On keeping a little light for myself
By the time I get home from work most days, I’m running on fumes.
I drop my bag, kick off my shoes, and before I can even sit, Holden’s there, a flurry of needs in small, insistent bursts. A drink. A snack. “Can you throw this away?” “Can you grab my blanket?” Like he’s got no legs of his own.
The other night, we ate dinner with the family, and afterward, I finally sank into the couch with a book, the first quiet I’d had all day. It lasted maybe thirty seconds. Then came the voice.
“Can we do sparklers?”
No, it’s too cold and still too light out.
“Then can I go outside and ride my Shuffle Cart?”
No, again. It's only 50 degrees.
It’s like he can’t stand a quiet moment unless he’s the one filling it. The more I say no, the more creative his requests become, as if persistence might wear me down. Usually, it does. This time, it didn’t.
I tell him I just need a minute. That I’ve been going since sunrise. That I want to read one page — just one — without someone calling my name. He looks at me, confused. To him, I’m an endless source: a drink-getter, a sparkler-lighter, a do-er of things.
And sitting there, book unopened, I realize how impossible that must’ve felt to my own parents. To ALL parents, really. I remember how I once pushed and prodded, too, not to be difficult, but because I didn’t understand that tired could live inside love.
Now I do.
Maybe that’s what no really means sometimes. Not rejection. Not disinterest. Just a boundary drawn in exhaustion. A reminder that we’re human, even to the people who think we never stop moving.
A few minutes later, when dusk settled in, I said yes. We went outside, bundled in hoodies, breath clouding in the chill, to light the leftover sparklers from the Fourth of July. Ridiculous, really, little bursts of summer fire in October air. I just needed to sit first, to breathe for a moment, to come back to myself before giving more of me away.
Holden will learn it someday, probably when someone small is asking him for the hundredth thing in a single night. Maybe he’ll finally sit down, too, and understand that saying no was never about the sparkler. It was about keeping a little light for myself, even if just for a moment.
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