Sometimes I think the pattern of my day is like a medieval morality play. It is not always easy getting out of bed before 5am on a regular, responsible basis. But once I get moving my optimism wakes up, and by mid-day, I'm not only tackling whatever life is chucking at me, I'm also thinking of the many important things I'll accomplish at the end of the day, once the kids are happily asleep. Things above and beyond folding the laundry, I mean.
But somewhere around seven pm, I feel my strength start to leach away. I mean, it just goes. I understand how a vampire feels when the pre-dawn glow is beginning to dim the stars. The roosters are stirring. Time is short. Panic sets in.
I try to pace myself and stay calm, because some part of me is still alert enough to know that yelling, "Go to bed NOW!" to my kids will only backfire. Children sense when you're in a hurry. The more quickly you need them to move, the proportionally slower they become, with more toothbrushes dropping into bathroom dust bunnies , and more time deciding which book is really the one they want to have read to them.
You'd think there'd be some deep, deep animal instinct left over from when early humans roamed the earth in groups and it was the stragglers that got picked off first. You'd think that children would sense the importance of keeping up with the group, but as any trip to any amusement park in the world will show, if there is such an instinct, it's dormant in children and only awake in parents and goat herders. That's what those kid leashes are all about. That's what dragging the toddler from the wrist is all about.
But I digress.
What I mean to say is that come 7:15pm, I know I can't deplete what I have left of my energy by doing anything to slow the children down, such as suggesting they each take a 30 second bath. And I just start to pray that I won't fall asleep yet again reading the bedtime story. Even "Good Night Moon" can start to sound like a surrealist poem when I'm at that stage.
Goodnight room
Goodnight moon
Penguins purple top bling fullstop amoeba current under
("Mommy! Wake up!")
Goodnight stars
Goodnight air
linoleum overeasy ash dungbeetle biddybiddy doowapwapp
("Mommy!")
Why a medieval morality play? Because I wonder if my day is like an allegory of my life. I fear that I'll reach some ripe old age and all of the coffee and best intensions in the world won't be enough to allow me to finish my life's work before I’m sapped of energy. I fear that I’m somewhere around 3:50pm and only think I’ll publish a book of poems or run a marathon or travel the world when in fact, I’ll only manage a few more things before I trip over my walker and end up in a bed eating tapioca pudding (which I hate), mumbling, “Good night noises sprinkler lick motorcross spiddyboo everywhere.”
