Hobson's Choice
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Saturday.
Sometimes my blog has been percolating in my head all day before I make it to the computer, sometimes not. Today, on five interrupted hours of sleep, it's a not.
Just read part of an article on why more fathers aren't staying at home with their children. I was surprised to see nowhere the kinds of discussions that Chris and I have had.
Chris loves his work, is passionate about it in all its aspects (even meetings, but perhaps that's because he is a writer and can describe departmental meetings in a way that makes them sound interesting and intriguing... or am I just so far gone in Stay At Home Land that any account of the outside world fascinates me.. and maybe I ought to devote some thoughts to my current situation and my current fascination with the tv program "Lost". I'm rambling; I'm operating on next to no sleep).
And on a lot of anger today. Chris also admits that if he had to spend all day every day with a small infant or child, he would want to drive them into the country like a stray cat and just leave them. He understands the tedious rage of it all (and perhaps also because he is a writer, he can admit what other men, and women, will not say aloud).
And I find myself at a place today where that vision is almost attractive. I've been at home alone with a sick child for almost thirty-six hours with little adult interaction. Sometimes suffering makes people more noble; in this case, an ear infection and flu shot have not ennobled my daughter. They have made her obnoxious to the point of making me wonder if I am the worst mother in the known universe that my child can behave like this, to the point that I cannot summon up a jovial manner to describe her "antics" over the last thirty-six hours.
I'm ready for the end of the ear infection and the return of the usual Eleanor Green.
Tomorrow, when Chris has been back for a little while and I have had a little sleep, I know that I will no longer wonder if she has had permanent personality shift to the land of Bitch. She has missed her father desperately, and that has not ennobled her either (and that's a sign, isn't it, that the Stay at Home factor is not the be-all of parent-child interactions).
So I'm wishing away the hours until Chris returns home and have been all day. And then I read an email from a friend of my parents' who is about to lose his wife, whose wife is about to have to leave her children for a long, long time (and perhaps forever, though I cannot believe that). I want to run up the crib and hold on tight, to smother my little obnoxious, hitting daughter with kisses.
And how to make sense of it all? The mysteries of tedium and passion and love.
I was reading a book by Sandi Kahn Shelton the other day wherein she related an anecdote about her daugther's questions about death. They talked for a long time about what we know and what we don't know about it, and she thought the conversation was wrapping up when her daughter said, "But not us, right, Mommy? You and me live forever."
And somewhere in that anecdote lies some of clearer parts of the mystery.
2:27 p.m. - 2004-10-16
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