Kathleen Clary Miller has written 300+ columns and stories for periodicals both local and national, and has authored three books. She lives in the woods of the Ninemile Valley, thirty miles west of Missoula.
“C’MON DEER!” bellowed my two-year old grandson Jack during his recent visit. Standing on my back steps and hollering into the woods, to his dismay, did not beckon the herd of white tails that instead leapt from our lawn and fled. He couldn’t understand why whenever his Labrador retrievers back home in Pennsylvania came when commanded, these creatures rebelled.
Jack is still too young to realize many things. For example, he was the only boy permitted to partake in the third and now fourth annual “Girls’ Week” that I host here every October in the Ninemile Valley. Included every year are my two daughters (both living back east), my niece who is a nurse in Portland, and my sister who still lives where we were raised, in California. This year my youngest daughter, Kate added Jack’s 3-month-old sister Olivia to the mix.
As usual, during this event my husband hightails it out of our house with the speed of a whitetail—it’s required; his side of the bed housed Kate and this year both babies slumbered (?) in our bedroom, alongside Cody, our German shepherd who really wants his dad to return and the normal routine to resume.
It’s a mixed bag, this week of heady delight and utter depletion—of my pantry shelves and my staying power. After several airport runs to bring us all together, we hunker down and for seven days change out of pajamas only to take a walk in the woods. We consume inordinate amounts of chocolate. Not to mention wine. Not to forget coffee. We frolic with the kiddos, then color in our coloring books or work jigsaw and crossword http://www.distinctlymontana.com/node/add/blogpuzzles while they nap. It is my favorite and most glorious week of the year.
But between frequent bottle feedings and toddler meals, after breakfast, lunch, and dinner for five adults (repasts that are only realized because of the marathon supermarket shopping in advance; Suffice to say there is enough food and home-baked wonders to fill both indoor and outdoor refrigerator and freezer) when day is done I am spent. And sleep is hard to come by what with babies by my bedside in vibrating contraptions to help them rest. It is the most exhausting week of the year; I know I’m coming down with some vicious fatigue virus.
Instead of my retirement routine of nine hours of sleep each night, this week I enjoyed five. Kate begged me not to get up with her and the babies, but oh no I wasn’t about to miss a single moment. By week’s end every room of my house looked like a playpen and Cody was still noshing on endless crumbs dropped from highchair and snack cups. How freeing it is to let everything go; I felt so young! How many years of life have I shaved from my total because I let it all go until I could seriously fall asleep standing up? I felt so old.
When all girls (and grand-boy) departed after three runs to the airport, I felt too bone-weary to cry…and yet I wept like Olivia in need of a bottle, behind the wheel all the way home. When I got there I faced laundry from five beds and two cribs, twenty dirty towels, and a floor covered with spills and sticky fingerprints, blocks, pots and pans and wooden spoons—a minefield of makeshift musical instruments.
Ahhhh….I could sleep late tomorrow, I consoled myself, but what’s that old saying? “I’ll sleep when I am dead”? Or in Montana-speak…all winter. Snap out of the reverie and look at the bright side! No more shopping and menu planning and cooking and cleaning and coping with the chaos of small children, I rationalized as the tears spilled from my bloodshot eyes because I could still smell babies in every room. Even though if I could have I would have lay down in one of the cribs and slept until January, peace and quiet—and rest—are highly overrated.
I can hardly wait for next October.