mad dash

Yesterday I stopped by my lawyer’s office and signed the stipulation. My lawyer wasn’t there. Alex wasn’t there.Not even the entire stipulation was there – just that one page needing my signature and the date. Just me and a notary in a festive sweater. It was the definition of anti-climactic.

A few hours later, I drove the kids and Alex to the airport in a menacing rainstorm. At one point, as I squinted at the nearly indecipherable windshield, Alex said, “I just wanted you to know that I signed today.”  ”Yeah, me too.”  Pause. Then  Thomas from the back seat:  ”Do you think we should really be flying in this?” Good question, Thomas. Good question.

So it seemed done. But then today – a flurry of emails from my lawyer, who clearly isn’t concerned that tomorrow is Thanksgiving. For reasons that aren’t entirely clear to me, he’s suddenly found ways to get the child support up. It’s now nearly double what it was a month ago — or even days ago, for that matter. It’s at a number, that while still low feels within the realm of the possible, within the realm of Realism. We have left Kafka-esque behind and are inching toward do-able. I am sighing with relief. And, dare I say, celebrating?

Tonight at the grocery store, I bought cheap hot  house flowers and champagne. I am taking a bath later. I am saying thanks that this whole process is coming to some end. We are entering a new phase, moving from divorcing to divorced. A phase that will bring its own challenges, but a different phase. And for that, I am definitely thankful.

hang down your head

Bea is walking around the house just now absent-mindedly singing made-up lyrics to the tune of “Hang Down Your Head Tom Dooley,” which she’s currently practicing in chorus:  ”You were a lovely couple, but you had to sep-a-rate.”

Sigh.

Just made a birthday dinner for Alex. The kids were so excited. I made risotto and a salad. It was ok – nothing like I would have made in the past. And his favorite cake.

The kids leave with him tomorrow for a week. I can already hear the silence they’ll leave behind. I’m torn between exhaling with relief and sobbing.

I will go sign the papers tomorrow. They’re ready. There are some tiny loose ends – numbers I still need to track down. The kids’ insurance… The amount I pay to an afterschool program …  And then. And then. Done. Like that. Done. Signed. All that will be left will be the lawyers’ bills. Years of them, I suspect.

We sat in the dark tonight. A family of four. A single candle in Alex’s piece of apple cake the only light. The kids sang with gusto, Bea giving him pecks on the cheeks between verses and Thomas pumping his fist in time. The three of them blew out the single candle together, and I knew what Alex must be wishing – that he’d be able to remain near his kids, despite the fact that he’s currently applying for jobs all over the country. A wish that has little chance of coming true.

Inhale.

Exhale.

Light out. Dark.

Four people in the dark, unsure of what will happen next.  Four wishes so hard to fulfill.

on my mind

Too much.  Toooooo much is on my mind.  And it’s not turkey. Here’s a sampling from the swamp that is my emotional innards.

A medical condition – if you will – and other people’s reaction to it. To which I just want to scream (yes, scream – I’m not feeling particularly nice):  ”Mind your own bees wax! Go out and get your own condition and do with you will with it; but as for me and my body –  hands off, and most definitely, opinions off!”  Grrrr….

Work work work and applying for jobs – dreamed last night of making my way through a wooden and vined  mazed in the middle of a gorgeous housing  complex from 18th c. England. A very successful and beautiful friend was in the lead; I was bringing up the rear of our small party. The “prize” at the end was a job – a perfect job that would make me very happy. Even though I kept hoisting myself over every wall, scraping my knees and bloodying my elbows in the process, it was clear that I was not going to be rewarded with a job at the end.

Ahimsa – part of a code of conduct in a number of traditions, including yoga, Buddhism, and Jainism – which demands that we  do no violence toward others. Many people have used ahimsa as reason for practicing vegetarianism, and it’s certainly used as a reminder of kindness toward others. But what I’ve been meditating on is the practicing of nonviolence toward ourselves. I’ve been thinking about this, because frankly, I suck at it!

