Signs of Life (19 page)
Authors: Natalie Taylor
Josh would not want me to be sad on New Year’s Eve. And I shouldn’t be. I may be sad, I may be exhausted beyond repair, and yet I am extremely fortunate. I have a warm home. I have food to eat. I have friends and family. But most important, more important than anything else on the entire planet, I have a fat baby.
He too was completely covered with dust; he dragged around with him on his back and along his sides fluff and hairs and scraps of food; his indifference to everything was much too deep for him to have gotten on his back and scrubbed himself clean against the carpet.
—
FRANZ KAFKA,
THE METAMORPHOSIS
even
though I’m not back at school, I know exactly where my students are in the semester. Right now my eleventh-graders are reading
The Metamorphosis
. One day Gregor, the main character, wakes up to find he is a giant bug with no identity. I am a giant bug in a blue bathrobe and extra-large sweatpants—who breast-feeds—with no identity. My FMG tells me this is a normal feeling. She says it may last for the next eighteen years, except the breast-feeding part, of course. “The milk becomes a metaphor,” she says as she yawns. “Didn’t you ever read
The Giving Tree
?”
Ads writes me an e-mail asking me something along the
lines of “How are things going?” Hmmm … This is my response:
I write these lines in a hurry. I have just set Kai down in our fourth attempt for a nap since he awoke at eight this morning. He is already stirring again. I did not take my bathrobe off until noon today even though I am well aware that the bathrobe is not an option for the answer to the question “What should I wear today?” I am fully aware that the bathrobe is simply an article of clothing that was designed to get one from the bathroom to the bedroom without the hassle of clothing but with more coverage than a towel. However, this morning I literally did not have the three minutes it takes to get dressed. Between the dogs and Kai, all I had time for was to make a cup of coffee, and in my world of four hours of sleep a night, coffee trumps everything. So, around noon I set Kai down for a nap and I take off all of my clothes, so there I am, in my bra and underwear, standing in front of the closet, looking at what to wear. Before I can open the drawer and pull out a pair of black “yoga” pants from my stockpile of “yoga” pants (I tell myself they are yoga pants because I can’t handle the fact that I wear stretch pants every day. I told myself I wouldn’t be the mom who wears stretch pants every day … but I do wear them every day, so I call them “yoga” pants even though I have never worn them to do yoga. Actually, I have never even done yoga). So before I can even put my yoga pants on, Kai starts to cry. He wakes up within one minute of being set down. So I pick him up in my bra and underwear and start to rock him. And by rock him I mean I start doing squats in my bedroom. Next thing I know, Louise is barking insanely at the front window. She does not stop. Finally, I go out and see the Consumers Energy truck and the Consumers Energy guy looks up and gets the surprise of his life with me in my bra and underwear. I yell at Louise. She ignores me. Kai is still crying. Finally, I bark at the girls to get into their crate. I squat for another twenty minutes (for some reason this is the only way I can get Kai to fall asleep)—which doesn’t
seem like a lot when you read it, but go try and squat for twenty minutes. Go and try it, and I’ll even be generous with you and you can hold a ten-pound weight, even though Kai is probably more like fourteen. Finally, he falls asleep. I get dressed. I put on black yoga pants, a fleece sweatshirt, and my slippers. Is this any better than a bathrobe? This is my life and there was a time when I would have thought this was a crazy person’s life.
I remember a time period when I judged moms. I was annoyed at moms who complained. Remember how I cursed that book I was reading about a stay-at-home mom who dared to whine about her stay-at-home-mom life? Now, as a mom who doesn’t sleep or get dressed on a consistent basis because I don’t have the time or energy, I am in awe that there was once a point in my life when I could actually read a book. More important, I am sorry I said those things and thought those things. I didn’t know. I wasn’t a part of the club yet. I just want to take a moment to say I’m sorry. At the time I cursed all of you, I wasn’t a mom. Now that I am one, I know all the secrets. I am now one of you and this job is not easy. I didn’t mean it.
