Encouragement

I recently started getting up early to work out. Some of you who have known me for many years may find this strange, as I've always preferred staying up late to getting up early. However, I've discovered that I enjoy the peace that comes with getting up before anyone else in my house is awake.

A couple of weekends ago, I left the house to work out on a Saturday morning and didn't make it home before the troops were up and screaming for breakfast. In our house, there is a division of labor that goes something like this: Taxes=J, laundry=me, dishes=J, answering any uncomfortable questions our children may ask=me. It works for us, and the fixing of meals usually falls squarely on my shoulders as well. Not that J can't cook. He makes a mean Kraft macaroni and cheese, and his PB&Js are nothing to sneeze at, but to my knowledge, he's never cooked anything that involves measuring or doesn't come directly from a jar or box.

This particular Saturday morning, J was feeling ambitious and decided to try scrambled eggs. He's watched me do this dozens of times, and felt that he was up to the challenge (kudos to him for trying something new.) He dished up the eggs and set them in front of R, and then eagerly awaited his reaction. R took one look at his plate and said, "At least they're yellow Dad."

Maybe he has a future in motivational speaking.

Feng shui for parents

Recently, I was flipping through a popular women’s magazine in bed. (I had snuck away when no one was looking, knowing that I had approximately two-and-a-half minutes before someone noticed I was gone and came looking.) So, I was searching for something I could read quickly. I came across an article about decorating your bedroom for ultimate romance. The author advised that couples shouldn’t have pictures of their children in the bedroom, or anything child-related for that matter.

Since I was lying in bed, I took a moment to look around our bedroom. A pair of sweaty black soccer socks had been slung across the footboard, and a stack of board books was shoved into one corner. A tiny green barrette sat atop the bedside table next to a discarded sippy cup. As I shifted to get a better view, my foot hit a lump under the covers, which upon inspection revealed a matted yellow stuffed duck trapped between the sheet and comforter. On the wall, hung a plaster cast of a child’s tiny handprint, a summer library craft project. Clearly, ultimate romance was passing us by (at least as it was defined by this author).

 Six-and-a-half-years ago, J and I traveled to the beautiful island of Maui to celebrate the beginning of our marriage. We swam in the ocean, snorkeled, traveled the Road to Hana, ate at expensive restaurants, fell asleep while warm tropical air wafted through open windows, and slept in as late as we wanted.

It’s my assertion that honeymoons are wasted on newlyweds. Back then, we had hours to sit and listen to one another’s thoughts. There was still an air of mystery surrounding marriage, and I hadn’t yet begun to swipe J’s flannel pajama pants and sweatshirts for sleepwear. We were consumed by being young and in love, and sleeping in wasn’t a luxury because we could do it every weekend if we chose.

I think honeymoons should be taken five to ten years into a marriage, when neither of you actually ever gets to finish a complete thought before being interrupted by someone who needs help wiping. (The last uninterrupted conversation we had revolved around whether or not to call the duct-cleaning guy to snake the dryer duct. We’re romantic like that.)

By the time a couple has produced a couple of children, time for each other is at a premium. I like to think of it as drive-by romance. A quick swat on the rear while we fill milk cups at dinner. A shared laugh over something one of the kids said.

The reality is, the years with our children will be short. They will soon move out and live their own lives. There will be a time when it will just be the two of us again, and we can lay on the beach in Maui (although that bikini is never going to be quite the same). Children have a way of filling up every corner of a house, every spare moment, and every nook and cranny of a parent’s heart. Instead of banishing all things children from our bedroom, I think I’ll embrace this chapter of our lives. There will come a time all too soon when I will be lying in bed reading a magazine with no one to interrupt. I think I’ll keep a few board books to stack in the corner just in case.

Motherhood

Two of my friends from my junior high/high school/college/post-college-wandering years are expecting their first babies. There's something unsettling about watching people who were part of your childhood have children of their own. First, I think we would all agree that there were things that we did/said/wore/thought/dated that we would rather our own children not try in the future, but that's another post for another time (kind of like how the government won't unclassify documents until all who were involved are dead).

I still think of us as girls, buying the latest Celine Dion CD and listening to the same song on repeat 70 times in a row at full volume. (This is how you know that your parents love you because if they didn't, you never would have lived through this phase of your life.) We cheered together (Literally, we were cheerleaders. Let the stereotyping begin.), laughed so hard we almost peed ourselves, sometimes fought, lived together, traveled together, drank wine, commiserated over broken hearts, navigated the triumphs and tribulations of breaking into our careers, drank more wine, witnessed each others' marriages, changed careers, moved away, and now are starting our own families.

