Mommy Bloggers: Saturday Morning Meditation

Ah, Saturday. Truly, the one day of the week where I can stay snuggled into bed until I drift awake, rested and at peace.

*screeeeeeeeech*

When my first kid popped awake at 5:15 am, I pulled her into my bed, hoping to snuggle her into submission. Her happy cries of "Up! Mama! Get up get up get up!" woke the other two, and by 5:20 am, I had all three kids jockeying for position in my bed.

My husband did the sensible thing, and got up to make coffee. I stayed in bed, dodging the knees and elbows of three gangly kids, wishing for a magic cloud of sleeping dust to appear overhead. After feigning sleep for another few minutes, I tried shooing the kids out of my room.

"Hey! Everybody out! Go on now! This is a sleeping place!"

No dice. My son gave me a baleful glance and said "Wah wah wah I can't hee-uh you." Elmer Fudd the smart-aleck. The kids wrestled like puppies, giggling and occasionally yelping.

If I couldn't get them to stop, I figured I'd leave them to it. I slipped out from under the warmth of my blankets and shuffled out to the kitchen for my own cup of coffee. The kids trailed behind, peppering my back with a hail of questions. We made quite a ragtag parade, me in my shlumpy sweats, my oldest already bedecked in extra scarves and jewelry over her pajamas, my son muttering random dinosaur facts, clad in only his pajama top and a pair of underpants, and my youngest, hair like a lion's mane, chirping "Yay! Mommy! Yay! You got up!"

Yay. Yay, indeed.

While the kids twittered around the house, tra la la la la-ing about the joy of being awake early on a Saturday morning, I sat glaring into my mug, longing for a few more hours of sleep. I slapped my cup down on the counter and stalked back to my bed. I threw my body back down, pulled the covers up to my chin, and laid very still, eyes squinted shut. Hah! I was a parody of my children at bedtime.

Opening one eye, I looked over at the clock. 5:35 am. Oy. I snapped my eyelid closed, and willed my brain to relax. Muffled outside my bedroom, I could hear the kids engaged in some sort of drama. Unable to relax, I stood back up, marched back to the kitchen in a major snit. I grabbed at my coffee cup and sloshed the lukewarm brew down the front of my sweatshirt.

Tears sprang to my eyes. I stomped across the kitchen to let the dog out. As the door slid open, the cold morning air slapped me in the face, causing me to inhale sharply. My lungs burned from the temperature difference, but my brain cleared. My foul mood evaporated as I noticed the first light creeping over my back fence, turning the dew on my deck to a silvery sheen. The dog slipped past my legs into the warmth of the kitchen, but I stood there, dragon-breath billowing into the still-dark yard.

In the next room, I could hear my children. Their voices fell to stage whispers, and rose to shouts as they acted out a story about a Queen, an Animal Researcher and a Baby Jaguar. I continued to gulp lungfuls of bracing air, feeling the tension leaving my body. I slid the door closed, and felt a small hand on my back.

"Mommy? Whatcha doing?" My three year old beamed up at me from behind her unruly hair.

"I'm breathing, baby." She thrust her arms up at me, and I settled her on my hip. We stood together, our foreheads resting on the cool glass of the sliding door.

"Mommy?" She whispered near my cheek. "I breathing, too."

"Do you see that the sun is almost awake?" I turned my body so that her chubby face pointed in the direction of the sunrise.

"Up came the sun and dried up all the rain..." she sang to me.

She read my mind.

Saturday Morning Meditation

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