Children on planes – my kids are flying out east with their dad tomorrow night and will be gone for a week. I’m an inveterate flyer, as are they. I’m proud of the fact that can practically do 21st century airport security with their eyes closed. Bea even reminded me this morning to buy tiny bottles for the solution she needs to take to clean her new pierced ears because the bottle she has is too big for airport security. But suddenly I have visions of airplanes falling from the sky. I have visions of no vision of them ever again. And it stops me cold.

Cooking a birthday dinner for my ex – This fun, fun, fun event is tonight. And, I’m sad to admit dear reader, that it was my idea. It somehow seemed like the right thing to do. Now, however, that I’m not eating meat, that I”m broke, that I need to work late at my job, and that I need to go out and buy tiny bottles, it’s an idea that seems particular poor in timing and, well, in my earnest desire to see it through.

Kick boxing – the need to take out some very real, very physical anger is looming large. I’ve always walked away from anger – considered it a lesser emotion, one that a better person would not linger in. The Dalai Lama does not get angry, so neither will I. But at the moment, I’m marinating in the stuff – like some white trash turkey swimming in PBR – and I need to find a way to do battle with it. Suggestions?

Ok, the old dog needs to be walked. I promised my son I’d bring him a PB & J because he doesn’t like the school lunch selection after all. And I”m late for work.

 

 

“what is love?”

I asked my kids this last night as we drove home on a slick and black  November evening. I’d been hoping for one of those effervescent,  magical kid comments. Like an art teacher friend who asked elementary students where the light came from in a particular Goya painting. “From a window that you can’t quite see,” said some. A few of the older kids were able to talk about perspective and provide a direction from which the light emanated. But a six-year old said simply, “From God.”

Well, my six-year old said nothing quite so soulful. “When you think someone is hot,” said Thomas from the backseat. He was snuggling with his lamb blanket and looked about three in my rearview mirror, but his words belied the little boy he has become of late. We were passing the parking lot where I drop them off for two weeks every summer to go to a day camp out on a farm with animals and art.  That camp, to my mind, is love.

On my way to them last night I’d seen a buck dead in the road. The traffic was all backed up. It was a windy road that ends with a traffic light and it was hard to imagine that anyone had been going fast enough to collide with the animal, much less kill it. I was stuck right next to it for several minutes, the lights from another car lighting up its face as though on a Hollywood set. Its eyes were wide open. “What is this?” it seemed to be asking, trying to understand its fate.

What is love?

I knew that at that exact moment, a dear friend was sitting in his office where he works as a therapist and explaining to a mother–a woman I imagined to be about my age–that her teenaged son has schizophrenia. I couldn’t even imagine how she must feel, what was going through her mind and heart. Instead, I focused on C. and the task ahead of him. The care I knew he was showing just now, but also the way in which his heart was surely breaking. I would have given anything to be invisibly holding his hand right then.

What is love?

“Ok, so yeah, you usually think someone is ‘hot’ when you’re in love, but you can love plenty of people and things and even ideas without thinking they’re hot. You love Django, right?” I ask my kids, “but probably not Syrup,” the neighbor’s cat. My kids both get this. “So why is this? And how do you know? What do you feel inside of you when you love someone or something?”

I can hear some real digesting of ideas going on back there. Why on this dark night as they cup little bits of the banana bread I baked for them am I asking them this? I know I won’t really get an answer, but I wait to be surprised. I want them to consider this, even if for a few minutes. What is love?

My capacity for love grows with age. It expands and can fill me with a grace and purpose that amazes me. There are days, too, when the source seems to be blocked – as though my access to a higher power has been cemented over. My absolute terror over money, especially, and my anger at Alex, can block it out as certainly as a tornado sky kills the sun. But yesterday, the love kept burbling to the surface at unexpected times. During a meeting as I watched a group of colleagues who were trying so hard to do the right thing in an issue involving race and gender. As I navigated my way around that giant animal in the road, its life just ended. As I thought about C. and the news, such immense and life-altering news, that had been his to discover and his to share. As I picked up my children up from their nature-outing van, holding them against me in the park where just weeks ago I’d been able to see them, and where now they were dark figures, pressing leaves and rocks into my gloved hands. I held Bea so tightly that I think I startled her, but then Thomas joined us, hugging me from behind. Two little people with backpacks and lunch sacks, muddy boots and winter coats. One mother seemingly alone and yet so enormous.

buttering the sky

Slipping

On my shoes,

Boiling water,

Toasting bread,

Buttering the sky:

That should be enough contact

With God in one day

To make anyone Crazy.

