Hands Full, In Hindsight

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.”

Fasten your seat belts: Life with twin toddlers — Put on your crash helmet — good advice for life with twin toddlers

Paper Girl

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 my daughter made. She has no idea what an accurate depiction of it really is. — The front of a Mother’s Day card that my daughter made — an unwittingly accurate depiction of what my world sounds like.

The F-words

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. Yes, I rode this. — The Hulk roller coaster at Universal – with 7 inversions. I rode this, eyes closed.

Tears I

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.

More next week…

Low Boil

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.

Driving Forces

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.

It's may not be Disney World but they seemed to like it. — A non-Disney light show.

Sweet Spot

I am sitting here on a screen porch on a breezy, cloudy, 70-degree day, in the center of this sand-swept New England town. Strangely, all is quiet except for the chiming of church bells, the murmur of voices in one of the nearby houses (screened windows and doors are always open here this time of year), or conversation from cyclists on the street, their voices rising and fading as they pass. Dishes clink from the small inn next door. Cars and mopeds do venture up this narrow, one-way lane leading out of town, but today, at this moment, the loudest sound is the wind rustling the leaves. And, now, a propeller plane in the distance pricks the silence, and is gone.

This is rare, this moment comprised of sounds that have nothing to do with my voice, with the yelling and calling and cajoling of my three children (and yes, sometimes my husband). How can a house in this bustling summer town be so close to that town, actually in that town, and still be so quiet? I am aware of the neighbor behind our rental house whose back patio I look down on from my kitchen window. There is a large blue and white surfboard propped up against the gray-shingled house, and I see her at her own kitchen sink, wisps of aging yellow-white hair visible, as I do dishes at mine. Is she a renter too? I’ve decided that she is the mother and there is what looks like at least one teenage girl, a long-haired brunette in cut-off jean shorts, and a man–but I can’t figure out if he is the husband or the son; lean and clad in a polo shirt and striped bermuda shorts, he looks too young for one and too old for the other. And who is the surfer? Who wears the wetsuit hanging from the tree out back, drying in the wind?

Who are all these people crammed together in this quiet and bustling little town?

We are the loud ones, I notice. If you don’t know who the loud one is, to paraphrase a saying, it’s probably you. Yes, I had my daughter walk out with me to the street and listen while I instructed her siblings to talk loudly from inside the house. How much could we hear? Not as much as I thought. But then, they weren’t yelling, because of course I asked them to, and that was the end of that.

These quiet, peaceful moments … it’s hard to really inhabit them and fully appreciate them because of the anticipation of their ending. Any second now, the twins could burst through the door, having walked back from their friend’s house where they’ve spent the night. My son could clamber down the creaky back stairs from his bedroom, where he has been reading all morning, and ask for breakfast at lunchtime. Even if I tell him to get his own, there will be conversation, help needed, and the moment (in my mind) will mostly likely be gone. But for now…

Yes, this is a rare sweet spot–this place on the back porch full of intermittent sounds that mark the silence between. I contrast this moment with the same one two days ago, when I was walking into the charming and distraction-filled town with my twin daughters, age 10, and my son, 12. He was lagging behind, having brought his book so he could sit on a bench while I took the girls inside a clothing shop. The girls, on the other hand, were walking so close to me, I was consciously sticking out and slightly waving my hands to keep them from walking on my flip-flopped feet. They are experts at “the box-out”–one on either side of me, slowly nudging closer to each other until I, exasperated, come to a dead stop, quickly scoot around them and run forward a few steps to snatch three seconds of free walking until they run and catch up with me, and the cycle starts again. I remember when they were younger that they often clung to me so successfully as we walked down the street that I felt like I was “wearing” my children. For someone a bit claustrophobic, that’s not a good thing.

I guess things haven’t really changed that much. Yet.

I see the shift happening in the soon-to-be 13-year-old. He is sleeping later, more reluctant to do “kid” things like go the pool for no reason or take a long bike ride. Yet he is the least high-maintenance of the three in some ways, not complaining as I drag him into town with the girls, as long as he has a “Ranger’s Apprentice” volume to read. He stayed home last night when my husband I went to dinner, perfectly content to watch sports on TV, not afraid to be alone. We gave him money to go grab a slice of pizza.

When we got home, he was watching a movie and I asked what he’d eaten: “Two Luna bars,” he replied. I caved and made him a PB&J. Then I settled in next to him on the couch and we watched the rest of “Swindle,” a Nickelodeon original.

He’s still a boy.

Ten and 12-year olds. The sweet spot, I hear my friends say. That time when you still have your kids as kids but can give them enough independence to give yourself some independence. It goes quickly, I hear these friends say. Suddenly all that independence you’ve been waiting for them to get, for you to get — “please stop walking on my feet” — arrives, and you are walking freely, waving your arms ever so slightly at the phantom children closing in on you.

A lone plane slicing through the cloudless blue sky of summer. — A lone plane slices through the cloudless blue sky.

Little Things

In this entry I randomly select a song title from my itunes library as a writing prompt.

