Transparent Tuesdays

Issue 236: A Day In The Life

You guys,

6:30a.m. Unload dishwasher. Make coffee, cashew milk, and six scrambled eggs. 

6:40a.m. George appears in the kitchen, one sock on his foot, a big smile on his face and both hands behind his back. “Guess which hand,” he says, squinting at the overhead kitchen lights. I point to his left hand. He shows me an empty hand. I point to his right and he reveals his other sock. 

7:00a.m. Layla is awake but flattens herself to the mattress when I try to pick her up. “Do you want to climb up into your high chair?” I ask. She jumps to a standing position. Sam took off the harness last night so she can get up and down on her own, like a big girl. As I change her diaper I hear the familiar screams from George. “No!” he shouts. “No!” They are short, pointed screams. Directives. “No Papa!” 

7:10a.m. I come downstairs with Layla in my arms. “Take Layla,” I say. Sam does. I stomp over to George. “Easy,” Sam says, a gentle reminder. I grab George from behind and carry him upstairs to his room, place him down on the floor and walk away from him, to his dresser, and pick out clothes for school. “No, Mama!” he yells. Then I feel him bite down hard on my right butt cheek. “Ow!” I scream, and turn around and look at him. He puts his fingers in his mouth, which I thought he only did when he was around people he didn’t know or we’ve asked him to take a picture, but lately he does it all the time. I don’t say anything, for once. He screams more. He wants to go downstairs. I tell him no. After five minutes, tears stained down his cheeks, he looks up at me and extends his arms. It’s over. I hold him, and we sit in the chair together in silence. 

Lately I’ve been blaming him for his behavior. He’s so hard. He doesn’t listen for shit. He’s out of control. He thinks he runs this house. But as he lays against my chest, exhausted and staring into space, my mind wanders to when he was 2 years old in occupational therapy and his therapist told us about the benefits of “hard work.” George likes heavy lifting, she told us. This checked out. George has always liked to move things. From one corner to another, into piles. We were instructed to include more heavy work into his daily life. I make a mental note to Google “heavy work for toddlers” later. 

8:07a.m. No matter how hard we try to leave for school at 8:00a.m. it’s always 8:07a.m. when I start the car. 

8:50a.m. Straighten up the upstairs rooms—put toys and books in their respective bins, laundry in hampers, blankets and stuffed animals on beds. Start a load of laundry, put piles of clean clothes away. (This is my bi-weekly hurry-up-and-clean-before-the- cleaning-lady-comes-tomorrow scramble.)

9:30a.m. Arrive at the local courts for my tennis match. I joined a league two months ago. A neighbor posted something on Facebook and Sam saw it. “You should respond!” he told me. 

I’ve lived in this neighborhood for four years. I recognize all the neighbors, say hello and make small talk, but have never connected with any of them on a deeper level, never have made any friends. I’m paired with Jenny, our team captain, arguably the best player on the team, and we lose 3-6, 5-7 to a couple of old ladies, so unassuming when they step onto the court. They’re like tortoises—slow, steady, smart. They actually aim the ball, while I just try to get the ball over the net and keep it in bounds. The funny thing about tennis is that I always feel like I’m winning even though I’m losing. 

12:15p.m. Move clothes from washer to dryer. Then foam roll and ice quads as I gossip to Sam about one of the ladies on my team. Before the match we all strolled onto a court while someone else was in the middle of a game. The man playing told us it wasn’t good tennis etiquette and Amy, from down the street, waited until he turned away and said, “Well you don’t have to be rude!”

“Amy… the quiet one??” Sam says. 

1:30p.m. Put Spotify Daily Mix 3 on the kitchen speaker and start to clean up from breakfast and prep dinner. My mind wanders to my morning with George and I quickly sit at the kitchen table at my laptop and write the details down. 

3:40p.m. Kids arrive home with Sam. I ask George for help. Can you vacuum the downstairs? He runs inside. He loves the vacuum. It’s something we only let him use sometimes, because it’s heavy and expensive and I don’t want him to drop it. 

