Your Turn By KELLY H. JOHNSON
P.O.W.
When Parenting Secrets Get Revealed
“So, what
do you do?” she asks. And
thus an essay is born.
I am a barely functioning mother of four and have been for a good
many years now. My dysfunction is largely due to the fact that all of my
kids are what I will generously call “night people.”
Based on the age of my oldest child, I estimate I haven’t had a good
night’s sleep since about 1994.
Last night my two youngest children woke up every hour on the hour, like
tandem alarm clocks gone mad, and it has left me tired to the point of
feeling just the slightest bit deranged. I try to keep hold of all the
details I know I will need to get through the day, but I can already
feel them escaping, like leaves off the back of a fast-moving truck.
This is nothing new. I actually keep a note taped to
the inside of my car that says, “Count Your Children!” And I do. Every
time I get in or out of the car and each time I leave a store. That is
how unglued I feel—like it is possible I might drive off from somewhere
without one of them.
My friends insist I’m perfectly normal; however, evidence to the
contrary continues to mount: to wit, I forgot to buy my children
costumes for Halloween, I’ve lost my son’s book report—twice—and
yesterday I almost took the antibiotics prescribed for the cat.
These things strike me as being a little to the left of normal. At the
very least, they seem to be the sorts of things most folks manage to
avoid.
This past Christmas, I pulled off a real doozy—one for the record
books. It was mid-December and, with my son’s kindergarten music program
less than a week away, I decided it was probably time to dig through the
mountain of papers that had accumulated on my kitchen counter and find
the newsletter his teacher had sent home weeks earlier.
I gave it a quick read, taking note of the reminder to “dress the
children appropriately” for the show.
“A bit vague,” I thought, but I dug around and found some dark blue
pants and a bright red shirt with a navy collar for my son to wear.
I arrived at school on the big day with his younger siblings in tow. We
nabbed three seats in the first row and I settled back to enjoy some
priceless holiday entertainment.
But when the pint-size performers began to file in, my anticipation
turned to horror. One by one they came, some tall, some short, some
blonde, some brunette, but all of them sporting crisp, white shirts.
Correction—all of them, except one.
For the next 30 (excruciating) minutes, I watched my son sing his heart
out on stage—a lone figure in bright red against an unrelenting sea of
white.
I called my dad when I got home, ready to throw in
the towel. “I’m too damn tired to think straight!” I whined into the
phone.
A retired Navy Captain, he said not to feel bad, that sleep deprivation
was real and was used routinely by the military to wear prisoners down
during war-time interrogations.
“We must have the whole world’s secrets by now,” I joked. But the truth
was, it felt like the world had just uncovered all of my secrets, as
though my every shortcoming had been laid bare in front of this army of
parents and their ivory-clad minions.
With no relief in sight, I did what any semi-sane mother would have
done. I surrendered to my three benevolent captors and their red-shirted
leader in hopes that I could negotiate for a nap.
Kelly H. Johnson stays awake in the West End of Richmond with her
husband, Fred, and their children.
