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Sometimes in the silence just after the girls have gone to sleep, the lack of noise, the deafening call of my name ad infinitum suddenly over, I feel the solitude the most. Not because I am missing the girls, they are right in front of me sleeping like angels on clouds. It is because it feels like the spooky quiet after a really great concert. The energy, the pulsating heat going through and around my body, and then stillness so eerie and otherworldly that I am sure I have been abducted by aliens, taken to another planet, and sent back to earth with some sort of message that I don't yet know. Maybe I don't even know the message is there but know I have missed some time that feels like forever but it's been just five minutes. My ears ring. My eyes dart around the room catching everything, even in total darkness. I feel like I don't quite belong to me. So I wait.
I rarely leave the girls' room and jump back into life. I don't get on the phone or watch TV or have a cocktail listening to music. I stay in the quiet. I might write or do something resembling meditation for the scribble minded (Scribble-minded being like the characters in Charles Schulz's Peanuts who had a bubble over their heads with scribble in it, usually in response to someone doing something strange or confusing. I always wondered if they were frustrated or just so overwhelmed with their own thoughts that they had no comment.), but I mostly try to regroup.
I know that I am suffering the effects of some sort of sensory manipulation. I know this because I jump at the phone ringing or hush anyone, everyone when I hear the girls crying, even though they are not crying. I wake up before they call me knowing they are about to call me. And they are always about to call me. I wince at the tiny frogs singing songs all night long in the garden because they disturb the silence. I don't have thoughts of killing them or anyone else for that matter, just dreams of calm, peace, love.
A good friend here said to me that it is not a problem to do all of the mommywifeystuffs. It is just being acknowledged or getting some love in return for all we try to provide. After a full 14 hours of kiddie/household time, walking into the silence of a quiet house should be a blessing, a slice of heaven. But for me, it has been so incredibly lonely. I miss myself the most in this quiet. It would probably be different if after a long day, I could retire with Didier at my side and we could watch movies, tell old stories, debate something, anything as we like to do. But most nights, I see him as I am about to close my eyes, too tired to discuss more than the passing inquiries about our days. Only something extreme warrants further discussion and even then, we are both often too exhausted for words. So it waits until the morning when it has lost its impact, poignancy, or really relevance as new issues present themselves as the sun rises.
So I ask myself in the silence, if I know all that I have done in service to my family each day, but no one else does, did it really happen? If I do it everyday and my only witnesses are 4 years old and 18 months old, does it count? Is that enough? Should it be? It probably should be but I still want someone to tell me, when it is finally quiet, and I brought the quiet, that I did good. And there is no one.
(c) Copyright 2010. City Mom in the Jungle.
I have a lot of friends with two kids. Two girls. Two boys. A boy and a girl. Whatever the combination, every last one of the couples raising these cherubs is exhausted. My husband, who is definitely not known for his political correctness or holding his tongue once told a mother at my daughter's school, a woman with four children, that she was crazy. That four was too much. He said it in English and French, he was so serious about it. She spoke English and French and looked at him aghast. I am certainly not telling anyone else what to do with their time or their energy or their family planning budget, but I do know, that in the Penn-Virot household, these two people are enough.
I suppose that I cannot be surprised that two girls of mine love a little chatter, but man, these two have my eyeballs busting out of my head. Between that and the nonstop cleaning, flash cards, extra activities, trying to remember all the characters from all their favorite programming, recognizing all the squiggly animals from the daily drawing pad, breaking up fights, (Yes, between a 4 year old and an 18-month old, usually over a toy or a pen or a silly band), watching all the cartwheels, dance moves, rolls, fast "hopscotching," jumps on the couch, off the couch, you get the picture, I just don't have anything more to give. Add to that the management of the finances, payment of household bills, school, and extracurriculars, laundry, housecleaning, and all that entails and one wonders how we have even done so well with the two!
