The moment I commit to writing I hear a little voice peeping from behind a closed door. Sofia has just woken up from her second nap of the day, and Luca won’t even consider closing his eyes for a minute until the sun sets. When does a writer find time to write? Something has to give — the housework, the dog that needs to be walked, the laundry that needs to be washed, the bills that need to be paid. Yet somehow tinkering with these keys feels like a cathartic improvisation on the piano. I need to write. It’s my lifeline to creativity. It’s my escape route from loneliness and frustration from having given up working. And yet as much comfort as writing gives me, I make so little time for it lately.
I’ve made one step in the right direction: I bought myself a laptop computer for Christmas. It should allow me to write at those random moments of the day when I long to write but can’t. Currently, my desktop computer is in my son’s room. He’s just as jealous of my computer as he is of his new sister. This means I’m never free to work on the computer when he’s around. When he’s not around and at school, I’m busy with his sister. The computer is only really available to me when he’s asleep. But I would keep him up if I typed in his room while he slept. So, I can’t wait for my new computer so I can dive onto it and write whenever I feel like it.
Our nanny leaves today on a month’s holiday and I guess it’s fair to say that I’m quite wildly terrified about my state of health, and my husband’s, while she’s away. I’m sure we’ll survive but the thought of being completely on my own for a bit drags me down. Probably because I have a cold now, and my usual winter cough, and my head is so congested that I feel as if I’m walking around the house wearing a helmet. Vitamin C has betrayed me, and my legs have never felt flabbier. Despite the ziggurat of stairs in our house, I feel terribly out of shape, and the Pilates I used to do with such discipline has suddenly disappeared into the closet like an old coat that has gone out of season. I wish a personal trainer would whisk me away to a reality show so I’d be forced to put some exercise in my life and actually see some results with a studio audience to cheer me on and boost ratings for a television network.
We threw a party for 35 people last Thursday night, and I’m still exhausted from the production of it. Miraculously, our kids slept throughout the roar of the guests’ laughter and raucous conversations. I checked on both kids as they slept during the party. I vividly recall those evenings in which my parents had parties when I was little. I always resented the loud voices echoing off the dining room’s walls, and couldn’t wait for the moment in which the guests would leave so my parents would come kiss me good night. As I watched Luca sleep, I couldn’t help but feel sorry for him, clinging on to his softly-worn Mr. Moo blankie with a pool of drool forming on his pillow from his open mouth. And, sure enough, about three hours after I had checked on him, by the time I was deep asleep, he woke up crying my name and begging that I make his bad dreams disappear. He has been waking up every night lately, at about 3AM. I stumble up the stairs to his room, fumbling with my glasses so that I don’t walk into a wall in the pitch black of the night. And I ask myself, why this sudden anxiety? Is it his new sister, now ten-months-old, whom he struggles to accept as a permanent fixture in his life? Is it the constant entertaining that we have at home that makes him feel undermined? Are his nerves just as on edge as ours for our upcoming move? It’s all of these things, I suspect. Yet he can’t say he doesn’t see his parents. I am dedicating my life to him since I have given up working. His father is on 200% with him when home from the office. Yet the middle-of-the-night wake-ups still occur. I’m waking up, too. And, I’m tired, tired, tired.
