Sometimes I feel so desperate for sleep that I want to run through and out the front door of our house and leave Aron to take care of Graham while I nap on the sidewalk, in the grass, or even in a gutter: really I'd nap anyplace, even the bed of a stranger's truck. I have lots of crazy sleep impulses. Another involves sneaking a snooze during bathtime, but each time I come close to taking the tub nap I imagine a local newspaper headline the next day reading "Young mother dies during attempt to nap in shower." That would be embarrassing for Graham. "Your mom is sooo stupid…"
The headline would be right in that it's true that I'm young—young for a mother, anyway. I'm not, however, young in any other respect. I'm actually old for pretty much everything else I am or hope to ever be: college undergraduate, doctor, Cirque du Soleil performer, pastry chef, bar owner, professional tennis player. I'm not in the mood to have this pouty perspective defeated; I don’t want to turn my frown upside down, so this self-pity won't be abated by the fact that I hardly actually have the ambitions to be any of those things I listed.
When Graham is twenty-five, I'll be fifty. That's nice. Even from twenty-four fifty doesn't seem old. At fifty you can still move, you can still drive, you can still form and retain memories, the last of which is particularly important since I'll probably still be an undergrad attempting to learn Latin when I'm fifty.
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