Rickenbacker.
It's just on eight o'clock here. Both the girls are asleep. The husband is well out the door. I am wearing my new birthday slippers (and they rock) and drinking coffee that is hot. Not cold coffee as is usually the case. Not even lukewarm coffee, which is the kind I am so thankful to get on Saturdays when my mister is home to help. But hot, just-about-burn-your-tongue-but-still-perfect-for-drinking coffee.
It is quiet and still. Even the cat, a dim gray mass in the dim gray light, is not moving. The trees are still. The moss is the only thing I see in motion. It's swaying just the barest bit with some hushed and invisible wind. I think it's warm outside, but I haven't touched the glass yet to see.
Last night took it out of me. Three nights in a row of good sleep and then bam. Ya go to bed expecting another bit of the same stuff, but instead you get something different - something new - something requiring more than the few, small drops of energy you saved up for a 'just in case'.
Now, I sit here, alone in the morning, drinking my hot coffee, thankful for just these few minutes before the storm of the day. I feel a mix of readiness. On one hand, my head feels like it used to feel many, many, many nights ago after those combo rounds of kamikazes & miller lights: warm and thudding. My eyes hurt in the same fashion. And my muscles are all cramped up from trying to sleep while curling my body around and between the tiniest member of the family and her daddy without bothering either of them ( ... again I ask myself, why didn't we get the king bed? ...). On the other hand, it is quiet here. And my coffee is hot, hot, hot. These few minutes of aloneness, of solitude, of silence and stillness - help and blessing - gird me up for the next hours.
In a few minutes, I'll hear the familiar tap on the wall - the one that signals the waking of girl-the-elder. It's the sound of her bumping her aquarium into the corner as she turns it on for music while she lies in bed 'reading'. It still amazes me that at nearly four, she does not get out of bed until we come get her.
Moments after that, her warm little face will be buried in my neck, and she'll ask me if her daddy's here and can we go get her sister. We'll debate the merits of removing her socks and whether or not she can strip and put on a dress before breakfast, and then we'll make our way to the table for her traditional big girl bowl of cheerios and m&ms. And then we're off.
I know how the remaining hours will go. Not to the details, mind you. But the day-to-day activities are more often than not, pretty much the same. I suppose that's what all the professional moms call having a capital 'S' Schedule. That isn't a place I ever thought I'd willingly be ... the Scheduled mother. Especially in light of the fact that the me that is me when I'm not being mama or wife absolutely detests those things. And yet, here is me, here is the she who knows how it will go down for the next nine hours.
But, my coffee is hot. And I'm still drinking it. And I've had a moment to sit and read and write and be the me that has a moment to stop and contemplate the things I love, to watch the moss swing the tiniest of swings, to pretend that the gray of the day will translate into a warm blue, to think about what I'm going to do with the first round of baby clothes my little ones outgrown, to think for a moment about what we could eat for dinner.
These things are good. And despite the pain left radiating through my eyebrows from a hard-night's-daybreak, I'm feeling like I can make it through.
Here's to it, and feeling all right.
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balance,
family,
thinking
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