I had been looking forward to Thursday night all week.
My final semester of law school is well underway, and between that, the five kids at home, and the part-time job, it feels like I rarely see my husband. He stays home during the day so that I can go to school or work, and then I come home mid-afternoon and he leaves within ten minutes to go to his job, where he works until almost midnight. Some days, my mom or a friend come over to watch the kids so I can stay at school later, which results in me not seeing my husband for days.
Thursdays are his off-day, though, which means that once I’m finally home around 5:30pm or 6:00pm, we have the whole evening together. After three days straight of me handling dinner time, bath time, and bedtime with all five kids alone, I am mostly just thrilled to have another adult in the house.
This Thursday was like all others. I left my house with my first grader around 7:00am. I dropped her off at school, commuted the 45 minutes to law school, and was there until 4:45pm. I rushed over to pick my daughter up from after-school care, making it right at 5:30pm. Holy crap, she’s been at school for ten hours, I feel so bad, this is all my fault, and other similar thoughts raced through my brain. When my daughter climbed into the backseat of the car, she sighed dramatically and exclaimed, “I just wish I could stay there until the last kid leaves!”
“You want to stay until 6:30pm?” I asked incredulously.
“Yes!” she responded adamantly, “It’s fun!”
At least I know she’s not irreparably damaged by having a working mom… yet.
Dinner was ready as soon as we got home, courtesy of my husband and our InstantPot. By the time we finished eating, spoon-feeding the seven-month-old twins, and cleaning up dinner, it was almost 7:00pm. The twins were clearly tired, so my husband started putting the twins to bed, giving me a break after doing it for three nights straight. I glanced once more at the clock and thought, What the hell, the big kids can go to bed too, before helping them all brush their teeth and get pajamas on.
My husband and I were making asides to each other this whole time: What treats do we want to eat once all of the kids are in bed? Should I go out and get something? Should we watch some football? Maybe I could study lightly while he plays a video game?
The second the kids were in bed, I began unloading and loading the dishwasher while my husband went upstairs to work on folding the mountain of laundry on our bed. By the time I crawled into bed, it was only 8:30pm.
“I’m sorry,” I said to my husband.
“What? Why?” he asked, deep in the process of matching one hundred tiny socks.
“I just… feel bad about what me being in law school does to our lives. I feel bad for how hard it is on you.”
And it was true, me being in law school has been a strain on our entire family since day one. My husband has had to bend his entire schedule around when I have classes, meetings, and court. If I need to take a final or attend a mediation, my husband will request off work so that he can be with the kids. If someone is sick and needs to stay home, I don’t automatically skip school so that he can still work; instead, it’s a toss-up, a careful weighing of which class I would have to skip, how important it is, and how many more skips that leaves me with for the semester.
Add in the fact that I was pregnant with twins for over half of my 2L year, and then had to, oh, give birth and recover for the rest of my 2L year, my husband really has done it all. Cooking. Cleaning. Childcare. Middle-of-the-night feedings with the twins. My husband is much more of the default parent than I am, and although I’m grateful beyond measure, I also in turn feel like a deadbeat mom.
“That’s nothing to be sorry for,” he responded, “we’re in this together.”
“Still,” I finally responded, “I’m sorry.”
And then I passed out at 8:32pm.
I awoke with a start. I thought I had heard my stepson cry out, and my heart was racing. I listened for several minutes, though, and heard nothing, so I chalked it up to a bad dream. It was still dark outside, so I knew it had to be early. I felt refreshed though, and chuckled to myself because of course I felt refreshed, I fell asleep before 9:00pm! But then it hit me.
I felt ready to start the day…
But I had fallen asleep around 8:30pm.
I checked the clock on my nightstand.
3:22am. Oh.
I quickly did the math in my head, and then confirmed with my fingers because it was still early, so maybe I miscalculated. But my math was correct, and I had really just slept seven hours. I had barely been sleeping six hours the past week, so it’s no wonder that I felt ready to jump out of bed and start my day! But then, a second realization hit me:
I had missed out on quality time with my husband.
A wave of guilt and sadness washed over me. I had been looking forward to a few hours of uninterrupted time with my husband, and I ruined it. I had passed out early, and my sweet husband had made sure to lock up the house, blow out the candle on my nightstand, remove one of the extra pillows from under my head because he knew I always complained of a crook in my neck if I slept with too many pillows, and turn off all of the lights. All while I snoozed away.
Now, we would spend an hour or so in the morning working in tandem to get all of the kids ready for school, and then we would part ways to take the kids to their different schools before I went to work for the day, after which I would come home, say goodbye to him, and he’d head off to work until at least 11:00pm.
Thursday night was supposed to be our one chance during the week to decompress and catch up, and it was gone. I slept through it. My last words to him before I had fallen asleep had been, “I’m sorry,” and now, I really felt sorry.
I am sure that I needed the sleep. Clearly, my body was fed up with me fueling it exclusively with caffeine and freezer meals, and shut things down early to ensure I slept more than the usual 5.5 hours a night I had been racking up lately. It’s not like I chose to fall asleep when I did and “ruin” our night on purpose, with “ruin” being in quotes because I didn’t ruin anything.
But that doesn’t mean that it doesn’t suck. It just served as a bitter reminder of how constantly exhausted my husband and I are. We really are like ships passing in the night, and I never knew it was possible to miss someone so much despite sleeping next to them every night.
One of the twins ended up waking up within ten or so minutes, so my early wakeup didn’t entirely go to waste. My husband normally handles all of their middle-of-the-night parties, so I was happy to jump out of bed and take care of it, letting him sleep. Once Evelyn was back in her crib with a clean diaper and a bottle, I headed back downstairs with my dog, my favorite blanket, and my laptop. I was wide awake, and didn’t want to wake my husband. Instead, I did what I always do anytime I feel overwhelmed with sadness or guilt or disappointment or basically any other feeling: I began to write.
A day will come when my husband and I sleep in blissfully until at least 7:30am. We will slowly wake up to the sunlight streaming through the closed blinds, stretching and yawning and commenting on the late hour to one another. We will eventually make our way downstairs. My husband will make us breakfast, and I’ll take our dog for an hour-long walk just because I can.
Maybe the kids eventually wake up, or maybe this is a time after the kids have moved out. Maybe we both eventually go to work, or maybe we’re retired. But we’re relaxed, not in a rush, not juggling thirty things simultaneously and running ourselves into the ground.
“Want to go out for dinner tonight?” my husband will ask.
“Sure!” I’ll respond cheerily, “I can wear that new dress I just bought.” Maybe the dress cost over $100, maybe it didn’t. But it’s new, and it’s mine.
“Awesome, want to go to that new fancy Italian place downtown?”
“Sounds perfect.”
We’ll arrive at the restaurant at 4:45pm because we have nothing better to do. We’ll piss off all of the waiters when we stay at our table until 8:00pm, just chatting away. There is no rush to return home in time for bedtime, no thought of tomorrow’s early wakeup call. Just me, my husband, and a bottomless basket of breadsticks.
That day will come, I’m sure of it. But for now, it’s 4:47am on a Friday morning, and I’m going to climb back into bed next to my husband, just for an hour before our alarms go off, and the craziness resumes once more.