When I was pregnant with R, someone sent me an e-mail that was an adaptation of a piece that was first printed in Chicken Soup for the Woman's Soul. It was written by Dale Hanson Bourke, and I liked it so much at that time that I saved it in the MISC folder on my computer. I came across it a few months ago when I was looking through the 6,000 documents in that folder for something completely unrelated. I'm posting it to this blog, mostly so that I can get my MISC folder down to 5, 999 documents, but also because these two women are going to be AHH-mazing mothers. Here's to you C.B. and A.R. and to all moms and moms-to-be!



My friend and I are sitting at lunch when she casually mentions that she and her husband are thinking of "starting a family."  What she means is that her
biological clock has begun its countdown, and she is considering the prospect of motherhood.

"We're taking a survey," she says, half jokingly. "Do you think I should have a baby?"

"It will change your life," I say carefully.

"I know," she says. "No more sleeping in on Saturdays, no more spontaneous vacations..."

But that is not what I mean at all.

I look at my friend, trying to decide what to tell her.  I want her to know what she will never learn in childbirth classes.  I want to tell her that the physical wounds of childbirth heal, but that becoming a mother will leave her with an emotional wound so raw that she will be forever vulnerable.

I consider warning her that she will never read a newspaper again without asking "What if that had been my child?"  That every plane crash, every fire will haunt her.  That when she sees pictures of starving children, she will look at the mothers and wonder if anything could be worse than watching your child die.

I look at her carefully manicured nails and stylish suit and think she should know that no matter how sophisticated she is, becoming a mother will immediately reduce her to the primitive level.  That a slightly urgent call of "Mom!" will cause her to drop her best crystal without a moment's hesitation.

I feel I should warn her that no matter how many years she has invested in her career, she will be professionally derailed by motherhood. She might successfully arrange for child care, but one day she will be waiting to go into an important business meeting, and she will think about her baby's sweet smell.  She will have to use every ounce of discipline to keep from running home, just to make sure he is all right.

I want my friend to know that everyday routine decisions will no longer be routine.  That a visit to McDonald's and a five year old boy's desire to go to the men's room rather than the women's room will become a major dilemma.  That right there, in the midst of clattering trays and screaming children, issues of independence and gender identity will be weighed against the prospect that danger may be lurking in the rest room.

I want her to know that however decisive she may be at the office, she will second-guess herself constantly as a mother.  Looking at my attractive friend, I want to assure her that eventually she will shed the pounds of pregnancy, but will never feel the same about herself.  That her life, now so important, will be of less value to her once she has a child.  That she would give it up in a moment to save her offspring, but will also begin to hope for more years, not so much to accomplish her own dreams, but to watch her child accomplish his.

I want her to know that a cesarean scar or stretch marks will become badges of honor.

My friend's relationship with her husband will change, but not in the ways she thinks.  I wish she could understand how much more you can love a man who is always careful to powder the baby or who never hesitates to play with his son.  I think she should know that she will fall in love with her husband again for reasons she would never have imagined.

I wish my modern friend could sense the bond she will feel with other women throughout history who have tried desperately to stop war and prejudice and drunk driving.

I want to describe to my friend the exhilaration of seeing your son learn to hit a baseball.  I want to capture for her the laugh of a baby who is touching the soft fur of a dog for the first time.  I want her to taste the joy that is so real that it hurts.

My friend's quizzical look makes me realize that tears have formed in my eyes.

"You'll never regret it," I say finally.

In a People House

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Last week at preschool R made a homemade version of the popular Chia Pet planter out of an old pair of panty hose, some dirt, and grass seed. He decorated it with googly craft eyes and red pipe cleaners for antennae. Voila, caterpillar! While this project was very cute and inventive, it also left an inch of dirt in the bottom of his backpack and resulted in a film of potting soil mixed with grass seed on our kitchen table. Not one to squelch creative genius, I dutifully found an old plastic tray, watered the panty hose and set it on the plant stand to sprout.

The Super Bowl was just finishing, and I was getting the house in order for the upcoming week. I opened the back patio door to try and shake some of the dirt out of R’s backpack. My husband was tucking him in, as we had let him stay up to see the end of the game. As I turned to come back into the house, I felt a WHOOSH and flutter near my hair and a bird flew past me into the dining room.

