Kids get you up early – well, they can get you up at all hours to tell the truth. My son and daughter have brought me out of a sound sleep more often than I care to remember or will ever likely forget.
Not that I'm alone in this – we split shifts in our house. My wife, being a night owl, let's me get my sleep in early and I take the shift after 2 a.m. We formally instituted this schedule after my son was initially diagnosed with cerebral palsy. In those days it became clear that he wouldn't be sleeping through the night anytime soon.
It's a strange sensation, coming out of a deep sleep — jolted back into the waking world by a cry or a call or a sign of sickness or discomfort. At these times, I find my body is quicker to react than my mind. It's not unusual for me to be half way across the hall before I realize where I am or what I'm doing or recognize that I've passed out of a dream into the real world.
After the initial shock though, it can actually be a relief, waking up. I'll rest with the kids on my lap for a bit, patting their backs, waiting until they are calmed and then head down to the kitchen for a glass of water before heading back to my own bed.
"What was it?" my wife asked in a sleepy whisper on a recent night, "Is everything O.K.?"
"Nothing. I think the boy was just a little lonely. He's sleeping now," I said, and kept an ear cocked for any sound of a relapse.
"He's down," I said after a bit.
"He ought to be" she said with a yawn, "Today was a double therapy day."
It's times like these that I don't want to look at the digits on the clock; don't want to know how little time there is left in the night. Sometimes, I can go back to sleep, but more often now I'll just listen. There was a time in my life that my thoughts were mostly full of the future — or the past. Not now. The next day is always so close.
Most of our days are planned from end to end: school or camp for my daughter, work and errands for the grown ups and a battery of appointments for my son. It's a little like trying to get the kids into the dentist and the doctor on the same day every weekday in the year. There is precious little time in the daylight to think about anything but what has to be done.
Sometimes, even when I do sleep, it feels as if I've hardly closed my eyes when I just land slap into the morning light as if I had passed through one of those time warps in a sci-fi movie. Sometimes it feels as if entire days can go missing like this — when I'm so tired and disoriented that I don't remember what day it is or the season or my age or what I'm supposed be doing.
There's an old story I think of when I feel out of time like this; sometimes it's the last thought in my head before I drift off. It may sound a little like a children's story — I suppose it is (or very much like one for grown-ups). There's a very old line in English literature that tells of a little bird that flits out of a storm and into the shelter of a great open hall for a moment and then is gone again in the twinkle of an eye. I wonder sometimes how that bird got into the hall (somebody left a door open, I guess) or why he didn't stay.
The story reminds me very much of the tales I used to hear when I was a boy about bunnies or sheep or billy goats who seem to live in a world of their own logic. I forget for a moment that the author, with the very formal name of the Venerable Bede, had a much more serious intent for this image that I've paraphrased here. I just think of that little bird and it helps me understand my own quick, mysterious flights from waking to sleeping and then back again. The story helps me feel less worried about my own bewilderment and get some sleep before the kids wake me up again.
"Is today not a school day?" my daughter has begun to ask each morning when she get's up. "Do you go to work today?"
She hasn't quite got a full grasp on the basics of time yet. She'll sit on the edge of her bed while she rubs her eyes and try to puzzle out the weekdays from the weekend.
"What about the day after today?" she'll ask hopefully if it happens to be some other day than Saturday or Sunday or holiday.
"What about the day after that day?" she'll say if that answer fails too.
It's hard to look down at her little sleepy brown eyes and not want to chuck my whole Monday schedule. I know that as much as we try to prevent it, she's absorbing some of this overwhelming pace; that she knows there are days when things are just a little less crazy.
My son is more direct in his wishes.
"Park!" he says standing in his crib, "Park! Swing!"
His version of "swing" actually sounds more like "wing," but it doesn't make it any easier to say no to him, however gently. He's starting to walk now, and in addition to the swing, he loves to explore with his new skills.
He just looks at me as if I've not gotten the concept, like my wits are sleepy. He just goes on repeating his request cheerfully, like someone who goes on ringing a doorbell patiently — expecting that the porch light will click on eventually and someone will come out.
Some of this will sound like pretty ordinary morning family stress; we're all busy people these days. It's not easy to say what distinguishes our life now from what it might be without the cerebral palsy in our family. I talk with other parents, and outside of the frequency of our visits to the therapists and the doctors, much of our experience as parents is the same.
But I do know it's different. Some of these differences can be read through ordinary indicators like all the debits to doctors and therapists in our checkbook or the fact that I know many of our health-insurance representatives now on a first-name basis, but some are less easy to mark.
There's a feeling in our house that is similar to when a member of the family has a fever or an injury or an impending and worrisome visit to a specialist; that feeling that lifts all the emotional energy into something like a light fever; a feeling that translates into a thousand uncomfortable adjustments to ease the discomfort of the person who is affected. It's a feeling that has moved in with us for the foreseeable future.
"All right, family, let's get going," the day begins officially with one of us saying this.
The doorbell rings, the backpacks get slung, the keys get ferreted out from under whatever they've crawled under and we all put on our game faces. I watch my son begin his drills with one of the many friendly therapists who help him; we guide our daughter out the door and off to camp; we prepare for the sprint into the business of the day.
