Friday, October 24, 2008

The Jurl Syndrome

There are moments when everything and everyone around me freezes and I experience complete clarity. Yesterday, I had just such a moment.

I'd been running a slight fever all afternoon, but being a mom I still had work to do even once I'd left my office, especially since Husband was heading to the driving range (he has a big golf weekend coming up and really needed the practice), leaving me in charge of both kids. Thankfully, my Mom agreed to take Sam to her soccer practice so I could stay home with Jake and my fever. One fifteen month old is easier to manage (ignore) than both of them.

By the time I picked up the kids and got us all in the house I had fifteen minutes to get Sam into her soccer gear- fifteen minutes of Jake fussing for food because he is a garbage disposal, fifteen minutes of seeing my semi-messy house through my mother's eyes, and fifteen minutes of Sam running away from me while shaking her naked booty in my face, her brother's face, and Grandma's face.

After I threatened to give all her DVDs to the poor children in Haiti if she didn't get her naked self ready for practice, Sam finally hopped over (literally, which just makes me more crazy) to me, but before I could get her drawers back on, and after Grandma's third instance that she use the bathroom before they left, Sam bent her knees slightly and peed. She peed like a Roman fountain. On my hardwoods. And I was in the splash zone so she got my feet and my skirt. Sam claimed she couldn't make it to the bathroom, but it seemed to moi she was taking a page from Edith Piaf's playbook where urination is a form of entertainment.

As I watched her pee like a wild animal something inside me snapped and I had my moment of clarity-- I could no longer go on living. Not with these crazed psychopaths, anyway. This life of Cheerio covered floors, rivers of pee, and islands of dookie was not for me. In that moment I knew, really knew, that I would have to disappear to get away from the mess and the cries for mama, mama, mama, mama, mama, mama, mama, mama or die. It was all too much for one feverish woman.

Then the world started to move again- mom cleaned up the pee, Jake did some walkin, Sam got ready for soccer practice, I had a few moments of quiet time once Mom and Sam left for soccer, I got the house picked up in ten minutes (thanks to Mom's help, again), and I even had my dinner with no one in my business.

My psychic break began to heal thanks to a part of my brain that knows this is life, this is my world and everyday I have to get up and do stuff, lots of stuff. And yes, some days I will have to get up and fish a dookie log out of the bathtub or clean pee off the floor, but there will be days where the worst thing I have to do is sweep up the apple bits Mr. Peepers flings all over the place. This essential part of my brain, the Temporal Insanity Lobe, quickly stitches up these metal fissures so that I can keep going and not think about the stone that I have to roll up hill everyday and every night, again and again.

By the time Sam and Mom returned I was all better, mentally that is. Until an hour later when both children insisted on climbing all over me, stabbin me with their pointy little elbows and pointy little knees. After yelling "OUCH" for the tenth time I had an astral projection where I saw myself as a patient in a mental institution that has lost all contact with the real world and now sits in a wheel chair, face slack, drool draining out of the corner of my mouth, wearing a dingy grey robe with burgundy stripes as doctors bustle about trying to figure out what's wrong with me, meanwhile inside I'm thinking, "Ah, peace. I heart the nut house".

I was jolted out of this beautiful fantasy by the sight of a food particle (chewed Scooby Snack, I think) in Jake's hair. I fished it out and tried to get Sam to eat it. She refused, I shrugged, and their Dad finally came to put them in bed.

Though my psychic breaks mend, they never heal completely so I know I'll never be back to my old self. My old self was flushed down the toilet the second Husband's super sperm entered my baby making space. But this fractured soul has greater texture, greater depth of feeling, greater capacity for love, and remarkable resilience. And since I can't get rid of it I might as well embrace it.

But one day I'll have my dingy grey robe with burgundy stripes and my very own window at the nut house to stare out of with my dead, dead eyes.


The Temporal Insanity Lobe is somewhere in the middle....

4 comments:

Kate's Mom said...

That is too funny! Can you reserve a spot for me next to that window too?

Claudia said...

yeah. I want a spot there too some days.

Anonymous said...

I am so with you--save me a seat with y'all. I swear I'd sneak home at lunch and take a nap...but oh wait, my house is never ever ever empty!!! Boy, I really do need the nut house so I can get 5 seconds to myself :o)
And how do children get such pointy elbows, and how do they know how to precisely put them where they will cause the most pain?

Bobono said...

I used to tell my family I had to go out of town for work over the weekend. I'd rent a hotel room across town and spend the entire two days completely ALONE. It's the only thing that kept me sane. No husband, no kids, no dogs, no birds, no dinners, no laundry, no nothin'!

This was pre-cell phone days...anyone remember those? Seems like a lifetime ago doesn't it!