around and the beautiful symphony of ‘Bs’ begin to play in my head (BOOK! BATH! BRUSH! BED!), and then becomes reality, I often sit down on the couch, once they’re tucked in, and curse my need to rush.
Rush rush rush.
So I sit here tapping on my laptop, working, and my husband does the same, and I can tell you – nay, guarantee – that after about half an hour one of us will say without any prompting or introduction some sort of anecdote about something one of the kids has come up with.
We often repeat ourselves. We have become the grandparents of our future grandchildren already; we bask in the ordinary and the adorable. For example, Keira’s first ever picture of a robot then, naturally, makes it the best picture of a robot that could possibly ever exist.
Then a quiet longing will creep over me and I will steal away to technically ‘check on them’ but in fact I stand and trace the jawline of my daughter or listen to my son snore: the child who sleeps so sporadically, who often sits up at 1am and declares, “I WANT BREAKFAST NOW”, and yet has slept through thunderstorms that set the neighbourhood dogs mad with barking.
I could then feel guilty. Lord knows, we as parents, quickly acquire the taste for self-flagellation.
But not this night; this night I go back and sit on the couch, take a sip of my cup of tea, and return to my book.
I give up my mistakes, and I make plenty of them, to the night. I recite Miss Stacey’s mantra: “Tomorrow is always fresh, with no mistakes in it.”
Then I sit a little longer, it gets later, and then it happens: the often rough sable of motherhood loosens from around my shoulders. The clocks tick backwards and I am no longer an anachronistic mess. I am not a mother, I am not a woman, I am not anything but myself, and as I swing my feet up on to the couch and settle in, I feel a contented sleep begin to creep upon me.
Soon, the book slips from my fingers and I feel peace.
Though much is taken, much abides; and though
We are not now that Strength which in old days
Moved Earth and Heaven, that which we are, we are
One equal temper of heroic hearts
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
Born to strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield
Tennyson, Ulysses
