Weekend Recap

The house is eerily quiet as I type this. My daughter is asleep, my wife is hundreds of miles away and my Mom left a few hours ago. I am, for these few hours, a functional bachelor, a man with no outside influence. I could do anything at all with my time. Live up the wild life and let the invigorating taste of freedom go to my head. But instead, I find myself sitting here at the computer trying to recap this, my first run as solo parent and looking forward to Moonshot’s return. And not just because she’ll be bringing a copy of Harry Potter7. No…I actually miss her.

Thursday “Morning”

My alarm went off at 4 am on Thursday morning. I’d like to explain this occurrence away as a malfunction…but the truth is that I set it for this ungodly hour. Moonshot was to be at the airport by 5 so a plane could whisk her away to Minneapolis for three full days of what was described to our friend Elsa as “help with the wedding planning” but which would truly culminate in a surprise bridal shower. I can say that now since the event should be happening as I type this.

We stumbled our blurry-eyed way through last minute packing, strapped a bewildered Norah into her car seat and made our way for Lambert International. Our local NPR station had yet to begin their daily broadcast, so the British accents from the BBC only served to remind us just how early it really was. If it’s before Morning Edition, then by definition it’s still night.

We realized on our drive that we could easily and quickly tally the number of times since we moved into together that we have been apart for any stretch of time. Once, I went to a family wedding in Reno. Later, when I went to Little Rock on business for four days, she took the opportunity to zip up to Iowa to spend some quality time with her folks. And last year I went to Memphis with my brother and several of his heavy-drinking friends. That’s it. We should probably make it a point to spend more time apart, foster a greater sense of independence in the marriage and such…but the sad fact is that even after so much constant contact…we still enjoy each others company most of the time. It just never occurs to us to demand that the other get on a plane and get the hell away from us for a while.

We dropped Moonshot at the American Airlines terminal and returned home. Norah, for her part, sat wide-eyed in the back seat the entire trip. I kept glancing at her and trying to convince her eyes to become droopy. However, there was absolutely no sign of the sleepiness that must have been evident on her father’s face. She seemed animated upon returning home, as if she fully intended to stay awake and start her morning routine. Panic started to well in my chest. After about fifteen minutes of convincing, however, she decided to do the right thing and let daddy go back to sleep.

Thursday

I took Thursday off work and did my best to follow the daily schedule set out by Moonshot. Generally, I think I did pretty well. I kept Norah clean, fed, and relatively happy. I ran some errands (pick up repaired hedge trimmer, take Moonshot’s car to carwash, buy Star wars stamps for Canadian SW fans who can’t buy them for himself) was able to socialize a bit out at Duke’s house and also made time to take Norah up to the newly opened Cabela’s near our house to look at their huge aquarium with Superfly and Mr. Chubbers. My timing was slightly thrown off, however when a veritable waterfall appeared in the skies over St Louis. Parking lots became instant lakes, complete with wave action from the cars pushing their way through the liquid resistance. Norah was curious but unafraid about the drenching, but the extra time spent due to the downpour meant MoMa arrived at the house before I returned. She came up just so I could go to work on Friday…you’d think the least a properly appreciative son could have done was be there to welcome her.

Friday

Friday was a surprisingly normal day. Just a change in casting, really. I woke, showered, and fed Norah. Then, instead of waking Moonshot...I woke MoMa. Instead of eating breakfast with Moonshot, I dined with MoMa. I packed a lunch and left for the day and aside from a few more calls home to make sure everything was going well, it could have been any Friday. And since that was sort of the purpose behind MoMa coming up, I’ll call it a smashing success.

Saturday

Saturday found us at the Little Gym with MoMa grinning ear to ear as her granddaughter ran about the child-filled room, hands in the air, emitting shrieks of pure toddler joy. (Norah was shrieking…not MoMa, mind you.) Later in the day we went shopping for Norah’s upcoming birthday, because the trunk load full of goodies MoMa shoveled into Norah’s room Thursday night wasn’t enough.

After supplying my daughter with another bundle of clothes and toys, MoMa drove away into the sunset.

