There is this pivotal moment in all of our lives when we must sit back, stifle the urge to scream out in exasperation and simply give in to the methodical twitching that has currently taken over our left eye socket.
It is the bedtime routine…No let me rephrase: It is in the aftermath of the bedtime routine and I am moments away from finding the closest underpass, befriending the patrons perusing the space and brown bagging a bottle of cabernet sauvignon with them simply to escape the lunacy that is Motherhood.
“It is an hour after your bedtime Sophie, you need to go to sleep.” This is what I say to my daughter who has been slumping around the living room for the last half hour. I think she thinks I don’t notice her.
The girl slinks closer to me as though apologizing in advance for the fresh hell she is about to radiate. She then places her lips about a quarter inch from my earlobe and says in a half whisper half scream, “I’m so hungry.”
What in the…I won’t finish that sentence as it is in no way appropriate for newspaper reading. I think you get the point though.
“You ate your dinner and you had desert there is no possible way you can be hungry.” I pause and look directly into her eyes which are unwavering in her quest for a midnight snack.
“HUNGRY.” She replies in that guttural, Paleolithic sort of way.
The eye twitch is coming back but I will it away by shutting my eyes tightly for ten consecutive seconds.
“What are you doing, you look weird.” I am attempting to ward off the insanity, I want to tell her.
I shove a piece of bread with butter into her tiny hands and tell her that will do for tonight. She looks greedily at it and moves back downstairs to her fortress of teddy bears and sparkly lip gloss. After a few minutes quiet erupts in the house and a cool shiver creeps every so steadily up my spine.
Now, you’d think that after all of my troubles with trying to get her to sleep, quiet would be a welcome change. But you see, you’d be wrong. At least not in a mothers psyche. Suddenly thoughts of my baby girl somehow forgetting how to chew and swallow food correctly flood my good sense. I imagine her choking on the bread and how she, at this very minute, could be coughing and sputtering and completely helpless down there.
All because I carelessly gave her bread to shut her up and got her back into bed. It’s the ole ‘Bread in the Bed’ predicament.
So I make my way towards the girl child’s bedroom.
All seems quiet upon first inspection.
I can hear the soft snoring of Lars coming from his room which sort of makes my heart swell because at least I have one child who slumbers deeply throughout the entire night.
I pop my head into Sophie Anne’s Room. She is not on her bed—substituted for my daughter is a pile of ragged and torn looking bread pieces laying delicately atop her pillow.
I spot the top of the kid’s head behind her nightstand.
She is crumpled on the floor and by the slump of her shoulders and the angled look of her head I can tell something is amiss.
Before I can ask her what the problem is her head shoots up and there staring me in the eye is what looks like a war-torn Sophie. She wears crinkles of fret across her forehead and her cheeks are lined with a thick layer of tear streaked dejectedness. “SLEEPY BEAR IS MISSING!” She yells out in anguish. “HE IS GONE! GONE TOTALLY GONE!”
I look to my left and see the grimy leg of a bear wearing a familiar pink polka dotted jumper. He lays half under a pile of dirty clothes. I pick the thing up assuring not to hold it to close to my face because as much as my daughter seems to adore the ripe tang of the squalid plaything I prefer to keep my distance.
“You found him! Thank you!” She says as though he had been missing for years. I am about to tell her that if her room was cleaner Sleepy wouldn’t go missing, but instead I just smile.
At this point, after the night we’ve had, sometimes we parents need to recognize when to pick our battles.
Now, would somebody please buy me a bottle of wine and direct me to the closest underpass?
Lindsay Brown is a mother of two and a freelance writer from Alberta.