Mother daughter morning cat fight.

It was one of those mornings at our house.  I heard the first stir around 4:00 AM.  "I know it, if you would just leave me a lone, I got this!"  or something like that.  It resonated from down the hallway, upstairs.  To be quite honest, it was screamed at the top of her lungs, my 20 year olds reaction to a nudge from her mom to get up and get ready for work.  Why she volunteers to open the pool on Tuesdays (at the JCA) is a mystery to me.  And to the animals and likely the neighbors next door, if they were anywhere near an open window, they might have thought there was a beating going on, or something like that.  The only thing taking a beating was my REM sleep. 

I shut the door to the bedroom and to the upstairs balcony that overlooks the family room.  I chose not to engage them, as I would then play into things and fall victim to all sorts of leveraging.  I think they wanted it that way.  I could predict the events that would unfold in the next half hour, prior to her departure at precisely 4:45 AM.  As I hear the stories of the nights shootings on the early news, from the small TV on the kitchen counter through the air duct just to the right of my head, I toss a pillow over the grate.  The microwave door opens and slam shut five times.  The front door and back door opens and shuts like a big birds wings preparing to take off.  Why?  We have one dog, one pee.

There it was, the familiar "You should" or "You better", which is followed by a tad bit louder "I already know this!" and then, the all so familiar......"Leave me the #$@%  alone!"

This is all pretty normal in our small family.  Janie up fixing things so Natalie can get out of the house on time, breakfast, other things important to her day.  She "seasons" what she does for Natalie with just the right amount of rhetorical expression, to push her right off the edge, as most parents do, when their kid doesnt want to be bothered or told things that they already know.

I wonder, as I try to concentrate on sleep, what Natalie's room will look like in her apartment next year while trying to imagine her mother not managing the tempo of her life.  Perhaps all those noises and my lack of sleep are not all that bad, in comparison to the silence, or not....ifyouknowhatimtalkinbout.