Song Title: “Live and Die” by the Avett Brothers (from The Carpenter album)

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about living every day, staying in the present, making the most of those moments. A friend’s tagline on her email is: “Enjoy the little things, for one day you may look back and realize they were the big things.” Being someone who likes to have big things to look forward to (don’t most people?), this idea prods me a bit. In rushing to get on to the “big thing”–like the annual beach getaway–I sometimes don’t realize that there is beauty and depth in the little thing. Often these little things have to do with my three little things–my kids.

Besides not having a mountain of patience, I’ve driven enough rings around the Beltway, made enough mac n’ cheese and hot dogs, and presided over enough “word study” sessions to feel like I’ve earned the right to not always enjoy those “little things.” At bedtime, I’m literally willing my kids to sleep, like a marathoner with the finish line in sight, as if that will make any difference in what they actually do. I usually end up surprised and frustrated when they don’t seem to have received my mind-controlling messages and suddenly appear in the kitchen for that life-preserving glass of water that will sit untouched by their bedside all night.

Even now, my 10-year-old daughter, who leaves for camp this weekend, is hanging around as I type outside on the patio. I try not to shoo her away too sharply–she will be gone for two weeks, after all–but my first thought when I see her is “not now.” She comes closer, and I uncharacteristically hold my tongue and wait to see what she does. She has showered and dressed and fastened a fake flower to the side of her wet, blond hair that is pulled back in a ponytail.

“Mom, can I see your phone?” (That’s where all the games are.)

I hand it to her and look back at my screen. She sits down at the table next to me and asks if I’ve seen a sweatshirt that she needs to pack for camp.

“Honey, I’m working on something. I’ll be happy to talk in a bit, and then we can take Cookie for a walk.”

She wanders over to the swing and sits. She’s not excited, not upset, just slouches in the swing with that fuscia flower in her hair, lightly pushing her feet back and forth. I think about what I’m writing and how this beautiful, contented (for the moment!) 10-year-old, excited and scared about her first-ever sleep-away camp, is soon to be a 10-year-old who will have had a two-week experience that I will have had nothing to do with, except for write the occasional letter and send a care package, maybe. She will come back changed, even if ever so slightly.

She ambles back over to the table, grabs my phone and starts to show videos of her and her sister to our scruffy terrier, who lies at her feet.

“Mom, look at Cookie watching!” She is giggling.

And I am watching my daughter. It’s only a little thing, this moment in which a 10-year-old is delighting in showing her dog a video, but it’s one I’m paying attention to.

Think I’ll go walk that dog now.

The Stealth Napper

In this entry I randomly select a song title from my itunes library as a writing prompt.

Song title: “Never Gonna Leave This Bed” by Maroon 5

I can’t say that I enjoy NOT being a morning person, but I also have come to realize that I cannot fight my “bio-ribbons,” (as one daughter calls biorhythms.) Contrary to what I used to think — as a teenager, college student, employee, wife, then mother — you don’t necessarily morph into a morning person when you “grow up.”

It’s kind of like growing up itself, actually. Over time, as you gradually adopt all the accoutrements of adulthood — a job, a professional wardrobe, a rent payment, a husband, a house, a dog-as-first-child — one day you find that everyone thinks you really are a grown-up. And you think, “I’ve fooled them.”

So it is being a night owl who must moonlight as a morning person. You wake up at 6:30 a.m., rouse the kids, make breakfast, rush out the door, and weave and bob through traffic to get to school on time. You go to that meeting about making snacks for the teachers and race to yoga so you can squeeze in your de-stressing and detoxing. You feel energized enough to go make that stultifying grocery store run. You walk the dog in the sun-filled park. You perk up just in time for the afternoon carpool.

But sometimes, after that morning carpool … you go back to bed.

Yes, on rare occasions, when I have that little pocket of time after morning drop-off and no appointments or responsibilities (glaring ones, at least), I’ve driven back home, beelined upstairs and flopped into bed. This is particularly the case if it’s been an unfortunate “no-coffee” morning — if my husband, who usually makes the coffee, is away and we’ve had a searching-all-over-for-the-math-homework-that-was-just-in-the-backpack kind of mornings.

This return to sleep doesn’t happen nearly as often as I’d like. But I like knowing it’s in the universe of possibilities. It feels illegal, in a good way.

Further confession: I’ve even found a quiet place near my children’s school to park the car, set my phone alarm, and tilt my seat back for a 10-minute catnap. Yes, I feel like those cabbies you sometimes see catching winks in their car, and I can relate.

Once, when the twins were infants, I remember arriving home bleary-eyed from an afternoon of errands with them both sound asleep in their car seats. A friend’s car was temporarily occupying our one-car garage, so I parked in front of our house, cut off the engine, cracked the windows, and reclined my seat for a siesta. Why fight it?

A few days later I ran into my neighbor, who smiled a little as she said, “I saw you in the car the other day. You and the babies — all asleep.” Her eyes widened.

Trying not to show how embarrassed I was, I just smiled back and murmured something about “If you can’t beat ‘em…”

I think our world would be a more peaceful, serene place if we openly embraced the idea of the catnap. Luminaries such as John F. Kennedy and Leonardo DaVinci apparently did. In fact, how about adding napping rooms to every Starbucks? If that tall, grande or venti latte’s not doing the trick, you could order up a 10, 20 or 30-minute nap. Extra dark. Eye pillow included.