The house is quiet, not in the relaxing, lazy, summer kind of way, but in the empty, listening, waiting kind of way. Where are the thumps from above the kitchen, the sound of the phone that often drops from my daughter’s bedside table onto the floor when she reaches for it upon waking?
Where are the feet that emerge as the other one descends the steps into the kitchen, ready for the day, on her way to somewhere, usually with a plan? I turn expectantly, poised for that fresh, unlined face to appear above the feet. I never get tired of looking at their faces, judging what the mood is. Are they up for conversation? One usually yes, the other almost always no. Sometimes her eyes are puffy, her hair unbrushed. She beelines for the coffee machine, usually protesting having to answer some question. “I know, I know … I don’t know, ok? Please don’t talk to me right now. I’m sorry, I just need coffee.”
Coffee. The twins are 18, and this last year of high school — spent mostly at home because of Covid — has been all about coffee in the morning. “We are a coffee family,” one pronounced a few months ago, pouring herself a large mug. Sometimes the machine goes through three rounds in a morning. How can four people drink so much coffee? I wonder.
They have been in a summer resort town for the last month, working a few miles from the town center at a restaurant and living with friends. My husband and I recently came from spending a week there after driving them over. One morning in town, as I ducked out of a shop to take a phone call from one daughter, I looked up from my perch on a bench to see the other one running up the sidewalk, carrying a tray of iced lattes from the coffee shop down the block.
“Hi sweetie!” I wave. Into the phone I say, “Your sister is walking up the sidewalk!”
“Mom, we’re rushing to work! Sorry, I can’t stop,” says the drink-laden teen, zooming past me in her work uniform.
“Where are you going?”
“We’re parked up the street!” she calls back over her shoulder.
Still holding the phone to my ear, I proceed to follow her to the corner, where the car is idling and her sister is behind the wheel. As the coffee carrier scrambles into the car, I peak through the passenger window. “Hi!” I say brightly to the driver, and into my phone.
She barely glances at me and shifts the car into gear. “Why are you driving all the way into town to get coffee?” I ask incredulously as they try to make their getaway.
“We were out of coffee at the house!” comes the answer, fading behind the car now disappearing up the street.
My husband and I said goodbye to our son on a recent Saturday afternoon at the airport. He was off for two and a half months of travel on the other side of the world, embarking on a gap year before he starts college next fall.
I’m not an openly sentimental person, but my voice caught in my throat as I hugged him goodbye. I surprised myself. It was as if I had spent so much time being occupied — an all-encompassing word for busy, annoyed, frustrated, losing patience — preparing him for the trip that I hadn’t taken a moment to think about him actually being gone. My mind was mired in the details of plane reservations, packing lists, visas, and plans, plans, plans. I discovered that he had never obtained his official driver’s license after his provisional expired, and hounded him for days about it. He ended up at the DMV several times until they were satisfied with his paperwork. Then there were the multiple shopping trips, outings to CVS, the cajoling, questioning, and constant email patter: “Did you see the latest email on your trip? Have you emailed that person back yet?”
No, I hadn’t gotten beyond the getting him out. But the day before he left, I stopped by to survey the damage from the packing hurricane that had torn through his room and slowly looked around, realizing it would be empty for the next 10 weeks. There would be no parents weekend visit where we could see his dorm room, meet his friends. Yes, he would be back in December, but ostensibly off again after the holidays for his next endeavor.
I’ve been thinking about how I always tell people I’m from North Carolina, but lost much of my Southern accent because I haven’t lived there since I was 18. Yes, I went back for some summers and holidays, but after college I moved to DC. I had a summer at home between moves a few years later, but I don’t really count that. Having lived in Washington longer than anywhere else, I’m practically a DC native.
Is our son going to say the same years from now? Will he have moved from our home the day he got on that plane bound for Sydney?
Time to go
Maybe the gap year is different — there is still some uncertainty about his plans — but he is not expected to be at home this spring, and maybe not even this summer. A multitude of adventures await him, and I couldn’t be more excited for him. He is on the trip of a lifetime, making memories and friends he will never forget.
They say youth is wasted on the young, but in my mind traveling is made for the young. I take heart in knowing our firstborn is exactly where he should be right now, doing exactly what he should be doing. Take this time, I say, before getting on the conveyor belt of college, work, housing, daily commutes, bills, routines. Wring every drop from the towel of adventure, self-discovery, friendship, and yes, probably — hopefully — hardship. Travel provides the kind of self-test not offered in school. The unpredictability of it — unforeseen situations and how you react to them — those are lessons not found in any syllabus.
