Jake slept in this Monday morning. I did too, for a while. Until Mike told me it was eight o'clock and suddenly my eyes were wide open like a Bush voter who finds out for the first time that Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11. One minute I was dozing blissfully, the next I was jolted awake with the unpleasant aftertaste of guilt in my mouth.
I probably could have used the extra sleep just as much as Jake. More, in fact, since he spent the night awakening only when his coughing really hurt his throat whereas I was in a state of mental alertness for every single cough and snort of his stuffed up little nose.
But I, naturally, could not sleep past eight o'clock, even if I have spent many an early morning praying that Jake would go back to sleep until, oh 8:30 or 9:00. Because it's Monday morning. And, let's face it, even if Jake had ever answered one of those morning prayers, there's no way I could have indulged in the luxury of sleeping in with him. There is, after all, always something you could be doing while the baby's asleep.
Even When You Need the Rest, You Don't Think You Need It
I would, first of all, like to give myself credit for having a real weekend. The kind where you read the Sunday paper while eating lunch on the porch. Or finish up last week's Entertainment Weekly while your son is napping. The kind of weekend I don't think I was ever much good at, even before motherhood became my excuse for being so crazy. In the mid-90's, for example, I ran 10 miles every Sunday morning simply so I could exhaust myself to the point where I had no choice but to drape my sweaty body over the futon couch and read the Sunday Times. I am not, sadly, making this up.
So I congratulate myself on an admirable job of experiencing a summer weekend like a normal person experiences a summer weekend. This triumph was in no small part aided by the fact that Jake took some good long naps, thanks to the start of the cold that would make sleep, um, difficult, for the entire family last night.
It began almost as soon as Mike and I headed upstairs for bed. From Jake's room came the alarming barks of a boy with post-nasal drip.
"You might want to make sure the day bed's ready for you," I advised Mike.
In fact, I was the one who volunteered to start the night on the day bed. But only after I awakened Jake by putting honey in his hair.
I was, honestly, aiming for his mouth, which is better than trying to put honey in your child's hair but only marginally. At least, when your child is asleep and pretty much guaranteed to jerk indignantly awake at a sticky spoon being wiggled in his face in the dark.
"He was going to wake up anyhow," I whispered guiltily to Mike as I carried my screaming boy into the bedroom and let him fling himself at his father, who has never, ever smeared him with honey as he slept. "At least now his throat won't hurt so much."
Then I noticed the evil smell emanating from his diaper. Cautiously, I moved my nose closer.
"I think we have to change him," I said apologetically.
Mike held Jake's diaper open so I could make a visual confirmation. I nodded. Same evidence the bug had invaded his gastrointestinal system as well as his sinuses that I had discovered in the parking lot of Earth Fare a few hours earlier. At the time, I had insisted we change him right there rather than make him wait through the five minute drive home with something so indescribably evil-smelling in his pants.
And so, screaming with anger, Jake was subjected to a thorough butt wiping and diaper creaming because, wouldn't you know, his poor little scrotum has been suffering over the past week from the effects of soy oil (sometimes you forget that pretty much all fried food is cooked in it), sesame seed butter (I was just testing the waters), and, now, the bug.
Clean and diapered, the poor guy nestled against Mike and feel asleep, his mouth wide open, his breath coming in hot, congested, huuuaaah's.
"Do you want the day bed?" I asked Mike. "Day bed" equals flimsy mattress and gauzy office curtains that look lovely in the day time but fail to screen out the screaming street lights that invade my dreams on the occasional nights I sleep there. But it also equals freedom from kicking toddler feet, seismic coughing fits, and arms flung across one's face as soon as sleep starts to descend.
Mike merely shrugged. And for the first time in a long time, I let him be the martyr.
I slept until about 2:00, when I heard Jake crying. A lot. And found Mike in bed with him looking bug-eyed and frustrated. "He insists on sleeping on top of me, and I can't take it any more," he said in that choked-up voice with which I have often uttered the exact same words. I have to admit, it was a relief to find out that fathers feel this way too sometimes.
"Do you want the day bed?" I asked.
"Thanks," Mike said with the sincere gratitude that guarantees me at least one weekend morning sleeping in while he plays with the baby.
And it wasn't that bad, really. Probably since it's been a few weeks (a week, at least?) since I had one of those nights where you're not sure whether you really ever slept at all. It was that strong, calm, first-in-the-series, where you're well rested enough to reason that a sick child is part of motherhood and it is our job to lose a little bit of sleep to help our loved one make it through the night.
This self-assured level-headedness, of course, is fleeting, as by the second night more than a few tears are shed over the need for sleep, please, sleep. By night three, I'm usually speaking sharply to Jake to go to sleep already, all thoughts of his stuffy nose and scratchy throat buried by my own desperately fuzzy sense of self-preservation. And I don't even want to contemplate nights four and five. Suffice it to say, I hope we don't get there.
At any rate, Jake made it all up to both of us by sleeping so blissfully late today.
