When you become a parent, you trade-off many aspects of your former life as an autonomous adult. The first thing that disappears, never to return, is sleep. Shortly after the double lines on the pee-stick appear, sleep slides out the window. Sleep never comes home again. One learns to live in a haze of constant sleep deprivation, and after a while, you forget what it was like to have unbroken rest for an entire night, or beyond 6 am.

Shortly after sleep goes on hiatus and the fruit of your loins slides into the world, you are slapped with the realization that you no longer remember what silence sounds like. Constant noise surrounds you, whether from the ticking of the baby swing, static on the baby monitor, outraged shrieks of torture emanating from the never-sleeping child or the constant loop of Dora the Explorer theme song. There is no quiet. Permanoise. You grow accustomed to living with aural interference day and night, and soon enough – like sleep – silence becomes a vague, halcyon memory of a former life.

As the keeper of any toddler will tell you, the sudden re-introduction of silence at some point in the future is not pleasant. Silence, in a home with a toddler, indicates that there is something evil and nefarious afoot. Like the aftermath of an atomic bomb, the strangely eerie hush of a tot stops atoms in their tracks. What you discover- after it occurs to you that your ears are ringing with pain caused by a noise-free environment -will probably make your heart stop mid-beat. Terror sets in. Cue screaming and head holding like scene from Hitchcock movie. (”Mother…oh God..Mother! Blood! Blood!”)

Yesterday, while I was diligently attending to my motherly/wifely duties of evening  food preparation, it occurred to me that the two year old was no longer planted in front of the television set in the family room where I’d last seen her gazing slack-jawed and vacant-eyed at Yo Gabba Gabba. The vein in my temple started to pulse with anxious dread. I washed the raw-chicken diseases off my hands, and strode into the living room area where Children Are Not Allowed.

At first, nothing seemed awry. Then I noticed it. Blue ball-point pen, zoodled and scribbled from one end to the other on the 1 month old, beige leather couch. It was as though Miami Ink Jr. showed up, and had a practice run on my furniture. Sailor blue circles, careening into angry lines and vaguely pie-chart looking handiwork. On the headrests. On the stitching. On the seats. On the arm rest. All over the beige walls for about a yard and a half. Child is nowhere to be seen. Hyperventilation sets in. Heart racing. Vomit, rising up in my throat meets with the massive urge to pee my pants in fear. THIS IS NEW! THIS IS $2000! THIS IS MY HUSBAND’S COUCH! Blind panic sets in. Scream after the child. Locate child. Child smiles, as though to say “Look, Ma! I did this just for you!” Contemplate life in prison for eviscerating the little brat, decide to toss her in her room instead. Set about trying to get ink off couch.

Magic Eraser = nada. Perfume = nothing. Milk = not budging. Soap + water = zip. Finally, in fit of desperation and Interwebz inspired self-help, storm off to store and pick up rubbing alcohol, fabled to get ink off of most surfaces. By this time, irate Daddy is involved, and is pointing the Bad Parent finger at Mommy. He grinds the alcohol into the leather, and gets most of it off. The couch will never be the same. Mommy is weeping. Daddy is an inch away from having a stroke. Toddler is now curled up sweetly in her bed, snoring away, oblivious to the destruction and havoc she has wreaked on the furniture and her parents’ marriage. The 4 year old is still glazed over, in front of the TV, completely oblivious that any of this ever happened. I’m not sure if my blood pressure will ever come back down. *Sigh*

This was not an isolated incident. Oh no. These things occur, at random, every few months. They don’t happen while I’m planted in front of Twitter or Facebook. They don’t happen when I’m cackling on the phone with my friend, Anna. They only happen when I’m being a responsible, helpful, good me, and then the Silence Phenomenon kicks in. The last time this happened, the baby had liberated pink nail polish from  somewhere, and painted the beige carpet. The time before, the four year old was jumping on a bed and smashed her nose open, requiring numerous stitches. Prior to that, the big kid let the baby out into the January cold wearing nothing but a diaper. Before that, silence proved to be telling of the children crushing my expensive cosmetics into the flooring. Of finger-painting Jackson Pollock-esque art with turds on the wall. Of stealing dog-food and eating it in a shoe closet…

Silence in a house full of little people is heavy on the pocketbook and psyche. There is a reason God made children so bloody noisy – we are not yet Momnipotent. We can only wait in joyful hope for the coming of graduation, moving out and children of their own.

Now pass the scotch – Mamma needs to forget today.

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Exit Light, Enter Night: Where the Hell is the Sandman?

When Naps are No More

Wisdom Teeth, or, Nature’s Way of Laughing in Our Faces

I’ll Take “Clutterbug” for $200, Alex

I Coulda Been a… Furniture Mover?