On Co-Sleeping, Children's Perfume, Pills, Homesickness, and Flower
The eighth Substack post arrived this morning without incident.
On Co-Sleeping
Though borne out of necessity, I relish the fact that my children still sleep in my bed with me. It offers a closeness that would otherwise be unavailable to me, as their bedrooms are upstairs which is impossible for me to get up to. My disability keeps me downstairs for now, and though I know that someday they will want to sleep in their own spaces, for now we take turns sleeping next to Mommy and sharing blankets.
Moss (age 6) is usually the first asleep, and his sleep comes suddenly. You find out he's asleep because he stops asking questions about whatever we are watching at bedtime. Occasionally he will fall asleep on the floor, like last night, and I have to try and wake him to move back onto the bed. Once he is asleep he is very hard to rouse, and it usually ends up with me struggling to physically pull him upright and guide him to the bed. Luckily, he immediately falls back asleep and is down for the night.
Fern (age 5) stays up a little later and likes total darkness for when she falls asleep. Since Moss is already asleep, we usually chat while holding hands as she prepares to slumber. We sometimes listen to a YouTube song called Brahms Lullaby for Babies, Hours of Soft Music by Baby Sleep Music quietly because that is what they did at nap time at their old daycare. I secretly turn on my Voice Notes and record her telling me stories and about her day. She keeps catching me recording, but she doesn't seem to mind. I tell her that I am afraid of the dark so that she will hold my hand until it gets too clammy for her. Then, her breathing slows and I realise that I am alone.
Luckily, they are both good sleepers and don't wake up when I get on the computer to dick around after they are down. I can get up and do things around the room and they will just sleep right through it. I can watch YouTube on the TV, volume 12, without incident.
I am struck mostly by their breathing, which falls in and out of sync with each other, and by their peace. They fall asleep with such abandon, without fear and anxiety that keeps adults awake at night.
Their days happen and then are forgotten, I can barely get an answer to the questions about what they did in school that day, they live so In the present moment that their day's events barely register.
I try and live in the moment, like they are, and not pre-mourn the eventual loss of this beautiful bed nest that we all choose to inhabit. I have always been partial to living in bed, even before I was forced to because of my disability. I do my best work in bed, writing, drawing. I have had wild experiences in bed, but this place is no longer the site of sexual tension but of complete maternal love.
I am reminded of a poem by ee Cummings that is supposed to be about a lover but reminds me in bits of my children. It's a translation from Sophocles' Electra called Reverie. The line is, "You are the long night of peace. And dawn is of you, a thrilling glory frightening stars." Mostly because Moss woke me up at 4:45am, which is his natural time to rise, completely adverse to my typical lack of morning abilities, to tell me that I had not, in fact, charged his iPad last night.
On Children's Perfume
I do not of course mean literally that my children are out in the world wearing perfume. I truly wish that all perfumes and colognes were outlawed and punishable by death–I had to vomit in the bathroom of a children's arcade over the weekend triggered by the smell of cheap cologne–this is my unpopular opinion hill that I would die on.
What I mean, I guess, is that I wish I could bottle the scent of my children into a perfume that I could keep with me the rest of my life. There is something about the smell of them that evokes the most mammalian feeling within me. I reach for them before they leave to grab them by the head and sniff and kiss them, I tuck my nose into their hair and neck and am transported by the scent to a primal place, one where I feel and know that I am home.
Their scents change over the years, I mourn the smell of their baby beings, and I fear the fragrance of their teenage years. The warm milk and hot skin of infants, the clean linen and baby spit up smells that we have long left behind. Now, they are a mix of clean laundry and soap and chlorine and chapstick and sunshine and the cold winter air.
In summer, it's sunscreen and sweat and icy poles and tennis shoes. Wet bathing suits and footy franks (hot dogs).
But there is an animal scent that I cannot name, it is something that makes me feel, 'MINE' in all caps when I smell it. The recognition of my own spawn, the fragrance of my progeny. It gives me the overwhelming feeling that I am with my people, I am safe, and I am loved. How can a scent transport us to love?
I know that this odour won’t last forever—that it’s a temporary scent, in situ. Someday, I’m sure they’ll experiment with perfumes and colognes against my wishes. They’ll wear deodorant to mask their natural smell. But if I could bottle this moment, I would wear it like armour to remind myself of these tender times we share in intimate proximity.
On Pills
My day starts with pills and ends with pills. My hours are punctuated by pills, by pill alarms, by Apple Health alerts. I am dependent on pain medication for my Complex Regional Pain Syndrome, and I am dependent on medications for my depression and ADHD. I used to have a complicated relationship to being on a lifetime of medication to support my medical ailments. Though the medications themselves have changed over the years, especially after I got a Genesight test result that said my body could not metabolise the antidepressant I was on, they have been a constant companion for me since I was in high school.
I've met people in my life who have never had to take a bit of medicine in their lives, who don't keep paracetamol in their purses and corners of Valium in their pocket. I know people who have to inject themselves with medication every day just to survive and function. And here I am, annoyed that I am a slave to my medications and their cycles.
