Just which 1,000 words for that picture?

A picture’s worth a thousand words, but do those words reflect the actual moment, the moment in my head, the moment right before or the moment right after?

The photo above is of a sleeping Potamus, on my chest, and might make the warm and fuzzy feeling go off. The words used might be: calm, quiet, sleep, rest, nap, love, maternal or something of the like. In fact, I’d ask…what words would YOU attribute to the picture above?

 

Because the thousand words that really describe the picture are:

Potamus was up at 5am because of that fucking daylight savings time off and probably growing or teething because damnit he still doesn’t have any teeth.

It’s the result of a long day of work for mama and play for baby, despite the plea by mama to grandma that “he really needs to nap well today, he’s been up at 5am.”

And that warning/plea went unheaded and sweet bouncing grandson sent home to collapse in an exhausted heap on mama’s chest for two hours at the time we eat dinner and thus mama is left with a baby up two or more hours past bedtime…alone. Though those are the words that will happen after this photo is taken.

The grumbly grumbly stream-of-consciousness in mama’s head as she sits with sleeping babe and fumes about Boof’s attendance at a local soccer match that will go well into the evening and the thought “why can’t he get his mom to get our kid to take a nap?”

The beer + animal crackers for dinner (for mama) and the goldfish crackers and yogurt for dinner for Potamus, because after waking from a dinnertime nap the whole world is turned upside down.

The thirty minutes of hare krishna/hare rama chanting to get Potamus to calm his crying down, only to have him wide awake full of bouncy energy until 9:15pm, and the feeling of bags growing exponentially under my already tired eyes.

The words would describe an exhaustion that doesn’t go away with sleep, least not from sleep full of fitful dreams of worry about students and the state of the world and weather I’ve caused complete world fucked-upness by my continual indulgence in dairy. Can I even say I’m sort of dairy free if I’ve been eating pizza and tortellini and pizza (did I mention pizza already) like it’s going out of style.

 

No. That picture doesn’t conjure up any of those words.

 

But, I think, when I shut my eyes for that briefest of brief moments, I did feel rest and love and maternal.