It’s a Saturday night like so many other Saturday nights. The kids are tucked in. We neglected to have them pick up the family room before we headed out for dinner, so I’m trying to ignore the scattered puzzle pieces, Ninja Turtles, hacky sack, Storm Trooper, and...a few My Little Ponies? Which Suzannah has not really played with in quite some time, so I’m imagining all kinds of strange scenarios that required both a Storm Trooper and Rainbow Dash. They were doing this half-playing, half-movie-watching this afternoon while I took a nap.
I’m trying not to be annoyed by the cluttered state of things, because Matt made sure they were quiet this afternoon. And they were, although I’m not even sure it would have mattered. I made it through exactly half of my bowl of take-out pho after Suzannah’s track meet before I said, “I’m too tired to finish this, I think.” I spent last night chaperoning my school’s leadership lock-in, but unlike last year, I left around two. Suzannah and I needed to leave for her track meet at 7:30 this morning, and yes, I was made very aware of all the people who chaperone these all-night events and then waltz blurrily into the sunshine to have full weekends as well, but I am not as tough as all of those people and needed to grab a quick nap before spending three-and-a-half hours in the bleachers watching my kid run and cheer for her friends. There are some things that, tedious as they may seem to others, demand as much presence as I can give them, and my daughter’s track and field events fall into that category. That and driving us safely to and from said events.
I dozed on the couch for two hours. Matt was sick and coughing and I wanted to give him some space to rest well because I knew I wouldn’t be at my best today; also, I’m hoping to keep whatever hit him away. He doesn’t really understand when I do this, but when he gets sick it hits him for a day and it’s done, so he never goes out of his way to avoid me if I’m under the weather. If I get sick, I sniffle for a week and cough for three. On our way to dinner tonight I said, “I suppose it’s just your superior Minnesota genes or whatever,” and he was all, “What does Minnesota have to do with it?” and I was like, “UGH, nevermind.” Perhaps I needed more than a two-hour nap. We had this completely absurd argument at two o’clock this morning in which I was all, “I might just stay up and clean the kitchen,” and he was like, “That’s ridiculous, I’ll clean it tomorrow,” but I really was thinking of popping in an episode of Friends and doing the dishes. I was tired when I drove home in the middle of the night, but adrenaline or my endlessly churning brain made it difficult to fall asleep.
It was a good night, though. I was so proud of the kids who ran the lock-in, of the way they treated each other. I watched a senior girl quietly talk a sobbing freshman through a moment of drama. I watched kids talk about some tough things with classmates they might not normally notice. I had my own assumptions challenged, which, I think, is so important for all of us, and it’s something that happens all the time in my job (and I pray, really pray, to stay open to having my assumptions challenged until I can stop making them altogether). I listened to kids talk really honestly about the effects of social media in their lives, and I thought about how depressed it makes me to see people in their screens instead of in the world, and I talked about how our courtesy hasn’t kept up with our technology, how we consume people’s lives like they’re ours for the taking, and we neglect the human beings sitting next to us in favor of disappearing into a screen. We find it excruciating to just be in the world, awkward silences and fresh air and traffic and humanity roiling all around us. We forget that on the other end of our online comments are people. We think a text is more important than the person we’re eating lunch with. Also, I am so crazily grateful that social media didn’t exist when I was in high school. And at the same time, I think that when they're faced with the tough questions, kids tackle them with a fierce honesty and awareness that adults sometimes lack. To hear a teenager say, “Put down your phone and look at people” is a beautiful, powerful thing.
And after all that, there was pizza and chicken baseball (it’s awesome and weird, just like it sounds) and watching teenagers set up volleyball nets in the middle of the night and it was all kind of beautiful. Two of the girls walked me out to my car when I left, hugged me, and told me to drive safely. I drove home singing, my car the only one on the road. Two o’clock in the morning is a strange time to be going somewhere. Even Pacific Highway is nearly deserted. Driving the winding road that leads to my house I notice one or two houses with lights on, and I wonder who else is awake at this hour. Are they anxious, are they night owls, are they okay.
I woke again before dawn, tip-toed into my daughter’s room and laid her track clothes on her bed. Toasted a piece of bread. I like eggs and greens in the morning these days, and Matt offered to cook one for me, but I know how fast the stadium fills on track meet days and Suzannah’s event was first at the practice meet. Suzannah and I headed out at 7:30, and by the time I settled into the stands with her to wait for the third grade girls 400 meter run I felt pretty good. Awake. Content to sit and enjoy the sunshine. Matt and Isaac arrived. Suzannah’s auntie Morgan arrived. Matt bought me a hot chocolate and a little bucket of popcorn, which was exactly what I wanted at eight o’clock this morning. We watched our girl run. She was beautiful. She ran the whole thing.
She also ran the 100 meter and did the softball throw. Isaac was mostly a good sport about all the hanging around.
I picked up pho on the way home, which always lulls me into a nap. I was worried I wouldn’t be able to fall asleep in the middle of the day, but as it turned out, I needn’t have. I pushed my lunch across the table to Matt and crawled into bed. Sometime during the next two hours, Matt mowed the lawn, turned the kids loose in the yard, ran a bath for Suzannah, and set them up with a movie. When I crawled out of the bedroom two hours later I felt disoriented, sluggish, and hungry. I showered, which made me feel a little more human, and we headed out for dinner. A cozy, normal Saturday night.
I’m reading good books -- Fourth of July Creek and The Chronology of Water are so good they take my breath away, literally. I’m writing. I’m taking another class with Ariel Gore and learning from the best while reading really good work; the chemistry of this class feels so great. (It’s never been less than awesome, but there’s something about this group.) I’m teaching. Suzannah is running, running, running. She is doing things in gymnastics she couldn’t do a year ago, or even in January. Isaac is looking forward to his own gymnastics class this summer, but in the meantime, he is happy to be five years old, to play with his buddies, to talk about gross things every chance he gets. To color and run and fiddle and be. Suzannah is cruising through the sixth Harry Potter book, which I did not anticipate, but I cannot, will not, would not hold her back. Our dog snorts and snuffles and gets annoying bladder infections or ear infections and requires eye drops and belly wipes but is my best Sunday afternoon nap companion, settling into the bend of my knees when I curl on the couch, and I pat her soft old head and scratch her ears.
I think that when I started writing tonight I had some grand idea in my sleepy brain about what I wanted to say, because I have so many Big Ideas, but I’ve hit a wall after a night of strange hours and a day of strange eating, and soon it’s going to be one of those Saturday nights when I fall asleep on the couch and have to be prodded into bed.
Go gentle, friends. Sleep well.