- Hafiz

abstinence

Abstaining from the “patience pills” I’ve been taking for five years now.

Abstaining from meat after a calzone in New York City filled with four different kinds of animal product left me cold – and sick.

And I spent several weeks abstaining from touch.

I’ve momentarily considered abstaining from sugar and alcohol, but this weekend’s brownies and two glasses of Shiraz indicate that’s probably not immiment.

I’m re-embracing sexual touch, but feel a long-time disassociation coming on from the former two. I’m following my heart – and my gut – and wondering where it will lead. A healthier me? A happier me? A more me me? I’m not in unknown territory, but it always takes awhile to remember what it’s like. And of course, I’m not the same me. (“The same me” – hold that thought… we’ll get to that more in a moment.)

I didn’t eat meat for nearly a decade, but when I got pregnant with Thomas, I started craving it. Preferably covered in mustard. Suddenly, I was having hamburgers every other night after years of not even accepting soup with chicken broth. As for anti-depressants, my first go-round with them came at age 30. After years of talk therapy, my very caring therapist had to admit that the fact that I had to stop at the end of every lap while swimming in order to empty  my goggles of tears was something that might warrant extra treatment. She sent me to a psychiatrist who, as pretty much was the case circa 1995, prescribed Prozac. When I came back to see her two weeks later and she asked if I was feeling better, I said it was hard to tell. “Do you feel more you?” she asked, clearly not understanding that she was dealing with a writer who could have riffed on that question all day. What is “you”? What is “more” you? Is a happier you necessarily a more real you? Perhaps the girl who was filling her swimming goggles was the realest you possible.

For now, I’m remembering that I cry a lot more easily when I’m not on anti-depressants. I cried all over New York. I cried last night. I shudder and sob and am amazed that that well still exists. I’m also shorter of patience. And I’m not long on it to begin with. So this is my work. This is the part of the “real me” that needs to recognize her limitations and find ways to stop and breathe and be with the feeling.  To not necessarily push it away, but to see if she can also be with it in a tender enough way while remaining drug-free. (And yes, in such moment, I entirely get that a glass of wine becomes a drug. A plate of brownies is a drug.)

I guess the art of abstinence is not about suffering but about winnowing away the barriers to seeing ourselves.  When you’ve drunk to the last drop and there’s nothing left to pour, what is left?

Eons

I have been traveling—away from my kids for about five days. Over the weekend, Alex sent me photos he took of them and they looked HUGE—Bea especially. Suddenly, she looks on the cusp of adolescence. So big, so fast. How could this have happened? If I blink, will they suddenly be in college?  Last week, holding a friend’s 8-week old baby in New York was another reminder of how much they’ve grown – how much we’ve changed as a family. “It must seem like you were here just yesterday,” said my friend as she breastfed baby Juniper. “Actually, no. It feels like eons ago.”

Eons since I grappled with a stroller. Eons since I fretted over the meaning, or lack thereof, of an infant’s tears. Eons since breast milk bottles sat upside down next to the sink, cleaned and ready to be used again. Eons since I’d dealt with that weird yellow poo that stains the backsides of newborns’ onesies.

Eons. That’s also how I felt when I opened this photo of my dad with Bea and Thomas. I was cleaning up my computer desktop and came across it, then had to do the math: Christmas four years ago. Four months before he died. I can parse the numbers so many other ways: Five and a half years after Bea was born. A year after Alex and I first separated. Forty years after my first Christmas with my dad. Nine months after he was diagnosed. Numbers. Irrelevant really. They’re easy to focus on, to stare at them and try to learn something from them. But like my kids’ current ages or weights or heights, they are irrelevant. What matters is the reminder – hard but in some ways incredibly sweet – that nothing stays the same, all is changing, every second.