I’m reluctantly resigned to the fact that I won’t be there for those lessons, to witness how he reacts and grows. I will be here at home, waiting to greet the person who walks in the door afterward. Is it possible he won’t change much? I doubt it. He is seeking, ready to breath in, absorb. Taking a year off was his idea, not mine or my husband’s. It never occurred to me. In fact, I found my usually adventurous nature turning cautious — why would he want to be a year behind all his friends starting college? It’s not “normal” — is it even a little weird?
I see now that in this decision he’s already demonstrating his unique nature: a willingness to depart from what’s expected, from the norm. He never looked back, once he decided to defer his college acceptance. I only hope he continues this tendency, this ability to look inside himself, to listen to his own voice. It is something I didn’t really do, or know to do, until several years out of college, when I quit my job in DC and moved to New York with only the promise of a summer internship and a bed in a friend’s apartment until her roommate returned in the fall.
That New York adventure wound up lasting more than a year, and ultimately led to my moving to Seattle to be with my then-ill sister, and traveling around the world once we knew she would be OK. Those years of adventure are when I really became myself and came into myself. I lived with people I’d never met, discovered parts of the city on my own, discovered parts of the world I never knew, got lost, got found, got scared, and had a blast.
Our son is younger than I was then, but in some ways he is wiser.
He is scheduled to come home December 1st, but just two days into his travels, he texted us to ask if he can extend his trip to travel with “my friends.” We all discussed this idea before he made his flights and he emphatically said he did not want to stay beyond the program. This latest communique was typically frustrating — it could be costly to change flights — but my husband and I laughed about it too. He’s happy, and already has “my friends.”
I think about my own parents and how they must have felt when their four kids left home. If they were sad, I don’t remember, or didn’t pay attention. (It’s possible they rejoiced.) We attended colleges and grad schools, got jobs and got married, traveled and moved away. But we did return often to that same house we grew up in — for many, many years — until it was sold a few years ago.
I may tell people I left North Carolina when I was 18, but I don’t really mean it.
It’s back-to-school time once again. There’s an oddly appropriate redundancy in that phrase — we’re not just going back, we’re going back again. Been there, done that to death. Nothing new to say — hasn’t it all been said? Doesn’t it get said every year?
Time to stock up on school supplies! Time to schedule carpools and classes! Time to shop for shoes and clothes! Maybe you’re buying shorts that the kids will wear for a few weeks in September, where it’s suddenly hotter than it was all summer, because the ones you got in May now don’t fit.
Time to set that alarm again! Time to get back into rush-hour traffic! Time to utter “Ugh, re-entry!”
Time for some people to say, “I loved summer, but by the end was counting the days til school started,” or, “I’m SO ready for back to school,” or, “It was the longest summer ever!”
Time for others to say, “Summer could never last long enough,” or, “I’m NEVER ready for back to school,” or, “It was the shortest summer ever!”
Goodbye to all that summer…
For some parents with full-time jobs and little or no vacation, maybe their kids were in camp or other programs all summer, and this “back to school” isn’t really back at all. It’s where they’ve been all along.
For others, maybe the “lazy days of summer” were a bit too lazy, and the schedule that “back to school” brings is a greeted with relief. Alternatively, maybe summer was more exhausting than the school year. Maybe you crammed every family member and the dog in the car and road-tripped your way up, down, around, and through summer.
And yet for others, maybe starting the school year again is literally like a rocket re-entering the atmosphere, the family shedding parts of an idyllic summer as it crashes back down to earth.
Yes, we’re all getting back in the swing, back to the grind. Back in the car, the kitchen, the office. Back on the sidelines, the bleachers, the ball fields. Back to reality.
But … Are we really back?
Is any season ever the same as it was in years past? Is any day, hour, minute? We’re all facing something new, no matter how “back” in it we are. My three children are, for the moment, all in the same school — the parental equivalent of a triple sow-cow, double toe-loop. So my landing “back” should be pretty well-cushioned. Not too many re-inventions this year.
Yet I find myself looking forward to the coming school year mostly when I ponder what’s new about it, what’s changing, and what’s maybe even surprising — the unknowns in store.
This may be triggered by something as simple as a new sport or teacher, a new volunteer or work project. But it’s something that shakes up the routine, that energizes the field. Because otherwise, when I think about going “back” this time of year, I feel a bit complacent, a tad bored, a little stale.
No, I much prefer to think about going “onward” to school, moving “into” the fall, heading “toward”… good things to come.