Except, of course, that I didn't—couldn't—take the opportunity to catch up myself. Never mind that I will almost certainly need the extra sleep come tonight's aria of snorts and chokes and other lovely congested-child sounds. It is Monday morning and I will find something I should be doing, invent a reason to feel guilty for sleeping even until eight, stir up a bubbly brew of anxiety and panic and the drive to get done all those things on my to do list that I—gasp—didn't even think about tackling during the long, glorious summer weekend that I am about to ruin by wondering why I didn't, say, clean out the sunporch where I currently meditate next to boxes of Christmas ornaments, Mike's huge, clunky, antique tool box, and the hiking boots I bought for our honeymoon.
Why We Invent Reasons to Be Busy
In ayurvedic medicine—the traditional Indian medicine akin to Traditional Chinese Medicine—people are classified as having combinations of three types of energy: vata, pitta, and kapha. Vata is, pretty much, me. High strung energy, prone to anxiety, spinning along at a frequency better occupied by hummingbirds who are, I understand, physiologically suited for flapping their wings at impossible speeds almost incessantly. Pitta is the person with a temper, which, I, um, kind of don't entirely get. I mean, I get angry, sure, but sort of at a slow boil. Not an ounce of that fiery, impetuous, Scarlett O'Hara type in me.
But is is kapha I sometimes most admire. For kapha is well able to say to herself, "Hmm. I've got nothing pressing to do right now. I think I'll roll over and go back to sleep." Kapha energy enabled a dear friend of mine to spend several years living off her savings while spending a couple of hours a week scribbling ideas for screenplays she never quite finished and watching a lot of UHF television. You remember UHF, where old episodes of Ellery Queen and Kojak play out their days. I know this only because I have one friend who still watches them.
At any rate, the big difference between kapha energy and vata energy is that kapha is rooted in the earth. So much so, admittedly, that sometimes one has trouble rousing oneself to, say, not watch Mod Squad reruns all day. (I feel slightly queasy at the mere prospect.) Vata, on the other hand, floats in the ether, the groundless place where our minds chatter without reserve.
Think about how you feel when you are anxious. A jumpiness manifests in your shoulders or neck or chest. Up high, making you squeak and jitter. It's no coincidence that the physical site of anxiety is so close to your head. Or, more specifically, your brain, the place where your mind gets going.
It was my mind, after all, that searched for something I should be doing this morning—something other than sleeping, of course. My mind attached some meaning to "Monday morning" instead of "Sunday morning," some rule to live by that declares a day that is, in nature, pretty much like another, a day when we are allowed to sleep in versus a day when we are not. Some of us at least have a workplace to blame, and a society that deems Monday through Friday work days. Me—my home office is open any time. Or closed, if only I'd let it be.
It is my mind that conjures up clear-as-a-bell recollections of my mother saying, "It's a beautiful day! What are you doing inside?" It tells me I could be launching my website, finishing my book proposal, walking the poor dogs who escaped for an entire night last week because we don't take them out any longer ourselves.
My mind, in short, has to fill up the silence and stillness of an early morning—those moments when your eyes open and it feels so deliciously good to just be—with thoughts and false meaning and structure that doesn't really exist. I had a rather sleepless night, for goodness sakes. I'm sure my body was perfectly happy to sleep. But my mind had to calculate just how many hours of sleep I had managed to cobble together and weigh them against the hours it would take to do what needs to be done today. (Eegads. It just cried, "What about yoga?!!" at me, causing my stomach to flip flop at the thought that I might go, gulp, FOUR DAYS without.)
So here's what I did do this morning, while my brain was reminding myself of those old, familiar, run-10-miles-on-a-Sunday-morning patterns. I sat next to Jake and read a book for a while. I gazed at his peaceful, sleeping face and declared him the most beautiful thing I have ever seen. And when he awakened, I sat patiently with him as he ate breakfast, walked him to school on a day of clear blue skies and a softly gusting breeze, and stayed with him until I knew he was settled and happy with his friends.
Because, much as I am a vata and therefore saddled with a creatively, crazily, entertainingly buzzing mind, I am also a mother whose child has taught her that all that structure and neediness and run-run-run isn't what's important and isn't even, strictly speaking, real.
What is real and important is getting enough sleep, and giving Mommy a smile and a hug when you awaken, and eating vanilla yogurt with wheat crackers for breakfast. Because, when you stop telling yourself you can't, you can.
Virasana (Hero Pose) and Vadrasana (Lightening Bolt Pose)—Moments of Grounding
It's kind of funny that something we call "lightening bolt" pose is grounding—electricity and all that. But it is. It's a gentler version of virasana, or hero pose, which can be a strain on the knees of those who have tight quadriceps.
Either version, however, offers an opportunity to align one's spine so the energy can flow freely, to ground at the base of the spine and let the top of one's head open to the sky, and to let the anxiety and "Should Do's" fall away.
Vadrasana, or lightening bolt, is also a lovely alternative to sitting cross-legged during meditation. It can be easier on your hips and knees, and is a simpler way to tilt your pelvis forward in order to bring your spine into alignment. In fact, I think I'll try it tomorrow.
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