“But Mom, I have to marry Zachary. He said if I don’t, he’ll be mean to me every day at school and he’ll bring a gun and I’ll be in jail. This is serious, Mom. Stop laughing!”
Firsts
Anna completed homework for school for the first time, just yesterday, writing her name over and over again in fluid d’Nealian script. It’s just the beginning, I thought, as I watched her grip her pencil, and who knows where it will lead? She says the word in a funny, two-syllable way, emphasis on the first: “Mom! I finished my home-work. My home-work!”
Then, also for the first time, she put together a 24-piece puzzle entirely by herself. She carefully found the four corners, then the straight-edged side pieces, then the middles.
Noting these firsts, one right after the other, I felt that mother-feeling. The feeling we live for, the we-are-one sensation (an illusion, I know, but let me have my moment), the feeling that we are parts of one whole, sharing one emotion, one moment, just us, undivided.
It had become too rare, and I worried.
I remember when the ‘firsts’ came so quickly that I could not keep up, scribbling them in a journal, then forgetting to scribble, then forgetting where I’d put the journal, finally giving the whole thing up. Then they slowed down, became less remarkable, sometime around her second birthday, when she began to spend long hours away from me, away from home, making new friends and learning so much.
We’re back, somehow, to a world of our own. All of those firsts never really went anywhere, I suppose, they just grew harder to spot, tinged with melancholy at the passage of time. She hasn’t ceased her explorations, certainly; she casts her net wide, loving recklessly and with abandon. She’s as engaged in school and friends and playdates and birthday parties as any five-year-old.
The difference, it seems, is with me. The difference is that my world is so aligned with hers: my work is her school and her teachers are my colleagues and my schedule is hers too and her friends are my friends’ children … it’s cozy. So cozy. So cozy it hurts sometimes, like a hug held just a moment too long. But mostly, it’s comfy.
I like it here. I like to remember, as I watch her flash across the playground, the moment we spent this morning, choosing purple socks or red ones. (I like that that even matters: purple socks or red.) I like sitting here, laptop glowing in the dark, thinking of all of the things I like about this life. I like the fumbly way she plays with the language, telling me she “goed” here and “goed” there and how much she loves “Sabannah” no matter how often she hears the name of our town pronounced correctly (all-too-soon, she’ll say it right, for the first time, and then this small chapter too will close). I like to listen as she tells of her day, that she played blocks with Olive and Victor spilled his milk and Tyler is a red square now instead of a green triangle. The surface of her narrative slides over and around me like a smooth current, words tumbling and flowing and playing in the light as she makes sense of her shiny new world.
That’s how the world seems to me, too, when I stop and look at it through her eyes: shiny and new, I mean. Every corner, every minute, bursting with first-times. When I think of it that way, it’s not so hard, watching the firsts slip away, for there are always more to come.
Always, always, more to come.
Winding down — and speeding up — to moving day
These long, lovely days are changing pace now, picking up in a panicky rush toward the day we actually board the plane and move to the other side of the country. It’s a reminder to me that this is all very real. That we’re in the middle of a Significant Event in our lives: this isn’t any old week, coming up; it’s a touchstone in our family’s evolving history.
I have the luxury of a few decades of experience to understand this, words to remind myself of what needs to be done, strategies to calm myself down when needed. This may, in fact, be the most significant move of my adult life, but I can also choose to take it one day at a time, to tackle my list each morning and quit when it’s quittin’ time each night.
Anna has no buffers. As she watches me dismantle the only life she’s known, as more and more of the familiar disappears into boxes, she grows frantic, reeling from a growing anxiety she can’t understand. Even as I’m glad she can’t fully grasp that this is the last playdate with Olivia or that Elliot won’t always live two doors down I know this knowledge lives in her someplace, driving her to frequent tears and afternoon meltdowns, and it’s a little bit heartwrenching.
Change, even good change, is hard. This isn’t the first time in her short life that she’s been wrenched from one world, bound for another. We are no more or less a family than we were when we left her orphanage, but this time our histories align, this time we’re travelling together, past and present and future.
When she’s up against a wall she fights like Bartleby the Scrivener, who one day began to reply to all requests with a simple, “I would prefer not to.” It’s amazing how infuriating that can be. For Anna, of course, it’s a more direct, “No!” And after I’ve exhausted my lab-school-trained choice-of-last-resort – “Can you move your body or should I help you move your body?” — and actually do help her move her body, I find my hands full of 41 pounds of writhing, screaming girl.
It’s exhausting us both.
I really wanted to spank her yesterday, a feeling I don’t have very often. I have spanked her before, exactly twice, and I’m not knee-jerk opposed to it but I do know that now is not the time for that. I reserve spankings for when she works herself up into a perfect storm of hysteria and social rioting, like the time she sat down in the middle of the crosswalk, mad that I’d denied her something or other, and refused to budge while cars bore down on us and the light turned green.
