MUSINGS

My (New) Bedtime Blues

 Yitti Berkovic

I smell pizza.

Somehow, through the fog of my dreams, I inhale the scent of tomato sauce and oregano and bubbling melted cheese, and I wake up with my mouth watering but with my mind a mixed-up mess.  

Drowsily, I peek at the clock on my bedside table. 

It’s two o’clock in the morning. 

Why on earth do I smell pizza?

I’m tempted to turn over and forget about it. Maybe it would be wiser to go downstairs and find out if Italian elves have invaded my kitchen, but I’d prefer to stay under the covers and dream about someone making supper for my family while I sleep. (Should I call down and let them know that my kids like a thin crust?)

I close my eyes, but just as I doze off again, I wake up to a stronger, more acrid smell. Is that smoke? Is the pizza burning? (Just my luck–the Italian elves who break into my kitchen don’t know how to cook.). 

Sleepily, I grab a robe and head downstairs, not sure how to prepare myself for what I’ll really find. 

(Did I forget that guests were coming, and they’ve made themselves at home? Did my little guy figure out how to order pizza delivery from his bed and charge my credit card while I was asleep?)

My mind is now awake with a million different theories, none of which makes any sense. And when I stumble bleary-eyed into my kitchen, I find no one.

My kitchen is empty–except for the wisps of smoke that are emanating from my kitchen island. That’s where I spot the culprit–an overheated Betty Crocker Pizza Maker, its jaws clamped tightly on what was once a slice of frozen pizza but now looks more like charred toast.

Lovely. 

Even though I am half asleep, it doesn’t take a detective to figure out what happened here. One of my kids was still awake well past midnight and decided to make himself or herself a second dinner–and then completely forgot all about it and nearly set my house aflame.

I pull the plug and then wave a dish towel around the red machine as black soot rains down around me. Crisis averted, but my anger doesn’t fade as quickly as the danger. 

I wait impatiently until the guilty party (identity protected) eventually makes a sheepish appearance in the kitchen. “Sorry, Ma,” said child offers. “I jumped into the shower and forgot that I put up some pizza for melaveh malkah.”

The recriminations creep onto my tongue:

“Why are you up so late? This is why I can’t get you up in the morning!”

“You could have started a fire!”

“You woke me up and you wasted a perfectly good slice of pizza?”

But the child’s face is creased in apologies, and I’m too tired for a fight. Instead, I wish my teenager a “Layla tov” and trudge back upstairs, knowing good and well that this kid’s head won’t hit the pillow any time soon. I’m pretty sure another slice of pizza has been popped into the Betty Crocker. 

As I try to sneak noiselessly into my bedroom, my husband asks groggily, “Why are you up? Did one of the kids have a bad dream?” and I laugh out loud.

Remember the good old days when the noises that kept us up at night were from crying babies or little guys who wanted to climb into our beds after a nightmare? 

Nowadays, it’s far more likely that we’re woken up by a teenager and not a toddler, and it’s a lot harder to get a teenager back into bed (I can’t just bribe them with Cocoa Puffs for breakfast or an extra bedtime story tomorrow night).

It feels like yesterday that I wrote an article for this magazine called My Bedtime Blues, detailing my hassles as a young mom trying to corral her kiddos into bed. In what feels like a blink of an eye, I’m looking back fondly and missing those days when all my kids were in bed long before I was.

Now, even though I am a notorious night person, I’m rarely the last one in my house to go to sleep. Well after I say Kriyas Shema al Hamitah, the main floor of my house remains wide awake, pulsing with noise and energy.

Plans are made. Cram sessions commence. The car pulls in and out of the driveway. Slurpees are purchased. Pizzas are burned to a crisp. The world continues to spin even when I’m in dreamland, leaving this mother micromanager feeling like I’ve dropped the ball. 

How can I sleep when my children are still awake? 

How can I maintain my much-needed sense of control if I’m not even conscious?

How can I be sure that my kids are safe (and that my house is safe from overheating kitchen appliances!) if I can’t enforce bedtimes anymore?

It isn’t an easy adjustment.

I guess it’s not unlike the adjustment I had to make almost twenty years ago when I first became a mother, when I first learned that stretches of sleep were a luxury. When I first learned to sleep with half an eye open and with an ear awaiting the sound that someone small needed me.

I guess it’s what we mothers need to do–we adapt and adjust as our children hit new developmental stages, even when it isn’t easy for us. Especially when it isn’t easy for us.

More than that, I guess it’s what we mothers pray for–that our children learn to differentiate themselves from their parents, that they begin to build friendships and interests beyond their parents, that they develop a sense of confidence that enables them to achieve big things without their parents at their sides (or even awake). 

Also, it helps to have a dose of perspective.

There are mothers in Eretz Yisrael who haven’t heard from their children in weeks.

When so many of these mothers fall into their beds at night, they don’t know where their sons and daughters are. They don’t know when their children last had a hot meal. They don’t know what dangerous mission their children are involved in. They don’t know if their children are hungry or cold or scared. 

Those mothers’ dreams aren’t punctured by the smell of burning pizza; they are punctured by Tzeva Adom sirens and the loud booms of the Iron Dome and worries that they can’t chase away, no matter how hard they try.

So even as I grumble things like, “Why can’t anyone in this house go to sleep at a normal hour?” and “Can’t you make plans to study before midnight?” and “Please knock on my bedroom door to let me know that you’re home, no matter how late it is!” deep down, I’m really not complaining.

Deep down, I know I’m the lucky one, (tiredly) shepherding my children into the next stage of their lives.