I remember last January, when I didn’t know I was pregnant yet, I returned to work after our two-week winter break. I asked my co-worker, Susan, how her vacation was. Susan has three children: four years, two years, and nine months. “Vacation?” she said. “I didn’t get a
vacation.
” She said that every minute of her time away from work was taken up with fulfilling the requests of someone else: her children, her husband, her in-laws, and her parents. She went on to explain that Christmas Eve was the worst. She didn’t want to go to church. The kids were tired, she was tired, and she still had presents to wrap. But her husband insisted that they go as a family. So the five of them went to a full Catholic Christmas Eve service. “I sat in the pew
thinking,
This is why Gregor turned into a bug.
” She ended by saying that she was overjoyed to come back to work.
At the time, I thought Susan was being a little dramatic. Now, as I run around the house with
one
child, I get it. I am turning into a bug at an alarming rate. I feel like my brain is diminishing. My memory, my patience, my ability to put logical thoughts in order—everything is slowly leaking out.
At the same time, however, even in the midst of this sleep-deprived, emotionally unstable place, there are certain parts of me that have sharpened immensely.
Sharpened
doesn’t even quite capture my capabilities. On one hand, I can’t even get myself dressed, and on the other hand I’m suddenly superhuman.
For example, you could take any object in the house and give it to the dogs and have them slap it against the hardwood floor and from two rooms away I could tell you what object they had in their mouths. Thus far I have been able to identify Kai’s pacifiers, their sea-ray chew toy, my slipper, a diaper, one of Kai’s socks, one of my socks (Bug treats them very differently), my flip-flops, and dozens of other items. Honestly, you could blindfold me and sit me in the bedroom and let them roam free and the second they had something they weren’t supposed to have, I would know.
The other day I was rocking Kai in my bedroom (which is at the back of the house), and while we were watching
American Idol
, I heard a noise that was not in my registry of normal house noises. I walked to the front of the house, suspecting that the humidifier might be malfunctioning or perhaps a toilet was running. I walked to the bay windows and discovered the source. My neighbor, on the other side of the street and two houses down, was snowblowing his sidewalk. Kai and I returned to my bedroom. Noise identified. Classification: harmless.
In addition to improving my auditory identification skills, I
have also developed strange talents that I did not have as a nonmother. They are as follows: (1) When Kai wakes up in the middle of the night, I know what time it is without looking at the clock, and he wakes up at a different time every night. (2) Without looking at the humidifiers (there are two in the house), I can
sense
when they need to be refilled. (3) If someone (say, my overbearing sister-in-law) changes the thermostat by
one
degree, I know in an instant. (4) If you handed me an empty container of any depth, width, or shape, I could pour you eight ounces of water almost on the dot. (5) I can tell snot color, quantity, and consistency just by the sound Kai makes when he sneezes.
Now that I’m a mom, I’m some weird spawn of a human. Franz Kafka, you think you know what a metamorphosis looks like? I got news for you. You don’t.
• • •
Ashley is going through the guest bedroom on her continual quest to identify baby clothes and products that I haven’t used yet. There is a stack of clothes on top of the Boppy swing. I walk in to see what she is doing. She holds up my purple sweatshirt revealing the buried Boppy swing and says, “Did you know this was in here?” (Subtext: “It’s a good thing you have me to go rifling through piles of shit in your house or else you may lose track of things.” Dialogue she will later have with Deedee: “I mean, Mom, have you
seen
her house? She’s got stacks of clothes in every room and she doesn’t even know they’re there.” They’ll have a long talk about how disorganized I am and how badly they just want to come in and rearrange things themselves. If I don’t watch myself, this will actually happen someday.) I take the sweatshirt and say, “Yeah, thanks.” She picks up the Boppy swing. The following conversation takes place:
ME:
Ash, what are you doing?
ASH:
Well, I was just looking for this Boppy swing because you know how he likes the big movement of you rocking him, and I am wondering if this will help him go to sleep.
ME:
Yeah.
ASH:
Does it help him fall asleep?
ME:
It did a couple times.
ASH:
Then why is it in here under a pile of clothes?
