A long time ago (2 years, 3 months and 12 days ago to be exact), I had entire empty days and nothing in which to fill them. Those days would have been, could have been, great blogging days. But alas, my first blog was created on the eve of Bailey and Cooper’s birth. And then, BAM, motherhood arrived keeping me perpetually busy.
These days I often wonder to myself (usually one evening a month I find myself alone in the car and I actually get twenty minutes to actually THINK)-‘what in the hell did you do with your time before you had all of these kids’.
The answer?
Well, I watched T.V. A lot of T.V. From C.S.I. to Big Love, House Hunters to Myth Busters. If a station showed it I would watch it. Hours upon hours. If only I could get just a few of those hours back.
I searched the Internet. Everyday I searched, in the days before my hcg levels began doubling, I searched for cures and treatments to infertility. From Amazon to buy The Infertility Cure or A Few Good Eggs to places like IHR.com for Basal Body Thermometers and Ovulation Predictors (that was money well spent). Once pregnancy became me, it was baby names and stroller reviews, gender prediction quizzes and back to Amazon to order A Child Is Born.
I also ate. Again, I did this a lot. Even when I wasn’t hungry. And I shopped. Surprisingly more than I ate, I shopped. I would drive some afternoons the twelve miles into the city just to walk the isles of the Baby Depot at Burlington or window shop Mother Goose. I was obsessed. And more than just a little depressed. I would venture into town some days just to order a large Coke (not diet) and an even larger order of onion rings from Burger King. I spent a lot of time with my Grandmother. That may be the single thing I will never regret. That time was never wasted.
I would stay home on occasion and having done the five or six loads of laundry for the week I would wash guest room bed linens when we hadn’t had guests. I would actually fold underwear. I would fill a bucket with water and work my way throughout the house scrubbing baseboards and wainscoting . Or I would spend the morning dusting bookshelves and books, then organize them by genre, then size.
I read. Boy, did I read. Sometimes three of four books a week. I won’t go any further on that subject as that’s one of the only things I am still mourning the loss of as a parent of many young children. But I didn’t just read novels and novellas. I read magazines and junk mail.
I may sound as though I am complaining. I’m not. I am trying to characterize that lonely life for you in which I used to live. The one where sleep was uninterrupted, the floors were clean, and the rooms were quiet. Too quiet. I had to quell the silence with television and Rhapsody playing constantly, the unsettling silence was deafening. That life was, if nothing else, boring. There were no noses for me to wipe, there were no disputes over who was playing with the Fridge Phonics last, there was no screaming in the backseat, only Talking Heads. If those days were empty because of waiting for the children I longed for, these days are filled to the brim with activities in which to fuel their toddler brains or to keep my sanity.
I was not right with myself for a very long time. Even, to be honest, after the twins were born, I was still in some ways, struggling with depression. But in these past few months, as the days have become busier and busier, I have smiled more, frowned less. I am for the first time in a long time, if not ever, at home in my life. I am satiated with this nuclear family of mine. When Cooper wakes up from nap and looks at me with those eyes for which I’ve no name for the color and says “Mommy, I was tired.” I think, ‘me too, buddy, what took you so long.”