We see the signs everywhere around our city, exhorting us to “Scoop Your Pet’s Poop” or “Please Clean Up After Your Pet”. Unlike the little violations many of us commit every day — crossing your neighborhood street in the middle of the block, buckling your seatbelt after rolling out of the driveway, throwing recyclables in the trash — not scooping your dog’s poop (is there any other kind of pet poop to scoop?) can bring an “eewww” kind of bad karma. Do YOU want to be the one to step in the poop? you wonder nervously as you dutifully pick up the little bombs from the sidewalk.
Oh, we’ve all had those moments when we hesitate halfway down the block, leash in hand and pooch happily trotting by our side, as we remember we forgot the plastic bag. Well, we think with relief, the creature just relieved herself in the back yard a while ago. I’ll risk it.
And, inevitably, just as you round the corner for home, your pup stops and assumes the position. Panicking, you look around to see who’s watching. At least I can move it into the bushes so no one steps on it, you think, keeping a little bit of bad karma at bay. So you grab a nearby stick and flick the jewels over and out of plain site.
But I’ll wager you’ve never had the kind of karma kickback I had the other day.
The husband and kids were walking to get ice cream, and I decided to take our terrible but cute terrier, Cookie, along for her daily constitutional. I grabbed the leash with a plastic bag already tied to it and called Cookie. As we made our way down the sidewalk, about halfway to our destination, she stopped and dropped while the others went on ahead. No problem. I reached to untie the bag from the leash, but accidentally let it go as Cookie raced toward the kids, me calling out to them to catch her. OK, I thought, turning back to study the product. This is to the side a bit and not in the middle of the walk, so I’ll just scoop it when we walk back by.
A little while later, ice cream in hand, we all headed back up the street. As we reached the drop spot, I glanced around. Ah, there it is, over to the side. This time I handed the leash to my daughter first and then untied the bag. Leaning over to do my duty (ha), I neatly knotted the bag and took back the leash. We had walked a few steps when suddenly I felt something under my shoe and stopped in my tracks.
“Ewww, I can’t believe this! Someone didn’t scoop their poop!”
Everyone looked down as I lifted my shoe in disbelief. Shit, I thought (appropriately). This happens to me now? Even after I scooped my own dog’s poop, like the model citizen that I am??
Staring further at the ground, I noticed another canine mine just inches away. It looked somehow… familiar. I glanced at my poop bag, suddenly lighter, and it took only a few seconds for me (and now everyone else in the family) to see that it was empty. There was a hole in it and the poop had quickly fallen out, somehow just enough in front of me that I had, yes, stepped in it.
Scraping my shoe while my three kids and husband chuckled over my mishap, I couldn’t help but analyze what had happened. What were the odds? How did I manage to fling the poop at the exact spot where I would step milliseconds later? Maybe I possess some sort of hidden talent? Is there a prize for that?
Clearly there were no neat and tidy answers to these knotty questions. I just hoped it was the end of my karmic payback… or should I say, poopback.
I wrote this eight years ago when in the throes of toddler-dom. In re-reading it now, I’m reminded of how, to paraphrase Gretchen Rubin of The Happiness Project, the minutes pass by slowly, but the years quickly. These moments may not always be “enjoyable” exactly, but they’re what make up the years of our lives — and ultimately, the memories we cherish.
“You’ve got your hands full,” I often hear people say after I tell them the ages of my three children — twins girls, 3 ½, and a son, 5 ½. I usually dismiss the cliched phrase with thoughts of “You think I’m busy…”
I may have three small children, but I’m a wimp compared to those super-moms who manage to keep track of their three or four kids’ various after-school activities, sit with them during homework, schedule playdates, go on exotic family vacations and find time for a weekly date with their husband. Not to mention fulfill those classroom duties jokingly labeled “volunteer,” like sitting at the crafts table while one in every four child pours an entire bottle of glue onto a thin piece of construction paper and inevitably adds a mountain of glitter. These moms remember to pack lunches every day, apply sunscreen to their kids’ scrunchy faces and send in the proper forms on the appropriate days. They even do it while in a seemingly good mood. Oh, and did I mention they work full-time?
No, I can barely manage to take my kids to Starbucks. Take earlier today, for instance. I had made a morning vet appointment for our dog, who had a suspicious-looking growth on her face, knowing that I had a sitter scheduled to take care of the girls while their brother was in preschool. When the sitter cancelled, I vowed to take along the twins. I can do this, I thought. OK, I admit I almost backed out and considered putting them with a neighbor’s sitter, but then I would have felt like an extreme wimp, not just a mere wimp. So, even though bringing them along also meant that I would have to lift our 70-pound, arthritis-ridden yellow lab into the back of the SUV since the girls were in the middle seat, I didn’t back down. The twins’ only requirements? One brought her bunny, the other her book.
