Some Kind of Magic

My kids make me nuts.

Some days are a constant battle, from sunrise to sundown. I wake up in the morning to the sound of kids body-slamming each other in the hallway, of eyes being poked, toys being thrown, and cats being forced into tutus and lipstick. The before-school scramble is punctuated by impassioned wardrobe rejections and complaints about the shoddy table service at breakfast. They walk in the door after school, bellowing because they’re hungry, but only if we’re having pancakes for dinner, and evenings wrap up with the nightly, epic Battle of the Toothbrush, likely concluding with me sitting on the edge of the tub with my face in my hands, trying to remember the last time I peed in peace.

But there’s some kind of magic in these kids. Some otherworldly voodoo that keeps me entranced. I watch them from around corners while they play, I close my eyes and inhale them when they are near but not looking, I commit the soft lines of their faces to memory, knowing that they will only be young for a season, and understanding that even as I stare, the lines are changing and I have already lost this moment in time. I ache physically when they are away from me, the distance, however short, creating a slight, almost imperceptible disruption in the pattern of my breath.

Every night, since the day they were born, I have gone into their bedrooms after they have fallen asleep to whisper in their ears. I tell them how I love them, how my soul is made of them, hoping the words will somehow sink into their dreams and seep into their bones, become the substance of their very matter and what they believe to be true about the world.

Every movement we make as parents is designed to help our children leave us. The days sometimes seem long, but I know the years will be fleeting. Before long they will be making lives of their own, the time they spent here with me a sepia-toned snapshot. And even when I am old, and my children have children, I will still be under their spell, mesmerized by the smell of their skin, their movements, and the soft lines of their faces.

Jiggety Jig.

We are home again, from what very well may have been the longest two-week trip of my life. You’ll be relieved to learn that we survived the flight home, despite the fact that the leg from Vegas to San Francisco was some unholy brand of turbulent, and I spent the first 50 minutes of the 90-minute flight yelling and crushing my husband’s hand like we were back in stage two labor. It wasn’t until an angel dressed in a Southwest polo shirt starting plying me with free cups of wine that I really began to see the adventure in it all. At some point after that I think I whooped “Let’s do this thing!” and then tried to play pat-a-cake with my 5-year-old, who just inched closer to his dad and whispered, “Mommy’s laugh sounds funny.”

And it was a turbulent end to a turbulent trip. Between natural disasters and the attendant tragedy; client conferences; happy reunions with safe-and-sound family members; a way-too-long stay in my in-laws’ house; and my daughter’s unbridled determination to show my mother-in-law just how little parental control I possess by painting the walls and flooding the new downstairs bathroom, it was a real corker. I came home with a deep feeling of gratitude for my family’s relative health and safety, a renewed appreciation for my home state, and a bang-up case of conjunctivitis in each eye, so I think maybe you can appreciate my inner conflict.

But yesterday I woke up in my own bed, and everything seemed a little shinier. The way the morning light falls to the floor at that just-so angle; the way my kids each crept in to my room some time during the night and snuggled in on either side, their snoring slight and soft enough to lull me back into a half-sleep; the way the lake sits framed by my kitchen window as I make breakfast. The coffee we drank was high-octane and sugar-spiked, just the way I like it, the cats walked around purring, happy to have us home, and I think maybe I hummed while I did the laundry. In the evening, I sat on my own couch with my husband to overdose on Nurse Jackie, while he flirted with me like he thinks I’m cute, despite the fact that my eyes are a supernatural shade of red, and I’m so congested I can’t even mouth-breathe my way through enough consonant sounds to hold a conversation.

I know my routine is waiting for me. I know there are bills to pay and dishes to wash and work to be done, but for now? For now, I think I’ll hold on to this extra bit of gratitude a little longer.