Sunday

It’s now Monday as I write this. You see, I didn’t quite finish the story above on Saturday night. I got tired and started thinking how great it would be to just lay down in bed and watch some TV. Maybe do a few Sudoku and just decompress. I told myself sweet little lies like, “Oh, you’ll finish this post in the morning,” but I never really believed it.

The bed did feel wonderful, though.

At any rate, Sunday came early as Norah’s protests sounded through the monitor at a little before 6. Not crushingly early, true…but 6 full Snoozes worth of sleep are not lost joyfully. We rose, ate and played with the suddenly abundant toys strewn about the house. We watched the Mickey Mouse Clubhouse and waited until 10 or so to make our way back to the airport to pick up Moonshot.

Norah loved the airport. She likes most open spaces where she is free to roam. And I want to take a moment here to express how odd Moonshot and I both find just how odd everyone else seems to find our free-roaming child. It’s not as if we just let her go…but as often as possible, we let her walk about and we walk beside her and tell her about the things she’s seeing. At the post office on Thursday, she carefully pulled things off the shelf, looked them over, and replaced them (usually). As we waited for the car to be washed…she did the same in the attached convenience store. And at the airport, I let her stomp around; exploring baggage carts, benches and displays behind glass. In each of these places, people smiled at Norah but looked genuinely concerned about her range of motion. It’s true; most one year olds I’ve seen out in public are either held or strapped into a stroller. But Moonshot and I are subscribing to the “let her explore her world” approach to parenting. She tends to put things back on the shelves after she’s done looking at them because we’ve shown her and let her practice. I’m not saying it’s the only or even really the best way to parent…but thinking back to the airport, I can’t help but be a bit amazed that it’s so rare as to seem disconcerting to onlookers.

But that’s not what I was talking about. I was talking about Moonshot’s return. And return she did; happy and unscathed. Well...mostly unscathed. She’s been nursing some pretty nasty mosquito bites from those Minnesota mutants they have up there. Norah seemed happy to she her mommy in a typically distracted sort of way and I, for my part, was genuinely happy to see my wife. Moonshot seemed happy to see both of us and would have been happy to see her luggage…but two out of three ain’t bad, eh? Apparently her luggage had failed to make the plane switch in Chicago.

“Where’s the Potter book?” I asked in terror.

“It’s in my carry-on, don’t worry.”

A sigh of relief, “Have you finished it yet?”

“No, I got motion sick on the plane so I’ve barely started.”

Gasp. See, my entire theory here was that she’d be done with it by the time she stepped off that plane. She reads like a book a day and I was comforted through that long and Potterless Saturday with the reassuring thought of its Sunday arrival. However, a bookmark stuck at page 135 was somewhat less promising.

We had a wonderful afternoon and evening. She read while I trimmed the hedges with the newly repaired trimmers. I read while put she Norah to bed and again after Moonshot went to sleep. We even found some time to just sit and chat…but not about Harry Potter. She has forbid it. Apparently she has so much confidence in my ability to read her that she doesn’t even want to discus the story as far as I’ve read for fear of giving something away. Which is, of course, an irresistible temptation for me to continually bring it up. Yup…it was nice to have her back ;)

I fell asleep with the book in my hands.

About a half hour later, the phone rang. Seems a guy with Moonshot’s luggage was cruising our neighborhood in a lost sort of way, looking for our house. I stumbled downstairs in my robe, accepted the luggage and returned to bed. I tried again on Potter. By this point I was only about 40 pages behind my wife and I had big dreams of catching her so that we could compare theories over breakfast. Alas…my comfy bed proved too much fore me. I again fell asleep with the book in hand. Sometime around 3, I awoke and finished the current chapter before turning out the light and accepting defeat.

Monday

The office is eerily quiet as I type this. I’m finishing my Subway veggie sandwich and trying not to coat my keyboard in sweet onion sauce. The Grenstead has resumes its normal rhythm, which feels nice after a fun but hectic solo flight. Tonight will find Jet and I killing time while Moonshot teaches piano lessons. Hmmm….unless I could sucker him into watching Norah while I work on Harry Potter ;)