The nice thing about low expectations is that when things turn out not to be a disaster, that means they went really well. The vet visit was a case in point. There was no one else in the waiting room when we got there, crayons and Twizzlers magically materialized for the girls, and everyone was happily occupied. When we went back to see the vet, the girls were quiet for, oh, about three minutes. Then one started some hybrid mix of chattering-singing, sort of like chanting, that unnerved me a bit while I was talking to the vet. But it did speed things up and we were done in ten minutes. It turned out the dog was going to stay there for the afternoon to have the benign bump removed, so I thought, hey, we’re already out; I’ll take the girls to lunch.
I needed to buy some coffee and there was a Starbucks across the street. The minute we walked in, the girls eyed the tables and chairs and announced they wanted to have lunch there. Perfect, I thought. We’ll grab a quick sandwich and head home.
One wanted tuna salad and the other chicken salad. I let them get chocolate milk if they promised to wait to drink it. We sat down, and the taller one immediately looked at her sandwich, pointed to her sister’s, and said, “I want what she’s got.” Not missing a beat, I took the other half of her sister’s sandwich and put it on the plate.
“Hey! That’s mine!” the smaller one yelled.
“No, I purposely got enough for two of you,” I said forcefully.
“OK,” she said, momentarily compliant.
Ah, the happy silence of eating. A full 45 seconds passed before I started hearing cries of “Done! I’m ready for my milk now!” The smaller one quickly hopped off her chair.
“No, you’re not done. Sit down.”
“I’m thirsty!”
“OK, one more bite then you can open your milk.”
“No!”
“One more bite or no snack this afternoon.”
“Noooooo!”
Sigh. I looked around. Only one other couple was in the shop, and they were in intimate conversation.
“OK, but don’t drink it all.” I handed over the milk.
“OK, mama.” That sweet little voice again.
Another 20 seconds of silence. Then I made the mistake of thinking we were actually having a civilized time. “Look,” I said, trying to get them to eat more. “Bunny wants some sandwich.” I made munching sounds and moved bunny’s head. The taller one started laughing.
“Mommy, I wuv you!” She climbed off her chair, lunged forward to hug me, and spilled my coffee in a move so efficient I couldn’t have copied it if I tried. My sandwich ruined, I instructed her, for what felt like the hundredth time, “PLEASE stay in your seat while we’re eating.” She turned and hustled back to her chair.
Another 30 seconds passed. They were only drinking chocolate milk now, having completely abandoned their sandwiches. The smaller one, who’d already kicked off her shoes, announced, “My feet are hot.” Suddenly the socks were on the table.
I’m the one who’s done now, I thought, grabbing the socks and throwing them in the Starbucks bag.
My phone rang. It was a call I had to take, but I couldn’t hear because of the music playing, so I stood up and walked a few feet away from the speaker. Like mosquitoes, the girls followed me to the corner.
“Get back to the table. No, not you — sorry, I’m with my kids at Starbucks and I can’t hear very well. OK… Talk to you later.”
I looked with disgust at my daughter’s bare feet in the middle of the coffee shop. Heavy sigh.
“Please put your shoes on. We’re leaving.”
I wrestled her shoes back on her feet — forget the socks — and threw away the trash. As I headed for the door, the other one announced that she needed to go to the bathroom. Naturally.
We all went together into the restroom where both used the bathroom again (they’d already gone once at the vet), everyone washed their hands — “by themselves,” they insisted — and I opened the door, just trying to propel myself forward. Then I remembered that I also wanted to buy a thermos for my husband, so I quickly grabbed one and paid for it while periodically shouting various phrases over my shoulder: “Put that down! Don’t touch anything — ever! — in this store! This is a nice store! We are in a public place and you don’t touch things! That’s breakable! Put that down! Please don’t play with that!”
Turning to leave, I noticed a new arrival in the corner, a neatly-dressed 50-ish looking woman who had been observing the scene. She smiled as I reached the door, my mosquitoes buzzing behind me.
“You really have your hands full.”
I smiled back weakly, pushing on the door.
“Yes, I do.”
Put on your crash helmet — good advice for life with twin toddlers
An organizer I once hired in desperation told me that everyone has a collection, and mine happens to be paper.
I confess to being a “piler” too. I have stacks of books and magazines on my dresser, by my bedside, and underneath the table in a basket. I usually only attack these piles when, like Herbert in the Miss Piggle Wiggle story who never picks up his toys, I can’t get to what I need because of all the stuff in the way. My hairbrush might be hidden under layers of paper I’ve amassed — in-progress writings, half-read magazines, blank pads for scribbling lists or brilliant ideas. Just paper, paper, paper.
