To Hell with All That by Caitlin Flanagan

Author:Caitlin Flanagan [FLANAGAN, CAITLIN]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: FAM000000
ISBN: 9780316186537
Publisher: Little, Brown and Company
Published: 2011-04-30T16:00:00+00:00

PALOMA WORKED from nine to five—a span dictated by our finances, not the number of hours she was willing to work—and for a long time the babies woke up at five every morning. All my life I’ve been a morning person, but during that year I faced the day with a foggy brain, a desperation for sleep, and an emotional weariness that I recognized as depression only many years later. For a four-hour stretch we would sit in the little living room, waiting for Paloma.

First things first: I would switch on MSNBC, feed and change the babies, and put on the teakettle. At last the Today show would begin. I would watch it straight through and with an intensity of which its producers could only have dreamed. I assumed at first that I had developed a newfound interest in cooking tips and money management and the weather. But gradually I came to understand that what I liked was seeing people up and dressed and doing their jobs. Even the crowd outside the studio—a group I had once observed with curiosity from a Manhattan coffee shop, wondering what in the world would inspire anyone to show up for such an exercise—now seemed like industrious, happy people: bundled into parkas, radiating good cheer, ready for a jam-packed day of sightseeing. They had important roles to fill in the early hours: they were New York tourists. They didn’t want to miss a thing. Back in the apartment, midway through what the hosts called “the seven-o’clock hour,” a weak light would begin to fill the living room, illuminating the stains on the carpet. Sometimes I realized we had to get out of there.

Staging the prison break—something Paloma achieved twice a day, always without a moment’s trepidation—was arduous. I had to get myself dressed and then get the boys dressed. Immediately one of them would need a clean diaper or drop off into a deep, unscheduled sleep, throwing the whole enterprise into question: maybe his brother would fall asleep, too, and then I could sleep? Many such missions were aborted on this hope, always unrealized. If we pushed on, I would race down the stairs to the porch and set up the double stroller, frantic with anxiety: were the unattended babies turning on the stove or diving headfirst into the toilet? Then I would race up and get one boy, bring him to the stroller and strap him in, race up for his brother (more anxiety: was the boy on the porch being set upon by pit bulls or kidnappers?), and get him squared away in the stroller.

And then—suddenly—we were free.

On our own, out of the terrible apartment. We were like the Today show tourists: up and dressed and eager for adventure. The very second I wheeled the huge stroller around and headed down the path toward the sidewalk, I would begin to cheer up. The oppressive apartment, the yammer and glow of the television, were behind us. In my memory of the time it was always winter, cold and fogged in.

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