I just got off the phone from talking with Alex. The divorce should be final this week, if all goes ok. Neither of us really understands the process, but we’ve each done our bit and there’s nothing left to hold it up. A four-month legal process. A 16-month process from separation to the final final. Or, do I start the clock on April 30, 1994 – the day we got married?

Math. It doesn’t matter. What matters is that we’re now in a different space with each other – discussing our kids, his work, my work, our elderly dog. It’s a relationship that will continue as long as each of us is alive – be that four months, four years, or four decades. But its tenor, its purpose is changed. And I guess it will change again. And again. At some essential level, that’s ok.

telltale

I still forward more NY TImes articles to Alex than anyone else. I wonder if this will still be the case ten years from now. I wouldn’t be entirely surprised. Or sad.

and yet…

…more reasons to get along with my ex.

“Yet a mother’s support of the father turns out to be a critical factor in his involvement with their children, experts say — even when a couple is divorced.”  from today’s NYTimes, Fathers Gain Respect from Experts (and Mothers)

wordless

Life has me in her grip. So much going on as I feel my small boat rocked on the ocean. Confident that I’ll get to shore, but like  Max, not sure where I’ll end up. So today, pictures only. Beautiful images to get us all through.

 

 

 

I believe in the possibility of everything…

I do. Yes, me. Pragmatic me.

Tonight is a reading by my friend Hope Edelman from her new memoir, The Possibility of Everything. In the book, she and her husband take their daughter to Belize where Maya is treated by shaman healers. It’s an adventure tale, for sure, but more so the book is about faith. It’s an exploration of what we can allow ourselves to trust. Where and when can we let go, even a little bit, and let powers beyond ourselves support us?

“Trust the Universe,” is a phrase that annoys me. (And Hope, it seems from her book, agrees – or agreed.) I take this phrase as be code for “give up trying.” And I’m all about trying. I work really really really hard to keep everything going. Too hard, some would say. But if I stop, then what would happen? It would be as though The Universe (ah, yeah, that again!) would see me not working hard enough and any little bit of goodness it was thinking of sending my way would evaporate. This is my fear: stop and all will collapse. Keep going, and I’ll eventually be rewarded.

After this January, I have no idea where I’m earning my income. The temporary job I have ends then. The local job market is as dry as it is everywhere else, and relatively small as my town is only 60,000 souls. So the reality of poverty – along with my anger over the child support pittance – can wake me up at night. This giant worry I’ll call Financial Woe, comes and sits on the side of my bed and hisses fear in my ears. Many nights, she is there, coiling her long legs around mine and not letting me come up for air. “It’s all going to collapse,” she snarls. “The worst is going to happen.” She is sure. And by 4:30 am, I am sure, too. What “the worst” is, I don’t exactly know. It’s a feeling. A color. A shape. Nothing concrete. Just utter fear and failure.

But then, as if by magic, there are days like yesterday when I’m sure it’s all going to work out. Some time in early January, just in the nick of time –  maybe even in early February – something will appear in my lap – some job or project. It may be just enough, or it may be bigger and better than anything I can imagine right now. It doesn’t matter. What matters is that it will appear. And that experience – just like so many others like it I’ve had over the years – will help me to extend my belief in the possibility of everything. Again. Little by little, step by step, this Pragmatist has been becoming a believer. Walking just like Indiana Jones across the invisible divide. Getting up every morning, knowing even on my darkest days, that somewhere, somehow, it will work out. That hissing lady is still there, and it may take years longer for me to totally rid her from my life; but in the meantime, I’m doing better at floating – laying my head back and knowing that the water will hold me.

 

 

 

it doesn’t add up

Can anyone explain the math involved in child support payments? How is it that a father can be told by the state to pay $225 a month for two kids when the mother  makes less than he does and has the children 5 nights/week, and also pays for 90% of their food, 75% of their clothing, all of their incidentals (e.g., toothpaste, birthday gifts, violin rental, laundry detergent) and does 95% of the work involved in keeping them going, e.g.,  appearing civilized and moderately groomed, getting their homework done, arriving in the right place at somewhat the right time. It seems to me that the courts ASSUME that somehow the mother will come up with the rest of the money that the $225 does not cover in monthly expenses — whether it means borrowing or working crap jobs that take her away from her kids or renting out more and more of her house. How this adds up to make any kind of sense whatsoever is beyond me.