Yesterday didn’t present nearly so dramatic a scene, just a million refusals and negotiations, a thousand pushed buttons, and more than a few fits. But I knew as I held on to the end of my rope with both hands that in her head? In her body? She was, indeed, every bit as frightened as I felt that day in the middle of the busy road.
It would be easy for me to think that by letting her win the argument I am helping her find comfort, and I know I’d be rewarded — at least momentarily — by her gleeful squeal. Perhaps I would be helping her to assert some agency over her environment, at least a little bit, now while it feels like she has no control over anything. But my instincts tell me that’s not the case.
She doesn’t really want to feel that she has control, quite the opposite. She needs to know that I do.
What she needs of me now, really, is to stop the madness — to put some sort of order back into the structure disintegrating around her. She’s not practicing negotiation skills, she’s begging for me to show her where the firm ground is in the shifting landscape. Nothing is making sense to her these days, but Mom saying “No” is something she fully understands. If Mom says “No, that’s not okay” then it follows that Mom must have some idea of what is going on, some sense of what is okay.
So even as I’m tempted to relent more — what’s one more DVD? I could get that much more packing done — in truth I have to relent less. I have to make extra special sure that we eat on time, go to bed on time, follow our routine to. the. letter. I create an agenda each morning, ticking off activities as we complete them, and I have to stick to it. I can’t work for one minute more than I tell her I will, even though I’m the only one around here who can read the clock.
Change, even good change, is so hard.
…And then again, sometimes the easy thing is the only way to go.
We’ve always taken Anna with us to donate things and to the landfill on garbage/recycling runs, and are glad she’s beginning to form an idea of where things go when she tosses them. There are lots more lessons on recycling and donating and such to be taken advantage of while moving, but I’ve decided to ship her to a friend’s house for the afternoon while I go through her toys.There’s only so much I can take when the pedagogical becomes tinged with the kind of hysterics only a little girl with a one-eyed, bald doll can muster.
Pedicures for preschoolers? Or even pre-teens?
Yesterday, Anna and I walked by a salon full of preschoolers getting mani-pedis. She asked for one. I said no.
There’s just something uncomfortable about a grown woman kneeling at the feet of a little girl, buffing and polishing. It just doesn’t feel right.
Am I making too much of this? Or is this just the sort of ‘small’ thing that can actually mean a lot in this day and age, when little girls and grown women sometimes seem to forget who is who?
I’ve painted Anna’s nails for her at home. Her requests for polish seem to go along with her forays into my shoe closet and make-up bag, something she asks to do about once a month. It’s a controlled experiment: I only let her use the palest pink polish, and the only people applying it are me and her babysitter.
It is something about looking like me: my toes are always painted red. It doesn’t have anything to do with princesses. Her idea of royalty is still pretty basic, shaped by the princesses she knows. Princesses, for example, wear dresses and crowns. They marry princes. They are good and kind. All of this is damaging in its own way, of course; it just doesn’t include make-up or nail polish. Yet.
Help me work this one out. What would you do?
To work or not to work… and on and on and on it goes
There’s a great discussion over at Motherlode today about planning for career and family. The conversation is a bit specific to careers requiring a lot of education (a pharmacist and a doctor) but I thought I’d take it into academia. What do you think?
My contribution:
I can only speak to my own plan, which was to go to graduate school (check), land a tenure-track position in academia (check), get married and travel/save/enjoy life as a DINK (check), start a family (check), hire a nanny (check), cut back my hours at work (check) and then …. I quit.
This is such a deeply personal issue, and fraught; whichever path we choose dictates our perspective. I sense an undercurrent of ,”How much can/should my advanced education help me control the outcome?” and while I cannot imagine a world in which pursuing education is a bad idea, that does not mean that whatever plan you devise won’t need an escape clause.
I chose to finish my PhD and pursue tenure before adopting my daughter, and I still made the choice to leave the workforce when she was two. I was used to leading with my head, so my emotional response to motherhood was startling; I was also used to doing well in my endeavors, and motherhood required of me a whole new skill set, one I hadn’t even imagined. Our nanny was fantastic and my university was flexible — sort of — and yet I still found myself dreading leaving her for the day. It was (and is) as strong a passion as I had ever felt for anything.
For me, it didn’t come down to money or time. It was all about how I felt when I became a mother. I feel amazingly lucky that what an education and Type-A planning ultimately provided for me was the foundation and freedom to make the choice I did.
Why we stay home*
We go to the mall maybe four times a year. I live in Conspicuous Consumption, USA, so our local mall features Versace, True Religion, Burberry, Michael Kors, Hermes, Tory Burch … practically a Museum of Modern Consumerism.
They also have a Disney store, which Anna sniffed out as soon as we pulled into the parking garage. And of course it’s on Plebeian Concourse, which also houses the Gap, to which we were headed to return some curvy jeans I’d ordered online. (Apparently, I am not Curvy. I am, however, Not Young, and Young is what dictates the shape of all jeans that don’t have waists that reach my ribcage.)