4:00p.m. Make dinner. (Sam would like to point out here how “funny” it was that I chose a day in the life in which I made dinner, since I only cook one night a week, tops, because “I only do sides,” and it’s he who plans and executes every other night.) Pause when George has moved on from the vacuum and has started to whine. I have a new job for you. “Can you move all the books from the book bin to my bedroom?” 

“Why?” he asks. 

“Well, because…” I say, thinking. “I need to organize them.” 

4:30p.m. Eat with Sam at the kitchen table as we watch George pull the entire bin to the door of the bedroom. It slides slowly across the hardwood floor—it must be forty pounds—as he pants and heaves. When he reaches the bedroom he recruits Layla to help him take all the books out and spread them on the bedroom floor. 

4:45p.m. Upstairs we take measurements of George’s bedroom. We’ve decided to move them into the same room so we want to see how two twin beds would fit. George says he wants the beds next to each other so he can hold Layla’s hand when they sleep. 

4:55p.m. George whines while Sam and I discuss which direction to put the beds. I tell him I have a new job for him. Go downstairs, get all your toy trains and put them in the little plastic bin, and then call me. He runs downstairs and Layla follows. 

5:45p.m. Kids eat dinner. Sam sits at the table with them while I stand at the kitchen island, ready at the cutting board to deliver more strawberries, tortilla chips smeared with refried beans, and diced chicken. No one asks for more chicken. 

6:15p.m. The bedtime blur of jammies, potty, brushing teeth, books, potty again, then stories about when I was a kid—tonight George asks about Christmas morning and sitting at the top of the steps. 

8:15p.m. Walk into my bedroom and see all the books spread across the floor. “Dammit,” I say, having forgotten this was my doing. I put the bin back in the living room and begin to put all the books back. George appears at the bottom of the stairs, his fingers in his mouth. “What are you doing down here?” I say. He giggles. He’s never come downstairs after bedtime. “Help me put all these books away,” I say. He runs back and forth eight times between the rooms, carrying three or four at a time and dumping them at my feet. He’s smiley and sweaty. 

8:30p.m. Tuck George in for the fourth time. 

8:45p.m. Get in bed, read Long Live The Tribe Of Fatherless Girls.  

8:56p.m. “Papa?” From his office down the hall I hear Sam respond, “What?” 

“Can you put me to bed?” George says. 

“Bud…” I hear the swivel of Sam’s chair, then his voice louder in the hallway. “Mama put you to bed four times already. This is the last time.”

9:30p.m. Turn off the light.

***

4:30.a.m. Alarm goes off. Hit snooze and lay there with my eyes closed for five minutes. Brush teeth, pour cold coffee with cashew milk. 

4:45a.m. Enter the library with my coffee, glass of water, and laptop. Sam is already up, sitting at his desk in his office. I whisper, “Morning,” and he waves back. I sit in the blue chair with my feet up on the matching blue ottoman and open my laptop. 

I put the baby monitor on low. The kids sleep. I don’t worry about them waking up, don’t worry about my to-do list, don’t worry about email. I used to wake up when George woke up. My mornings were frantic and frenzied and from the very start I worried I wouldn’t have enough time to write. 

It was Sam who started to wake up at 4:00a.m., sometimes 3:00a.m., because he couldn’t sleep. You’re insane! I told him. Just rest your eyes. You’ll fall back to sleep eventually. But then I’d be standing in the kitchen with him at 7:00a.m. while the kids ate breakfast and he’d have this goofy smile on his face and say how much work he got done, how amazing his morning had been. 

From then on, when I’d toss and turn in the early morning hours and notice he wasn’t in bed, when I’d see the warm glow of the kitchen and hear the sound of ceramic touching counter top, I’d feel a tiny surge of adrenaline and want to know what those mornings without kids were all about it. So now I write before the day begins. 

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Until next week,

Charlie