Two years. Really?

Elizabeth sent me this link to a funny essay by divorce memoirist Suzanne Finnamore about how it takes two years to get over your divorce. I’ve got admit that while this sounds like good advice, it just doesn’t jibe for me.

Finnamore writes:  I got through the First Christmas. The First Valentine’s Day. The First Wedding Anniversary. The First Divorce Anniversary. It slowly eased up; the psychic damage was beginning, if not to disappear, then to taper. I stopped wishing him dead, and started wishing him rich so he could send us more money. This did not happen.

As I wrote in a note to a comment a few weeks ago, I think we’re all on our own schedules. Some of us have been consciously mourning our marriages for quite awhile – letting go in stages – accept various “deaths.”  I know Alex and the kids and I will have Christmas together for years to come. I’ve never cared about Valentine’s Day. And our wedding anniversary hasn’t had any resonance for me since the one four years ago when I figured out he’d had an affair. (Yes, on our anniversary, after weeks of asking him to tell me the truth, I discovered a smoking gun email that made it quite clear he’d a) had an affair, and b) lied to me about it. Gosh, Happy Anniversary!)

I remember when my dad died from cancer and I didn’t have the immediate grief response I thought I should have. But then I realized that in so many ways I’d been grieving and letting go for the year of his illness. I’d already done quite a bit of the work. Not that I was “all better” or ready to get on with things as though nothing had happened. Not at all. But I’d already moved beyond a certain point of raw grief. And I think the same is very much true of where I am with the end of my marriage to Alex.

This weekend I watched Away We Go, a very sweet film about a young couple who are trying to figure out where to live and how to be as they prepare to become parents. There’s a part where a song is playing that says, “Promise you’ll always wait for me.” The context of the song within the movie makes it clear that this means:  when I fuck up, when I’m slow to learn — wait for me. Promise.  And this — much more than any holiday — really got to me. Because I feel that Alex and I grew at different paces. We took different paths at some point. And maybe I didn’t wait for him long enough? He didn’t ask me to wait – but maybe part of the deal you make when you get married is that the other person shouldn’t have to ask, might not even know at certain points in his/her life that they need to ask — but you wait anyway. And I didn’t.  This is the question I’ll come back to for years.

confused or just highly curious?

Wondering what it means that on my Mondo Beyondo list I had these two side-by-side entries:  #24)  Live in France.  #25) Learn Spanish.

not as I’d intended

Sylvia Plath and her children.

In the midst of holding my daughter while she howled over having bitten the inside of her lip, as the 92-year old dog (in dog years) tripped yet again and fell to the ground, as Thomas screamed that he couldn’t have desert because he’d already been given two sugar cookies (before dinner and without my permission) at soccer, as no freelance work appears on the horizon and no new metier makes itself clear, as the bills overflow on my so-called and poorly named “communications table” … I wonder if I’m really going to be able to do this on my own. This is not what God intended – and I don’t even believe in God. But who/whatever created this great soup of life surely did not intend for one woman to care for two kids on her own while trying to make a living. It just doesn’t add up.

When I was pregnant with both kids and living in a different house — a very narrow, old farmhouse with a single toilet downstairs — I’d invariably have to go to the bathroom at 2 a.m. on frigid nights. All the way down, gripping the banister that a thoughtful friend had installed, I’d repeat mantra-like: “At least I have a bathroom. At least I have a bathroom.” It got me through many nocturnal pees with my grace intact and without rancor. I’m looking now for my mantra.

into the woods

I’m afraid but not even sure what of. It’s a big amorphous feeling. A force. The fear has been in my dreams:  In one, I was working at a bank in a non-descript white room at a desk that I’d had since childhood. I went out for a break and came back to find the desk gone – as was my job. Just like that. Gone. This is a fear tied to the local university’s announcement of a job freeze and to the news of Gourmet’s shuttering, a story that feels like a bell weather to me. In the next dream, I was suiting up to go downhill skiiing. I’ve never been downhill skiiing and am very afraid of heights. There was to be no instruction. They were just dropping me on the mountain – by helicopter – and leaving me there. Last night’s dreams were a bit gentler, but only just. I had 24-hours to outfit an empty house with appliances and furniture without any money — I had to do it by luck and charm — or I’d lose it. By the time I’d awakened, I’d managed to have a Viking stove come into my possession and the memory of Sylvia Plath had fleetingly occurred to me.

