This blog post was written on a yellow legal pad and transcribed later…which begs the question: Is it a blog post if you write it on a yellow legal pad?  Or does that just make it a journal entry?

I remember about two or three months into life with Zeke.  We had ordered some sort of food in because neither of us had the energy to cook and I was driving home after picking it up.  Freedom filled my lungs with each breath.  The ten minute drive made me yearn for more.  More time without a suckling child attached to me.  More time to move without lugging around a baby carrier.  Just more time to be alone.  No one tells you how hard motherhood is if you are an introvert.  You are never alone!  I looked out my window into the dark night sky and saw the yellow-lit rooms of a hotel passing me by.  I yearned for that hotel room.  I lusted after its clean sheets and the leisure of cable television and time to watch it, sleep in a big, comfortable bed, someone to pick up after me.  Quiet.  Solitude.

I almost cried that night, realizing that my fantasies had taken such a strange shift to the absurd.  Rather than picturing a romantic getaway with Conan, that night I just wanted to get away.  Alone.  And I wanted to be in that hotel room so badly I almost pulled the car over and walked into the lobby to get a key.

Here I am tonight a few months later, writing this on the cold, tile floor of  our bathroom in a fairly nice hotel in Durham.  It is 9:30 at night and the bathroom is the only place where I can turn on the light because we have a child who hates to sleep.  Give him any excuse to stay awake or wake-up–light, noise, breathing in his near vicinity–and he’ll take it.

My husband is downstairs in the lobby reading his book.  I suppose partly because he is more vocal in his refusal to and frustration at being made to live in fear of moving or making noise.  Partly because Zeke usually demands his momma if he wakes up.  It would not be pretty if I weren’t around.

So here I am.  Spending the better part of my evening hiding from my son, crouched in a 5×5 bathroom, far from the comfort of the king-sized, 500 threadcount, bed so that I can have light to write and maybe do a few crosswords before just giving up and heading to bed before 10 pm.

Gone are the days of carefree leisure in a hotel.  Gone are the days of luxuriously late evenings nestled down in pillows and blankets in a well-appointed room that we don’t have to take care of.  Gone are the days when I can turn on a light after 8 pm.

That hotel fantasy from months before, like most, never materialized.  At least not yet.  At least not as I had imagined it.

But things have changed.  I don’t want to escape anymore.  Though the tile is uncomfortable, I don’t want to leave it all behind tonight.  Conan will be back soon.  And we’ll sneak quietly under the covers.  We’ll undoubtedly get up a few times tonight to hold our son and help him get back to sleep.  And we’ll wake up in the morning and do it all again.  I wouldn’t trade it for anything in the world.