Apple Health put out a medication tracking feature a while ago, and at first I was overjoyed that I had a way to track all of my medicines and their timings and dosages. I'm one of those people who requires extra room on the page just to list all of the medications I am currently on, let alone list the ones that I have tried in the past, which a recent medical form tried to ask me to do. You can even customise the shape and colour of the pills themselves, something which I am sure would be very helpful to someone who was trying to keep track of someone else's medication. But quickly I realised that it was annoying to have an outside force reminding me of something that internally I already knew was due.
So I still get the reminders, they pop up on all of my devices, and I ignore them for the most part because they usually end up being a reminder for something that I have already done. And then the medications change slightly, timings get off course, the dosages change–the reminders become defunct. Or maybe I have just grown lazy and tired of the constant reminders of my dependence and mortality.
I don't have anything brilliant to say about pills, if you need them, you need them, and I recommend taking them over not taking them. I have experienced what happens if I don't take them, and that is not something I am willing to go through again, so I take them, and I take them. Does this feel repetitive to you? Because it fucking does to me. And that's all I really wanted to say, that these pills that control my pain and depression are controlling me, and that though annoyed I am grateful.
Grateful for the fact that I can experience less pain and depression, though by no means NO pain and depression. Do the medications work? I'm not sure, but I'm too afraid to get off of them and fuck around and find out. So I take them, take them, and I take them. Because I still want to be here.
On Homesickness
Leaving America in January of 2021 was the hardest thing that I have ever done. I left behind my family of friends, and what was left of my family, to immigrate to Melbourne, Australia, at the time with my husband and two children under two years old in tow. My now ex-husband is from Melbourne, and we moved to be closer to his family and further from the guns and unrest that surrounded us in rural Oregon.
Because of Covid, we could not have the massive going away party that I would have had upon leaving the country forever. We were afraid to catch Covid and not be let into Australia, because at the time the border was completely locked down. We had to quarantine for two weeks in a hotel in Sydney just to get into the country, with Covid tests throughout.
The homesickness started in the Shetlers’ van on the way to the airport, one of the longest and saddest drives of my life. It started before we even left the driveway, as I took last looks around the farm where I had lived and loved for many years. I was surrounded by my family and the wonderful family of our neighbours with their six kids packed in with us to say goodbye.
The first year was brutal, I think I cried every day for some reason or another. I cannot see a stand of firs without being homesick. I cannot look at the soil here without being homesick, I can't smell petrichor without it. I of course was happy that I had been welcomed into a safe Australian nation where my children could grow up without school-shooter drills and with socialised medicine.
I couldn't watch anything that reminded me of home, an episode of Grand Designs New Zealand looked so much like Oregon that I lost my breath and cried for hours on the balcony. I clutched a tiny album of Polaroids taken with the Shetler's that last day, from the Polaroid camera I left behind for our nanny and wonderful photographer Julianna.
Over the years, the homesickness comes and goes in waves. I'm a very nostalgic person and I lamented being so far from the people who helped form my very core memories. I can often make it through an entire video call with a friend, but when it comes time to say goodbye again, the crying starts. My good friend Holly had been so patient with my sobbing on the chats. The homesickness often has to do with specific people, and this is the most acute form of it, it hit me excruciatingly hard when I learned of the death of my very good friend Rachael Jensen in Portland.
But the homesickness can be little things, too. I miss having more than one option for BBQ sauce, I miss American cereal and candy and have cravings for things that I hadn't eaten in years even in the US. It comes when I see all of the Oregon memorabilia that I have hoarded over my life. It hits again when I hear myself speak and realise–I am the one with the accent here.
I cannot imagine trying to immigrate to somewhere that you don't speak the language, somewhere that didn't want you there. I have had the easiest of immigration experiences, as those things go. I've had lawyers who assisted me with my permanent residency visa and now my citizenship application process. I speak the language, even if I stand out because of my accent. I was not wanted here, but I have been accepted, I think.
The US that I miss is still there, but feels just out of reach. The internet makes it so that I can reach out to my people there and speak to them pretty easily, the 12,274kms between me and my best friend are shortened by text and Instagram messages, and I am able to keep in touch. But it does not fill me up the way a human interaction IRL can.
Right now, I wish I was planning a trip back to Oregon to visit everyone, but I need to get my citizenship here before I can leave the country and get back in. I hope that my disability allows me to make it back to Oregon someday soon, because my children don't remember a lick of it, and there is so much that I want to show them there. And so many lovely people to meet, all across America.
On Flower
I feel that I should remark here that we lost our most beloved rat Flower yesterday. She passed away peacefully on my chest, having been loved every moment that she was with us. I knew that her passing was imminent as she had chronic respiratory infection that she struggled with since we got her. She was Fern’s favourite, and I was very scared to tell her yesterday that she had passed. But she took it well, simply asking that we name a new rat Flower in her memory. I will still expect her at the cage door, the first to be let out and the first to rip a piece of pizza out of my hands. She would always lick my lips, giving me a little kiss, and she loved to play with the dog. She was the singular rat that would eat a snack right where she was handed it, and she especially loved Froot Loops. May her memory be a blessing and may she rest in peace.
And On
I’ve still not worked out how to introduce and excuse myself from these posts. Thank you, Reader, for making it this far, please subscribe if you do not already so that you do not miss a missive from moi. I am thoroughly enjoying writing these for you, in case you were wondering.