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The benefit of being a light sleeper is having the ability to hear the back door close at 7am on a Saturday morning from one floor up. Since all my children are now north of 13 yrs old, my razor sharp ears are no longer needed to hear toddler squeals in the night. I don’t need to be attuned to the sound of little heads getting lodged in stair banisters, or bikes crashing on the driveway. I used to be able to hear a sneeze from a crib or the creak of a mattress as a little person rolled over in the middle of night, with or without a monitor. Not only am I a light sleeper with creepy mommy hearing, I’m just a terrible sleeper in general. For years, I have lay awake at night listening to screeching cat fights echo from all corners of the neighborhood, or yawned for hours under a parade of sporadic headlights that washed over my darkened bedroom. I've had no choice but to resort to a variety of sleep hygiene routines and pharmaceutical concoctions in order to catch a few winks.  But even still, I only manage to float somewhere between sleep and awake - neither one stealing me completely.  Without toddlers to listen for anymore, my nights have seemed increasingly empty, until now. Don’t kid yourself for a second - I absolutely heard that door at 7am.

“Did you hear the back door this morning?”

“No. Maybe someone got up to put the dog out.” Steve answered.

This is a man who leaves his body every night, like a wet suit on the floor of a dive shop, only to return after a perfect 8 hour hiatus.  I knew he didn’t hear a thing.  I also knew none of our children had gotten up to put the dog out.

“I think someone came in the house.”

“Doubtful.” he answered. “Were you up at 7?”

“Not exactly. But I was kind of awake.”

We are still under lockdown, with no sign of Covid restrictions lifting any time soon. Get up, sleep, eat, work; the order of the day is confused and flexible. Why would any of us be up at 7am on a Saturday? Nowhere to go.

Creak.

I know what I heard.

We lost interest in the mystery quickly though and chalked it up to me taking one too many ‘helpers’ at bedtime. So we carried on with our days like prisoners, moving about the same grounds aimlessly; floating as astronauts in our space station, each doing our own work, surviving moment by moment. I made bread and cookies until we’d run out of containers and Steve poured himself into work. I taught my classes, and Steve took calls. We walked trails and waterfront paths daily, sometimes enjoying it, sometimes doing it because it was the only thing that would keep us from staring at the calendar wondering if we had done a ‘Tuesday’ yet this week? 

With the fire on and our feet tucked snuggly under our legs on the couch, we aimlessly scrolled through our evening options on the TV … again.  Two of the boys were parked in front of other screens while Dexter breezed through the room with his dripping winter boots in hand about to head down the stairs to his room in the basement.  

“Hey! Don’t take wet boots down to your room!” I begged.

“I’m gonna put them in the laundry room to dry.” he retorted.

Then Steve jumped in and added, “Oh, and I’ll fix your screen tomorrow.” .

As we settled on a show to watch, Steve let me know that Dexter’s window screen was broken. He had found it on the back patio after putting the dog out. I held on to my thoughts as pieces to a puzzle I didn’t know I was forming began to slide into place. 

I thought back to 8 yr old Dexter. I had recently returned to work and introduced he and his brothers to the world of school and daycare. Not that I needed these structured institutions to confirm what I already knew about Dexter - but it became clearer by the second that rules and common sense were very much the round hole that Dexter’s square peg was not interested in. It would be completely fine if his shenanigans only affected him but at this stage, as mother and son, we were inextricably intertwined. His actions were mine to explain, repeatedly. I remember the day I pulled up to the daycare expecting, as usual, to collect three tired boys with lunch bags wreaking of squashed apple and soggy Bear Paw, wrapped in a wet sock or two.

“Mom, we’d like to talk to you.” said Tina.

Tina was a very matter-of-fact early childhood educator who swore up and down that she just loved my boys, which I knew was not always the case for my bunch. I make Bose cinema speakers, not wall flowers.

“He went out the window.” she said to me, quite matter-of-factly.

“He went out the window?” I asked.

After a raucous snack time, the children in the after school program were saddened to hear that they would not be allowed to go outside to play. It was frigid and the city of Toronto had issued a cold weather alert. They’d be going to the gym instead. Grumble, grumble, foot stomp or two, grab some toys and go. That’s what most of the kids did. But Dexter went to the bathroom. He climbed up the wall to a window, pushed it open and slipped out. Yes, he climbed up a wall. He went outside to play, in extreme cold, in his indoor shoes, with no coat, no toys, no friends, because he wanted to play outside. Needless to say, he was missing for a short period of time before someone spotted him prancing about in the yard. Only Dexter seemed pleased with how daycare went that day.

Dexter dyed his hair because he wanted to. He became a pescatarian because he wanted to. He trashed the playroom at a Good Life gym because he wanted to go home. My membership was revoked. I belong to Vive Fitness now. I used to bribe him (and all of the boys) with jelly beans, or quiet beans as I called them. He would get one bean for every minute that he had been quiet while I made or answered a phone call, because every second my attention was not on him, he wailed and fought. He refused to do ANY work in class but instead ripped up paper and coloured on puzzles. Eventually we discovered it was because he was bored.  He chose to go all Banksy on the room instead of letting someone know he would like more to do or read. This was all just the beginning of Dexter’s long and tumultuous relationship with his omnipotence. Dexter has moved through life going from one box to another, pushing off the lids and kicking down the sides while we followed along behind with tape. 

