The Art of Juggling

I have always admired the skill of juggling; the remarkable ability to keep multiple objects circulating simultaneously, for the act itself seems to blatantly defy the law of gravity.  I’ve never been able to get the hang of it, perhaps because I can’t get past the thought of releasing more items into the air than I have hands to catch.  Perception of control is my modus operand.  It all boils down to one thing: mind over matter.  So while the idea of tossing around four tennis balls seems impossible to me, I am right now handling the demands of an infant, an injured husband, and a sick dog.  If you change the context, swap inanimate objects for life roles, it turns out I just might know how to juggle after all…

It was 4:08am; Liam was crying, Brian was sleeping, and I, was up. Like every other time, I started to pull my head off of the pillow, slide out from under the sheets, to begin making my trek to the nursery. But for whatever reason, this Wednesday morning my body decided enough was enough, and demanded help.  For the first time since we had the baby, I rolled over, woke my husband up, and told him it was his turn to tend to Liam. As I felt him get to his feet, I snuggled further in under the covers and began to spread out over the toasty spot he just left vacated.  Just as rest looked to be mine, a light exploded overhead and destroyed the only chance I had gotten at more than 4 hours of sleep in just as many months. Certain expletives leapt to the tip of my tongue as I glared at the perpetrator who stole my sleep.  There Brian stood, less than happy to be awake, completely ignorant to the fact that because of him, I was awake, too. Since I was up now anyway, and he seemed to have his hands full with just the baby, I went downstairs to take the dog out.  As I waited for Tyson to do his business, I thought about how it was going upstairs.  When I had passed by the baby’s room, Bri had on the big light and was entertaining Liam, neither of which is recommended when aiming to put a child back to bed. But as I made my way back up the stairs, all lights were out and silence was all that could be heard. Well, I’ll be darned, I thought, as I crawled back into bed. He did it. Before I got the chance to revel in this glorious novelty, I felt a hand on my shoulder – not the big, hairy, work-roughened fingers of a man, but rather the small, doughy, drool-soaked fingers of a baby.  I rolled over in complete disbelief. Yup, there he was, alright, happy as a pig in mud and wide awake. Not trusting myself to speak to Brian at this particular point, I scooped Liam up and marched us both off to the nursery. Somehow I’ve managed all this time to feed, change, and put Liam back down without waking Brian and bringing him into bed with us. Why couldn’t he have managed it just this once? To add insult to injury, I was facing a weekend of taking care of the baby all by myself so that Bri could go play with his boys.

Two days later, 6 more hours of sleep under my belt, and a dog now diagnosed with an ear infection, my husband was doing everything he could to detract from the fact that he was leaving me in the domestic trenches with canine amoxicillin and cradle cap, while he got to hang around a cabin with grown-ups and alcohol. The bottle of wine and pint of ice-cream he picked up was mere ammunition for survival, nothing close to what would be considered acceptable as a peace offering - he owed me bigtime. When the phone rang that night during Liam’s 1am feeding, I knew it wasn’t going to be the best of news; yet, I still wasn’t prepared to hear Brian’s voice telling me he was going to the hospital. He was ok, relatively anyway, but he did something to his knee and couldn’t walk. Sure enough, there he hobbled crutches and all, into our house at 3:30 in the morning. So, my weekend of playing caretaker just extended to include my husband.  Great.

It’s now Sunday; I have found no rest this weekend, and shudder at the thought of having to begin another week in just over 12 hours. But as I look around and realize that Liam is freshly changed, Brian is fed and napping and Tyson just had his medicine, I discovered that it’s never too late to learn a new skill. So no matter what it is you find yourself handling in your life this week, here’s to learning how to juggle  J