November 12, 2o11
Awake at 4.00 am.
On a long weekend.
Imagine that.
Thursday night spent worrying about my mother, tossing and turning in my bed as she spent the night in the ER.
Dulse refusing to move from it's place in her throat.
Not knowing until the next day where she was or how she was doing.
Me wondering when I became the worrier.
Friday night was spent alone with Stephen.
Weird, I know.
Neither of us knowing what to do without the kids to tell us.
Full fledged access to the couch and the remote.
And both of us in bed by 10.00 pm, lights out by 10.45 pm.
I tossed and turned all night.
Worried, worried, worried.
Not having your chicks in the nest when you're awake and able to enjoy the nest is one thing.
Not having your chicks in their subnests when you're in bed is something entirely different.
It isn't the first time, to be sure.
Coupled with the years you've spent cultivating honest and open relationships with your children, to the point where they confide in you and tell you things and you think you're all that because you're kids actually TALK with you.
Which also includes them telling you things that maybe you don't want to hear.
Kids not home and you know what they're doing.
Every parent's dream right?
Such is my relationship with Em.
She tells me everything and we talk things out.
Most of the time it's stuff I can deal with, know how to negotiate, circumvent the rough and dangerous terrain of being an-almost-18-year-old young woman.
Normal teenage stuff.
Nothing out of the ordinary.
Stuff you did yourself and shared with them, hoping I guess that if you were honest they would make more adult and mature decisions than you did at their age.
Forgetting, of course, about the power of youth, the newness of experiences and the desire to want to try them, older siblings who seem to have a wealth of experience you don't.
Knowing that you have raised a responsible, intelligent, mature child whose desire to be honest leads you to be equally honest so all the cards are on the table and everyone knows where everyone else stands helps to sooth the pains of raising your children and watching them go off into a world where you can't always protect them.
But it doesn't mean that I won't lay awake at night, toss and turn, and feel as if the world is a little off kilter under that chick returns to the nest.
One night your aging mother.
The next your teenage daughter.
Such is the stuff of the sandwich generation.
And people wonder why I am always tired!
Stephen and I took some time out yesterday.
Time out for us, anyway.
Taking our dissertation stuff and our marking stuff, we headed to one of my favourite places to enjoy a work enhanced, pet free, childless, computerless-should-you-want environment.
That's right.
The university library.
Sharing a table, his dissertation stuff spread out before him, the last remnants of the crime and film papers in front of me, we settled in for a couple of hours of quiet work time, punctuated so often with "what do you think of this?" and the odd bathroom break.
Starbucks was even open.
Stephen made substantial headway to the revisions of his proposal and I soldiered on through the papers, still unsure about how to combine critical, substance related comments with spelling and grammatical comments because there is only so much I can do.
Sentences don't end with commas.
Or prepositions.
Commas should be used sparingly and if you don't know how to use them look it up.
Incomplete sentences are not appropriate
There is a difference between there, they're and their.
Just as there is a difference in the formation between in text quotations and quotations longer than 3 lines or 40 words.
Using "on" when you mean "about" makes me want to stand up and scream (so it was a good thing I was in the library.)
Contractions are not used in formal papers.
And that doesn't even touch the substantial stuff.
If I have to read through this material, I can at least do it in an environment that's peaceful, welcoming and provides a coffee with one of the highest caffeine percentages of any coffee.
Me and Stephen.
In the words of Amy Farrah Fowler, we can get CA-RAZY!
Title Lyric: Wake Up by Arcade Fire
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