While My Boyfriend Was Sleeping

What I write after Joe and Henry go to bed

Archives for January 2013

A thousand of him

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I’m at the grocery store, standing in the produce department. An old Italian woman in a babooshka approaches my cart. She presses her face so close to Henry’s face that for a second his curious mug is eclipsed by her curious mug.

“He is a bootiful,” she says.

“Thank you,” I say.

“His face, it is a bootiful!”

“Thank you,” I say again.

“He is the only one?”

“Yes,” I reply. “He is my only one.”

“He is a so bootiful you could a make a thousand of him.”

I laugh, picturing a thousand Henrys.

“One day,” I say. “I might make another one of him. A thousand seems excessive.”

She kisses him on the top of his head, oblivious to my sarcasm and shuffles away to the cheese section. “Ciao ciao,” she says, her voice carrying over the clang of carts and drone of adult contemporary music.

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Exercise is my Adderall

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At the top of 2013’s to-do list: complete an Olympic distance triathlon.

An Olympic distance triathlon breaks down as follows: 1.5K swim, 40K bike and 10K run. In non-metric terms this is roughly a one-mile swim, 25-mile bike and 6.2-mile run. This is perfectly do-able if you put in the training, which is the hardest part.

I’m on the roster for St. Anthony’s, an ambitious triathlon that every year draws some of the world’s most elite athletes (including Olympians) to downtown St. Pete. I wouldn’t even attempt to compete with these animals. My doughy Reese’s-loving behind can’t hold a candle to these fat-free lean machines. I’m thrilled just to be in their company.

And I’m eager to plow through the food tents. I love post-race food tents.

I ran my first race three years ago. At the time I considered this an epic undertaking. Turns out it was more of an epic life-changer. I’m addicted to these things now. Since then I’ve clocked five sprint triathlons and two half-marathons.

Somewhere in the middle of this I had a baby.

When I trained through my pregnancy people told me I was crazy. When I raced a few months after Henry’s birth people told me to slow down. When it became apparent that my child was a fireball people told me it was good thing I have so much energy.

This energy is not always inherent. Sometimes it has to be mustered. Sometimes I burn out. Sometimes you’ll find me sitting under a blanket on the couch, eating a hazelnut chocolate bar, watching Sex & The City reruns.

The reason I’m able to stick to any sort of workout routine is because I don’t view it as a routine. I view it as therapy. I exercise to maintain sanity, strength and self discipline. If I go too long without physically exerting myself I get kind of flaky, scatterbrained and unfocused.

If I were drawn to taking psycho-stimulants I could probably get a prescription for Adderall. I’m hyper with a fairly compromised attention span. Writers have long upheld a tradition of taking drugs to produce good material. Me? I’d rather bike. It’s good for your cholesterol and the view is phenomenal.

The kind of mom I am

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Fifteen percent of the time I suck at being a mom. I do things other moms would find deplorable.

I lie to the pediatrician about how often I give my child his vitamin D supplement. (That would be never. We spend our days outside synthesizing Florida’s natural abundance of the vitamin.)

Also: I tend to wake up in a surly mood, not because I hate mornings, but because I hate 6 a.m. mornings. Most people think I’m bubbly. At 6 a.m. I’m as flat as an old can of root beer. I trudge into Henry’s room like a mom zombie. I close the door behind me and crawl under a blanket on his couch, during which time Henry tears through his toys, upends his collection of Legos, rips his clothes out of his bottom dresser drawer and squawks like an angry bird. This is not an ideal situation. If I’m lucky I can get away with closing my eyes for 10 minutes. If I’m unlucky, as I was Wednesday morning, I’m roused from my 6 a.m. coma via plastic truck to the face. For those of you who noticed, this was how I acquired the small gash on the bridge of my nose.

I’m a natural night owl. This doesn’t mix well with motherhood. Still, I’ve found ways to persevere.

Now that we’ve removed the front rail from Henry’s crib, I can easily crawl inside to catch a few minutes of shut-eye before his squawking reaches headache decibels. Last week I fell asleep in the crib while Henry gutted his bookshelf. When Joe got up for work he glanced at the baby monitor and saw footage of his wife curled up like a big galoot under a monkey blanket.

I’m not an ace mom. The first time I caught my kid eating dog food I made him rinse his mouth out with water. The second, third and fourth times I let him decide whether or not Kibble was palatable.

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A ripe old moment

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|| Note: This is a post for my Opa, whom I’ve written about many times in the past. (See The pitfalls of downhill roller skating or While my Opa was sleeping, or Dies ist Opa.) He died Jan. 6 after suffering for several years with Alzheimer’s disease. He was a jovial, outgoing sprite of a man whom most people describe as a character. He spent as much time creating life stories as he did telling them. Even at his foggiest, he could captivate a small audience, albeit by then most of his tales were wildly embellished or completely untrue. When it became clear that his star in this world was fading, I began the subconscious process of squirreling away memories — both significant and slight. The one you’re about to read falls under the second category. I’m not sure why it floated to the surface. Memories are like dreams sometimes. When they roll in you must abide. ||

A memory: I’m seven, maybe eight years old. I’m holding a coffee can that has two holes punched through the tin. An old shoelace is knotted through each hole to form a kind of coffee can necklace. It’s hot out. July, maybe. I’m in Upstate New York, wearing purple jelly sandals and a tank top. My arms are browning under the midday sun. My tongue is stained with blueberries.

I hand the coffee can to Opa.

I loop it around his neck like I’m crowning him with a gold medal after a long race. It dangles against his chest like a clumsy locket. Inside the can is motor oil, or at least I think it’s motor oil. It’s thick and black and Opa won’t let me touch it.

“Dees is dirty stuff,” he says, as he plucks a beetle from a raspberry bush and drops it into the can.

I trail closely behind him. My sisters too. The air smells like grass and manure. The breeze is subtle, but my hair is fine and flies away easily. We’re in my Oma’s garden, a large unshaded plot divided into neat rows of cucumbers, zucchinis, tomatoes and berries. We’re inching our way through bushes, my sisters and I, our shadows following Opa’s shadow, our legs burning from thorn pricks.

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