Naps: The New Nightclub

Exhaustion fluttered into the window, as small pockets of afternoon light leaked into our 1880 Victorian home.  We snuggled as a family on the couch in the living room, each of us fitting into each other like puzzle nuzzle pieces.  The silence of Saturday serenaded us with peace and calm. Our heads drifted back in relaxing curls against the couch.  Together we napped.  This was well needed rest.

I asked my mother just yesterday, shouting for her to hear me over the phone, “Were you and Dad always exhausted when we were young children?”

“Yes, of course,” she said as if it were well-known knowledge.

Parenthood leaves me exhausted each night, desperately trying to gain the strength to write each night. Instead, I veg out to a TV show I can watch online. Family obligations, cleaning, re-cleaning  dressing toddlers, changing diapers, making meals, doing dishes, cleaning floors, vacuuming, checking in and tagging in and out with my husband leave us both depleted.  At the end of each task, I feel there will be some sort of feeling of it all being done, but it starts all over again, as if a train on a schedule.  ”All aboard,” the train of responsibility chugs along the track of parenthood.

I guess it is just the story-line for this chapter in our lives.

Ben snuggled deep into the white comforter cocooning into our bodies like jello, soft and malleable.  Finally comfortable and not irritable, he drifted off to sleep. My husband and I both off to sleep just minutes after him.  This cocoon was just what we needed.

Naps — they are the new nightclub — just as exciting and just as cool.

“There is more refreshment and stimulation in a nap, even of the briefest, than in all the alcohol ever distilled.” -Ovid

Love is Not Always Flood Lights and Fireworks, but Sometimes, It Is

Love is Not Always Flood Lights and Fireworks

But Sometimes, It Is

My son is sleeping on my husband’s chest. Snuggled in an O against his broad shoulders in a snuggly nest.  Resting easy, gently.  I want my son to wake up because I haven’t seen him this morning.  My husband let me sleep in this because I stayed up late last night writing and working on grad school work.  I woke refreshed and awake, not my usual still-feel-like-I-need-two-more-hours-of-sleep-grogginess.  Dare I say refreshed.  Yes, I was refreshed.

Photo by Sara Turner

As I walked by my two darlings, my husband was singing a song and waving me off – as in, Go away! So you don’t wake the boy.  He is almost asleep. I went to the kitchen to get my breakfast and make coffee.  I toasted two slices of cinnamon raison bread and slowly buttered it, taking my time.  I put my son’s toys in the basket that I washed yesterday, placing them in,  like an organizer would, quite a difference than their daily throw it in the basket routine.  I did some laundry, changing over a load in the washer to the dryer and taking the dried clothes out of the laundry room.  That load is in the kitchen. Still.

I am wanting my little one to wake up.  I miss his little face, his little body.  His tiny little shoulders – how they’ve grown — yet he is still so tiny. 

"Daddy's Hands" - Photo by Sara Turner http://www.sturnerphotos.com

I can hold his hand now and it makes me giddy, my hands and long fingers inter-twined with his little mini fingers that will grasp so many tangible and intangible things in his lifetime.  He will hold the hand of the woman he will marry with those hands.  He will hold the hand of the woman who will break his heart with those hands.  He will hold a pencil to take the SATs with those hands.  He will hold that same pencil in his hand, as he may struggle in college.  He will hold the crayon that he writes his name with for the first time with those hands.  God forbid, he may hold a beer in those hands in college.  For now, those little hands give me glee.  Give me goose bumps — how beautiful they are.  How magnetic they are — drawing me to them, as my eyes are magnetized — heart pulling me closer every day to this new and joyful love of mother and son.

My husband and my son are in the same room as I write this, their chests breathing in and out together in unison.  The same hearts, bonded with mine.  Love is an amazing thing.  It isn’t always flood lights and fireworks, shining brightly above a star filled sky, with fiery, colored flames sparkling down and dropping into a scenic river or lake.  Sometimes it is blurry, like a rainstorm and the windshield wipers aren’t working or better yet, are jammed.  And you can’t see a thing and have road rage because you’re stuck in the clogged, congestion of life’s freeway, with people honking at you to hurry up.  But sometimes, just sometimes, not all the time — it is pure magic. 

It stops you dead in your tracks, as if alone in a white fluffy filled forest, frosted with elegance, whistles at you, and shouts its name. Stitching — beating — breathing — beating — breathing heart murmurs all over your sky filled soul.  You sit on a lawn, with a blanket below your knees. Hot warm, summer skin, dark sky, filled sky, stars bright and plump like ripe apples, and wonder, working willfully, scattering wisdom and love across your own family sky.

 

memomuse believes in magic, especially magic in words.  She is a mama, poet, writer, and photographer living in Eastern North Carolina.  She is a graduate student in the MA in Creative Writing program at East Carolina University.  You can view her magic in words at this website: www.memomuse.wordpress.com.

Photo by Sara Turner