I often get up at three a.m. with a headache.  There is never so much as a children’s chewable aspirin in the house to help me out.  When I do not have a thing in the house to take for a headache, I get a headache.  When I have not cleaned the house for two weeks or changed the cat litter since last Christmas, I have unexpected guests ring my doorbell.  I always answer the door.  I am wearing mismatched pajamas, my husband’s socks, and there is not an excuse I can create as they survey the mayhem.  My mother never vacuumed, however she left it out and plugged in all the time.  If people visited she would say that she was just cleaning the house.  I never thought of this creative excuse.  I try the flu, but that only works on first time visitors.  The next time they assume that I am a closet drinker…close, but I don’t drink in closets. As a mother of four active children I gave up on keeping the house up.  My husband works twenty-six hours a day, seven days a week.  All of our children were born through immaculate conception.  It sounds heathenish.  But, it’s true.  Why is it sailors manage to have six to twelve children to feed when they spend most months out to sea?  Do children really arrive by stork?

I am an only offspring.  My life as a child and my training in college as a writing and literature major did not prepare me for raising four children, for having two cats, a dog who eats crayons, and two goldfish.  My house is too big, but I need a house this big for all of the above.  Cleaning it takes a full five day week of unrelenting hyperactivity.  I scale mountains of laundry.  I cook in pots so big you could take a bath in them.  I look at myself only once a month to assess the damage only.  It’s there, the wrinkle between the brows that comes from frowning.  I have dark circles under my eyes as though I had a good cry while wearing, what?, mascara. My freckles are merging into shapes I name:  elephant, scissors, seven legged bug.  My hair needs a wash and trim and a blow dryer.  My nails are chewed.  I look unwed, because I can’t remember where my youngest son put my wedding ring. (he froze it in a paper cup of orange juice ready to be thrown out in case I clean the refrigerator and freezer.

I was raised in a clean and quiet household.  My mother used to wash my dolls and curl their hair.  They would be in clean, starched and ironed dresses in a line along my pillow.  My kids are lucky if they find a pillow at night.  When they are at school I go into their rooms with a leaf blower and a huge garbage bag.  I was not trained for this job.  Babies make you lose sleep to make you crazy.  But they are wonderful.  They are warm, smell like candy at the nape of their necks, and their clothes are so cute.  I was lured by the dolls on my bed to become the mother of four.  When I discovered I was pregnant with our fourth  child, a neighbor called me who had four children, too.  She laughed hysterically at me.She then told me how to make applesauce, how to drink wine while making dinner, and how to lock myself in the bathroom for the only time out I would get for the next two decades.  She told me that if I had not done two loads of laundry by ten a.m. my day was ruined.

What is needed is Basic Training for parents. It should start when the E.P.T. turns positive, before they have one child, or buy footed pajamas with ducks on the front.  I am now fully capable of running such a boot camp, and believe me, it would make most marines cry…yes cry.  I have scooted across my roof in snow to grab a body part of my toddler who is laughing with glee as I slide down to the drain pipes.  I would teach the prospective parents how to juggle a telephone, chastise the children for eating an entire bag of cookies, and watch the dog poop a colorful mound on a beige carpet, all while on the phone with a teacher telling me that my Troll book order check had bounced.

Parenthood is its own reward.  One just needs to be prepared to survive to  experience their reward.  I am waiting for the kids to become parents themselves, if I can live that long.