After another sleepless night during Covid, I did in fact venture downstairs in the early morning to let the dog out myself.  I felt a cold rush of air sting my legs and face as I hit the bottom step. Coming through the back door, in his coat and boots with a bag over his arm was Dexter.

“What are you doing?” I asked sleepily, swallowing my urge to lunge.

“Oh, couldn’t sleep. Just came back from a walk.”

I bit my bottom lip to keep the words “I’m not a total idiot” from spilling out of my gaping mouth in a combative, old fashioned, crazy mom tone. Instead, I opted for the tilted head, raised eyebrow “MmmmmHmmmm.”

“With a bag?”

Okay, I let that one slip out.

I kept my unofficial investigation to myself for a couple of weeks as I studied comings and goings and distant sounds in the house. In lockdown, it was easy to fit this into my schedule. I noticed his TTC pass seemed to auto-refill in the middle of the night.  Bless my husband's dear sweet soul when he said “The TTC probably just has some automatic system and his account must have come up as needing a top-up randomly at 4am.” I bit my bottom lip again to fight the “I’m not a total idiot” urge again. A few days later I hear Steve, for the second time, asking Dexter to just let him know next time his screen breaks so he can fix it right away.

His window screen popped out again? Covid restrictions, daycare, it’s all the same.

I decided to reveal my findings and offer a conclusion to my husband as we retired one evening to bed, my guard lowered due to emotional exhaustion and vodka. As Steve and I performed our little night time routine; fluffed our pillows, turned on our bedside lights, got our books and kicked off our slippers - no, we’re not 111 years old, we just enjoy a nightly routine reminiscent of a bygone era, we chatted. We compared notes on the fact that our teenage son was most definitely sneaking out the window in the middle of the night and taking off on the subway to God knows where. I huffed and puffed. I paced. I was ready to lecture and had in fact been rehearsing my speech nightly as I lay tossing and turning in bed.  I even went to the “You better talk to him, ‘cause I’ll kill him” scenario. Actually, it may have been Steve that suggested he talk to him so I didn’t kill him. Either way, we both wanted to save his life. My memory is foggy from the perpetual rage and fear hangover I seem to be nursing since the changeover from taking care of three lovely children turned to policing three clearly devious teenagers.

At least Steve and I were in agreement.  The screen on his bedroom window wasn’t magically popping out, he didn’t need his boots in the basement (next to his room) to dry out, his TTC card wasn’t automatically renewing in the middle of the night from a glitch in the system, and he wasn’t out for a breath of fresh air in the early morning with a backpack because he couldn’t sleep. And most of all - I wasn’t crazy.  I had heard the door open and shut early in the morning.  We were going to have a serious talk with our son. It would be uncomfortable and we would make sure the other kids weren’t around. I would try not to kill anyone… unless provoked.

The next day, as I pretended not to be anxiously awaiting Dexter’s arrival in the kitchen, Steve asked me the question that unraveled my entire plan.  “What were you doing at his age?”  Wrong!  This wasn’t about me - or us, at his age. It’s our son. The little boy genius who had exhausted teachers from 3 schools, scared off multiple babysitters, given the runaround to literally anyone who thought they knew better, been kicked out of play groups, and countless other escapades that shall go unnamed. Then I realized he had a birthday coming up. A big one - 19 years old in a couple of weeks. I was silent as I thought of my friends and I at 19. Then horrified at those memories. I wasn’t even living at home at that age.  The only uncomfortable conversation that was going to happen was going on right now inside my head.

There was no investigation. It was over. I hadn’t noticed that I was still trying to keep a full grown Dexter in a little old onesie. These sides were destined to split in a dramatic fashion. I’d spent years introducing a daring boy to a world made of walls and grabbing his ankles every time he tried to get a look at the other side.  If I could just feed him jelly beans a little longer to keep him doing what I wanted.  

We had a conversation. But instead of, pardon me, ripping him a new one, I resigned. 

Me: “Dexter...you’re almost 19.  You don’t have to crawl out your window.  You’re entitled to a life.”

Him: “I didn’t think that was an option.”

Ouch. That’s on me.

We went over his options - both as I saw them and as he saw them. He was allowed to grow up, and I was expected to evolve.  We have yet to discuss why he was squeezing out the window but coming back in through the door, but I’m happy to save that nugget for another time. It was time for Dexter to stop going out the window. I had no choice but to stand back and open the door for him. Since our talk, I haven’t heard the door in the morning, or found his boots hiding in the basement. Instead, he lets us know when he’s having a rough time with the lockdown and needs to see a friend, and we talk about how to do it responsibly. He’s always gonna find a window. I know I did. We got to honesty. And nobody died.

Now as I lay in bed each night, I can barely hear the screeching cats in the neighborhood, nor do I need to listen for the unexpected creaking of a back door. My oldest is all grown up and I have peace now. Parenting done. I just lie back in my cozy bed and relax. All I need to listen for now is the possible sound of Uber doors slamming, my cell phone buzzing, strange voices, sirens, the police knocking, gunshots, ambulances in the distance … 

By Carol Sloan

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