A few months ago during the height of summer I purchased two tickets so that my husband and I could travel to see one of our all-time favorite bands, Portishead, play a show in Los Angeles. They had not toured in the United States for ten years. It would be a very rare, special occasion.
Portishead is a band with a lot of romantic significance for us, given that we were listening to quite a lot of their music around the time when we fell in love nine years ago.
Since then, my husband and I have really looked forward to traveling out of town for this show. We even made it the centerpiece of our 9th anniversary celebration!
Today was the big day, our long-awaited trip to Los Angeles for a special dinner, beloved music, and time alone together. Grandma and her wonderful life partner would be coming to our home to watch our brood.
Which is why, of course, our two year old daughter chose last night (of all nights!) to awaken at 3am for no good reason and refuse to go back to sleep for the rest of the night.
"Mama! I'm hongree!!!"
Bleary eyed, I came to her door. "Time For Bed."
"NO! I HONGREE!"
So I gave her some food - a muffin.
She promptly ripped the muffin into hundreds of tiny crumbs and threw them around the room.
"Mama! I want to PLAY!!!!!!!!!!!!"
"No. Time For Bed."
"I NO BED!!! I PLAY!!!"
So I told the child in my desperately-clinging-to-sleep state that yes, we would play when the sun came out.
"Time For Bed," I added.
"Mama! I watch TV!"
"NO. Time For Bed." I let her crawl in with me, hoping to keep our small house quiet enough to prevent her from awakening her big brothers who had to be up and ready for school in a few hours.
The little imp (who had been terrorizing her brothers in the room they share) lay down in bed next to me for about 30 seconds and then began to kick me repeatedly. After putting up with this madness for too long, I looked at the clock and realized that somehow 3am had turned to 4am.
That was the last straw for me. In my exhausted state I knew it was time to call in reinforcements.
My husband joined the fray around 4am.
"It is time for you to go to bed," he spoke firmly to our daughter. "You cannot keep your mother awake like this."
"YES, I IS!" our daughter replied.
"I am going to count to THREE and then you are GOING TO SLEEP!" said her daddy.
"No, I DIDN'T!"
"Yes, you are!"
"NO, I NOT!"
...and so forth. It went along like this for far too long, until I must have passed out from sheer exhaustion because the next thing I knew I was dreaming (or half-dreaming) that my husband and I were already in Los Angeles but we'd forgotten the show tickets at home.
With a jolt I started awake and jumped up. "The tickets!" I squealed -
"Hmmmmmm?" my husband mumbled.
"WHAT, Mama?" my daughter giggled.
Groaning, I rolled over to face the clock and realized that it was now 6:00am. "NOOOOOOoooooo!" Time to get up, despite an overwhelming feeling of exhaustion.
"I'm going to get coffee," my husband grumbled.
"Mama! I HONGREE!!!" grinned our little girl.
* * *
In retrospect, we were so blessed. Despite the fact that I ended up running on about three hours of solid sleep (and my husband with only slightly more), we actually managed to enjoy a fantastic trip!
Maybe that's one of the crucial things about parenthood - it puts your priorities into stark relief so you don't take anything for granted.
Even though my husband and I were both completely wiped out, we couldn't reschedule our precious time alone for this once-in-a-lifetime show. We needed to step up to find a way to make the time together special and romantic despite our underlying sense that a NAP would have been heavenly.
On the drive we listened to a mix of Portishead, Radiohead and many of our other favorite artists. We also enjoyed companionate silence, something so sacred and rare as parents with young kids.
Once in Los Angeles we were lucky to dine on great food from a few local places we'd scoped out (all of which had gluten free options for me!) and even made back to our hotel with enough time to shower up before the show.
And the show... what a show! It would be hard to rave enough about the quality of the band's live performance, which was far beyond anything I had expected and had even better sound quality than their best recordings. The lead singer Beth Gibbons was completely entrancing, and while her body only swayed gently during the set, her vocals were overpowering - intensely sensual and perfect. We found out today that Radiohead's second drummer was sitting in on the set too!
By the time we made it back to our hotel my husband and I could barely see straight we were so tired, after a day of driving and celebrating on no sleep.
In fact, my husband closed his eyes and started snoring ;-) within moments of sitting down!
I am very tired now, but inside feeling quite radiant and blessed. Despite the groggy lens through which I approached this day, it turned out to be pretty terrific.
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