I made it a goal when Alex and I separated to eschew fear, to kick it out of my orbit and never to embrace it again. Fear has been such a constant bedfellow to me for years, prohibiting me from becoming my best self. And yet here it is. This gaseous dance of colors and sounds, a force field.

Last night in a scorching hot bath, I picked up Eat, Pray Love and opened it to a random section. Gilbert was remembering a trip she’d taken to a remote Balinese island a few years earlier – before deciding to leave her husband and light off around the globe. She’d sat on the beach and recognized each fear, each sorrow, each anger, and each shame from her life. (How she’d magically remembered them all, she doesn’t say — I have a habit of draping such memories in blackness so that they become hard to find later.) She acknowledged each one and then let it go. When she was finished, she felt cleansed and empty – void of the gaseous dance. But she knew that new shames and fears and angers would take their places. Again and again she would do this dance until she came to the point of, well, enlightenment. Until then, each of stays in the dance. All we can try for is a bit more grace.

So here I go: out into the world. Ready to dance with my fears. With that disappearing desk and the giant stove, with the mountain of sheer ice.

of two minds

Alex is down. He is thinking of moving away. Not far. But away. To a place where he has more friends. It’s a  move that on some levels makes sense and seems inevitable – more work possibilities which means more money for me – something that is definitely of interest as I’m currently receiving none. But it’s also away from the kids. A move that would be more than a large splinter in their hearts. A move that would speak volumes to them about love and trust.

And so here’s where I’m of two minds:  do I let him stew in his own juices – leave him alone to his own depression and whatever its outcome may be? or do I  try to be helpful in the name of my kids and provide avenues for him to feel more connected to this community, give him ideas for how to establish roots here that will help him feel less isolated and make him want to stay? In short, do I become my children’s advocate, even if that means being in a relationship with my ex that isn’t  entirely comfortable and is more than bit galling, or do I say fuck it? I think I already know the answer. But I’m not sure I like it.

for each of you

Shine on, people!

“He was also a great kisser.”

I have Greg Brown’s song “Rexroth’s Daughter” in my head today. It’s been one of my favorite songs for years now – a real touchstone. So many parts of this song get under my skin, but today I’m ruminating on the third stanza:  “…even the very longest love does not last too long / she’d stand there in my doorway smoothing out her dress / & say ‘this life is a thump-ripe melon–so sweet and such a mess.’”

So sweet. Indeed, so messy. And all too short.

Today, these lines are there for Elizabeth and Scott. Scott died on Sunday, at home with Elizabeth and their two daughters. They were the real deal:  the loves of each other’s lives. The obituary Elizabeth wrote says it all — a life of shared passions (books), of children and friends and family, of journeys, and baking and beer making, and kissing. “He was also a great kisser,” ends the obituary. May we all be so lucky to have someone who remains so dedicated and smitten that he or she writes this final line for us. Amen.

Into the great good night – Scott. Into the dawn with your eyes open and your heart held by many – Elizabeth. With love and dignity and honor to the love you created and held for so many years.

Rexroth’s Daughter

by Greg Brown

Coldest night of the winter working up my farewell
in the middle of everything under no particular spell
i am dreaming of the mountains where the children learn the stars
clouds roll in from nebraska dark chords on a big guitar
my restlessness is long gone i would stand here like an old jack pine
but I’m looking for rexroth’s daughter the friend of a friend of mine

i can’t believe your hands and mouth did all that to me
are so daily naked for all the world to see
that thunderstorm in michigan i never will forget
we shook right with the thunder & with the pounding rain got wet
where did you turn when you turned from me with your arms across your chest
i am looking for rexroth’s daughter i saw her in the great northwest

