By late Christmas morning, all the excitement had died down and the kids were happily occupied with their gifts. Dex and Neve were working cheerfully together, a gift in itself, building an elaborate Lego set on the dining table. Colin was repeatedly putting his new truck in the box it had come in, saying, “Where’d you go?” and then taking it out again. In the six hours he had been awake, he had looked at none of his other toys. From our slumped positions on the couch Tom offered me a high five. “We did it.”

“Yeah.” I sipped my fifth cup of coffee. “Sorry I didn’t get you more than the book.”

He smiled. “Sorry I didn’t get you more than the book.” 

“I don’t care. I get the day off, I’m psyched.” I was so relieved we didn’t have to start cleaning up and getting ready for 25 people to descend upon us  for Christmas dinner. My sister-in-law had, last minute, invited everyone to her house instead, and, after I had thoroughly kissed her feet, I realized I hadn’t felt this relaxed in ages.

A thought popped into my head. “You know what I really want?”

“What.”

“A big fat nap.”

Tom smiled and nodded his head in agreement. “Yeah.”

And so we packed Colin off to bed, turned off the phone, told Dex and Neve to have fun and both of us collapsed for two solid hours of sleep. When Colin started calling to us from his crib, I stretched and said to Tom, who was buried in pillows, “That was delicious.”

“My kind of Christmas,” he muttered.

When we celebrated a big anniversary recently, we got away for 36 hours to a little inn about an hour away. We ate a few meals, but we basically spent the entire weekend sleeping. And I am not being coy, we were really sleeping.

So, all of you out there with new jewelry and sweaters and golf accessories, enjoy. I know what I’ll be asking for on every special occasion from now on: nap coupons.

In the dawn, I am hovering over Dex’s bed, listening to him snuffle and wheeze. We have a decision to make. He has this important hockey game today, and he came home with a Grade-A cold last night. It’s the same cold I have had for a week, so I know what’s ahead for him. Lots and lots of mucus, among other things. Now, sure, he could drag himself to school and play, and keep sniffing all that crap up into his head, but he is he king of impacted sinuses. 

I ask him. “Do you want to go?” 

“I don’t know,” comes the muffled voice from beneath the covers.  “I want to play,” he says, near tears. “But I don’t feel so good.”

I suggest a shower, getting up and seeing if the sinus drains, and he just grunts. I ask if thinks he can lift his head, and he grunts again. I know, as a teacher, that I am not happy when kids blow their nose all during class, their mucusy hands touching the desk, the doorknob, the railing . . .. So I make the decision that he’s staying home, and he gets upset at me. Then Tom comes rolling in and gets mad at me too, “Oh for goodness sakes, let him go. ” ‘Twas ever thus.

I am always in the position of evaluating the seriousness of illness and injury, do we need an ER, a doctor, a band aid or Motrin. Is it a fever, is it more than just a cold? How did I end up in this role? It is never a team decision, it is always me that is either the heroine (Yeah! no school! no test today!) or  the bad guy ( yes, I know it’s 2 am, but we need to go the the ER). So whether it works out well or not, it is either my triumph or my fault.

Someone has to be the adult, the practical decision maker, I know. And if I were a single paernt, I’d have to do it all the time. It just seems that more and more, it  has to be me, and that is a lonely spot to occupy.

I went to pick up my son from a friend’s house, and there, on the table, was the most  imaginative, elaborate gingerbread house Kris has ever done. It was a Pirates of the Carribean scene, galleon ship and all, the latest in her impressive line of holiday creations. The house was lushly decorated with greenery, and piney-cinnamon scent filled the air. Earlier in the week, I went to drop a package off at an acquaintance’s home, and the word astonishment doesn’t even do justice to my reaction to her Christmas display. She admitted with the squeamish shame of the addicted that she has 32 boxes of holiday decorations– and believe me, all of them were out.

We have stockings up. Oh, and a Santa on the mantel. Which we wouldn’t even have without Neve, since she dug them out.

I admit it: I am terrible at creating holiday cheer. I don’t know how these other two do it since they both work 40 hours a week, with eight kids between them; I can only guess that they love it as much as their kids do. You always have energy to do the things you love, right?

By that logic, I suppose I don’t cherish all the holiday stuff. I don’t own a holiday outfit, or funny reindeer socks or earrings that look like bulbs. We get a tree, and we decorate it with stuff we’ve made or been given — which is not a political statement by any means, it is just that I don’t shop, remember?. Does that make me a stick in the mud? I look at the knick-knacks and decorations and festive pottery that people enjoy and all I think is, oh man, I’d have to clean and pack and unpack and clean all that stuff? All that work for one day? I had the same reaction to a holiday auction i went to last week. Volunteers ( the committee was all women) had spent four months working on this thing, decorating for a solid week, chapped hands and aching backs to show for it — all for a four hour event. I made the mistake (I always do) of mentioning this to my tablemate, who looked at me as if I were the very Grinch. “Well, I think it looks lovely,” she said, and turned to find someone less practical to talk to.

