It's 1:27 p.m. and I'm trying to type really quietly so as not to wake up Malko, a.k.a. Harbinger Of Noisy Destruction. He finally fell asleep around 12 after yelling "PAPA'S BED!! PAPA'S BED!!" no less than 180 times, during which I gritted my teeth and sent him the telepathic message Suck It. I'm all about respecting my needs, yo, and my needs were telling me to ignore his insane, demented, loud, obnoxious demands to "take a nap" in the parental bed. My needs were that he needed to shut the hell up. In his bed.
Funny I should talk so roughly about my child after having a little breakdown, yesterday, about the impermanence of life--specifically, about the unrelenting possibility of one's child getting sick or having an accident and everything quickly turning into a nightmare. I recently learned that one of Malko's nannies, Jessica*, lost a child to cancer years ago, and putting that knowledge next to her ever-smiling, uncomplaining face was a shock. I've always wondered how people who've lost a child go on, how they manage to act normal, and to be so physically close to Jessica's reality--to witness, in a way, what I imagine is a constant struggle--was more than a little moving. I imagined myself in her shoes, working as a nanny thousands of miles away from the country she grew up in, from the place where her seven-year-old son died. How does she do it? How does she look at Malko, the same age her son was when he got sick, without bursting into tears? How does she keep it together?
I try not to think about this kind of thing--children dying--too much, but the fear, the worries, the thoughts are always floating around on the periphery, and sometimes I think that's a good thing: it makes me appreciate what I have. Believe me, I know what a ridiculously perfect life I have: our kids are healthy and happy, we have a comfortable home, we have safe water to drink and lots of food to eat. We have loving family and friends, and luxuries beyond belief.
I try to appreciate these things daily, to really think about how lucky I am, and most days, to a certain degree, I'm able to sustain awareness of our good fortune. Sometimes, though, like today before Malko fell asleep, I revert to the me who bitches and complains, who wishes my kid would shut the hell up so I can sit down and finally, finally write an entry in my blog, an entry that says, I hope, how much I love him.
*not her real name
