The Night Shift

Why is it that in most houses I know, while the men are snoring, the women are up, pulling a night shift?  Long after our paying jobs are done, we stay up readying our charges for the next day.  Laundry, picking up, prepping food, lunches, writing notes, organizing back packs, running the dishwasher:  my mother did it and probably her mother before. 

I'll admit there's something vaguely comforting in being the only one up.  In the quiet, I can get so much more done.  I am able to resist the urge to yell at my 10 year old, once again, for leaving his dirty clothes in the middle of the floor.  Instead, I get to be reflective.  Late at night, when they are sleeping, it's easy to hearken back to when they were babies.  When I was pregnant, a wise woman told me that I'd miss those late nights, rocking in the rocker, with a downy-haired baby snuggled into my neck.  Late at night, I am transported back there.  And somehow, picking up pairs of their dirty boxers is not all that bad.

The dark solitude takes me back to my own childhood.  Clearly,  I can remember going up to bed, and still hearing the television downstairs.  In my earliest memories, I recall the theme music from "Alfred Hitchcock Presents," or "The Saint."  That music always unnerved me.  It meant that it was way too late for me to be up, or even my mother (or so I thought).  Now that I have a family of my own, I too relish staying up to watch my shows while I tend to those leftover chores.  It is as if I have officially earned passage into that club.

My aunt was the queen of the nightworkers.  She would stay up long past midnight, sewing, ironing, sweeping and generally obsessing over her home.  (As I grew up, I realized she had a serious case of OCD.)  The result was a haggard appearance, with large, dark circles around her eyes.  I have vowed to never take the night shift to such extremes.  Call it vanity, but I'd much rather sacrifice the Good Housekeeping award over my looks. 

Many of my friends commiserate.  When they hear I or another compatriot was up late, they'll say, "You should have messaged me. I was up, too."  Chalk up that convenience to the abundance of technology:  phones and social media make it easy to intrude into that late night club without waking family members.  But wouldn't that defeat the purpose of the night shift?  Laboring in solitude is exactly the point.