EXTRACT | ‘Tears Before Bedtime’ by Diane Awerbuck

Introduction

It’s Time for The Talk

Eight-year-old: Did you write this book?
Me: Yes. I told you.
Eight-year-old: Be honest. Did you copy it? Or did you write it yourself?
Me: I WROTE THIS BOOK.
Six-year-old: Okay. Then how long did it take you?
Me: About three months. That’s, like, 100 days.
Six-year-old: HA! You haven’t even been ALIVE for a hundred days!

If life is a set-up, parenting is the punchline. Funny is fine, but before I had children, I was pretty clear on what was ha-ha and what was peculiar.

This book is a chronological collection of real conversations I’ve had with my offspring, or that they’ve had with me — mostly against my will. Sometimes another adult will appear briefly, but we should always remember who the main characters/problems here are — the youth.

They’re old enough now to give their meaningful consent for publication. The ages in the text are the ages they really were at the time. There are two of them — not unlike Thing One and Thing Two in The Cat in the Hat — and they are fewer than two years apart. Sometimes the fluffy one seems to catch up in age to the squeaky one, but that’s just because of when their birthdays fall.

As to why this is being published at all, the answer is that it’s a joke book * : Van der Merwe meets yo’ mama. Telling jokes is one of the ways humans connect with their communities. Humour is illuminating when it comes to social and sexual anxieties, and it helps us find meaning and healing and support in our shared experiences. And for fun, goddammit, because what are you going to do? Cry about it? As my first stepfather used to say: “I’ll give you something to cry about!”

The conversations are also preserved, of course, because the things capitalism considers side effects — domestic minutiae or women’s work or things unworthy of payment and respect — are in reality the only systems we can’t do without. They are fundamental (sometimes fun, always mental) to who we are and what we make of ourselves. Philosophy, technology, currency, thought, progress: these high-flying ideas depend on the solid ground of home cultures. There are rocks, and there are cradles, and after that we choose what we do with our hands.

That said, the whiplash emotions of family life are hard to set down on paper. Home truths are best considered in their aftermath, from the couch, with a stiff gin. If you can’t work out their contexts from these dialogues, then you’re welcome to sit here in bewilderment with the rest of us. Cheers.

Some things to note:

Yes, my children were planned. How dare you.

Yes, they have an active father. He took the front cover photograph, which tells you everything you need to know about patriarchy and the division of labour.

Yes, I am an expert on child-rearing and animal husbandry. I’ve taught hundreds of high-schoolers and university students of all stripes over a span of three decades; I’ve had a couple of pretty stripy children of my own; I’ve been a stepchild and a half-sister and a full-blood sibling; I have a doctorate in language, war trauma and social media; I’ve researched and written lots and lots of things — articles and novels and stories and prescribed textbooks and poems and reviews and social science modules and thinly, thinly veiled memoirs and visions of the apocalypse. Somehow none of that is terribly useful at four in the afternoon: the tears before bedtime are generally mine.

I love my kids. I’m not saying either of them is the Messiah but, like the Virgin Mary, I’ve stored these things up in my heart. I’ve remembered every comment, and I will be avenged. Bet on old age and treachery, the playwrights and cyclists say. Old age and treachery will always triumph over youth and skill. My mother went one better. “I hope one day you have kids,” she said. “And then we’ll see who’s laughing.”

*I never said the jokes were good.

Extract

Eight Years Old 

Me: Good morning, my baby.
Eight-year-old: I CAN’T BELIEVE IT. I STILL HAVEN’T CHANGED INTO A CAT.

Eight-year-old: Look! I packed my own lunch!
Me: FINALLY. So what’s in the lunchbox?
Eight-year-old: Beer and kitten meat.

Me: Did you wash your hands WITH soap?
Eight-year-old: They’re clean.
Me: That’s not what I asked.
Eight-year-old: My hands are super-clean. I’ve been licking them all day.

Eight-year-old: I’m Darth Vader. He’s retired from fighting.
Me: Good move.
Eight-year-old: So now I will play the flute. [Plays ‘Hot Cross Buns’ on the recorder]
Me: Yikes.
Eight-year-old: Yes, he’s really bad. But everyone is too afraid to tell him.

Eight-year-old: Sometimes I just want to run away.
Me: ME TOO, SISTER.
Eight-year-old: But then I never do.
Me: Why don’t you?
Eight-year-old: I don’t feel like packing.

Me: Guys. Enough. Someone’s going to get hurt.
Eight-year-old: BUT I WANT HIM TO SMELL MY BREATH.

Me: Where are the little buckets, people? If I don’t have the buckets, I can’t give you popcorn.
Eight-year-old: Oh, just scatter it on the floor and we’ll peck-peck-peck it up.
Ten-year-old: Like the chickens we are.

Me: Why aren’t you dressed yet?
Eight-year-old: Tell old Pharaoh, LET MY PEOPLE GO.

Himself: Do you know where the cat’s been since this morning?
Eight-year-old: Where?
Himself: In my cupboard.
Eight-year-old: Well, he is a tuxedo.

Me: It’s great that you’re getting a head start on Christmas, but I think the lyrics are “Ten lords a-leaping.”
Eight-year-old: But I like it better when it’s “Ten men prowling.”

Eight-year-old: This is the happiest I’ve ever seen you.
Me: Well, this cocktail menu is amazing.

