You heard it: Confessions of a ‘Twilight Mom’

Is it normal to stay up until 3:00 AM 12 nights in a row reading the Twilight Saga when you have a young child who wakes up every morning at 5:30?

No, it’s not normal. I’m usually in bed by 8:30 PM, out cold by 9:00. But I was recently transformed into a Twi-Hard, part of a legion of millions of uber-fanatics who are utterly obsessed with author Stephenie Meyer’s vampire love stories.

Yeah, yeah. I know I’m not 15 anymore, but, boy, it sure feels like it. And I’m not alone.

Chatting with other mothers at my son’s class or in the hockey arena (where so many of us pretend to be watching our kids fall all over each other), I discovered there were other Twilight Moms just like me, only they’d been this way since the first book came out in 2005. Oh, how far behind I was! They chuckle knowingly at me each morning as I arrive to drop off my son at school or at hockey practice, the dark circles under my eyes a sure clue that I had not yet finished reading the series. 

Anna, who finished the fourth book more than two years ago and has not been able to get through another book since, admitted that often while lying next to her great-looking husband at night, she wonders why he’s so tanned. “Why can’t he be all nice and pale like Edward Cullen?” she laments, as the other Twi-Moms nod in total understanding. 

My own husband, whose reading material rarely comes in forms other than vehicle publications, has been shaking his head non-stop since my fixation began. 

“Don’t you even want to talk to me? We haven’t had a conversation in days,” he complains. 

I glance up briefly and reluctantly, eager to get back to the killer vampire kissing scene. “Um, how was your day, honey?” 

But I do not actually put the book down. That just wouldn’t feel right. After all, I’d been carrying one of Meyer’s huge tomes with me everywhere for weeks: the flu vaccination line, the supermarket, and even in the car, where I’ll admit to reading a paragraph or two at a red light.

And please, don’t even get me started about the movies. Art they ain’t. And yet, Anna the Twi-Mom and I have an annual date at our local movie theatre where we skulk into the dark screening room amidst throngs of screechy teenage girls, all of us here to be the first ones to see the latest film. When Breaking Dawn opened last week, I was literally counting down the hours until my movie date. 

Pathetic, I know. But here’s what’s worse: What am I going to do when the last flick comes out in 2012? 

Wendy Helfenbaum is a Montreal writer, television producer, and Twilight addict.