I treasure it, I realize. My children’s once-in-a-lifetime-snapshots-of-a-moment-in-time crayon drawings. My oh-so-precious journals and notebooks from the past that should probably stay there. Old calendars with gorgeous pictures, inspirational quotes, and a year’s worth of living chronicled in its small squares.
Paper may be passe, but it’s so much more to me.
Yes, I am capable of throwing out and often do, but I know I keep things I shouldn’t. It’s just so hard. Jettisoning all of the Disney World buttons our family got while celebrating my recent birthday feels like I’m dismissing the specialness of the trip. Imprinted with each of our names, they’re little signs made to be saved. Maybe my children want these! I need to remember to ask! So, the buttons sit, waiting patiently on my dresser for the verdict on their fate.
I love and dread walking into a bookstore. Like a dieter in a bakery, I am tempted. Row upon row of sweet delights. Who can resist?
The magazine rack in the grocery store line always beckons, but I usually manage to put the publication back before buying. I’m one of those people you see reading and holding the magazine with one hand while blindly placing items on the belt with the other.
“M’am, can you push your cart up, please?”
“Oh!” I say, looking up and hurriedly stuffing “Allure” back in the wrong rack. What was the name of that Editor’s-Pick lipstick again?
Paper for me means information, inspiration, emotion. If I throw it away, I might lose what lured me in the first place. I think, when I’m old and forced to slow down, to sit and contemplate, I can take solace in sifting through all that paper, all those memories. Maybe then, and only then, will I throw them out.
We yearn to capture experience, to own it, absorb it into our bones. I remember when I was 12 and my cousin Margaret, a poet, took me to visit our aunt in Washington, D.C. After the trip, she wrote a poem titled “Smithsonian Album” that describes much of what we saw and did.
Contained in a slim volume on my bookshelf, the poem is an ode to our time together, presented and preserved on (naturally) paper. Yet only now, decades later, do I see that the poem also touches on — almost casually, like a flip of the hair — that impossible yearning in all of us. The ending:
Save?
What will you save?
The gusty afternoon
a bit of laughter
the pin-prick of aching feet.
And what of “relief”
and Joan Miro
what of Rodin, abstract
the green mall
the water buffalo?
All these picture postcards–
learn to keep them
learn to let them go.
(Reprinted with permission from Margaret Boothe Baddour. Click on title above or here to see full poem.)
The front of a Mother’s Day card that my daughter made — an unwittingly accurate depiction of what my world sounds like.
There are a lot of F-words associated with turning 50. First, let’s take the obvious one: F*ck. As in, “F*ck, is this really happening to me?” That thought first flickered in my mind after I turned 49 and started the countdown to the next birthday. Essentially, I had a year to wrap my head around “50.” By the time my birthday came around a couple a weeks ago, I’d been 50 for ages. No big deal.
A second but more important variation of the F-word is the phrase “F*ck it” — the rallying cry of the “50” crowd. It’s basically a license to say you’re going to do what you want to do, regardless of what others think. Yes, there’s a bit of the “When I’m an old woman I shall wear purple” in this. But the truth is, the older you get, the more you become comfortable with being yourself. And if yourself has always wanted to take dance lessons or act in a play or jump out of an airplane, turning 50 is a great excuse to do it.
As it happens, myself decided to go to Disney World. It wasn’t exactly something I’d been dreaming about, but it was something my husband and I had been wanting to check off the family-pilgrimages list for some time, and the timing was right.
Fortunately, I had the “f*ck-it” part down when I told friends what I was doing for my birthday. Many of them looked at me with either incredulity or laughter and quickly followed up with raised-eyebrow comments like, “Who’s idea was that?” or “I can’t think of any place I’d rather go less,” or just a simple, “That sounds awful.”
I have to admit that a part of me completely agreed. Did I really want to spend my 50th birthday tackling crowds and riding roller coasters? But ultimately, I loved the idea of having a memorable trip as a family on my birthday. In fact, “Family” is one of the most important F-words of 50. How could I hit such a milestone and not celebrate with my family?
Furthermore, those two days at Disney embodied another F-word, one that I plan to experience a lot in the future: Fun. It’s impossible to go to Disney World — and the nearby Universal theme park — without having a great time. Not only is it fun to see your own kids having so much fun (my son rode every thrill ride in every theme park, many times over — I think he counted 32 altogether), but you can’t help buying in to the whole schlocky deal. You “ooh” and “aah” at the constantly-changing colors of the lighted Disney castle, you find your competitive mojo during the Toy Story target-shooting ride, you actually choose to go on the Everest Expedition roller coaster three (yes, three) times. There’s a reason, you realize, why people return to Disney again and again: It’s la-la land.
