Mindful-fun-da-mentals

Explorations of mind, paths, and life

Australian Death Machine

Posted on March 19, 2009 - Filed Under self reflect

I know this is a bit outdated (by a few weeks) but I have really had an itch to chronicle some of the adventures of parenting, and this one was worth keeping in mind as bribe material.

A few weeks back I was completely thrown off by the fire and brimstone blasting from the depths of my son’s room at 5am, and I tossed and turned to the sounds of hell-driven beasts ripping apart walls in JP’s room. As a patient mom, I waited… because sleep was still calling me… and I waited a bit more … expecting the creatures from below to be silenced… they were not. I blew a few breaths of discontent wondering for a moment how on earth a kid can sleep through all that noise while my walls were oddly vibrating. In fact, as I lay in the darkness, the sun still too groggy to emerge, the trinkets at my nature shrine began giggling and sliding while bits of dusty debris were shaken from our popcorn ceiling with each gnash of death-machine fangs and stomp of metal rhythm beating wildly below. And still… I waited, trying to lull myself back to sleep, expecting at least 2 more hours of rest before I HAD to draw myself from the covers and get organized for the day… Yet, as I stumbled through lulls of sleep and a bouncing bed … a concern began to creep into my mind; the world can’t be this loud and not wake the entire building. I also knew that waking my MHA would certainly cause complete destruction and more noise… so I could wait no more.

Suddenly, as I sat up, dejected that I had to tame the beasts below, I had a brief, horrific thought a thought that perhaps my son was NOT alive, since, logically, if I was woken by the noise – UPSTAIRS – then something must have him either unconscious or completely gone from this earth. The anxiety seized me and caused me to move at a hurried half awake pace, knocking my knee on the cabinet by our door. I am blessed I didn’t stumble down the stairs in my rush, but I have fallen down those stairs before and knew that it wouldn’t help to have two dead bodies in the house…

I approached JP’s door with bated breath, my ears ringing as I neared. I covered my ears in revulsion at the sounds bounding from his room and bellowing down the walls, through the floor. As the door opened, I could see his long body stretched out over the bed, large feet hanging off the edges, the dog, a trembling heap under the covers. JP was there on his belly, just the crop of his hair poking out from under the tangled blankets. I pulled back the covers a bit to check that his face was still pink with life… his face certainly was… then, I managed a stiff agitated push to his back, ” How can you sleep with all this racket?”

JP quickly burst from under the blankets, eyes sagging with sleep and confusion. As he realized I was standing there… my hands quickly migrating to my hips as I recognized that life was still moving within him, he jumped from the bed, tumbling over the mortified dog… and reached to shut off the gates of audio hell! Sometimes I am stunned along this journey of teen-parenting.

Comments

3 Responses to “Australian Death Machine”

  1. MHA on March 21st, 2009 8:03 pm

    I was Awaken the same exact way this morning @ 6am 🙁

    I threw his alarm/CD player across the room, that fixed that problem 🙂

    Then I went back up to bed 🙂

  2. Anonymous on March 22nd, 2009 12:38 am

    I LOVE IT!
    ~amanda

  3. PiTo on March 22nd, 2009 10:35 am

    It is a good thing JP only stays with me on weekends, and does not have to get up to go to school. He is always up before me, and on the computer playing games. When I was his age, I had a morning paper route and had to get up at 4AM. I had an old stove timer that could handle lots of power. Like 2 old auto head lamps on high beam (low beam was burned out), 3 radios tuned to different stations, and a horn. Still did not wake me up, but woke everyone else up and they would wake me up 🙂