The Heavens
Sometimes at the end of a long day with the kids, I need a few minutes just to be alone. Yesterday was one of those days. With both children clinging to my legs and a massive car repair bill lingering in my mind, I was hanging on by a thread at the close of the dinner hour. (It's really more like the dinner fifteen minutes when you have small children, but I suppose it's just an expression.)
I made an appeal to my husband for ten minutes by myself, which he happily obliged, and then I disappeared into the X-room. This is a small rectangular room at the back of our house which seemed without specific purpose (like Generation X...thus the name) until we put a TV in there. One of its finest features, besides the giant cedar closet adjoining it, is its windowless door.
You don't find many living spaces in modern houses with doors. Sure, there might be a formal dining room with hardwood floors and fancy French doors (the space one of my friends calls "the echo room" in her home for its lack of curtains or rug), but it's not the same as this. The X-room is only about 8' x 10' and feels much smaller given its contents--a couch, a coffee table, a bookshelf, and a modestly-sized TV by today's standards. When the door is closed and you're snuggled up under a down throw with a good book (as I was), it is transformed from cozy media center to soundproof escape pod. As far as I was concerned, I spent ten glorious minutes in outer space.
After the ten minutes were up, I reentered the atmosphere and, opening the door, braced for my crash-landing into the noisy, roiling cacaphony of an ocean of bickering voices and battery-operated toys. Instead, I heard nothing.
I walked further into the house and saw no one. Then I noticed that the front door was open a crack, and I approached. There was my family, wrapped in blankets on our tiny front porch. Big brother had been wanting for a couple of days to watch the stars come out, and apparently tonight was the night. Steamed milk in hand, the kids were snuggled around their dad, staring up at an unfortunately cloudy sky. I sat down with them and looked heavenward.
The kids flopped back and lay in our laps. With a fair bit of diligence, we were able to spot one blurry star high overhead. I recited the "Star Light, Star Bright" poem so that the wee ones could make wishes. It was one of those rare moments in parenting that are just like what you thought parenting would always be before you had kids. When we peeled our eyes from the sky and went back inside, I felt incredibly grateful that I'd been to both outer space and parenting heaven in less than an hour.
I made an appeal to my husband for ten minutes by myself, which he happily obliged, and then I disappeared into the X-room. This is a small rectangular room at the back of our house which seemed without specific purpose (like Generation X...thus the name) until we put a TV in there. One of its finest features, besides the giant cedar closet adjoining it, is its windowless door.
You don't find many living spaces in modern houses with doors. Sure, there might be a formal dining room with hardwood floors and fancy French doors (the space one of my friends calls "the echo room" in her home for its lack of curtains or rug), but it's not the same as this. The X-room is only about 8' x 10' and feels much smaller given its contents--a couch, a coffee table, a bookshelf, and a modestly-sized TV by today's standards. When the door is closed and you're snuggled up under a down throw with a good book (as I was), it is transformed from cozy media center to soundproof escape pod. As far as I was concerned, I spent ten glorious minutes in outer space.
After the ten minutes were up, I reentered the atmosphere and, opening the door, braced for my crash-landing into the noisy, roiling cacaphony of an ocean of bickering voices and battery-operated toys. Instead, I heard nothing.
I walked further into the house and saw no one. Then I noticed that the front door was open a crack, and I approached. There was my family, wrapped in blankets on our tiny front porch. Big brother had been wanting for a couple of days to watch the stars come out, and apparently tonight was the night. Steamed milk in hand, the kids were snuggled around their dad, staring up at an unfortunately cloudy sky. I sat down with them and looked heavenward.
The kids flopped back and lay in our laps. With a fair bit of diligence, we were able to spot one blurry star high overhead. I recited the "Star Light, Star Bright" poem so that the wee ones could make wishes. It was one of those rare moments in parenting that are just like what you thought parenting would always be before you had kids. When we peeled our eyes from the sky and went back inside, I felt incredibly grateful that I'd been to both outer space and parenting heaven in less than an hour.
posted by Lisa Strandberg at 9:16 PM
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