Foreshadow

 

Morphing a guest/craft room into a nursery has forced me to sift through lots of stuff. I have used up stuff, thrown away stuff, put existing stuff in a better place...that kind of stuff. My mom gave me a box of my baby stuff a few years ago: cards she received when I was born, my growth chart, birthday party invitations, snippets of my copper-brown hair, etc. This comic was in the box. My poor parents cut it out of the newspaper shortly after I ruined their lives. I, of course, was the baby that refused to sleep at night.

I was born a night owl. I grew up a night owl. I was a night owl in college. I am now a seasoned night owl. I am chained to my awful circadian rhythm and cannot alter my body clock. I. Love. Nighttime.

Recently I read an article that promised increased personal revelation and clarity if I would go to bed early and arise early. I gave it a valiant effort but am here to report that it can't be done. Especially these days when the baby-is-coming-anxiety hits me just after 9 pm.

Last night between 10 and midnight I wrote a letter to my niece in the MTC, digitized RE's portraits/class photos since birth, glued a wooden Pinocchio head to the top of a vintage spool and staged it under a glass cloche (the head fell off of a Florentine pencil my aunt bought me a decade ago...and my mother raised me better than to throw away wooden Pinocchio heads from Italy), ironed Greg's Sunday shirts, shredded old credit reports and ALL of my IVF paperwork/pharmacy printouts/receipts from the last two years (talk about closure), and sampled 18 versions of Bach's "Brandenburg" concertos on iTunes. These are things that cannot be done in the day.

When I try to get these things done in the day I either end up in a trance watching cattail fluff blow around our yard or eating the pantry bare (except for the shelves - I don't eat wood). This is why working like a madman in the dark and napping before I pick RE up from school works for me. 

I texted my neighbor (and fellow night owl) about my inability to change and told her that becoming a morning person must be harder than kicking heroin. I felt relief learning that she has also been unable to kill her inner night owl. We will see what happens when baby comes but my hunch is the comic strip printed in 1976 foreshadowed the rest of my life.

A 1975 Similac formula ad was included in my baby box. On the back of the formula ad was this 1963 reprint of a poster called "Parent's Creed." At the time you could mail in $3.25 and receive a handscreened felt scroll of this verse ready for hanging. I agree with this creed 100%. It reminds me of what Marmie from Little Women would say about mothering.