At this point in the story, I feel obligated to point out that while I love animals, I really love them more when they stay outside of my house. I should also reveal that I have a phobia of birds, one that stems from an unfortunate incident when I was seven involving a neighbor girl and her pet parakeet. She insisted on showing me how she could give him a “drink” of water, but instead succeeded in drowning him. (Apparently, you can lead a parakeet to water, but you can’t make him drink.)

So anyway, I stood there in the doorway in shock because the bird, now panicked himself, was doing circles around the ceiling. I quickly sprang into action, and by action, I mean that I grabbed an old sheet that the kids had been using to make tents and held it over the doorway separating the kitchen from the living room. I also shouted for my husband. Confused, he emerged from R’s room and asked me what I was doing. Standing on my tippy toes, holding sheet to doorway, I not so calmly explained the predicament and my desire to keep the bird confined to the kitchen rather than let it have free-range of the house. “What would I like for him to do?” he asked.

When I got married, I saw pest and rodent removal as a huge perk in this union. (Mice terrify me almost as much as birds, due to an even more unfortunate choice of apartment rentals following college. And aren’t birds really just rodents with wings?) Never again would I have to deal with beady-eyed, pointy-snouted creatures that get stuck in glue traps or have the gall to poke their heads out from beneath random pieces of furniture. So of course, I expected my husband to take care of this situation (after all, I signed the puke clause in this contract.) He bravely grabbed the kitchen broom and marched toward his destiny.

Twenty minutes later, we were both exhausted and frustrated, but the bird actually looked like he might be settling in for the night. He chose three favorite landing spots throughout the room and took flight each time he was prodded with the broom, landing in a virtual Bermuda Triangle. Try as we might, we couldn’t get him to head toward the exit. All the while, our four-year-old gleefully watched from a crack in his bedroom door, despite being told to shut said door and get back in bed. (I’m guessing he may have picked up a few choice words and phrases to share on the preschool playground this week.)

We didn’t want to hurt the bird (I’m a pacifist), but we were getting desperate. J left the room and returned with a green and yellow insect net that came with R’s bug catching kit. I hid behind the sheet, not wanting to witness whatever might come next. I heard a THWACK and a cheer, which was followed by a groan. The bird had briefly flown outside, only to turn around and resume the game he was playing with the stupid humans. Finally, we opened the door leading to the garage, and he found his way out.

We were left to survey the carnage. There were feathers and bird poop everywhere. I spent the next hour cleaning and sanitizing the counters and floor. When I went out to the garage to shut the door before I went to bed, the bird was sitting on top of the folding door, watching me with his smug, beady little eyes.

I see a trip to the screen door department at Home Depot in our very near future.

Growing Pains

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Those who have sent a child off to kindergarten or are about to embark on this journey can relate to my melancholy and nostalgia tonight. It began when I opened my laptop at work this morning. The default site for my Internet browser is my district’s website. A seemingly innocent choice, but today, much to my sorrow, the district had posted the dates and times for kindergarten round up.

I’ve known this day was coming for quite a while. Reminders keep popping up in the most unexpected places that my little boy is going to be “school-aged” next year. First, it was Target, where we had to abandon the comfort of racecar jammies and Sesame Street shirts and move across the aisle to the size 4-6x racks. I shed more than a few tears over the fact that there will be no more puppy dog-themed outfits, but that I will now have to buy clothing covered in skulls and cross bones (he’s going to kindergarten, not joining Hell’s Angels for crying out loud).

While gathering ideas for our family vacation this summer, I was looking up information on a popular theme park. As I scanned the admission prices, I noticed that by summer R will no longer be four and under. More tears.

Outgrown car seats, the end of the pages in the baby book, and moving up on the dosage table on the back of the Children’s Tylenol box; all signs that I should have heeded, yet I was still caught off guard by that screen this morning.

I’m excited for R. There’s no doubt in my mind that he’s ready for the challenges of kindergarten, and I look forward to watching him go from preschooler to elementary student, but I’m also wistful for the years that are now behind us.

A couple of months ago, I was cleaning out an envelope of old papers that had been stuffed in the trunk in our bedroom and forgotten. I came across an old piece of notebook paper from the winter that R was two. Hastily scrawled across the page were funny things he had said or done that year. Here are just a few of my favorites:

One night we were sitting in the living room after work and daycare, playing before dinner. R turned to me out of the blue and said, “You’re a feisty girl.”

