Sleeping on the Job
Wednesday, September 13, 2006 at 10:16AM For two-thirds of the day, I am every bit the enlightened, modern-day dad.
My paying job doesn't take priority over my job as a parent. I don't come home late from work. I don't bring work home with me. My paying job never takes me on the road.
And my time at home isn't spent hiding out in the garage, tinkering with the car, or playing poker with the boys. Most of it is spent with The Kid: jousting with him, taking him to the park, reading to him, watching Disney movies with him.
Little of my time at home do I spend on me. Almost all of it is devoted to The Kid.
There are, of course, exceptions. Those occasional night-out escapes or the guilty pleasure of a sneak peak at the ballgame on TV. But most of my time at home that isn't spent with The Kid is committed to household chores, like washing dishes, doing the laundry or preparing dinner.
From sunrise to sunset, I pull the parental weight in ways that our ancestor dads never did.
Then I go to sleep and punch the timecard.
For most jobs, a sixteen-hour day is a long one and you'd pat yourself on the back for having put in the overtime.
But, as any Mommy or Daddy knows, parenting is a twenty-four-hour-a-day job. You're always on call.
For the first two years of The Kid's life, this was true for me. Through the toddler years, Mommy and Daddy split nighttime parental duties. One night was Mommy's night; the next was Daddy's.
But something happened around the time The Kid turned two, and he was freed from the confines of his crib. He began to voice his preferences, and almost always, it was for Mommy.
So when he would come racing out of his bedroom in the middle of the night, he'd cry out "Mommy-Mommy," like a monster had just poked its head out of his closet. Being the good Mommy that she is, Mommy would calmly and reassuringly take The Kid by the hand and lead him through the dark hall back to his bed. Then she would lie down next to him, on waiting blanket and pillows on the floor, until he fell back into his dream world, at which time she would trudge back to her adult bed.
After this became nightly ritual, sometimes occurring more than once a night, I began to tune out the cries. On the rare occasion that I hear anything at all, it is typically no more than a brief sleep disturbance, no worse than the trains and the trucks that rumble by outside our window. I was literally sleeping on the job.
Since these post-crib awakenings began, Mommy had never been away from The Kid overnight. There were nights out with the girls, or work or social meetings that kept her out of the house in the evenings, when the Kid went to bed, but she would always be there, in her bed, when he woke at night and came into our bedroom crying for her.
Until the other night, that is, when her paying job called her away overnight. After two years of sleeping on the job, I was again a round-the-clock parent.
This was a job I'd done before, so I was confident that I was equipped to do it again. But like any job that you've left for awhile and then tried to return to, you tend to forget just how hard it is.
By the time I finally got The Kid to sleep, it was 9:30 PM. I'd spent the better part of the past hour with him, camped out on the floor next to his bed, trying to get him to sleep. When I was finally able to lift my head from the pillows on his floor, I made my way to the bathroom. What I saw in the mirror startled me. Through sleepy eyes, I saw a tuft of pillow-styled hair protruding out of my cranium. Out of that tuft of hair, there were dozens of gray hairs – more than I'd ever seen on my own head before. As I wildly plucked them from my head, I wondered if one night as Mommy had done this to me.
In bed, I tossed and turned. Invading my thoughts was the fear that I might turn into a silver fox overnight.
At some point, I fell asleep, until I was awoke by the pitter-patter of little feet and the cry of "Mommy-Mommy." I shot straight up out of bed, and there at the edge of it stood The Kid.
"Where's Mommy?"
"Mommy's away at her meeting. We talked about that."
As he rubbed his eyes, I made my way around the bed and took him by the hand, just like Mommy. After a pit stop at the potty, I led him back into his bed and camped out next to him on the floor.
About twenty minutes later, I was back in the adult bed, the one with an actual frame and mattress.
I don't know how long it took for me to fall asleep this time, but when my alarm went off at 4:40 AM, it felt like I'd just gone to sleep. Dragging my tired body to the bathroom, I was relieved to see in the mirror that I still had hair that wasn't gray. I shaved, turned on the shower and stripped off my shorts and T-shirt. With one foot in the shower, I heard that now familiar pitter-patter of little feet and cry of "Mommy-Mommy."
I stood there naked to my son, and explained all over again to him that Mommy is Daddy today.
By the time I'd finished reading him a book at his daycare, and he hugged and kissed me good-bye, I was thankful for having been given the opportunity to be Mommy for a day. And even more thankful that Mommy would be coming back home later that same day.
Reader Comments (3)
Very nice journal entry.
However, a wise man once told me (let's call him K), that we'll miss the middle of the night wakings. Maybe. Just maybe.