A shout out to single parents

So S is out of town for a brief stint, and I'm responsible for taking care of the little urchin on my own for a while. And even though that's not entirely unusual as I take care of lil s a couple days a week, for some reason, it being a weekend or something, I was struck by just how much work it is to take care of a child. Naturally she refused to take a nap, insisting that it was perfectly fine to just stay up all day creating a tornado in the living room. This new toddler phase seems to include more swaths of destruction than the earlier and less mobile phases. I'd have taken a picture of the room as she left it, but I was afraid I'd give up on parenting for good. Why get down one book when you can get down seven?

So yeah, I lasted about six hours. And, the thing that's tough, is that you don't get any time for yourself, particularly with the no napping thing. No watching football or curling up to read a book. I could check scores on the computer, but it's not exactly kosher to just read a book while she chews on lamp cords or read a book while she sneaks up the stairs, smiling the entire way. Anyhow, I'm glad I usually have a second on the weekends, enough so that I can squeeze in maybe twenty pages of a book or half of a game, you know, those little things that keep you sane. This is not to say that lil s is no fun. She was a little bundle of joy wandering around the house smiling and carrying her winter hat, occasionally passing the cute pink thing off to me, so I could put it on my head, which she found endlessly amusing. Or stealing my hat and wearing it for a second with her dimpled smile, two bottom teeth protruding. The point is, she's wonderful. However, you lose any semblance of time that is your own. So, I just wanted to raise a glass, or two, I definitely drank some wine after she went to bed, to all the single parents, or just parents in general out there, keep on keepin on.



I used to be afraid of the dark. No, afraid is probably an understatement. I was terrified. I would lie in bed and imagine the extravagant ways that people might access my bedroom, what exactly I'd do if they approached. Debated the merits of pretending to sleep vs. hiding under the bed. I used to choose to sleep on the farthest side of the bed from the door when I slept in a new place. The theory being, murders are likely to take the first person they come to, and I'd prefer that I was the second.

You'd think that the years of watching G.I. Joe, Transformers, and HeMan would have made me into a person built of sterner stuff. It seems now, in hindsight, that I should have armed myself with a plastic sword, slept with it on my back, and known full well that if trouble arose I'd deal with it instantly. Unfortunately, my imagination was too acute for that. It understood that if worse came to worse there would be no hope.

The first night I feel asleep without the light on was an accident. I don't remember how old I was, but I imagine that I was ten or so. I woke up in the morning, shocked to find myself not whisked away by Dracula in the middle of the night. For years I'd turn the light on in my bedroom and then sleep in the hallway between the bedrooms of my mother and brother. Surely one of them would protect me if something ever went wrong.

I suppose now I should connect dots, figure out exactly what went wrong that made a little boy so afraid to sleep in his own room. But I'm alone tonight, and I don't want my mind to wander too far. This house is old. It creaks. And this mind, at times, can still be young and imaginative.