I should have carefully reviewed my values and beliefs before setting out for such a place. I didn’t. I could have taken the long way around, to afford us the strongest possibility of avoiding the Disney store. I didn’t. I could have at least stopped before entering the store for a discussion about what was Off Limits, how much money I was willing to spend, what we were going to see. I didn’t. I have no idea what came over me. The window dressing was just adorable. That’s the best I can do.
It was one of those split-second non-decisions that can prove SO damaging.
Suddenly I was That Mother, uttering “How cute!” and traipsing along as Anna skipped into the store. Right into the arms of the Disney Dominatrices. (The DDs, interestingly, are all women of my age: they are going for motherly, I suppose? Smiley and chatty and reassuring. Armed with a dozen fully tricked out princess costumes in Just Her Size.) Anna swooned, and I (finally) realized we were in danger. Frantically I reviewed our house rules: flat shoes only. A fabric I can identify. Clear nail polish. Under $20. Moderate likelihood that it will last till we get home.
Thus began the Battle of the No. No to the make-up. No to the flirty bikini with the creepily placed jewels. No to the high heels. No to the platform wedge flip flops (yes, they did). No to the Ariel costume with padded shell-shaped boobs (OH YES, THEY DID).
In her arsenal: four-year-old charm and a lifetime of Disney acculturation.
In mine: steely resolve and the credit card.
Eventually, I stood in line forever with small trinkets in my hands, only to have her pitch a fit because they weren’t what she really wanted. I grabbed her hand and headed for the door. When she realized that we were Leaving Now, she absolutely lost her mind. I could see it in her eyes — that wild-eyed look of Out of Control. She grabbed the door handle and pleaded. She begged. She actually screamed. A mall cop on a Segway turned toward us, then seeing we were at the door of the Disney Store, he shrugged and rode away. He’s seen this before.
I ended up carrying her to the car; she’d worn herself out and went completely limp. She whispered into my neck, “I loved the little Belle doll. Please?”
On the one hand, I should Leave; we’ve certainly done that before. One day at the pool she’d pitched a fit because she wanted to do such-and-such, so we immediately left. We slithered out of a movie when she was so restless she was trying to do headstands on her seat. We’ve only had to do that once (so far). There are more subtle threats, too, dangers of equating retailing with love, of teaching her that Mommy time = buying things.
On the other hand? Maybe this could be a lesson. A chance to rewind, go over the protocol in advance and see if we can actually go in and out without incident. We’re for damn sure not going to go anywhere near a mall anytime soon, so if this is an opportunity, should I take it?
Where is the Mom Fairy when you need her?
I decided we’d give it one more shot. I told her exactly what I was willing to buy. I reviewed the rules of engagement and spelled out our plan of retreat, to go into effect at the first sign of trouble. We made our way back to the store. The DD grinned at us: “Back for more?”
I scowled at her happy face, plopped Anna in the lounge with the never-ending loop of Disney scenes, strode straight to the Belle doll I’d earlier approved and straight to the checkout line, collected Anna from the lounge, and marched out, all executed with military precision.
No tears. No struggles. No whining.
I am not going to call this a victory, for her (she did get the doll) or for Disney (they did score a sale) or for me (I did get her to practice Controlled Retailing). Maybe it was a draw?
At least the casualties were limited.
*Technically, we go out a lot. We avoid roofs, in general, and especially places where they try to sell us stuff. But in terms of Consumer Discourse, this equates with Never Leaving the House.
Things you really shouldn’t talk about on the internet…
… but I will anyway. Here’s my first question:
How much nudity do you allow your kids to enjoy?
And I say enjoy with intent. My daughter relishes being naked. It seems she doesn’t distinguish between stages of dress; whether she’s bundled or bare-bottomed, as long as she’s warm enough she’s happy.
All this has made “what we do inside our house” and “what we do outside our house” a completely fabricated distinction when it comes to clothing. Especially because we live in a truly inside-outside house — there are French doors from her bedroom onto the back yard and we have a privacy fence; on warm days, which are many, she runs in and out in all states.
And as it falls to me to get her ready to live somewhere other than here and to be something other than a little kid, once again I’m asking the question: what am I teaching her and how might this play out? I’m thrilled that she’s comfortable in her body and I want to hang onto that; I’m also keenly aware that she’s four, of course, and it’s time for more boundaries.
But even as she grows up and moves out into the world, her life at home and at school still looks much the same. At her school the boys and girls still share a bathroom, and there isn’t a door in sight; I don’t think she’s yet learned to close our bathroom door, either, so occasionally her playdates squawk that Anna’s showing her naughty bits again and then look to me in terror that I’ll make them do the same.
So I gather I’m comparatively loose-reined here. But I don’t know. So I ask you: how’s it work in your house?
My Evil Mouth and my Innocent Babe shouldn’t live under the same roof
This morning Anna ran up to her friend’s mom and said, “My mom says you’re very lovely but she wishes you would wear a bra.”
If you’re thinking, “Well, she certainly didn’t make that up,” you’re right. Because I said that. Those exact words. Off-handedly, to Allan, without thinking. Gah.