That said, there were a couple of times I took one for the team. At Universal, my daughter really wanted to ride the insane, inversion-filled Hulk roller coaster, insisting she would only go with me. And I really didn’t want to go, preferring to keep my head on my neck. Finally, against my better judgment, I acquiesced, shutting my eyes the entire ride while being jerked left and right, turned upside down and corkscrewed around — hitting, I later learned, 4 G’s. After I got off the ride, and indeed for a few days afterward, I felt like my brain had been split apart and rearranged and the new formation wasn’t quite complete; a few cells were still rattling around in my head, looking for a place to land.
This leads me to another turning-50 F-word: Fuzzy. After two days in Orlando, it was how I was feeling. Unfortunately, my mind has gotten a little fuzzier as I’ve gotten older, and I find myself forgetting incidental things like my good friends’ names and restaurants I’ve recently visited. But, I’m attributing that to the multi-tasking brain we women are so good at nurturing, so I’m going to forget about it (which will be easy.)
Speaking of good friends, I would not be exaggerating to say “Friendship” is the ultimate F-word of 50. My friends provide me with comfort, laughter, commiseration and wisdom. They are the ones I’ve celebrated with as many of us hit five decades together this year, and they’re who I hope to be hanging out with for years to come. My friends help me realize how rich life at 50 really is.
And, they all are associated with the final, impossible-to-ignore F-word: the overused “Fabulous.” It’s hard to quibble with this one, as celebrating oneself as fabulous is certainly in order on any birthday. But there’s an underlying ring of desperation here, as in, “Even though you’re now officially old, you’re also fabulous! Really, you are!” No one says “You’re 20 and fabulous!”
But the flip side is that you can look at yourself amid all the “50 is the new [fill in blank]” comments everyone makes these days and say, “You know, I don’t look that bad and I feel pretty good. And mostly, I’m happy with myself. I’m still learning, trying to be a better parent, a better wife, a better friend — to myself and others. All, in all, I think I’ll stick with what I’ve got.”
So, I say, bring on the fabulousness. Bring on the fun. Bring it all on — and while you’re at it, maybe add a few highlights to cover the gray.
Or maybe not. F*ck it.
The Hulk roller coaster at Universal – with 7 inversions. I rode this, eyes closed.
It’s a cliche to say that crying will get you what you want, but by damned, it sure works for my kids. There’s nothing worse than seeing your child cry. The little mouth starts to quiver, and then the face reddens and eyes water, and before you know it, that gymnastics class that occurs right at the most inconvenient time, during dinner and rush hour, becomes a happy reality for your 10-year-old budding Nadia Comaneci.
What is it about tears? They say “trauma,” “crisis,” “pain.” Crying is the “there” in “Don’t go there.” I rarely cry — well, except during bad TV and commercials. No, I rarely cry over my own experiences. But the few times I have — in 20 years of marriage I recall a doozy of an argument or two that ended in tears — I almost always end up the victor.
Once I discovered this, I confess to having tried to conjure up tears a couple of times in “disagreements” with my husband just to get to the win, but found that’s harder to do than it looks. I haven’t gone as far as to think of something really sad — I guess that’s what actors do — but now that I’m writing this, even admitting this, it doesn’t sound like such a bad idea.
I’m wondering if my kids are onto this idea as well.
I’m in the midst of creating an album of photographs and letters for my Dad’s 87th birthday. As I cull through stacks of prints, I see my father in his youth—a dashing 6-foot-tall, blue-eyed blonde–and in later years, where he maintained his youthful look and more importantly, his lightness and humor. I am reminded of what a rich life he has led, filled with friends who’ve sent along pictures of the myriad trips they’ve take with him and of golf courses they’ve played. There are funny, heartfelt notes, but nothing too sentimental for a guy who doesn’t like to hog the spotlight. In fact, he will probably get pretty embarrassed when we give him this album. He has never wanted a big celebration around his birthday, and we are essentially sneaking this one in, going away for the weekend with the extended family to celebrate several birthdays, not just his.
Mostly, what I’m finding in the pictures are feelings–my own. Yes, I have the perspective of a daughter, second-born but oldest girl of four kids, when I look at these photos, but I’m also seeing them from my perch as a parent.
