Here’s a post I wrote back in March 2013. I’m not sure why I never got around to posting it then. Perhaps it painted a picture of the sleep situation which made it look worse than it usually was by then, since I wrote this about six months after we finally managed to get Elan’s combined sleep apnea and dust mite allergy better controlled. Colds still exacerbate his sleep apnea, and there are still nights when I’m up and down multiple times, though other nights when both of them blessedly sleep through the night. But many of the sentiments still ring true for me, so I’m posting it now.

Soda Springs, California, March 2013

I could just show you the pretty pictures of our weekend in the snow.

The kids so cute in their borrowed snow gear.

The landscape of tree and snow and light soul-lifting in its stillness.

I could leave out the part about everyone being sick, at different stages in this yucky cold/cough that’s infected our household. I could not mention the drifts of Kleenex and hacking cough long into the dry air, high altitude night.

I could not tell you about the nights lately, how utterly ridiculous they’ve been, how the phrase “comedy of errors” keeps winding its way through my mind, way more alert than it should be at 1:00 and 2:45 and 4:15 a.m. Except I’m not finding it funny.

I could let the pretty pictures do the talking, and you’d never know that last night, at 4:30 a.m., during my third 2-hour long session of wakefulness for the night, after the 5-hour long drive through the brutal traffic, after we got the kids asleep and the car unpacked, after I couldn’t fall asleep because of my coughing so I followed my husband’s lead and drank four sips of straight whiskey, after I finally did feel warm and fall asleep, after I got up for Emry a few times and Elan at least seven times, after Mikhail smashed his toe on the suitcase I left in the hallway and I went downstairs to rummage for band-aids in the brightly-lit downstairs bathroom, after I had done the daylight savings time math and realized I would be dragging myself and everyone else out of bed in absolute darkness, I said to Mikhail, “Sometimes I really wish I wasn’t a parent.”

And that was just it. Not that I don’t love my kids, because of course I do. But a wish that I could take off this mantle of parenthood, shed this weight of exhaustion and never-ending responsibility, just for a night. Heck, just for a few hours. To not have to be the one who responds to the small voices crying out in the night, when my body is crying and aching itself.

That’s the thing about parenthood: it’s relentless. On the bad days and nights, it can feel like a marathon without an end. Of course, there are plenty of great times too, otherwise no one would have kids. I could just show you the pictures and tell you about those. That would probably make me look better, like a more graceful, capable mother, one who doesn’t lose her cool regularly and yell over stupid things, who doesn’t stress out over being late and bite her nails when she’s supposed to be “relaxing.”

But then you’d never see the other side of the story. All you’d see is the pretty pictures. This is how lives look too perfect, and we end up judging ourselves too harshly against the manicured images of another’s life. And then you find yourself in a car stuck motionless in gridlock traffic, a vicious cold squeezing your temples, your kids chanting “iPad” and “video” in unison despite your half-hearted attempts to play family road trip games. And you might judge yourself for handing over the devices. But you shouldn’t. Because some moments have their picture-perfect loveliness. But no one posts pictures of their preschooler throwing a temper tantrum on facebook.

But because the wholesome beauty of having small children does exist, and sometimes their fragility and vulnerability does elevate me beyond what I think myself capable of, I’ll tell you a happy ending to this story.

On the eighth time that Elan woke up screaming, I ran down the hall into his room, as always. “What is wrong?” I whispered, laryngitis and frustration melding in my voice.

“I want you to sleep in here,” he said.

“Come sleep in my room,” I said. I threw down his blanket and pillow on my floor, wrapped him up, and after some huffing and puffing, we all finally got some sleep. And when the alarm clock jangled me awake in the stuffy, pre-dawn morning, I took a moment to appreciate his sleeping beauty. I did.

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