ME:
I tried the swing a couple of times, but then it broke.
(What I want to say:) Ashley! Do you
really
think that if I found the secret trick to helping my son sleep—remember, I am completely sleep-deprived on a daily basis—I would put it in the guest room under a pile of clothes? All this time I’ve been looking for something to help Kai sleep and
here it is
! The magic swing is sitting right here in the guest bedroom! Holy shit, you’ve solved the fucking puzzle to it all!
This is it!
This is the
answer
! This is fucking Rosebud right here under our noses! I am so stupid! We might as well get the adoption papers ready because clearly you are the smarter mother (even though you’re
not
a mother)!
ASH:
What do you mean? (Her tone clearly says she thinks I simply do not know how to use the Boppy swing. She begins to fiddle with it as if I am not intelligent enough to operate the swing. She thinks she can fix it.) What happened to it?
(
SIDE NOTE:
The Boppy swing runs on three C batteries, but the contraption itself is a piece of shit. It’s difficult to get the battery pack in and out of its holder. After a few uses, the swing stopped working. I tried putting in new batteries, but nothing happened. After wrestling with the battery pack four or five times I decided that the Boppy swing would not get the best of me, so I put it in the guest room. Ashley, who clearly
assumes that I haven’t spent hours trying to fix the fucking Boppy swing already, continues to mess with it.)
ME:
It wouldn’t go. It started making this weird noise, like the motor wasn’t working, and it stopped swinging on its own.
I then see Ashley discover a small plastic knob on the right side of the swing. Underneath the knob is a lock icon, the same icon you would see on a keyless entry of a car. Obviously, this plastic knob locks the swing in place so it won’t move. I had put the lock on when I put the swing away. That way I could stack stuff on top of the swing, like my purple sweatshirt, and not worry about things toppling over. Ashley pulls the plastic knob out and the swing moves freely. She then says (get ready for it): “It wasn’t just locked?”
ME:
No. It wasn’t just locked. (What I want to say:) Are you fucking kidding me? Are you
fucking
kidding me? Do you seriously think that I didn’t check to see if the Boppy swing was
locked
? Do you honestly think I am that stupid? No wonder you come over all the time. You must think your nephew is in danger living with a person who is too stupid to check to see if the Boppy swing was locked!
I walk out of the room. I cannot handle this conversation anymore. The Boppy swing has already stolen enough minutes from my life. I let her mess with it. She is still clearly not convinced that the swing is truly broken. I go into my bedroom to dig up
The Science of Breath
. My FMG is rummaging through my sock drawer. I ask her what she’s doing.
“Just seeing if we have any STFU cards left.”
• • •
I am standing in Kai’s bedroom. All of the lights are off, all I can hear is the noise of the fan and the humidifier. As I rock Kai to sleep, I feel my breath shorten. I can feel myself getting upset. I don’t even know why. There is no trigger, no picture, no smell or sound, it just happens. It’s been happening all the time lately.
I want to tell you that I have made progress, capital
P
Progress. I want to tell you I am better. I am great. I smile. I take care of my baby. I enjoy my life. I like waking up in the morning. But I don’t know if that’s true. I think I am only starting to admit that my journey through grief is going to be a lot longer than I ever imagined. Sometimes I think I’ll be grieving for the rest of my life.
After I put Kai in his crib, I look through a stack of pictures of Josh. I find one of me lying on the dog bed with Louise and Bug and I have my arms around Louise. My eyes are closed and there is this soft glow from the lights of the Christmas tree. Josh took this picture. I look so happy. The dogs look so relaxed. You can feel the love when you look at this picture. We look so balanced, the three of us. Now, it’s still the three of us, and we are completely unstable.
Sometimes I feel like I cannot survive with the dogs in this house. It is just too much. But when I look at this picture, it rips through my heart because I know there was a day when I loved Louise and Bug and they loved me back. Now they destroy everything. They jump on the beds. They know that I can’t handle them. They’re mad. I’m mad. I feel such a huge loss when I look at this picture because I know that I didn’t just lose Josh, I lost my life that I had with him.