blast off

I'm laying with Owen in the top bunk at bedtime and he tells me about his crazy dream.

Owen:

I had this dream that I went outside and you were getting into a space shuttle and it was called the Alone Shuttle. And you were going to this place called the Special Woods where all the animals were really nice and would help you with all your stuff.

I asked you, "Do you have to go Mom?" and you said "Just for a couple hours, Buddy."

Dad pulled me inside because it wasn't safe to see the launch, and when I went back outside, you were gone. So I went back inside and I went through my secret lair and came out in the driveway and I was hiding by the flowers and I saw you in the Alone Shuttle and I asked if I could come along and you said, "I have too much work to do, Buddy."

But then I got in my Secret Mobile and I was driving on the highway and I went past the Special Woods and I thought, hmmmm. So I parked on the side of the road, and then someone woke me up.

I wish I could have more of that dream.

me:

Even though I was leaving in it?

Owen:

Well, you know my lair? It was really cool and had really cool computers and stuff in it. I wish I had one.

:::

I love my job, but it has been really stressful lately. I met one deadline and I'm up against another, and I've been working too much for the last couple of weeks. During the day, at home after the boys go to bed, pretty much constantly. I knew the project would be like this for a stretch when I took it on, but it doesn't make it any easier. I really do believe in the value of what I'm doing, and my boys know that my job helps people learn how to take care of the planet and keep it healthy and keep us healthy, and as I've said before, they have been doing so, so good with the new schedule of more days with Dad and a few days with our beloved nanny. But it has been hard for me lately.

I had a meeting yesterday at which I burst into tears in front of a conference table full of scientists, many of whom could be my father or my grandfather. I was incredibly embarrassed and they all looked like they wanted to hug me. Some of them did. I work with mostly lovely, brilliant people, but when collaborating with hundreds of people and dozens of committees and a handful of egos, there is bound to be a stink bomb airlifted in at some point in the process, and when it detonated, it knocked me on my ass. Unfortunately (or not), my anger/sense of being wronged manifests in tears and when I tried to rationally lay out my feelings about a particular situation, I found myself with the tell tale shaky-voice/blinky-eyes, and before I knew it I was sniffling my way through my harangue. Yeah, I know. Awesome.

I was going to leave the meeting and finish out the day at the coffee shop, but halfway there I took a hard right and drove home to my boys instead. I rattled into the driveway and there they were - all five of them: three littles, light sabers drawn and ready for battle; one big, sipping a hoppy ale and smiling at my early return; and one hairy, lazily raising his head to check me out before resuming his afternoon snooze. Coming home to my boys...I can't even find the words. My boys are home. Their munchkin voices peppering the afternoon air, their sticky little hands and their dirty feet and their bruised foreheads fill me back up, swelling my heart and tightening my throat, and this time -- when the tears pricked my eyes, I was only feeling love.

:::

I had a yoga class tonight. I raced home from work to join the boys at the elementary school for literacy night for what was going to be a brief drop-in before class, but we stayed and then came home together. I needed to be here with them tonight. Eli and I have been collaborating on a new bedtime story.

Once upon a time, Mama was captured by the bad guys and put in jail and her hands were tied and she was calling for help. Eli the Brave heard her, and he came to the jail and he tricked the bad guys by pretending he was old and had a cane so they let him in. But once he got in he said 'Ha! I tricked you!' and he wielded his blaster, which they thought was a cane, and he blasted everyone with sleeping gas and they all collapsed to the ground. And Eli untied Mama and they hopped in the rocket and blasted off together, away from the jail. The End.

We lay on the bottom bunk and I tell him the story and touch the little glow-in-the-dark dinosaurs on his pajamas. I kiss his impossibly, ridiculously soft cheeks.

I do it again before I go to bed. I sneak into their room and I kiss their cheeks and I whisper that I love them so very, very much and then I slip into my room, and lift the baby from his crib when he calls for me and I snuggle him close and we nurse and I kiss the top of his head, and John joins us soon after and I drift off with my feet tangled in his legs and tiny fingers tangled in my hair and two chests rising and falling in the room across the little hall and a big hairy beast keeping guard at the door, and my heart is so full that it comes out my eyes and I thank God that I have these boys and that they have me and that we are together. Not alone.