Me: Nice work, Cinderella. Thank you.
Eight-year-old: If I’m Cinderella, you don’t say thank you.
Me: True. Sweep faster, Cinderella!
Eight-year-old: Oh, so now no thank you?

Eight-year-old: Mom! Look what I just made!
Me: Oh, those are clever. Are you going to stick them onto a sock puppet?
Eight-year-old: Nope. I’m just going to keep making eyeballs, eyeballs, eyeballs, and then I’m going to put them in a jar.
Me: …
Eight-year-old: It’s more freaky that way.

Eight-year-old: When I need comfort, I just think that the dog is lying under the table. Or I go outside.
Me: What’s so comforting about outside?
Eight-year-old: The light keeps me company.

Eight-year-old: Dad, when I grow up, will I have balls?
Himself: Yes. Your husband’s.
Eight-year-old: But did you have balls when you were a little girl?
Himself: Oh, no one does. You have to wait until someone comes along and gives you a pair, and then you turn all rude and smelly and inconsiderate.
Me: Great parenting, there.
Himself: You know what our car is missing? Truck Nuts. Imma get some for the Waldorf parking lot.

Eight-year-old: When I am on holiday, I have another mother.
Me: OH, REALLY.
Eight-year-old: Yup.
Me: And can I ask who has replaced me?
Eight-year-old: This fluffy red blanket. It can do everything that a mom can do.
Me: …
Eight-year-old: I call it “Mom.”

Eight-year-old: More water, please.
Me: Up you get.
Eight-year-old: Why don’t you get it?
Me: WHY DON’T I GET IT?
Eight-year-old: But I am a prince. And you are my servant. Actually, I am a Komodo dragon, and my tail swipes with the force of a sledgehammer.
Me: I am a mom, and I also swipe with the force of a sledgehammer.
Eight-year-old: So thirsty …
Me: ALRIGHT.

Eight-year-old: Mom, have you ever had sex?
Me: How do you think you were made?
Ten-year-old: With chicken wire.

Eight-year-old: I feel a bit nervous when I look at those ladies singing and dancing.
Me: I think that’s the plan. The song is called Single Ladies.
Eight-year-old: But they want me to look at their bums!
Me: They’ve worked very hard to get those muscles, my boy. They want to show them off.
Eight-year-old: Can they do any tricks?

Eight-year-old: So can you do big letters AND little letters AND cursive?
Me: The woiks, baby. I can do it all.
Eight-year-old: What about chicken language?
Me: You got me. What do chickens talk about?
Eight-year-old: [Mimes throat-slitting]
Me: So you’re saying chickens live in a constant state of fear?
Eight-year-old: Life and death. Whose turn it is. That’s all they talk about.

Eight-year-old: Mom, can I tell you something?
Me: Uh-oh.
Eight-year-old: I know a good reason that you gave birth to me.
Me: I’d love to know. What is it?
Eight-year-old: I can make up LOTS of songs about drunken animals.
Me: Well, that was worth the eleven-hour labour.

Eight-year-old: But what is the cat SAYING?
Me: Meow, I thought. What do you think he’s saying?
Eight-year-old: SURRENDER YOUR HOUSE, YOUR JOB, YOUR FAMILY TO ME. LET’S SWAP LIVES AND SEE HOW YOU LIKE IT!

Me: Ooh, storm’s a-comin’. I feel it in me waters.
Eight-year-old: You don’t have waters. This is a drought.
Me: Eighty percent of the human body is water, bucko.
Eight-year-old: That’s mostly spit.

Me: OH, SORT IT OUT YOURSELVES, CHILDREN! FOR THE LOVE OF SWEET BABY JESUS AND PEACE IN THIS HOUSE!
Eight-year-old: Long live the Revolution!
Me: …
Eight-year-old: What’s a revolution?

Eight-year-old: Hey! What are those two goats doing?
Me: Playing hopscotch. Oh, no, wait. It’s definitely … piggybacking.
Eight-year-old: Mom. Those goats are mating.

Eight-year-old: What happened to your hand?
Me: I told you. I was cutting vegetables, and by mistake I took off the top of my thumb. But only a little bit.
Seven-year-old: Was there a lot of blood?
Eight-year-old: I bet you were swearing. What swearwords did you say? Did you say–
Me: DON’T SAY THEM.
Seven-year-old: Ooh! Did you say Jesus Christ? Or did you say Cheeses Crust?
Eight-year-old: DID YOU SAY SHUT UP?
Me: LEAVE ME ALONE.
Eight-year-old: Because you have a dirty mouth.

Eight-year-old: Your boob is chewing my neck.
Me: You know, in some countries, children just let their parents hug them.
Eight-year-old: Just kidding. You have the bosom of a, of a —
Me: Yes?
Eight-year-old: — a female Chewbacca.

Eight-year-old: Are you sure I’m not adopted? Didn’t a lady who couldn’t look after me leave me and this amber necklace in a basket on your doorstep?
Me: Nope. You’re mine. Sorry.
Eight-year-old: But how do you KNOW?
Me: This guy, your dad, saw you coming out of my —
Eight-year-old: DON’T SAY IT.
Me: Say what?
Eight-year-old: Something like, The Glorious Beginning of the Rainbow Bridge. When actually it’s more like The Golden Gate to the Sewage Farm.

Tears Before Bedtime is published by Karavan Press.