TREENA MIELKE/On The Other Side
Deadlines are an inevitable part of the life of a newspaper reporter and go along quite well with black coffee, cigarettes and hiding in a fetal position for long periods of time after the paper comes out.
Despite that deadlines are kind of fun and great anti everything boosters.
Who has time to feel sad, depressed, too fat, insecure, selfish worried or exhausted when people higher up the important career ladder than you want completed, factual, newsworthy articles in the next two minutes?
I have a love/hate relationship with deadlines. I love the challenge, but I hate it too, because of the procrastination thing, which sadly is a trait that keeps tagging along with me wherever I go.
“Clean your desk,” I say to me. “Okay, tomorrow,” I say back. “Make your phone calls, set up your interviews, start earlier, I insist to me. “Okay, tomorrow,” I insist back.
And so it goes. Week in and week out.
But this week I got caught.
It started with the midnight phone call.
It seemed little Dylan Joshua was flouting newspaper protocol and had decided to be born on deadline day of all things.
Being the super grandma that I am, I said calmly, “Of course I’ll be there to babysit, I am on my way.” And on the hour’s drive to my daughter’s house I wrote my stories in my mind, figured out how I could take the child to the office with me, still take him for ice cream, show him off to the world as the super wonderful child that he is and most importantly meet my deadline before I brought him back to his mother, exhausted but happy.
Of course none of the above happened.
What did happen was that it came to be that for a few hours at least I was no longer a journalist, but simply ‘grandma,’ aka (the babysitter). And I learned I had a lot to learn, much of which was taught to me by a two-year-old in a diaper for crying out loud.
“You have a new baby brother,” I tell him as we eat our breakfast cereal together.
“Why?” he said, adding before I could answer, “Grandma, your face is dirty.”
I guiltily reach for one of his wipes, wiping the offending cereal off my face with as much dignity as I could muster thinking longingly of hot, strong black coffee.
We get dressed and he proceeds to dust the bathtub with one of his mom’s makeup brushes telling me he is ‘cleaning.’
I suggest we go outside and play for a bit.
“Why,” he says. I refrain from saying the age old thing that mothers and grandmas always say when no other logic comes to mind at the moment which is, “Because I said so, that’s why” and proceed to open the patio doors, hoping he will follow.
He does and before I know it we are jumping on the trampoline together, the child giving no thought to my age or statue in life, but thinking of me only as a suitable playmate for this particular moment in time.
From there we went to the swings and then the teeter-totter and then he informed me he wanted to go to the playground.
I think briefly of my office and the secure world of deadlines and even feel a momentary fondness for sources who only know how to say two words, “yes and no”, but because I am ‘the babysitter’ I swallow my misgivings and off we go.
On the way he teaches me about the importance of dawdling and not worrying about very much at all. And we both watch a yellow butterfly flitter around lazily and wonder idly where it is off to.
And later we both peer into the basket that holds his tiny newborn brother and I feel a sense of wonderment I know with certainty I could have never found behind my desk meeting deadlines and sipping strong black coffee.
And then we both go home and have a nap and it is all good.