Parenting an almost-teenage son and twin 10-year-old girls seems for me to be a full-time, 12-hour-a-day job crammed into the hours between 3 p.m. and bedtime, encompassing driving, homework, dinner and all the crises that crop up along the way. When I pick my kids up from school, I try to chat with them, hear about their day, laugh, be relaxed. I’d like to make light of life, the way my dad does. He loves to joke (often cornily), doesn’t lose his temper (really), and is an all-around happy person. It’s very hard to roil him.
For example, I remember once when I was a teenager, my neighborhood friends came knocking on my first-floor window one weeknight after dinner. They were biking down to the convenience store a few blocks away and wanted me to come. I, supposedly doing my homework, agreed, locked my door and turned up my music–inexplicably thinking that would disguise the fact that I was AWOL–and hopped out the window. When I climbed back in a little while later, the first thing my eyes landed on was the open door to my room. Oops. I’d been caught–turns out my music was too loud. I remember sauntering through the den like nothing had happened. My dad just looked up from his newspaper and said, “Sugar, you know you can’t do that. You’re grounded for a week.” He tranquilly went back to his reading. And I was effectively neutralized.
I can’t imagine myself asserting this kind of calm with anyone, much less my soon-to-be-teenage children. In fact, I find myself getting roiled pretty often, even when I’m trying not to. Take yesterday for instance.
I drive my daughter to gymnastics class in rush-hour traffic, taking about 40 minutes round-trip. I pull back into the garage and my phone rings. It’s my son, who is in the house.
“Mom, I forgot my vocabulary book at school and really need it for homework that’s due tomorrow.”
“Fine,” I say. “I’m already in the car in the garage. Just come out and we’ll head up there.” I am thinking, let’s just get this over with. It’s the beginning of seventh grade, so do the kid a favor.
He emerges from the back door, his sister close behind.
“Can I come?” she says. “I don’t want to be in the house by myself!”
“Fine, just hurry,” I say. She climbs in barefooted. I am calm, my pulse normal.
We head up to school in what turns out to be crawling traffic–oh right, rush hour–and what normally takes 15 minutes takes 30. My heart beats a bit faster. Once we arrive, the security guard unlocks the doors, lets my son in, we wait a little bit, and he runs back out. There is no vocab book in his hand.
“Did you find it?” I say steadily, hoping illogically there is some explanation other than that he didn’t.
“No,” he says simply. “It must be in my backpack.” He closes the car door.
“At home.” I again say grimly, eyeing him squarely. I can feel my neck muscles start to strain.
“Um, yeah.” He looks down. “I could have sworn I left it at school.”
“So you didn’t even check your backpack before you called me?” My voice is higher and I’m starting to feel hot.
“Mom, I swear, I didn’t think it was in there!” He gives me a sideways glance and looks away. I know he is contrite.
Tamping down the tiny voice telling me to keep it together, I jump straight to the list of grievances:
“I’ve driven all the way back here and it’s taking up a lot of time and your sister is sitting here in the car and hasn’t been doing her homework and now I need to get home and feed you both and then go get your other sister from gymnastics and rush home to get you all to bed on time and Daddy’s out tonight and now you’ve got to finish your homework so good luck making THAT happen and this isn’t exactly how I need to be spending my time right now!!” I take a breath. I’ve said enough.
“Plus, I need to take a shower!!”
“I get it, Mom! I’m sorry.” Now he looks at me squarely.
“No electronics at all this weekend,” I say with finality. There.
“OK, Mom. I understand.” He is now perfectly calm, even calmer than before. “I get it. I’m really sorry.”
“No electronics. No computer, no i-touch. Nothing at all!” I am toast.
“I know, I know.” What he knows is that now he is in complete control.
Just stop, I tell myself. But that’s the hardest part–just stopping. What do you do after that? Turn on the radio and start singing?
I manage to restrain myself, and when we arrive home, my son goes immediately to his backpack and pulls out his vocab book. I just shake my head slightly and head to “make” dinner (code for leftovers).
I think now about how my father would have handled that situation. Granted, he didn’t have to face the daily after-school routine–that was my mother’s job, and yes, I’m sure she got frustrated–but if he had, he probably wouldn’t have said much. He would have put an expression of veiled disgust on his face–his pulse unchanged–and if it had been me in my son’s shoes, I would have felt really, really awful.
Sometimes no words are more effective than any at all. Maybe I should have given my son a chance to reflect on his actions and feel guilty on his own. Maybe I should have then asked him how his actions affected others and what the consequences for him should be. Maybe I should never have driven him back to school.