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Before bedtime one evening, R was really wound up. He had been talking and chattering for almost an hour non-stop. Suddenly, he became very quiet. I asked him what was wrong. “I think my mouth needs to take a rest,” he said.

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Not long after he was potty trained, R was at daycare when he told his daycare lady that something in his pants “hurt.” Concerned, she checked out the “situation” and found that it was caught in the waistband of his underwear. She fixed the problem and turned around just in time to hear R say, “Ahhh! Better.”

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One day while we were playing outside, R climbed inside his red, blue, and yellow Little Tikes car and announced to me that he was “going to the grocery store.” He proceeded to drive the car to the end of our driveway, then turned around and drove back to the top. As he climbed out of the car, he said, “Hi mom! I’m home from work as a doctor.”

During a recent baby shower I attended, the guests were asked to write a piece of advice for the new mother-to-be. I noticed that one of the guests had written this: “The days are long, but the years are short.” Truer words were never spoken.

Veggie Tales

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Dinnertime. A part of my day that I have come to simultaneously anticipate and dread. On the one hand, I love the image I have created in my mind of the four of us gathered around the table, trading accounts of our day. R smiles and asks if someone can please pass the steamed carrots. J compliments the seasoning on the tilapia, and the baby coos sweetly from her high chair and patiently waits for a refill of her sippy cup. Norman Rockwell took his inspiration from my vision of the perfect family dinner. Unfortunately, when humans replace paint strokes, things have a way of turning out differently.

First, there is the dilemma of what to fix. The tastes in our household are varied. I love foods of different colors. Fajitas with red, yellow, and green peppers, salads with tomatoes, avocados, and feta cheese, broccoli in my soup, and blueberries in my oatmeal. At least two of the people in my house seem to be going through a yellow, brown, and white phase, meaning if it isn’t one of those three colors, you can forget about it. J prefers meat at every meal, while I would be happy with the occasional piece of turkey or chicken. The sight of raw hamburger makes me want to gag, but I love seafood, which J has never developed a taste for. As I survey the refrigerator each night, I get a glimpse into what it must be like to be the leader of the free world. The balance of world peace lies in this one decision. Once made, some will be overjoyed, and others will revolt.

I refuse to make multiple meals to appease the masses. In the short term, this would probably be a viable solution, but do I really want to live the rest of my existence as a short-order chef? Instead, we have established some rules for dinnertime:

1.     No one has to eat anything they don’t like for dinner. If you don’t like dinner, breakfast is in 12 hours.

2.     If you don’t take at least one bite of everything on your plate, and eat a pre-determined number of vegetables, don’t ask for an after-dinner treat. If you’re hungry enough for cookies, you’re hungry enough to eat your asparagus.

3.     If you whine, cry or disrupt other people’s dinner, you will be asked to leave the table. (My husband has only had to leave the table once on fish night.)

4.     If you choose not to eat, you will remain at the table until the family is finished eating. (I’m going to have my Rockwell moment, dammit!)

On a positive note, my son has become a master negotiator. He’ll see your three bites of peas and raise you two graham crackers. (Maybe someday when he’s a government diplomat, he will recount the many dinners of his childhood and dedicate his memoirs to me.)

A couple of weeks ago, my mom served broccoli for dinner at her house. R solemnly announced to her that he only eats the “hairy” pieces. Confused, she finally realized that he prefers the tops of the broccoli and not the stems.

Another time, after I referred him to Rule #2, he wailed, “But I’m only hungry for things that aren’t good for me!”

K has recently decided to get in on the fun. I noticed the other day that she was methodically picking through the pieces of food that were not to her liking and throwing them off of her tray. I said her name (in a stern tone) and shook my head no. She looked at me, grabbed another handful, chucked it off the high chair and shook her head right back. How do I argue with that?

While art history books praise Old Norm’s (can I call him Old Norm?) portrayal of realistic images of family life, I have my doubts. For example, none of his paintings depict whining children shooting peas out of their nostrils and smearing ranch dressing in their brother’s hair. The mother is always smiling, while the father looks adoringly upon his well-behaved brood. The vegetables in the middle of the table are described as “nature’s bounty,” not as “eewy,” and no one appears to be banging an empty sippy cup against their head. The white tablecloth is spotless, as if it hasn’t been sitting in that morning’s spilled cranberry juice for 8 hours. I just don’t buy it.

