One of these Mondays will be normal
March 31, 2025 — 8:13pm
Dear Reese,
You spend two hours in my office with me today, in between a noon daycare pickup and a last-minute doctor’s appointment.
Your teachers start texting me an hour after drop off this morning. You are crying and can’t be consoled. They are looking for tips. I get a flashback to the first day you were at daycare back in October. We think teething, so I drop off some Tylenol for them to give you (you have finally fallen asleep, so I can’t check you myself). A little while later, Tylenol administered, they say you still seem miserable. They say when you’re not crying they hear a rattling in your cough.
Darling, when I pick you up, you are all smiles. Your teachers laugh and say to you, “Are you going to make liars out of us?”. I get the doctor’s appointment just in case — you have been congested for the last week, and I want to rule out something like an ear infection.
In the end, you’re a healthy little girl. A little snotty. But no ear infection. No croup. No fever. So teething, most likely.
Part of me wonders if you just wanted to be home with me. There is some separation anxiety in this stage of life, and the two teachers you have spent the most time with aren’t in your room today. You are happy to hang out in the office — less happy when I coax you into sleeping on me in my desk chair, but we get there.
I always want to spend time with you, but it doesn’t throw a wrench in the workday. Again. After the doctor, we go to the cottage so MorMor can watch you for a while so I can get some work done in the late afternoon. I feel very tired.
But then I build you a very cool block tower for you to knock down and trail after you as you crawl across the house, interested in everything that may be dangerous. I help you stand and sing songs while we look out the sunroom window at the deer that comes all the way up the bird feeder.
When we get home, I make us mac & cheese since you didn’t eat much real food today, and I know you’ll eat that. You eat so much of it (and then so do I). While I cook and later clean up, you play with the tupperware cabinet and the box of random things I put together for you. We’re listening to a Dungeon Court podcast I’ve heard before. The scene feels good, nonchaotic, and resets my nervous system.
Last night, at our cottage sleepover, MorMor and I both lose sleep at different intervals. MorMor is thinking about how you hit your head and imagining all sorts of things. (It didn’t bruise darling, there’s barely a mark.) She’s so happy to hear your noises in the morning and vows to get rid of the offending table.
At 3 am, I wake from a dream I didn’t want to be in and then stay awake worrying about lots of things, including the temperature in the guest room where you’re sleeping. It’s just right for a while. Then by morning it’s too hot.
You sleep through the night.
I guess I want you to know you’re on our minds. Always.
As I’m writing this, you wake up with a cry an hour into your sleep. I watch for a minute as you reach for and eventually find one of the three binkies in your crib and fall back asleep. Even back home, I am a little bit worried about the temperature in your room. Is it too cold? I dressed you in the warm pajamas. Your sleep sack should be warm, but I’m lounging under a heated blanket so how I can I compare?
Uffda. I love you.
Love,
Mama
The Castle in the Pond, Part 19
With the expert navigation of The Fierce Croc and the duck, you make it back safely to the hiding place of The Great Bullfrog.
You tell her and the turtle of your adventure up the river, meeting the manatee who gave her father the original power, and the black swan’s near attack upon your return. You don’t tell them what the manatee called you — a Green Knight. Instead, you pull out the trowel that was blessed with the blue light of the manatee.
But the trowel is not glowing blue. “The black swan tried to take it . . . " you explain. “Can you feel the power?”
The Great Bullfrog leans her head forward to touch the trowel. “Croak,'“ she says. “The black swan didn’t take the power, but the power is barely here. There’s a flicker of it, but it does not feel like mine. I think, little one, that it was not meant to be in this pond anymore. What was once given can not be given again. Croak.”
“So all that was for nothing?” you ask.
“I’m sorry, little one. Perhaps there’s nothing to be done.”
“No. You all keep stopping me from confronting the black swan, but why? The black swan was defeated before.”
“That was with the bullfrog’s power,” the turtle says. “Only it could stand up to the black swan’s terrible magic. And that power, it seems, is truly gone.”
The Fierce Croc chimes in, “You may have defeated me, but you cannot take on the black swan with your gymnastics and fists.”
You feel a pulse within you. Like a heartbeat. Badum. Badum.
“This time, don’t stop me,” you say in answer and head for the center of the pond.
To be continued.