Happy Monday everyone! This week, we’re continuing with our series of Table Talk conversation cards. If you missed the previous cards and want to go back and print them out so you can use them at your family table, or with your book club, or at your next meeting or holiday party, you can get them here:
— Conversation Card 1 click here
— Conversation Card 2 click here
— Conversation Card 3 click here
— Conversation Card 4 click here
On the porch today, we’re moving on the Card # 5, which comes from Shellie Rushing Tomlinson’s book, Sue Ellen’s Girl Ain’t Fat, She Just Weighs Heavy:
It probably won’t come as much of a surprise to people who know me, and maybe not to a lot of you who have spent time here on the porch with us for the last couple years, but the times in my life that have driven me the most crazy have a lot to do with parenthood. This is probably true for many moms and dads. Even though it’s years after the fact now, and in hindsight, it seems like maybe we were overreacting, I do distinctly remember nights of sitting in the middle of the floor, and crying right along with the baby. My husband and I laugh about it today, but both of us remember being half (okay maybe more than half) crazy when this little guy came home from the hospital.
He looks so cute, and sweet, and harmless, doesn’t he?
The truth is that he’s probably snoozing in the carrier here because we’d been out driving around, and around, and around the block to get him to sleep. In those early days we fully understood why the FBI and CIA and the Russian Secret Police use sleep deprivation to torture people until they crack. Really, as two babies-of-the-family ourselves, we had no idea what to do with a baby. Long-lasting colic didn’t help the bonding process, and for a while, we really couldn’t imagine why anyone would want one of these things. Sure, he was cute and all, but thirty-six hours in, we really, really wanted to give him back.
The doctor, perhaps seeing that we were straddling the ragged edge, recommended that we try putting the baby on top of the clothes dryer and turning it on the quiet him. He did remind us not to put the the baby inside the clothes dryer, and to make sure that we stayed right there with him so he wouldn’t rattle off of this specialty baby-rocking apparatus.
The clothes dryer quickly became our best friend. We grew to love it–all three of us. We spent many hours snuggled in its warm embrace. If you close your eyes while you’re sitting with your arm slung over the clothes dryer and rest your head against it’s warm, rumbling metal skin, you can pretend you’re on a trip far far away. You can envision yourself driving over green hills and through peaceful valleys, where there is endless, endless quiet, and tiny (but very loud) people do not cry all night and keep you awake.
Eventually we developed a means of strapping the baby carrier to the top of the dryer so that our precious little bundle could sleep in safety and security… and meanwhile we could sleep too. There is no doubt that that the clothes dryer saved lives during those crazy times in our house.
These days, when I see young parents in the grocery store, flustered and embarrassed about a howling baby, I think back to those clothes-dryer times. It’s funny how things that seemed like the end of the world at the time (like a baby who won’t sleep) become the memories you laugh about later.
I guess that’s as it should be. In the great big clothes dryer of life, time tumbles and turns, wrinkles come and wrinkles go, the colors change, the clothes grow a little bigger each year. Everything remains in constant motion.
Every once in a while, when life gets a little too crazy, I’m tempted to try out that clothes dryer again. Who knows, maybe it works for grown-up moms, too ;o)
New On Shelves — The Latest Moses Lake Book
Click here to read the first Chapter!
