She woke up with a start. Her husband’s alarm sounded exactly like a truck backing up, only loudly, and right next to her head. He snoozed his habitual three times before she kicked him in the shin in a plea for him to turn it off already. He complied, getting up and heading to the shower, but not before opening the door to their three-year-old’s bedroom.
Pad-pad-pad, she heard, the sound of little feet on the floor. He was running to her room now, eager to start his day. Mostly, eager to start talking to her. It seemed from the minute he woke up to the minute she put him to bed at night (his father was in charge of his bedtime routine, but he would call for her after he was tucked in, and she would go, she would always go) he was talking. He only stopped talking to eat, or to watch snippets of beyond-his-years cartoons, like Scooby-Doo or Iron Man. Why had she let him check that out at the library? Oh right, to get him to stop screaming.
She turned over before the little feet crossed the threshold to her room. Maybe she could pretend to be asleep. Maybe he wouldn’t bother her. The feet stopped next to her side of the bed. “Mommmmeeeeee, wake up…” he said in that sing-songy voice of his, the one he combined with a devilish smile whenever he was asking for something she didn’t want him to have, like marshmallows for breakfast or yet another bouncy ball (didn’t the kid have enough?)
He was turning into a spoiled brat, a phrase her mother had used with her, a phrase she hated, but nonetheless, it was true. Nothing made him happy anymore. He always wanted just a little more than she was willing (or able) to give. Just he day before he had demanded to go to the store:
“I want to go to the store, Mommy.”
“Oh really? What do you need at the store?”
“More bouncy balls.” (Again with the bouncy balls!)
“You just got four new bouncy balls yesterday.” This was, unfortunately, true.
“I. Want. MORE!” He shouted each word slowly, making sure she understood.
“No.”
And then the crying started. It always did. He could turn it on and off in seconds, a true pro. She was so sick of the crying. So sick of the manipulation, the saying no, the having to deny him what he wanted and the fits that came afterward. Why couldn’t they just want the same things? Better yet, why couldn’t he be a baby again, when he would take three naps a day and she would watch HGTV and everything was easy?
She alternately wished for the past or the future—he would go back to daycare in the Fall. She had thought she wanted to stay home with him for the summer, thought she was missing out on all his milestones and rearranged her work schedule to be with him. But it was as she always suspected. She wasn’t supposed to be a stay-at-home-mom. She didn’t have the patience for it. But most of all, she worried, she didn’t have the heart.
She knew she’d be bored this summer so she overscheduled him in activities, but repeatedly she found herself oversleeping for his daily swim lessons. He mostly hated it, so she was mostly fine with him missing them. But then she would think about the money she’d paid, the fantasies she carried with her about him being on the swim team one day, and she would feel guilty. Guilty was all she was feeling these days, it seemed.
She would make him nap, the one concession she had in her day, and often he would protest, yelling at her through the thin wall that divided their rooms. But sleep would always come, and after he was quiet, she would sleep too.
The thing she dreaded most was when he would wake up from his naps. A measly hour and a half and he would call out to her (the calling out was endless, it seemed), “Mama! Mommmmeeeeee! Mama!” He would make his cries last minutes, never seeming to need to breathe. Indeed, she wondered how he did it. How those tiny lungs filled up and held his voice just long enough to guilt her into getting out of bed.
She wore her pajamas all day, every day now. She didn’t shower, she didn’t see the point. She used to at least brush her teeth and change into those ubiquitous black stretchy pants all moms seemed to wear but now she wondered why she even bothered dirtying those. And a bra? Once a prudish girl who never wanted to be seen without one, she was answering the door to UPS men and the like with her lopsided, post-breastfeeding boobs sagging down to her knees.
Worst of all, she didn’t care.
She would see moms at the pool who seemed to have it all together. The perfect post-baby bodies, swimsuits with matching cover-ups, four kids and still they brought books to read! She couldn’t take her eyes off her little angel for a second, except when inevitably she did, and then she would frantically search for him in the sea of toddlers at the kiddie pool, her breath finally letting out when her eyes landed on his sandy blond mop, his toddler tummy sticking out from under his swim shirt.
She loved him, she really did. And that was the problem. All she wanted was to be worthy of his love, and deep down, she knew she wasn’t. She was too selfish; she wanted too much herself to really be able to be there for him. It wasn’t like she hadn’t tried. She had, in her way. She scheduled playdates and trips to the museum and lessons (so many lessons!) and if they were out of the house, she could almost handle it. But at home, when her computer was out and her bed was right upstairs she couldn’t help herself, she turned on the TV and she snapped at him to go play in his playroom, the one she had spent weeks decorating and getting just right. And then she retreated into herself, counting down the minutes until bedtime, when she could go back to her own bed, relishing in the quiet before sleep when she was completely, finally, alone.
