The Morning After

I’ll spare you the gory details, but suffice it to say, we are hollow-eyed and wrecked this morning, the walking, talking dead. Steve did the grunt work, Ferberizing within an inch of his sanity for nearly 2 hours last night. I cowered in bed, drifting guiltily in and out of sleep, in a restless sweat, until he finally returned, growling at me as he got into bed: “It’s your turn next.” But I knew that if I so much as heard one bleat of Maisy’s protests, my hormones would spike and I’d fold instantly, and so I told him that, in no uncertain terms he would need to carry us all that night. I then delivered my coup de grace, a sleazy, pre-dawn bribe or—now that I think about it, threat— the kind only made in the most heinous of situations: “If you want to go to Silverton,” I hissed back, dangling his hotly-contested ski trip to Colorado next weekend, “you’re going to need to Ferberize.” Following which, I’m fairly certain that the words “man up” left my lips.

Steve, wisely, did not reply, and somehow we all slept undisturbed until 7 A.M., when the monitor emitted a tiny, hesitant cry. I cracked an eye and crept out of the room, too mortified by my Sarah Palin tough talk to utter a single conciliatory word to Steve. No matter: He was a motionless lump in the bed.

The sun wasn’t up yet, and the living room was bathed in cool, grey light. Outside, the wind was pushing clumps of feathery Stipa grass sideways, and the sky was empty of everything: clouds, Moon, stars. If Maisy had awoken, she was quiet again, and I sat in the half-dark room and thought about meditating or writing or doing something important and in this rare stillness, but instead I stayed where I was and let it settle on me—the calm after the storm.

But I’d be lying if I didn’t admit that, amidst this unexpected tranquility, worst-case scenarios began to sidle into my brain: Maisy lying in her crib, screaming silently, her mouth opening but no sound coming out, hoarse from her epic crying jag just hours earlier. Me entering the room to be greeted not by Maisy’s normally impish delighted smile but a horrid, disgusted sneer that spoke volumes: “and you call yourself a mother?” Maisy inconsolable for hours, days, weeks later—her personality ruined, naps ruined, life as we know it, now and forever, wrecked beyond repair. Drama queen.

Then the monitor squealed, and I practically sprinted into her room. There she was, seemingly intact, cooing through her upturned grin shaped like a capital H. One bullet dodged. As for Steve, I let him sleep until 8:30. The first night’s always the hardest, right?  Right?!