Reason Number 16: Naps

The sixteenth reason for not crying during your daughter’s senior year of high school is napping.  Naps are a regular occurrence for a child during her growing up years, and a delicious lifelong treat in these busy times we live in.  It is a lucky luxury of the young, underappreciated by most until the years when sleep is regularly minimized in the pursuit of other aims—achievement, fun, Nexflix.  It is not a reason to cry.

Last weekend, my busy, busy girl curled up in the overstuffed chair we purchased when I was pregnant with her.  It has probably exceeded its lifecycle, though we all still enjoy flopping onto it for the occasional lazy hour or two.  I looked up from where I sat elevating my sore foot to see this: 

 And I didn’t cry.

 I didn’t, of course, remember that I had been lying on that chair’s matching sofa grimly enduring the early days of morning sickness when I felt the butterfly bubbles of her first movement.  I didn’t recall the infinite wonder, the soul stirring recognition that there was a person in there, and that there was a reason for all this misery.  I didn’t think of all the hours I’ve spent watching that beautiful face at rest, placing a gentle hand on a tiny back to feel her breaths.  I didn’t remember how I once thought, “I love her best when she’s sleeping,” because it’s not true.  In the vast depths of a mother’s love there is no ranking of the precious moments.  They are all dear, all my favorite, all the best.  Not crying.

I didn’t cry to think of my one, terrible attempt at sleep training when Grace was a baby.  I was overwrought and over-read by the time she came along, and though my heart counseled against it, my exhausted body begged for it, so I tried.  I left my bawling infant for 5 infinite minutes.  I heard her wailing, steeled every nerve in my body as it strained towards her, walked calmly to the kitchen, poured a glass of orange juice, drank it down.  Ounce by ounce.  I stood resolutely for a moment, tears streaming down my own cheeks, then ran back to her, clutched her to me, felt her little body shudder and relax against me, and never tried again.  Not crying.

I didn’t cry to think how very many things like that she’s had to endure.  As the oldest child, sometimes she gets the best of me—the focused, engaged, all-up all-in sort of parenting I still had the time and energy for with my firstborn.  But sometimes she gets the worst—the bumbling, uncertain, willing to listen to the experts instead of myself kind of mom.  The kind of mom who is unsure and in uncertainty becomes too much, the kind of mom whose big noisy brain often overwhelms her hesitant heart into disastrous experiments with things like crying it out.  It was only the one time.  And we often co-slept, too, which some experts believe to be equally disastrous.  Did I choose the right paths?  She sleeps peacefully and through the night, now.  She hasn’t come to wake me in the middle of the night for comfort in over a decade.  Not crying.

I didn’t cry about my fur baby, snuggled above my actual baby on that big old comfy chair.  It doesn’t do to cry over puppies when your beautiful human babies are in the same frame.  It’s not sad to think that our little Penny is exactly the same size as a newborn baby, or that she looks at me with the same adulation that once filled her big sister’s face when I walked in the room.  Now I get a lot of eye rolls and abruptness from the girl-baby, but my fur baby never fails to light up with excitement at my presence.  Penny also willingly climbs in my lap, snuggled to my side and always within sight if I’m home.  A lifetime ago, I enjoyed such adoration from the sleeping girl-baby, too.  My friends with older children assure me that eventually teenagers come back to visibly appreciating and enjoying their parent’s company, but these late teen years don’t have much of that.  A puppy is a poor substitute, but it’s still something.  Not crying.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again.  Sleeping teenagers are nothing to cry about.  Indeed, it would be quite time consuming to cry about it, because they love to sleep.  They are always sleeping.  It’s just catching up on some zzzz’s.  It’s just a nap in an old chair with a little dog.  I’m not crying, you’re crying.