would she have said it was the wrong time if I had found her then
i don’t want too much a field across the road and a few good friends
she used to come & see me but she was always there & gone
even the very longest love does not last too long
she’d stand there in my doorway smoothing out her dress
& say “this life is a thump-ripe melon–so sweet and such a mess”

i wanted to get to know you but you said you were shy
i would have followed you anywhere but hello rolled into goodbye
i just stood there watching as you walked along the fence
beware of them that look at you as an experience
you’re back out on the highway with your poems of city heat
& I’m looking for rexroth’s daughter here on my own side street

the murderer who lived next door seemed like such a normal guy–
if you try to follow what they shove at us you run out of tears to cry
i heard a man speak quietly i listened for a while
he spoke from his heart to my woe & then he bowed & smiled
what is real but compassion as we move from birth to death
i am looking for rexroth’s daughter & I’m running out of breath

spring will come back i know it will & it will do its best
so useful so endangered like a lion or a breast
i think about my children when i look at any child’s face
& pray that we will find a way to get with all this amazing grace
it’s so cold out there tonight so stormy i can hardly see
& i’m looking for rexroth’s daughter & i guess i always will be

morning snuggle/struggle

Thomas:  ”Is it school today?”

Me: “Yes. And then violin lessons. And then the Millers for dinner.”

Thomas sighs.

We go about getting on clothes. Too tight. Too scratchy. Too cold. Off on on off. Stuck on his big noggin — when he was a baby and height and weight were in the 20th percentile, his head was always off the chart.

Bea stays curled up until the last possible moment, and then grumbles that she doesn’t have any clean sweat pants. She hates jeans.

“Bea, brush your hair.”

At the table, Bea keeps working on her Interesting Word List for English class. She eats her bagel in little bits. Ignores me.

Thomas is on the sofa with his Lambie. He hollers:  ”Snuggle!!”  (That means: Mama, get over here NOW and hold me.”

“I’m busy getting everything ready for everybody. In a minute.”

I call out the school  lunch menu for the week. They get to choose one lunch. Invariably, they choose pizza. This week it falls on Friday, Alex’s one day of the week to make lunch for them. Damn.

“Bea, brush your hair!”

Bea ignores me. Says instead:  ”We have ITBS today. I’m scared.”

“Honey, it’s a test. Sadly, you’ll take many many tests in your life, many that really don’t matter all that much. But perhaps the best thing you can learn from this is how to take a test and how to be comfortable doing it.”

She looks at me like I’m half nuts, half sage. Too much information? Not enough? Ah, the tightrope walk of parenting.

Thomas:  ”Mama, where are you?”

Me:  ”Um, right here. About 5-feet away from you.”

“SNUGGLE!”

I stop. We snuggle. He burrows into my shoulder. Bea comes over, sticky bagel in hand and nudges into the other side of me. We sit like that in silence for a minute or two. Then Mama Brain checks the time on her cell phone. It’s 8:19. The first bell is in a minute. I call Alex to see where the heck he is, while also encouraging the kids to the door. As the phone rings, I hear Bea, “Daddy’s here!”

He stands in the doorway, letting in the cold air as I scramble to find gloves and get the backpacks zipped. “Just come in and help, please!” I implore.

I scrunch down over Thomas’ shoes, trying to buckle them.

Alex barks:  ”Thomas, you know how to put on your own shoes.” (I hate it when he barks. He says it’s my Midwesterness, that everyone on the East Coast talks like this.)

Thomas, as though it were a question and not the rebuke I hear, says, “Yeah.”

“Well, do it.”

I now feel foolish sitting on the floor over his feet. It’s as much a rebuke of me as it is of Thomas.

I get up and zip Bea’s coat which sticks and which Alex is standing there ignoring. He snaps at her and at Thomas again:  ”Hurry up guys!”

“I really don’t appreciate you bringing this energy into the house,” I say, oddly aware of the fact that I’m wearing a thin nightshirt and no bra and he’s fully dressed, looking like a grown-up.

“I’m just trying to help get everyone going.”

“It would have been more helpful if you’d been here ten minutes ago.”

Bea:  ”Yeah, dad. She has a good point.”

Ah, I love my daughter – with her hair that looks like a bird’s nest and cream cheese smeared on her cheeks. She sees it all.