Today I came across an essay I wrote years ago for a graduate school application. It made me wonder what I can do that would inspire my kids to write about me the way I wrote about my father:
“As I grow older and reflect upon what factors have influenced my decisions, ideas from particular authors and classes from certain professors come to mind. But it is the people who put into daily practice values upon which others only reflect that serve as the examples I wish to follow. My father claims first place among the people I admire most for the simple reason that I have never seen him contradict in deed what he has put forth in words. I have learned more from my father’s mere presence than from any sermon delivered on a Sunday morning.”
I guess that’s my answer. Whatever my father did, he would have done it with conviction, kept his word, and most of all, reacted in a way that his children could ultimately (even if years later) admire. To that, all I can say is, there’s always next time.
Plus, I better make sure that computer stays off this weekend.
Sometimes In the middle of the night when I’m awake and alone with my thoughts, or sometimes in the middle of the day when I’m driving and surrounded by chip bags, backpacks, and sweaty kids, I think, motherhood is a bit of a stretch for me.
Wait, maybe I should say, motherhood in today’s world is a bit of a stretch, especially with three children. Of course I love them, but occasionally the thought creeps in that it would have been so easy to parent just one child. Now that I have three–twins, age 10, and a son, almost 13–I’m constantly amazed at the amount of energy, generosity and altruism required for parenting. I think about my own mother, who had four kids, drove carpool, cooked dinner every night, even sewed clothes for me and my sister. She and my dad took us on trips, including the requisite pilgrimage to Disney World. We stayed at the exotic Polynesian hotel, went to the Mad Tea Party, and dined to the vocal stylings of Steve Lawrence and Eydie Gormé (live!). It was about perfect.
I took it for granted, all that my parents did for us, which I guess is the job of kids. Children are too busy growing up, living the movie, to catch on to the fact that their parents are helping to write and direct it.
I think about my homemaker-happy mother, whose day before the kids got home included bridge and tennis and garden club–and grocery shopping. She lived (and still does) a happy life, with little talk of stressing out, leaning in, and getting away. Yes, life was simpler. Those were the days of kids having fewer organized activities after school–I remember walking to the local drugstore many weekday afternoons with my best friend Allison and ordering ice cream sundaes at the counter (and putting on the pounds to show it!). I don’t recall if my mother even knew what we were doing. I just knew to be home by dinnertime.
Today, I talk to my mother from my command center behind the steering wheel. We catch up while I, like the operator of the local train, make various stops along the way. These are the snatched moments where I find out about her or Dad’s latest checkups (they are insanely healthy for the 70’s and 80s), who they dined with at the club last Saturday night, whose funeral they attended the other day. Then always, it’s “I gotta go, Mom. I’m at [insert destination] now.”
Once I pick up the kids from school, I’m off to a gymnastics class, a baseball practice, a dance lesson. Forget the stay-at-home mom–that would be fantastic. No, I’m a “stay-in-the-car” mom, and covet the rare day where I manage to avoid my car entirely (especially since it’s so damn dirty, with pretzels and Power Bars and god knows what ground into the synthetic carpet and seat crevices.)
I’m not a great dinner planner, (ugh, the routine) the way my mother was, and I often get home from these carpool laps around the track to open the fridge and simply stare. Then I turn to the cabinet and reach for the box of pasta. I silently give thanks that my husband will eat just about anything and at the same time curse him for needing to eat at all. Every fall, I vow to “figure out the dinner thing” just like I vow to “figure out the homework thing” and “the driving thing.”
The thing is, this is what parenting is, largely. It’s being there for your children’s lives, being there when they need you. We give our kids so much, it seems, this generation of parents. We sign them up, plug them in, buy them off. I’m just as guilty as anyone, yet I occasionally try to fight these tendencies. Hell, we haven’t even taken our kids to Disney World. But, as I’ve seen with friends whose kids are older, it does eventually taper off, and one day it’s over, this part of parenting.
I feel I’m just getting a glimpse of what life will be like once my role in the movie is reduced to, say, Executive Producer. My kids are starting to become more independent, making their own breakfast in the morning, running to the corner market, walking the dog, and doing chores (sort of). Now, as opposed to standing over them and tying their shoelaces, I’m glancing sideways and driving them to the shoe store. I’m supervising when needed, and of course, nagging often.
Oh, I know those teenage years are coming and things will keep shifting–too quickly–and suddenly, I will yearn for these “easy” years when they don’t mind hanging out with their parents (or have no choice). We’ll all get our independence soon enough.
But for now, Disney World is starting to look pretty good. Maybe we’ll even get there before they’re all in college.
Through the trees 