Forever, when preschool teachers and pediatricians and even my grandmother, who held a PhD and worked as the superintendent of a school district, said: “If there’s one thing you can do for your kids, it’s read to them,” I could say, I do.
That is the one thing I do.
Even in the worst of my drinking days, I have always read my sons a book before bed.
Once, just after my first husband and I separated, I took a vacation alone to the Outer Banks and drank bloody Mary’s and beer and wine and bought souvenirs after visiting the Wright Brothers museum at Kitty Hawk, but I still called and from my Air B&B room on the beach, I read to them that night. Oozey Octopus, in fact. The Tale of a Clever Critter. They still like that one.
It is the one thing I am completely confident in my parenting. I also tend to offer them fruit.
My boys and I are all particularly fond of this story tradition.
The Berenstain Bears are my favorite. Our favorite. This comes to bite me in the ass sometimes, because the Berenstain Bears books are quite long.
My favorite is The Berenstain Bears and the Truth.
Say the author, Llew reminds me.
The Berenstain Bears and the Truth, I say.
The Berenstain Bears and the Truth, I say again, turning the page. By Stan and Jan Berenstain.
The baby, Cade, who really isn’t a baby anymore at 5 years old, and anyway, I have another baby, tries to climb on top of me, too. He looks for his book. His book is The Very Hungry Caterpillar. Thank God, I think, a shorter book. A board book.
Read mine next, Cooper says, handing me The Berenstain Bears Forgot their Manners.
I begin to read the book, trying to skip some parts, as I’m tired even if they’re not, but Llew stops me.
What about the pushing without an excuse me, he asks.
So I begin again, including Brother pushing Sister, without an excuse me.
Llew puts his head on my shoulder. I tousle his hair. His twin, Cooper, is under a weighted blanket that he calls “his heavy blanket.” He has his tongue just out of his mouth, a thing that indicates he is beyond exhausted. He’s like a butterball turkey, my ex-husband used to say. That means he’s done.
Sometimes I will snap at my second husband.
“God dammit,” I’ll say to him, sharply.
I don’t mean it, of course, and I try not to speak this way, but. One too many children tugged at my ankles, one too many Cheez-It’s has been crushed into the couch, I have realized I would rather go barefoot in a gas station bathroom than the boys’ bathroom. Any one of these things and I just get grumpy.
Overstimulated, I suppose. I behave, as I say to the children, like a grumpasaurous.
My husband is genuinely hurt when I do this, although he is learning that my moods are sometimes just moods, that they have nothing to do with him, and I am working on it, and it’s hard now that I’ve quit smoking cigarettes too.
The snapping is often over nothing.
“This is how I speak to the kindest man in the world,” I say, my hand on his face, touching his beard. “I am sorry.”
It has to do with my drinking, I say to him, after snapping about feeling frustrated with my boys fighting in line at taekwondo, after I realize I have misidentified a tree, after I become confused that we were supposed to eat dinner at my mother’s on 4th of July and not just have snacks, after I see the baby has scratched her face which must mean I clipped her nails into little razor blades.
I can’t explain why, I say to him. But it just does.
He nods, and is patient and kind, and I am fortunate to have him.
But this itch, this sudden flash of anger, this pissed off’edness. Where is it coming from? I try to force a solution, come up empty handed.
Inadequacy, I suppose?
I am approaching two years sober. The days continue to tick by, to collect. I rarely think of my day count, anymore, except when the well-meaning app on my phone tells me I ought to celebrate. Most recently this was 600 days.
I try to practice my daily gratitude. To whatever force makes the sun rise and set, I say please in the morning, and thank you at night.
My sons’ health, I always think. Having a kind and loving mother, is another.
There was a time, not so long ago, that I would sometimes wake in a start.
My boys, I’d think, opening my eyes, gripped in fear. The three of them tended to end up in my bed in those days.
When did you get here, I might have wondered. And thinking back on the night before:
I had them in the tub. I was drinking wine. I put them in Jammie’s and went room to room, reading their books.
Cooper used to take my face in his hands and say, Let me give you kisses. I’ll count.
Let’s do, he would hold his finger up, looking around, thinking. Ten!
And then he would kiss my cheek, counting to ten.
Free, it used to sound like, when he would say three.
My memory is slippery, even still, but as I recall it, I could always remember this. Sometimes between there and the door, though, turning out their light. There would just be a little patch missing, like I had burned a little bit of film with a lighter. Just a little patch missing. You could still mostly make it out.
It’s different today.
I stand at my sons’ doorway.
So much of what I can’t control is imploding around me, folding in on itself, wave after wave. Quicksand.
Goodnight, I say. I love you. And I remember turning out their lights. The full reel. All the film, out in front of me, even and especially the parts I don’t care for.
And so. All is right - which is not to say well - in the world.
“Goodnight, I say. I love you. And I remember turning out their lights. The full reel. All the film, out in front of me, even and especially the parts I don’t care for.
And so. All is right - which is not to say well - in the world.”
Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful!