Signs it's time to wash the car

I recently came across some half-finished blog ideas that I started and then abandoned months ago. This one was from last spring, but since we're currently in the middle of winter car angst at my house, it seemed appropriate to post it now.

Signs that it’s time to clean the car after a long winter:

1)   Your four-year-old says from the back floorboard of the car, “Look mom, I built a sand castle!”

2)   You notice a child eating half a granola bar on the way to gymnastics. The last time you handed out granola bars in the car was when you were visiting the pumpkin patch.

3)   If your children ever go on the lam from the law, the FBI could easily lift their fingerprints off of every interior window in your vehicle.

4)   Now that the temperature has finally climbed above 30 degrees, you find all seven missing mates to the glove/mitten sets you’ve been replacing all winter long.

5)   The dog refuses to get into the car by himself due to an unfortunate experience involving his entanglement with a half-eaten Tootsie Pop.

As it's only January, and we have a good two months before spring arrives, none of this is cause enough for me to run out today and clean my car. But come March, it will undergo the annual scrubbing, vacuuming, waxing routine, and I will threaten my children with a new no-food-in-the-car rule, at which they will promptly laugh because they have heard it a dozen times before and are aware that the first instance in which we're running late will see me tossing a couple of PB&Js into the back seat like it's feeding time at the zoo. But for now, I will embrace the chaos, hang a Sand and Sun-scented air freshener from my rear view mirror, and pretend that the sandcastles in the back seat are part of some bizarre beach vacation.

It's All in the Family

The only explanation for what I'm about to say is that I have finally gone off the deep end. A few weeks ago, I let the kids get a dog. He's a rescue dog from a shelter in the next state over. Obviously someone's family pet, it's possible that he wandered so far from his home that his owners were unable to find and claim him. We named him Oliver Twist because he was in a deplorable state when he came to us. Half golden retriever, half beagle, fur dirty and matted with a nasty infection in one foot where he had been trapped in a hunter's snare before he was rescued and taken to the shelter.

Three weeks later, he is healed, grateful and starved for attention, following us from room to room as we go about the business of life. It's taken me a few weeks to fully trust him around the kids. I initially regarded him suspiciously, lest he should suddenly turn and go all Cujo on one of us.

K however took to him immediately, showering him with hugs so tight I've actually seen his eyes bulge out of their sockets. "Gentle, gentle" is a constant refrain around here, and I'm not talking to the dog. Oliver in return shows extraordinary patience and tolerance toward this loud, bossy little person who follows him around the house instructing him in what to do and what not to do.

A couple of days after he came to live with us, I turned the corner into the kitchen to find K laying with her torso sprawled across the dog's midsection. She was using one hand to pull his upper lip over his canine teeth. All I could see was the face of my sweet daughter inches from the vicious incisors of an uncivilized beast. In my usual calm and unruffled manner, I quietly said, "Let's not play with Oliver's lips K." I immediately freaked out.

ME: "What are you doing?!!!!"

K: "I want to see his teeth."

ME: "Let's not touch Oliver's lips, okay?"

K: "Why not?"

OLIVER: Looks at me as if to say, "Chill out lady."

A few days after that, I turned the corner into the living room and found K using her hair brush to methodically comb the knots out of Oliver's fur. Again, I handled the situation with the kind of serene reaction I would imagine Mother Theresa would have had.  Completely horrified, I grabbed the hair brush from K's hand and began scrubbing it in the kitchen sink while lecturing her on why we don't use our personal grooming tools on the dog.

When I was getting ready for bed that evening, I reached for my toothbrush, which I keep next to my bathroom sink. Oliver stood at the bathroom door watching me. He yawned lazily, and I glanced over at his exceptionally shiny pearly whites and then back down at the toothbrush in my hand before chucking it in the trash can. I decided it would be safer to buy a new one in the morning and resolved to store it much higher up.

The Baby Who Almost Wasn't

Until his or her first shocking gasp of air, the initial glaring preview of bright lights, and the sight of a pair of strange hands reaching out to pull them into the world, a baby shares a kind of secret identity with its mother. She is usually the first to know of its existence, and the first to recognize its unique personality and temperament. A baby whose movements go unnoticed during the day, but who seems to host a dance party each evening will be a night owl, while the child who kicks vigorously whenever mom eats ice cream will have a penchant for sweets.

She alone bears the responsibility of protecting and nourishing her child up until the moment of birth when she must share them with the rest of the world. But for nine months, she has the satisfaction of knowing that her child rests securely below her heart, an extension of her own body.

Just after R’s second birthday, I got pregnant for the second time. My midwife estimated that I would be due around the end of April or the beginning of May. We were very excited that R would be a big brother.

I was about 6 weeks pregnant when I decided to go out and thin the hosta plants on the side of the house. I knew that I would never get it done in the spring when the baby was born, and I had been feeling great (unlike the first six weeks I was pregnant with R, and constantly felt like I was on an ocean liner without any Dramamine). I dug and pulled and split, and when I was happy with the results, I went in the house. That evening, I knew that something was wrong.

An ultrasound the next day revealed a kind of bruise on the lining of the uterus where the placenta had attached. The tech reassured me that this sort of thing was very common and many times healed on its own. Still, the slower than usual heartbeat, and the fact that the baby measured almost a week and a half behind where it should left me with an ominous feeling. They scheduled another ultrasound for a week-and-a-half later and sent me home.

Just as a mother is the first to know of her baby’s existence, I believe that I knew almost immediately when that little flicker of a heartbeat officially stopped beating. I didn’t feel pregnant anymore, even though I had had no more outward signs that that was the case. We waited several more days for the follow up ultrasound, but when they went to look for the heartbeat, the tech turned the screen away from us, and I knew that the baby was gone. I should have been eight weeks pregnant.

First, I was consumed with guilt. If only I had been patient and waited to thin the hostas, I might not have caused the bruising on my uterus. (My midwife assured me that the bruise was there from conception, and nothing that I could have done would have changed the outcome.) Then there were the days that I stayed in bed, unwilling to face the rest of the world, especially the people I felt that I had somehow let down by miscarrying this baby.

Knowing that I needed to return to normal life, I decided one day to go do some early Christmas shopping. I love the Christmas season, and I thought that the decorations and the atmosphere might help snap me out of the funk I was experiencing. I was looking through the ornament section at a local department store when I came across the “Baby’s First Christmas” ornaments. I fled the store, half-blinded by tears and drove home.

One night, R asked me to read the book “Horton Hears a Who” before bedtime. It was a book we had read a hundred times. Horton the Elephant discovers a microscopic world of tiny people called the Whos, and he saves them from certain destruction. There’s a line in the book that reads, “A person’s a person, no matter how small.” When we reached that line, J had to take over and put R to bed that night.

Although we told few people outside of our families and a couple of very close friends, I confided in a friend and colleague at work. His wife had had a miscarriage between the births of their son and daughter many years before. He shared with me how difficult the experience had been on them, especially her. And then he said something that, although I couldn’t fully appreciate the message in the moment, stuck with me for many months. In retrospect, it was probably the most sage advice given to me during that time period.

What he told me was this: “Looking back now, I know that without what happened to us, even though it was so difficult, I wouldn’t have my daughter or my grandchildren. I might have a different child and different grandchildren, but not exactly these ones, and I can’t imagine my life without them.”

K was conceived a few months later, and when I look at her today, I find it impossible to think about my life without her. My sassy girl with innocent blue eyes and full, pouty lips, her blonde curls cascading down the back of her sweet baby neck. The bossy way she reminds everyone to put their coat on before going outside, and how she must identify every person she knows in a photograph before she can move on. What would my life be like without her raspy little voice singing along to “I Love You a Bushel and a Peck” or finishing each line in the Madeline books?

As the months went on, and I confided in more friends and family members, I realized how common miscarriage is, and how many of us had silently gone through the cycle of joy, hope, fear, disappointment and sorrow. I wondered why this wasn’t a topic more widely discussed among women. There are few things worse than feeling alone.

The baby we lost would have been three this May, and even though the hosta-side of the house can still put me in a melancholy mood, and I sometimes wonder whether it was a boy or a girl and what he or she might have been like, I know that if I had been spared the pain of experiencing miscarriage, I would also have missed the elation of being K’s momma. In a roundabout way, I feel gratitude toward that tiny person the rest of the world never got to know, but who for six short weeks lived under my heart, and who will live for the rest of my life inside of it.

Occupational Hazards

When I was growing up, my occupational aspirations changed from year-to-year, week-to-week, and sometimes even from minute-to-minute (thanks to an academic adviser in college who reminded me that I would be expected to pursue whatever line of work I chose for the next 40 years until I retired, upon which time she informed me, I would probably be too old and arthritic to enjoy my retirement, and then could look forward to death. No pressure there. I’m guessing any employee satisfaction surveys she completed were pretty low.)

Starting at about age five, my heart’s deepest desire was to become a veterinarian. I liked to pretend that my grandparents’ dogs had exotic canine diseases that only I could cure. If I found a roly-poly sitting in the middle of the sidewalk where the neighborhood boys were sure to crush it beneath their mammoth bicycle tires, I would carefully move it into a nearby flowerbed. Then, during writing lab in the third grade, when we were supposed to be writing about what we wanted to be when we grew up, the boy sitting next to me looked over at my neatly printed block letters that spelled out VETERINARIAN. “Ew!” he said. “You want to cut off dogs’ private parts all day long?!” And that was the end of a dream.

In the sixth grade, I had an amazing teacher on whom I thought the sun rose and set. I decided that nothing could be better than inspiring a classroom full of students who idolized me and hung on my every word, their attention so rapt that they even forgot about recess until I reminded them that fresh air and sunshine were important for little bodies. I thought maybe kindergarten or first grade would be the place for me. I could finger paint and smell of fresh paste all day. And I loved the sight of a just-opened box of crayons.  (When I actually DID decide to go into education during my junior year of college, the college wisely required all aspiring teachers to observe elementary and secondary classrooms before choosing a grade level. It took me exactly 30 seconds to know that elementary was NOT the place for me. There isn’t enough Xanax in the world, and may God bless and have mercy on the souls of those of you who do this important job.)

Sometime during junior high school, I read my mother’s old Cherry Ames books (she was a fictional character who worked as a nurse during and following WWII and changed jobs every 208 pages) and decided that nursing was a noble profession. I began volunteering at one of the local hospitals during that time, and I loved the atmosphere. So what happened to this plan you ask? Organic chemistry is what happened. Never in my life have I ever been so bored.

I went through a phase when I wanted to major in dietetics, until I realized that chocolate was not a group on the food pyramid, at which time I declared the entire profession a sham and immediately went to my adviser’s office to change my major.

I’ve always loved to write and worked on publications from the time that I was in high school, so I thought, why not try print journalism? I loved the classes and the interesting minds of the people who shared them with me. It was the perfect fit, except that it was 2001, the Internet had been gaining momentum for the past decade, and newspapers and magazines across the country were laying off salaried journalists left and right and using freelance writers instead. When I realized that the only food I could afford on a starting reporter’s salary would be Raman noodles and peanut butter sandwiches, I decided to share my love of writing and literature with others, and became a high school English and journalism teacher.

I may have changed career aspirations as often as Cherry Ames, but one part of the vision that I had for my adult life never wavered. From the time that I was very small, I knew that I wanted to be a Mom. Chalk this up to having a great mom of my own (although I certainly never wanted her to know it between the ages of 12 and 20) or my fondness for the just-out-of the-package-smell of new plastic baby dolls, but I can’t remember a time when I didn’t want to have children. There are pictures of me as a toddler taking my baby doll shopping in a play grocery cart, giving my baby a time out, and pretending to wash tiny baby clothes.

It was the 80s, so I had four Cabbage Patch dolls that were among my favorite playthings. I would dress them, feed them, and rock them to sleep. My reward for such loving attention was the unfaltering painted smiles on their perfect plastic faces. My four angelic babies drank all of their milk and orange juice bottles (the kind that magically emptied when tipped upside down), always stopped crying when I picked them up, AND stayed in bed when put there, sleeping until whenever I felt like getting up to play with them again. By age 8, I figured I had this whole motherhood thing figured out. No problem.

The first time I saw two pink lines on a pregnancy test, I was overcome with a sense that I was about to do something incredibly important. More important than grading semester term papers. More important than explaining how to diagram a sentence. I was going to be entrusted with a human life. I was going to mold and shape this child into a compassionate, responsible human being. And some day, he would look down at me with gratitude in his eyes and an M.D. behind his name, and a wave of appreciation would sweep over him the likes of which he had never experienced or would ever experience again. I was going to hold the most revered job title in the mammal world- Mother.

The reality is, motherhood is the most difficult job I have ever undertaken. For one thing, most employers are required by law to allow their employees breaks each day. During this time, workers have the luxury of using the restroom in solitude. They are not required to balance a nursing baby in the crook of one arm while holding the toilet paper roll down with the other so that a toddler can’t “mummify” himself while repetitively chanting, “You go pee pee, Mommy.” At work, I am allowed to sit down to eat my lunch. At home, I stand at the counter eating the crusts off of other people’s peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.

In motherhood, your employers expect you to report for duty at all hours of the day and night without notice, even when you’ve been puking or running a fever. There’s no complaint box if you find yourself unsatisfied with someone’s attitude or job performance, and you are sometimes required to sleep with the boss, even when he insists on sleeping sideways with his feet digging into your ribs and enough stuffed animals in the bed to suffocate a small elephant.

There are no glowing performance reviews thanking you for all of the hard work you’ve been doing. No one gushes over how you took the initiative to scrape the hardened toothpaste out of the bathroom sink or thanks you for taking the time to make nutritious meals instead of stopping at McDonald’s on the way home after soccer practice. In fact, any performance reviews in motherhood are more likely to include comments on how you could improve. (“Don’t buy me itchy sweaters anymore Mom.” “You made fish AGAIN?!” “Mrs. So-and-so said that we didn’t do my homework right the other night.”)

I liken it to working for Mussolini or Stalin at the height of their power. I sometimes even affectionately call them my little dictators. The other morning around 5:30, K toddled into the bedroom. I didn’t know she was there until I felt warm air on my cheek and opened my eyes to see her own blue ones staring at me from a half an inch away. I nearly jumped out of my skin. “I want eggs for breakfast Mommy.” I tried in vain to explain to my two-year-old that Mommy doesn’t fix eggs until the sun has come up.

Motherhood is also the most rewarding job I’ve ever had. The benefits package can’t be beat. No one at work has ever before stopped me mid-Dr. Seuss to grab my face between two chubby hands, look deep into my eyes and say, “I lub you so, so much Mommy.” No paycheck can compare to a hand-made, albeit slightly crookedly cut get well heart that reads, “I hop you git bedr Mome.” And all of the accolades in the world pale in comparison to your preschooler introducing you to his class by saying with pride in his voice, “This is my Mom.”

I’ve never worked at anything that was as frustrating, anxiety inducing, thankless, and, at times, painful as parenting my kids. I’ve also never dreamed of a job that I wanted to do more than this one, and I never plan to retire.  

Tales from Down Under

Over winter break, there were a few days that I opted to take K to daycare so that I could spend some one-on-one time with R. K has what some might politely call a “strong” personality, and at times can dominate the focus of everyone in a room. It’s nice to be able to give R my undivided attention occasionally.

We found many things to do during our time together that would interest a 5-year-old boy, but that may not intrigue his 2-year-old sister. One day, after we spent the morning doing an R-centered activity, I needed to stop by Kohl’s to exchange a camisole that I got for Christmas to wear under a sweater.

R dreads nothing more than being dragged into a women’s clothing store, so I promised him it would be a short trip. Nonetheless, he complained all the way from the car to the door and from the door back to the lingerie department where Kohl’s keeps their camisoles.

I was busy looking for the size, color and style of camisole that I needed to exchange when I looked up and noticed that R was no longer standing beside me. Panicked, my eyes quickly scanned the area until I found him, three displays away, standing before a rack of very large brassieres. He had the same look of wonder in his eyes as the middle school boy I once caught with a copy of the J.C. Penney lingerie ad tucked into his Trapper Keeper at school.

Me: "R, you scared me. You need to stay right beside me. What are you doing?"

R: (So loudly, I actually looked to see if he was holding a bullhorn.) "What does D-D-D mean, Mom?"

Me: (Looking around to see who is overhearing this conversation, as I’m sure by now even the unliving have been awakened from their eternal sleep.) "It’s a size."

R: (To my horror, he now has his face buried in one cup of the DDD garment.) "Look Mom!" (Gleefully) "My whole head fits inside!"

