For some weeks now, my daughters have been quietly fretting. Well, not always so quietly. While my younger daughter takes a shot at shoulder-shrugging stoicism, my older one has been awaiting this day, not with eagerness, but with a sad kind of dread. The kind that woke her from her jagged sleep at two in the morning and steered her towards my bed, a mere foot away from hers. The kind that made her count every night she had remaining with me till she had to go. The less days remaining, the greater her quiet panic. And where was she going? To her father's house. For three weeks over the Christmas holidays. Then she and her sister come back home to me on the 26th.
Their father lives fifteen minutes away, but it could very well be another universe as far as my kids are concerned, because they've never spent three weeks straight with him, and away from me. It's a sad, but inevitable fact of divorce.
Of course it's not as if I won't be speaking to them for the next three weeks, but not seeing them for that period of time will be a challenge for us all. Silently, I reassure myself that I have the good fortune to be a writer, because solitude doesn't frighten me. But I'm attempting the same stoic stance as my little one when I say that, because three weeks is a long time to be without my kids.
Just the other day, my little one and I were watching a funny You Tube video of a bride and groom's first dance. You've seen it. The one where the couple starts out with a traditional waltz, then feign confusion when the music abruptly switches, complete with the sound of CDs screeching, to the butt-thumping Baby Got Back.
"When I get married," she declared, her tone solemn, "I'm not inviting you, Mom."
I was taken aback. "Oh? Why not?"
"Because," she replied, dragging out each syllable, "you're just going to tell my husband about how I was still sleeping with you even when I got older! Everyone will think I'm such a baby!" (She's seven by the way.)
I laughed, and assured her I wouldn't spill her secret.
It's a cliche of single motherhood to live in the one-bedroom flat with two children, however spacious and light-filled the flat may be. It would be wonderful to have more room and more privacy, but my kids understand that we're kind of living in the days between stations, that this is all temporary until we move back to the land where Kafka wears a smile.
My older one suspects that her carefully tended facade of growing independence could easily crumble if she gets outed as someone-who-still-sleeps-with-mom. Not that her penchant for snuggling next to me (and her little sister) in the middle of the night makes her wary of sleepovers in friends' houses. On the contrary, she enjoys sleeping over at her friends' as much as she does having them over. And I must say my kids' friends love sleeping over, oftentimes two or three friends at a time. Which means I get to sleep on the couch.
When my babies were born, I was determined that they would be sleeping through the night by three months, in their own cribs, nary a whimper from 7 pm to 7 am. Yeah yeah. I did Dr Ferber and the Duermete nino technique recommended by my cousin, a pediatrician in Barcelona. Eventually they did sleep on their own, though not always through the night. The le saga de divorce threw their sleep patterns in disarray. I've come to accept that my children are snugglers and cuddlers, and with me is where they feel safest. Which is fine, because there will come a time when they will no longer be crowding my bed, much less be living with me. For now, I don't mind being trapped by flailing arms and fidgety legs.
This afternoon, when my daughters said goodbye, the older one kept saying, three weeks without you is too long, Mom. The little one sat on my lap and held on to me tightly, and said she'd miss my nose. My kids never sought dummies or blankies or teddies; it was always Mommy, and some part of her they could hold on to and caress - from my elbow to my ear, and now to my nose!
I know my kids will be fine, but I also know they'll be happier once they're back at home. As for me, I'll have to hunker down in from of my Mac and tap away, in an attempt at willful self-denial: Christmas? Are you sure it's Christmas?
Just make sure Bob Geldof doesn't decide to come up with a single parents' version of Do They Know It's Christmas!
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