Free Fall

Megan would say that I am often a whiner and a drama queen, and I guess she is right. She at least has the right to her opinion. I, however, envision myself as long-suffering and stoic, especially this past week, when I’ve had the worst-cold-ever. All I wanted to do today was lie around in bed and read Her Fearful Symmetry, by Audrey Niffenegger, because it has lines, paragraphs, that read like poetry, and real life, and dreaming, all together, and I just want to have a day doing nothing. But no, Megan needed cigarettes, and she told me this last night, just before I went to sleep, “Please mom, I’ll need cigarettes in the morning, how about before 9:30?” So I roused myself this morning, blew my nose a million times on toilet paper, because I’d used up all the tissue already and drove three houses away to the BP on the corner. I grumbled at her as I was dressing, “Megan, what will they think of me, pale and coughing, and buying cigarettes?” I also told her that maybe I was enabling her, that she could buy her own cigarettes, and well, sometimes she does. . . It’s this parenting gig, that people think will end. 

They dream about it when their children are little, just get through toilet training, just get through kindergarten, just get through grade school, high school, college. . . But parenting doesn’t end, and it’s become ok with me, it’s just that it’s a different kind of responsibility, a different kind of work. Because I haven’t felt well, this whole week felt like a jumble, like I had to let go of the line of what usually balances me, and just free fall through whatever came my way. To only make partial sense of things, and to leave it at that. I worked a full day yesterday, and was tired and ready to go home when a colleague suggested we stop off for happy hour, and so I did. Sat at the bar, in my jeans and sweatshirt, and my roughed up nose, from all the blowing, and just sat, had a couple of wine spritzers, being the light-weight I am and tried to understand that male bonding thing that guys do in bars. 

The put downs, the innuendos, the cagey way they skirt around each other, never quite letting their guards down. I’ve learned to be ok with this now, being ok with the facade, the fear in their eyes, the way they’ve internalized gender roles and sexuality so that they are entrapped by it, yet can’t see it. They are surprised sometimes that I put up with it, and it may have made me angry in the past, but I can see now, that it is their own peculiar defense against emotional intimacy, with anyone, even themselves. I can enjoy their company, the stories they try to tell in between the jabs, realizing that this is a sort of social dance in and of itself. I only stayed for a little while, and then stopped and picked up dinner to make when I got home (see, I told you I’m long suffering). I put a steak on the grill pan, threw potatoes in the oven and then watched 2 episodes of Doc Martin before bed, before Megan asked for cigarettes. 

It’s Saturday, it’s only 9:00 am. So, I’ve bought the cigarettes and I’m still going  to try to work my day around being in bed today, and reading, but I’ll have to go to Target, to pick up Megan’s thyroid meds, and she’s also told me that we need to go get Erin, then go to a yarn store, so that together they can pick out yarn. Megan is going to knit a Hello Kitty hat for Audrey (Erin’s daughter, who is 2), to wear for Halloween. See, the parenting gig does not end, and I’m tired, but I do love hanging out with my daughters, and I love that they are spending their time doing something creative and loving for Audrey. We just love our babies in this family, and Audrey, like me, just loves Hello Kitty.