I quickly rushed him away from the racks of bras, but couldn’t resist stopping at a bin of clearance underwear. (I like a good sale as much as the next gal.) As I picked up various garments and held them up by their elastic waistbands, I could feel R’s eyes watching me intently. A smarter woman would have cut her losses and run, but I’m a glutton for punishment.

R: (Enthusiastically) "Wow, Mom! Are you gonna launch those things across the aisle like a rubber band?!"

Moral of this story: R is now too old to accompany me on any trips that involve undergarments of any kind.

Who's on First?

In recent weeks, the dreaded phrase “that’s no fair” has reared its ugly head at our house. As in, “Mom, that’s no fair that K got in the car first.” “Mom, why does K get more broccoli than me? No fair!” and “K always gets to take a bubble bath. How is that fair?”

I have utilized many tactics in my defense against the “No Fair” assault. I’ve tried telling R that to even things up, he can be the first in bed tonight, an offer that went over like a lead balloon. In what I thought was a diplomatic effort at equality, I have suggested that he might take up wearing diapers again since his sister does. No takers there. Many times, I have bit back the sarcastic response, “It’s because I like her more,” fearing that years of psychotherapy would be necessary to convince him that I was only joking.

After a particularly trying morning, in which I was accused of giving K her breakfast plate, milk cup, vitamin, and napkin first, I had had just about enough of “that’s no fair.”

Me: “Yeah, well you got to use my uterus first.”

R: (With a blank look on his face) “What’s a uterus?”

Me: “It’s the part of the mom where the baby grows.”

R: (Without missing a beat) “Well that’s no fun. It was dark in there.”

Oy vey.

On Happiness

K turned two a couple of weeks ago. As I watched her savor cupcakes and ice cream and rip into presents, I was struck by how much joy children find in the simple acts of living. I can’t remember the last time that I stuffed an entire chocolate cupcake into my mouth with abandon.

Children are notoriously impulsive. R shows no hesitation flying down the driveway on his scooter or throwing his body to the ground during a soccer game. K’s recklessness in the swimming pool would drive any parent to require her to wear a life jacket until she’s 30. The risks that adults carefully weigh and consider are only after thoughts in a kid’s world.

Somewhere along the road to adulthood, we grow into individuals who are self-conscious and afraid to take chances and fail. Some might call this good sense. Nobody wants to get hurt, and bones heal more slowly when you’re 40 than when you’re four.

But this indecision creates many roadblocks in our quest for happiness. The very act of risking without knowing what the outcome will be is what makes life exhilarating. Without change and risk, we are destined to live in a perpetual state of monotony. I’m certainly not suggesting that my children (or anyone else for that matter) race trains, play Russian roulette or get tattooed while inebriated. But there's got to be a happy medium between reckless irresponsibility and paralyzing caution.

One day, when R and K have reached adulthood, and faced with a major life decision, frantically find themselves conducting risk-benefit analysis in their heads, here are some of the things I would tell them about what I’ve learned on my own quest for happiness:

-Try new things. Order something you’ve never had before at a restaurant. Take a yoga class. Have a conversation with a stranger (in a well-lit, busy location). Get a new haircut. Go somewhere you’ve never been.

-Live with abandon. Jump into the pool without checking the temperature first. When a good song comes on, sing out loud in a public place. Wear white to a barbecue. Laugh until you snort milk out of your nose.

-Take risks. Accept a new job. Choose the red shoes instead of sensible beige. Say, “I love you” without wondering if the other person will say it back. When we stop risking, we deny ourselves the opportunity to live fully.

-Know yourself. Know who you are all alone without anyone else’s expectations. Take time to do things that make you happy. Throw off the idea that it’s selfish to take care of your own needs. When we do this, it allows us to give to others willingly, not resentfully.

When our founding fathers penned the Declaration of Independence, they valued happiness so highly that they called the pursuit of Happiness an unalienable right. We aren’t guaranteed happiness, only the right to pursue it. I would tell R and K to avoid being their own biggest obstacles to that pursuit. When happiness floats into view, grab onto it with both hands and hold on tight. Don’t let go and don’t look backward or forward. Just savor it like a fistful of chocolate cupcake.  

 Don’t wait around for other people to be happy for you. Any happiness you get, you’ve got to make for yourself. –Alice Walker