Sacrifice

by Camilia Cenek


When you did reading practice with our daughter
instead of putting her to bed on time,
you sacrificed my time on the altar of futility.
She gains confidence and attention
one hesitant word at a time,
while I lose another fragment of myself, twice.
First when I called her in from her play outside,
after I had prepared a lunch for her and her sisters,
after I had leaned over the side of the crib
with my hand pressed to the two-year-old’s chest
who has lately been climbing out
when he and I desperately need his nap,
watching him close his eyes and flutter them open,
after ushering neighbor kids from the house,
after a blurred freight train of childcare tasks
that stretches between the hours of 5 and 11 a.m.
which moms know.
I took it hard that after I had already
practiced the word list with her
instead of sitting quietly for myself
and after waking the baby in order to take everyone to the dentist
and after improvising a solution to a surprise, off-schedule, soiled diaper
for which I had not prepared
and after returning home to concoct a last-minute supper
and after then leaving the house alone to devise a respite
that I had fantasized about all day
when I came home at bedtime I found one daughter
not in bed, not wearing jammies, but running across the yard
and you inside listening to another daughter read the word list
that she had already read today with me.
It was sacrifice stolen on top of sacrifice given,
and then more sacrifice still, because
the two-year-old left his crib to enter the hall
to say hi to the floor fan, his sister, and me.
Everything that I had thought was behind me I found before me:
teeth unbrushed, clothes unchanged, kids untucked,
and my goals (a shower, a break, time to write, silence,
the completion of my book, the submission of my application,
the return of my career and my life)
receding such a long way off.


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Camilia Cenek is a writer and editor. She has BA and MA degrees in English and a BA in Psychology. Her writing has appeared or is forthcoming in Madison Magazine, The Good Life Review, The Sunlight Press, and Creative Wisconsin Anthology. Find her at camiliacenek.com.