daunting

Lena has never been more than a room away.

When she was born she slept in a basket on my bed in my parents house. Then I found a partner and I started to move Lena into a crib in my old room, while I stayed in the guest room.

Sleep training was hard. It was hard because all comfort had always been an arm reach away but all of the sudden I needed my bed back, for me, and Lena needed to sleep on her own, for her, and I got in these stupid arguments with my parents that were all along the lines of, ‘why do you need to change what is working, you’re just being selfish, why are you letting her cry.” And I had to say “Because it’s clearly not working, and I’m not being selfish, and she needs to learn to sleep on her own."

The thing I hadn’t realized then, and maybe am just even learning now was that I was being selfish, but most importantly I was allowed to be selfish, it was in fact important for me to be selfish. 21 year old me was not able to articulate all of this. I hadn’t figured out how to be a parent, I hadn’t figured out how to advocate for Lena, or myself. But we made it through, all of us. I can’t dwell on it too much without it still hurting—how hard it is to be both a parent and a child in the same house and the same time.

And then we moved out. And we shared an apartment with a roommate; a three-bedroom ground floor apartment where my roommate had the master bedroom, and Lena and I had the two bedrooms at the other end. Still at the end of the hall, still right next to each other. I heard her fall asleep, when it thundered at night I listened for her movements, waited for her to come to me.

And then we moved again, to A House of Our Own, a teeny house, where our bedrooms touch, where the light from her nightlight spills into the hallway and into my room. And when she’s sick I hear her cough and when she’s sad I hear her cry and when I’m sad she hears me cry and when I am happy she hears me joyful and we are right next to each other, as we have always been. As we have always been.

But we are both growing and changing. I want to go running in the evening and I ask Lena if she would be comfortable staying at home by herself for a little bit, no more than an episode of Pokemon, and she says, “I don’t know, I think I would get a little scared.” So I don’t leave her yet, I don’t go running when she is home, even though I want to so badly, even though we can go hours without talking in our little house, even when we are right next to each other.

I ask her if she likes it just the two of us and she says yes. And I say would she like it if there was another person around and she knows the answer I want to hear so she says “I don’t care.” She pauses, then, “But I like that it’s just us.” And I try to explain and I say, “You know how your other friends have a mom and a dad, and it’s nice because they have each other and I know we have each other but sometimes adults need other adults.” And Lena says, “Are you getting married?"

It’s daunting. To imagine adding someone into our lives. To change the life that we’ve put together. But we need it. I need it. I need my bed back again. It’s time for me to be selfish.

I feel like I did seven years ago and I’m justifying my decisions as an adult, as a parent. And I am saying in vain that other people’s kids sleep in cribs and other people let their kids cry it out, and other people have lives and relationships and do things for themselves and I can only hear my parents wondering why I need to change things when “everything is working out so well, you’re doing so great."

and I want to say no, I’m not.

I’m not.

I’m not.

I’m not.