Love, Guilt, and the PTA

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Mothers of my generation face a unique predicament. Having watched and/or studied the struggles of our foremothers to carve a place for themselves outside of the kitchens and laundry rooms, to trade house dresses for pinstripes (remember Dress for Success and giant shoulder pads?), and grilled cheese sandwiches for work luncheons, we feel compelled to prove that we too can have successful and fulfilling careers. On the other hand, many of us (my cohort group here is female friends and family members) either secretly or outwardly feel guilty about putting our children in daycare 8 hours per day while we earn a paycheck.

I don’t think stay-at-home moms are immune to mommy guilt either. Even when I’m home with the kids during the summer, I worry that I’m not playing with them enough, that they’re bored, that I should spend more “quality” time with them, do educational activities like reciting works of Shakespeare and creating dioramas of the world’s various habitats out of shoe boxes and construction paper.

We all know (or have heard about) selfish mothers. The ones who use the grocery money to buy crack, and allow their toddlers to wander the streets at will. But most of the women I know do not fit into this category. Instead, we overcompensate. If we took a poll, I’m willing to bet that more than a few of us have found ourselves frosting cookies or cupcakes to look like clowns/cute animals/holiday decorations at 2 in the morning for a classroom party the next day. How many mothers do you know who are up early on Halloween to put the finishing touches on the costumes? And mom is almost always the last person in bed on Christmas Eve.

Where did we learn this? Probably from our own mothers. I can clearly picture my mom staying up until all hours of the night before a junior high school dance to finish sewing my dress together because nothing in the store fit my exact specifications of 7^th-grade fashion. She sat through my sister’s 3-hour dance recitals, arriving an hour early to get good seats, and spent several blistering summers learning baseball lingo so she could cheer on my brother’s team (and my mom doesn’t even LIKE baseball). Mothers make sacrifices, not because they feel guilty, but because they love their children. And we do it gladly. Check the manual; it’s in the job description.

Maybe I’m stereotyping here, and I apologize if there are exceptions, but fathers don’t seem to share the same guilt. I’m not suggesting fathers don’t love their children just as much as mothers and spend just as much time with them. If truth were told, J is much better at just sitting and playing with the kids than I am. I’m more of the planning, organizing, and executive function in our household. But when it’s time for fathers to take a break, they seem better able to do so without feeling the need to rush through to get home to the kids. We moms could learn a lot from their example.

A few weeks ago, I got strep throat for the first time since I was a kid (Note- Strep throat is either MUCH worse in your 30s, or I’m just a much bigger wimp than I was when I was 6). I was lying in bed thinking that I might die, but also going through the running list of things I SHOULD be doing instead of being sick. It was a weekend, so I was feeling guilty that I was missing out on precious non-working hours with the kids. This experience got me to thinking.

Moms get tired, and sometimes we get sick, and sometimes we just want to lie on the couch and read a book. It’s okay for kids to learn to play alone and to sometimes be bored. (If I recall, the best games, plays, forts and costumes happened when adults weren’t involved.)

So my resolution for this year is to try to feel less guilt when I spend time working out (that’s my other resolution) instead of going to pick the kids up right after school. I also want to reconnect with my girlfriends who I extraordinarily miss. Most of them have their own children and guilt, or will very soon so it’s a challenge for us to get together. But we need to laugh and drink wine before we aren’t allowed to imbibe because the alcohol will react badly with our blood pressure medications.

I also want to practice being. Being is the state of consciously doing one thing at a time, something at which fathers excel (I meant that as a compliment in case it didn’t come across that way). If J is watching TV, he watches TV. If he’s playing with the kids, he’s playing with the kids, and so on. Conversely, if I’m watching TV, I’m also checking my e-mail, attempting some new project that will not be recognizable when placed next to the picture I saw of it on Pinterest, or making a grocery list. Often, when I’m playing with the kids, I get up in the middle to check on dinner or straighten up the living room. My goal this year is to enjoy whatever it is that I’m doing in the moment instead of constantly thinking ahead to the next thing that needs to be done or what we can do next with the kids.

German poet and playwright Johann Wolfgang von Goethe said, “Nothing is worth more than this day.” Maybe he was on to something. Happy 2013!