I don’t know, am I party pooper? I think it is just a case of fatigue. Holiday fatigue mommy fatigue, “making things special” fatigue.

Will I wish in ten years that I had spent some time creating a cozy holiday nest for our little cherubs?

This morning I left a disaster area. Colin was a wreck, no one really knows why. He has been a wreck since his hepatitis shot a few days ago, at his utterly belated 2 year check-up, throughout which he wailed and struggled.  We’ve been through a lot together, my pediatrician and I , and after many futile attempts at conversation finally he hollered to me, “ANY PROBLEMS?” and I yelled back, “NO.” So we administered he shot, Colin ripped a chunk of my hair out, and we called it a day.

So, for two days he’s wailed and clung and cried at everything. I stayed home, kept taking his temp, feeling his limbs, looking in his mouth. Nothing.  And I have no ability to comfort him, and Tom has been getting home at nine every night. I am having a room wallpapered, and the paperer actually came in several times to see if he could help (it didn’t work). Colin slept a normal amount, but ate nothing and turned up his nose at Bob the Builder.  I really needed to go to work today, and he’d already been crying to be held –even when I was holding him — most of the morning. It’s like he can tell when I am enjoying holding him and when it is a chore, and he tries to force me into enjoying it. I don’t know about you, but I can only cart around 25 pounds for so long.  Twenty minutes before my excellent babysitter arrived, I put him on the floor with a truck, which I promptly tripped over and broke. This time, my mother and the paperer came drifting in after the screaming had gone on for over ten minutes. “What did you do?” 

So yes, folks, I actually had the crying, snotty toddler clinging to my legs as I shuffled across the floor and out the door. My babysitter was yelling, ‘It’ll be fine,” but I was shaking as I got in my car. It is a thin line, one I have ridden too much in my life, between doing what I need to do and doing what my guilt tells me to do. Tom never has ridden that line: he goes to work, and the kids just have to deal with it. I’m the one that gives in.  But as I learned in the past, staying home every time you feel neediness from your child may work great for them, but it slowly erodes mommy.  I know Colin is in better hands with the sitter today. She has capabilities I do not, and a heck of a lot more endurance. I can go to work, feel satisfaction, complete things, escape the crying. For me, there is no contest: a day at my work place is a vacation.

Sometime over the past few months, Colin became obsessed with things being broken. Toys, trucks, cookies  . . .  and me. It was always more of an observation than anything else. If he sensed even a whiff of unease or discomfort in me, he would grab my face, turn it towards him and say, “Broken mommy.” It was funny at first, but he was saying it more and more, and the other kids were catching on, and I felt as if I were in some sort of fishbowl, all of them accutely tuned into my vibe. As more things in my world needed to be solved, I grew increasingly tense. I realized I was working harder and harder at being positive and unnaturally upbeat, just to quell the kids’ worry. I promised myself I would make time to have some fun and get some fresh air just to show them it was possible for their mother to choose something other than stress.

But you know how it gets. The demands of life pile on. You don’t sleep in order to get things done and then you are crabby because you don’t sleep. You get rejected from some great opportunity or some family member starts acting up or your spouse is totally unavailable again while everyone is sick. We’ve all been there in one way or another. But then there is the thing that breaks you.

In my case, it was hosting a huge Thanksgiving group and then another large party two days later (don’t ask, it’s a long story) and while I am up to my elbows in suds, my son informs me my laptop has crashed.

In fact, as I later learn, standing in front of a very sympathetic technician, the hard drive is gone. “Toast,” I believe is the term he used. I asked him if I could have a minute to myself while I wiped my eyes.

I don’t know how you feel about your computer, but I was decimated. The amount of time alone it would take just to get up and running again made my heart palpitate. I can’t even summoned the strength to speak about what was lost and what needs to be restored. And as I ran through all of this in my mind, Colin, who had been playing with his truck on the floor, looked up.

“Is ‘puter broken, Mommy?”

I nodded. He seemed to study me, then scrambled up off the floor. “You broken too.” I nodded again, and he gave me a hug. “I fix it! Look, Mommy, look! Be happy, SEE? Like me!” And he plastered this big fake grin from ear to ear. 

How much he needed me to be okay, I thought. How much our kids really do need us to be happy. I scooped him up and and said, “You know what I need? I need to think of something that makes me feel good.”

He put his finger up to his nose, his pose of thought. “I got it!”

“What?”

“Me!”