I am, frankly, not sure whether it makes me feel better or worse that a piece I wrote almost exactly two years ago more or less sums up my night last night. It is called — in a feat of clarity — How Being Kicked in the Face By a Baby Reminded Me That Energy Is All Around Us.
A few things have changed in the two years since that was written. For one thing, a different baby was kicking me in the face. That different baby’s brother — he of the original face kicking — is all grown up at the age of three and has his own bed and, most significantly for me, now when he cries in the middle of the night it’s his father who gets into that bed with him to be kicked in the face.
For another, what I’m feeling is not panic, as it was two years ago. Now, the hard, cold realization that this will go on for a long, long time to come doesn’t make me feel anxious. It makes me feel tired.
But perhaps the biggest change is that anxiety — my vata dosha — is not what rules me in the wee hours when my girl has the audacity to awaken me. (Okay, it was a big, hard poop in her diaper that awakened me, not audacity. But she refused to go back to her crib for a long time after she’d been in a clean, comfy diaper.)
It’s the pitta that rises up in me at these times, the temper that I have cavalierly assumed I don’t have.
Yeah, tell that to Lily.
What Is Pitta Dosha and How Did It Get Here?
I’ve mentioned the doshas before. But I haven’t spent much time on pitta dosha. Because I’ve spent the last 43 years telling people about how I really don’t have a temper.
And, for the most part, it’s true. Cut me off on I-240 and I might have some choice words for you (assuming the kids aren’t in the car), but I tend not to let it ruin my day the way it does some husbands I know. Refuse to put on your shoes when you are three years old and about to move up to a classroom where you are expected to be able to put on your own shoes and I may grow more than a little bit frustrated but will probably not yell at you. Unless the baby happens to be yelling at me, in which case I will snap something at you and then apologize profusely, blaming it all on the baby.
I’m not saying I don’t get angry. Ask Mike. I do. But mostly I walk around having grand, theatrical arguments in my head — the kind where I make just the right cutting, incisive comments without once saying “But, but, but,” or turning red and bursting into tears.
Unless it’s the middle of the night and that anyone is Lily.
See, right now, in the light of day, I can talk myself out of feeling angry. She’s a baby. She’s supposed to wake up at night. And does an admirable job of mostly not waking up in the middle of the night. She’s lonely or scared or cold or just figures it’s a lot nicer to sleep cuddled against Mom than the synthetic fuzzy pink blanket she has come to love. Who can blame her?
In the middle of the night I can. I am furious. I am shaking with so much anger that even after Lily has long drifted off to sleep — even if by some miracle I can return her to her crib without the soul sucking whimper and wail that signal an imminent return to my bed — I can’t fall asleep again. And this makes me really angry. Being so angry, once I have used up all the reasons to be angry at Lily for daring to awaken me, I turn to all the other slights I have suffered in my life. I toss and turn and feel hot and bothered and then I get angry all over again at the very fact that I cannot sleep because I am so angry.
It occurred to me recently that this is not healthy behavior.
And so, I am proud to say, I have endeavored to avoid it. To, quite simply, not be angry in the middle of the night.
How to Not Be Angry in the Middle of the Night — or Anything But Asleep
So, really, how am I supposed to not feel angry when I’m — feeling angry?
Part of it lies with following the Dalai Lama’s advice: Don’t feed it. Don’t give in to the anger. Don’t follow it, fan the flames, think angry thoughts.
Which is, of course, great advice, coming from the Dalai Lama and all. But it’s also a little unstructured, a little requiring of discipline. A little impossible to follow when you’re angry.
What I’ve been doing instead, as a first step toward not feeding it, is observing how it comes up. Noting what it is that sparks my temper.
It’s not the baby crying in the middle of the night. I figured that out last night when I got up the first time and told myself not to be angry and didn’t feel angry. When I rocked her to sleep against me and leaned … back … soooooooo … slowly until she was asleep on top of me. Which, I have to admit, was pretty darned delicious.
Even after I returned her to her crib and heard, within seconds, the first sputtering gasps of indignation, I refused to slide into easy anger. I just didn’t go there.
That’s about as far as I didn’t go, though. Because when I picked her up the second time I felt obligated to inform her that I was not happy. And just saying I wasn’t happy made me feel even more not happy. Angry, even.
Which made every kick in the ribs, every whimper, even the “Aaah!” of her awakening happily in her mother’s bed this morning a reason to feel even angrier.
I could have let this all whip me into a frenzy of furor with the world. But here’s where I have traveled somewhere in the two years since I let Jake’s midnight rib kicks ruin my subsequent day.
I watched what made me feel angry and I thought, “I’m not going to bother.” I felt angry, I noted that I felt angry, and then I let it go. I was still angry. But I wasn’t angrier. Which, from where I was sitting last night, was a pretty great improvement.
So, yeah, I didn’t give Lily a big smile back in the morning or sit with her on the glider hugging and looking out the window at the birds as we have been doing lately. And I wasn’t particularly interested in discussing the yogurt she was feeding herself by hand for breakfast. I’d even go so far as to say I wasn’t especially nice to her for most of the morning.
But I wasn’t mean either. I didn’t lose my temper or think mean things or do anything except give myself a break for being tired and annoyed. And by the time we got to school and she sat in my lap playing with the strange plastic people with the buttons in the middle of their chests that squeak when you push them, I was fully reminded of how crazy in love with my girl I am.
This is, by the way, called practicing. Not being perfect. In fact, being imperfect over and over and over again. But each time acknowledging that human part of yourself and forgiving yourself.
Even if I, for one, am hardly human at all at four o’clock in the morning.