Once in a blue moon Havana wakes up with a scream. Her subconscious is probably processing some aspect of her mad life as a 3-year old. As I enter her room and sit down bedside, with a gentle pat on the back she will often roll over and head back to her dreams. Other times she will already have begun to semi-coherently describe her dream to me. Then mid-sentence she'd turn over and return to scene that first woke her.
Crazier dreams no doubt emanate from Havana's 11-month old sister. Ilyana, unfortunately, will probably never be able to verify the visual contents of her slumber. Most likely she dreams of crawling, of standing, and the classic dreambreaker: of falling. Either way: when she wakes she wants only one thing. Ilyana’s demanding March to drink from her mother’s font every 3 hours remains unimpeded.
One night some 5 or 6 months ago her parents celebrated Ilyana’s first full night of unbroken sleep. We celebrated without full force, aware that worshiping the false god of the return of deep sleep would likely be premature. But for a full day back in January of this year we were lighter on our feet and carelessly expended the energy that we wouldn't need for that next night of unbroken sleep. That next night never came. We instead returned to the real world of uneven, shallow sleep, lying in wait of that sweet primal scream. And like the sun and moon, it came. And one of us rose up from bedside, as if carrying the entire weight of a million years of evolution on our frames, and zombied into Ilyana's room.
Sometimes I wish I too could return to the days when I was unencumbered by social restraints and could let out my own primal scream. But it’s too late. I can’t go back. But that doesn’t prevent my envy that Ilyana can scream as loud and long as her lungs will bear. Unlike the emotionally restrained adult world, babies can emote without a care. But like all babies she can also go from terrifying screech to giggle within 10 or 15 seconds. And it’s all socially acceptable.
Of the thousands of parenting methods available on bookshelves in California, ours tends towards attachment parenting. While we do not let our kids sleep in our bed, nor hang off our bodies all day, moreso, we do not let them cry unattended nor do we view our children as an inconvenience to some notion of our “careers”. Parenting is an inconvenience and a pleasurable one. It is full of adversity and struggle, the ingredients that can add color to what may have been the greyness that went before. Our single goal beyond keeping the young ones fed, clothed and sheltered, is that we attempt to help them be somewhat emotionally secure. That’s it.
But goals come at costs and ours is that for the first 12 months, with the exception of one January night, we have not slept past four hours in one stretch.
While the demands of parenting constantly press down on us, we have managed to construct our weekends around ourselves as parents. We do the normal kid stuff: the zoo and the park. But all stands in shadow to our single weekend goal: that our two children’s afternoon naptimes coincide and that their parents get about 4 hours a week locked away in our own room. After all, as flight attendants remind us, when the air mask fall, you put yours on first, so that you can breath, then you’re in a place to help the tiny ones get the air that they need.
