After he left, the hours at night became my solace. I would wash my face, brush teeth, brush my hair a hundred times, and slip into bed with a pile of books and a cup of tea. I had no one to answer to, no one to judge my sleep or lack thereof. I would read for hours, or just minutes. My routine became a comfort, a sliver of solitude where I could hide away from my roommates, put away the textbooks, and delve deeply into who I was, and who I wanted to be.
Now nighttime is the only time I have in an empty, quiet house. The children and husband are sleeping and I come alive. I putter about, looking at things undone. Homework not completed, lunch boxes with old scraps of food, projects left scattered about the kitchen table, dishes in the sink, mail piled on the hutch, big piles of laundry, of work, of obligations left unattended. I am reluctant to go to bed. When I close my eyes, the guilt I feel is blissfully short, thanks to Ambien and Klonopin. But it is still there, waiting for me. My patient husband is waiting, asleep, but he glances at the clock when I climb in next to him. I feel as though I have failed again. I am not a good wife and mother. There is work left undone - always undone - and if I were better I would have had a plan, I would have completed it all. I could be Donna Reid; instead I am Peg Bundy without the attitude and leopard-skin pants.
And yet I think back to my own mother - did she have it all covered? Didn't she spend her hours playing bridge, bowling, having coffee with friends, playing tennis? Wasn't she always on the go, leaving us to figure things out on our own? Dinner was always on the table when my father was home, that I know. And she was always there - if not reading the paper or otherwise engaged.
There is no book, you know. No book that tells you how to live your life. When to get up in the morning, what to eat, what to cook, when to find a moment to work out, or just breathe. Instead I live in fits and starts and I miss those days twenty years ago when I could find that comfort in routine. Then I was a young monk-like student. Now I am a frenetic housewife/part-time teacher/full-time mom putting out fire after fire.
There is no answer either. You can pray all you want, but God doesn't tell you what to do. He doesn't tell you that the reason you jump from fire to fire is not because you have to, but because you don't know what to do when you stop. When we stop, we breathe, we sleep with the aids of modern medicine, but we never really let the space of the hours seep in. When a thought, profound or simple, sneaks into our brain, we quickly file it away for later, and never return. It is our own escapism, and it has been this way for lifetimes.
Now nighttime is the only time I have in an empty, quiet house. The children and husband are sleeping and I come alive. I putter about, looking at things undone. Homework not completed, lunch boxes with old scraps of food, projects left scattered about the kitchen table, dishes in the sink, mail piled on the hutch, big piles of laundry, of work, of obligations left unattended. I am reluctant to go to bed. When I close my eyes, the guilt I feel is blissfully short, thanks to Ambien and Klonopin. But it is still there, waiting for me. My patient husband is waiting, asleep, but he glances at the clock when I climb in next to him. I feel as though I have failed again. I am not a good wife and mother. There is work left undone - always undone - and if I were better I would have had a plan, I would have completed it all. I could be Donna Reid; instead I am Peg Bundy without the attitude and leopard-skin pants.
And yet I think back to my own mother - did she have it all covered? Didn't she spend her hours playing bridge, bowling, having coffee with friends, playing tennis? Wasn't she always on the go, leaving us to figure things out on our own? Dinner was always on the table when my father was home, that I know. And she was always there - if not reading the paper or otherwise engaged.
There is no book, you know. No book that tells you how to live your life. When to get up in the morning, what to eat, what to cook, when to find a moment to work out, or just breathe. Instead I live in fits and starts and I miss those days twenty years ago when I could find that comfort in routine. Then I was a young monk-like student. Now I am a frenetic housewife/part-time teacher/full-time mom putting out fire after fire.
There is no answer either. You can pray all you want, but God doesn't tell you what to do. He doesn't tell you that the reason you jump from fire to fire is not because you have to, but because you don't know what to do when you stop. When we stop, we breathe, we sleep with the aids of modern medicine, but we never really let the space of the hours seep in. When a thought, profound or simple, sneaks into our brain, we quickly file it away for later, and never return. It is our own escapism, and it has been this way for lifetimes.
