the quietest freakout
Written by patty on August 24th, 2008Summer 2005 should have been a flat-out great summer. We were new to the pool club that year, and spent as much time as the boys would let us floating in the water as night fell. Our oldest boy had just turned five, and we were well past the diapers, sleep deprivation and constant neediness that left us with blank pages where our memories of 2002 – 2004 were supposed to be.
My husband suffers from the occasional migraine, and I am a chronic (if periodic) insomniac who can usually beat it back with exercise. Suddenly he had two, sometimes three migraines a week. I was routinely waking up at 3 a.m., unable to even consider falling back to sleep. Neither one of us was willing to admit the problem: not to ourselves, not to each other. Our son was about to start Kindergarten, and we were ten kinds of freaked out.
On paper, it all looked very positive. He was growing into such a fine boy. We were thrilled with his elementary school, and ecstatic to be dropping half of our daycare cost. It was exciting to think about our sociable boy meeting new friends and tackling new challenges. We continued to play the “What’s the matter?” “NOTHING” game, because really, what could be wrong? I was FINE. Everything was FINE. And there was NOTHING WRONG with getting up at THREE IN THE MORNING and STARTING MY WORK DAY.
As the school year began, we marveled at how well our boy was transitioning into his new environment. He enjoyed his new routine, he loved lining up each morning to turn in his folder and hang up his backpack. He liked everyone in his class (even if he couldn’t remember anyone’s name). We almost didn’t notice that I was sleeping through the night again, or that my husband’s headaches went away. All was well in our world again.
You’d think two people who had been married for 10 years would have been able to, oh, I don’t know, HAVE A CONVERSATION with each other and acknowledge what was going on. But that would have required admitting to ourselves that the idea of our baby taking such big steps towards independence was freaking us both the fuck out.
I don’t even want to think about what the transition to college will be like. This kid can handle whatever comes his way, with aplomb. I wish I could say the same about his parents. We’ve got a good ten years to work on getting ourselves ready. I think we’re going to need every moment.
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This may sound terrible, because I will miss my kids terribly, but I am trying to see college as an opportunity to sort of reclaim who we were as people, before we had kids.
For starters, I am selling this suburban box of bricks and we’re moving to a city somewhere…the minivan goes 2.4 seconds later.
manager mom’s last blog post: On Hiatus
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No judgment here; it doesn’t sound terrible at all.
Interrupted for the 70th time during the same three minute conversation, my husband and I often say “It can keep. I’ll tell you in ten years.”
It’s not the kidless part I fear; it’s the transition to kidless that gives me heart palpitations.