When I was 5, my mom sat beside me in my twin bed most nights and read Green Eggs and Ham, Goodnight Moon or The Wind in the Willows. I’d drift off to sleep as I settled into the rhythm of her words.
A quarter-century later, when I had a child of my own, I too hoped to provide her with a soothing nighttime ritual. And for a little while, my husband and I did. We’d bathe her, read to her and rock her to sleep in those early days of parenthood.
But with the eventual addition of my son and a full-time job, I soon came to view the half-hour between my husband’s arrival and my kids’ bedtime a little differently: It was now my chance to get stuff done.
While my husband raced around their bedroom, chasing after my shirtless son and scooping up my daughter’s dirty day clothes, I’d run around the rest of the house. The post-dinner kitchen floor needed sweeping, the washing machine needed loading and the bathrooms needed tidying. I’d capitalize on this time to square things away in hopes of basking in a moment of accomplishment.
Except that feeling never came. In its place, much to my frustration, was a pang of mom guilt. Sure, the chores had to be done sooner or later, and I was helping out the family by taking care of them now. And no one was really complaining about my absence from the kids’ room. But I still felt like I was missing out on something.
For a while, my husband and I had given up on having much of a routine, as what’s presented by parenting experts sounded just a tad unrealistic. Sure, maybe if we had a venti latte with a shot of Red Bull and clutched a stopwatch, we could somehow bathe the kids, towel them off, brush their teeth, comb their hair, Q-tip their ears, massage in their body lotion, read them a few books, sing some lullabies, tuck them in, turn on the Twilight Ladybug, bring them glasses of water and give them a series of hugs and high-fives all by 7:30 p.m. every night.
Yet the reality was, we usually had about 20-30 minutes to get them to bed and still have enough time to play chore/work catch-up and wind down each night. We figured no real quality time could transpire in that kind of time span and tended to just treat the pre-bedtime period as a haphazard series of events.
But one night, when I was switching the laundry, I heard my husband reading to our kids as they giggled. I saw my children rolling on the floor and tucking their noses under my husband’s arms and realized something: Story time was the one moment of the day when the family was relaxing. Together. The remainder of the day was stuffed with checklists, moving at the speed of a Dance Dance Revolution video, when what we really needed was a Bill Evans ballad.
The bathing and grooming wasn’t the essential part; we could cut that down to a few times a week. What mattered was gathering for those few moments together, when we put aside all the things that seemed so important and just enjoyed each other’s presence.
I decided that I needed to be part of that and could save the chores for later—or better yet, leave them for my husband (insert smile emoji). Each night that I’m home, I cherish the chance to lean against our giant stuffed pink dog, Pup, and read a book or two with my kids. Sure, my son might start roughhousing with his dad, and my daughter might howl that we must read her book first; these aren’t exactly meditation sessions. But story time is an opportunity to just be. And in that sense, it’s good for the mind and spirit.
When we tuck our children in each night, we know that even though their hair might not smell of fresh bubble bath and they might have a little dirt under their fingernails, they feel the warmth of our mutual love and the goodness of the day. And so do we.