And yet, people ask, "Do you want to try for the boy?" "Virginie is getting so big, would you have one more?" If I were still in New York, I am sure the answer would be something along the lines of "Hell to the naw!" TRY for the boy? Like I am playing skeeball and if I get it in the top circle we got it?! I don't think I ever got it in the top circle! It's not a risk I am willing to take. But here in Barbados, when asked, I find myself saying things like, "Well, if it is God's intention," or "I would have to take another baby as a gift." But that is mostly because I really don't think God is trying to see that through. He knows I am doing my best with the girlies I got now. I know that I, armed with my 28-day, do not intend to chance it. Frankly, I think we need another solution. Even the pill is only 99% effective and I am soon to be 41 years old. After a week without power and two little girls boa constrictor-wrapped around my head and neck and shoulders and waist and ankles, I just can't imagine that I would not be institutionalized should another wee one make his or her way to our abode. I seem to be teetering on the line as it is.
I was starting to get worn down. Very little sleep at night, followed by hot and humid days that quickly faded into dark nights. Nothing seemed normal and as the mom, I was meant to provide the normal. It is in spots like this that I usually begin to fade. I am just not that good at it. I like comfort. I don't really have that Pollyanna, make lemonade, sunshine that my smile belies. I am exhausted. Short-tempered. Hot. I just want a break, but I don't want Lily and Virginie to feel the stress of my fatigue and angst. I am still not quite sure if I am succeeding in this department. I know I am trying, but they see the cracks. I can tell when Lily tells me, "Thank you," when I tell her I love her more than anything in the world. I know it when they run back into place when they see me coming down the hallway. I know it when Lily asks if I hurt myself and then tries to kiss wherever it hurts and she figures everywhere.
My friend Wendy, God bless her for certain, has me come over and do some laundry, have lunch with her and her family as Lily has been called back into school. Somewhere in the middle of all this, I start driving and take the car and drive over there. I am nervous, of course, but it is different without Didier in the car giving me Formula One, rather than regular road tips. I manage to make it over there safely and not too slowly either, I might add. I do not think I qualify as a "snail," what Didier likes to call most of the drivers on the road here, but I did not try to pass everyone on the West Coast Autobahn either. There is a balance.
The afternoon is lovely and when Lily is dropped off by another angel friend at Wendy's, I leave her there for a swim with her friends and take Virginie back to the house to gather a few things. Plans have changed. A break in our future. We are to stay at the hotel, which too has no power officially, but a generator. We stay in a small room with air conditioning, television, hot running water, a bathtub, and a king-sized bed with cool sheets. We stay for two days until the power is restored at home. It is a small piece of heaven and a reminder of the fact that I am just not hardcore.
When I allowed myself to feel, really let sink in, the fact that many, probably most on the planet do not enjoy the comforts that we take for granted, take as a given, I felt ashamed. Really. We endured living with no power for all of three days before we could not take it any more. I thought I would kill Didier just because of fatigue and stress, and heat exhaustion. The girls clung to me with their humid little naked bodies and whined about the heat and the dark and I lashed out cruelly. I begged them to be quiet, to give me some peace when they were just confused and hot and tired too. We had water. It never stopped flowing at our home, but many, even friends who had electricity, lost their water. We had gas to cook with. The house was strong and sturdy and kept us protected from the elements. We had each other. Lamps. Batteries. Candles. Mosquito repellent. And we were alive.
I'd thought about giving a play by play of all five days without power, but I think the reality is evident. It was not easy. It was scary and frustrating and confusing. But it all came back and life is back to normal. We are truly blessed and fortunate. Many in Barbados, but especially in neighboring islands, St. Lucia and St. Vincent, suffered devastating losses and as they do not register with much of the First World as destinations for respite and hedonistic tourism, no one is talking about what they have suffered, continue to suffer. I may whine, sometimes often, but I do count my blessings. Sometimes one has to come up against a hard time, a disaster with no one to blame, to see them, the blessings I mean, swarming and keeping you safe.
(c) Copyright 2010. City Mom in the Jungle.
