family – Page 2 – Bad Parenting 101

Déjà View

This is the story of abandoning my family for two and a half weeks one summer to do something ridiculously selfish and wonderful. It is also about gelato, meltdowns, memory, and déjà vu. Have I mentioned that already?

Here’s how it started. A photography professor of mine leaned across the aisle during a lecture. She told me that she was taking a group of students to Italy during the summer. “You should come,” she said.

I laughed a little hysterically, to the point where the exchange became awkward, and we tuned back to the lecture.

Up until then, I’d only slept away from my four-year-old two nights of her entire little life, and those were spent on the floor of a friend’s house a couple blocks away–clutching my phone all night, just in case. And I’d never been away from my two-year-old. I had to lay down with her for an hour or two every night to get her to settle and go to sleep. Though I had weaned her at 18 months, she had taken to digging in my belly button as a replacement soothing mechanism. She picked at me with her tiny talons until I bled. Scar tissue, it turns out, is surprisingly sensitive, but I wasn’t sure how to wean a child from belly-digging.

There are probably a few people reading this that will roll their eyes and mutter in that superior way about sleep training. In my defense, I did try it with the first child. After several unsuccessful attempts on my own, after reading a pile of helpful books, I finally hired a sleep consultant, and tried again. My child cried and cried and cried and cried. She did not let up for naps; she did not let up for nights. She would doze off occasionally, only to wake up ten minutes later and start again. I let her cry and cry until there was a hole in my heart the size of Saskatchewan. So after THIRTY DAYS, I gave up. I didn’t even bother to try with kid #2. Now, how was I going to leave my spouse alone with such a mess?

With all of this in mind, I mentioned the Italy trip to my husband, so he could have a good laugh as well.

“Maybe you should go,” he said.

Best not to ask twice.

Strangely, despite the enormity of the impending separation, I didn’t freak out right away. I had childcare issues to resolve, packing crises, film and equipment to procure, and a research paper due upon departure. I worried about all of that instead.

Then I got on the plane…and cried for a couple of hours straight. Not demure little teardrops, either, but swollen, hiccoughing, snotty, sobbing. My apologies to the bewildered man seated beside me. Eventually regaining composure, I spent the rest of the flight listening to language lessons and, undoubtedly, murmuring along with the patient Italian lady in my headphones. Again, apologies.

The first couple of days on the ground were a blur of disoriented jet lag, a breathless march from church after church to museum after museum. Honestly, all I really remember about Florence is the gelato. Limone. Pesca. Caffè. Cioccolato. Shop after shop, fresh fruit piled high atop the frozen tubs, a little melty on the sides from the summer heat. In between scoops, I was having an out of body experience with some really fabulous twenty-year-olds. I was completely untethered.

On day four, we headed off to a monastery in Tuscany, where the landscape did something wholly unexpected: it became familiar.

I had already seen this place, on coffee tables, in ads, in my dreams. It looked exactly like it was supposed to look, and I was unable to see it as a foreign place. Even as I was wandering this countryside for the first time, it was already a memory, part of the landscape of my psyche.

For days, I couldn’t make a picture because all of the photographs had already been made; making another would be superfluous. I focused on the long, lazy dinners–completely unknown to the parents of small children–the carafes of house wine, the late night walks filled with fireflies, frogs, and stars. I focused on the warm camaraderie of young strangers, who asked questions such as, “What is childbirth like?” “What are your irrational fears?” “Who do you secretly, shamefully lust after?” Or, “If you had to eat someone here, who would it be?” Those questions don’t often come up at pre-school potlucks. It felt so good to contemplate anything besides bowel movements, discipline, and sleep deprivation.

Since I would never forgive myself if I went home empty camera’d, I figured it was time to shoot something. And because I couldn’t make a new picture of the landscape, I tried instead to make pictures that looked like what I could see in my head. I attempted to capture on film my memories that were not really memories, that were not really mine.

After I returned to the States, I stumbled upon a passage that put this sensation into words:

“The very colors of the place had seeped into my blood: just as Hampden, in subsequent years, would always present itself immediately to my imagination in a confused whirl of white and green and red, so the country house first appeared as a glorious blur of watercolors, of ivory and lapis blue, chestnut and burnt orange and gold, separating only gradually into the boundaries of remembered objects: the house, the sky, the maple trees. Even that day, there on the porch…it had the quality of a memory…” excerpted from The Secret History, by Donna Tartt

A very belated thank you to those of you who made that trip possible. I had a strange and wonderful time.

The Daybed

I don’t say this to evoke pity. Please don’t read it in a melodramatic tone in your head, or season it with melancholy. Think matter-of-fact. It is what it is.

I was a bit of an accident.

I asked my mother about it, once, and she paused for an uncomfortable moment before responding. “Honey, by the time you showed up, we were so happy to see you.”

Even as a child, I knew what that meant. That explained the six years between my sister and me. It explained why nine years separated me from one brother, and twelve from the other. It explained why I often felt like a child in a roomful of adults, and why, for many years, the taller people in the house took some precedence. It wasn’t all bad, though. In general, they also took the heat and the blame.

When we were all at home in our little red house, we piled atop each other, and tensions tended to rise. My parents hastily carved out the attic to make two bedrooms, one for my brothers, and one for my sister and me. When my brothers began to chafe at those close quarters, the eldest retreated into the basement with a black light bulb and day-glo Easy Rider posters. Once my sister hit her teens, though, when it became increasingly awkward for us to share a room, there seemed nowhere else to expand.

After much debate, it was finally decided that I should move into what was essentially a throughway, a roomy passage between the kitchen and the bathroom. As one might imagine, I had extremely limited space for luxuries such as clothing or books. There was a shelf put in, and a small dresser crammed under the stairs. There was a window which peered at the garage, and I hung a few things on the wall, but because everyone trooped through this space during waking hours, I couldn’t have my bed down there. Instead, I was allowed use of “the daybed.” Never mine; just the. This was a couch-like thing which served as a cot-sized bed at night. I didn’t really mind. Mostly. It beat witnessing my sister’s eighth grade make-out sessions.

The daybed was very simply designed. Very nordic. Imagine a cheap door, taken off its hinges and laid flat on skinny, pointed legs. An egg-colored foam pad, about four inches thick, lay on top, covered with an upholstery apparently conceived in the seventies. It was a magenta paisley, crossed with a parade of stripes and shapes which have never been seen together since. It was poorly made, too, so the rough metal zipper was entirely visible along the side, and I often grazed the backs of my legs against its voracious teeth. More inviting were the two long, wedge-shaped pillows which served as the back of the couch during the day. These were covered with corduroy of a very specific blue hue, one I still associate with all things quiet and comfortable. I loved to run my fingers along the nap endlessly, with it or against being equally zen-like.

From the daybed, I would doze to the sound of the dishwasher, and wake to the sound and smell of the eternal percolator, a seemingly indestructible wedding gift from the fifties.

It was there that I lay through the German measles and the mumps; there that I listened to my mother read Watership Down.

One evening, my mother found the nuts I had stolen from the roasting pan full of Chex party mix in the basement. They were in an old bread bag, tied in a knot and tucked under the daybed. They might have escaped notice, too, had my mother not helped me put the sheets on that night. “What are you, some sort of squirrel?” she asked, but not too sharply. I was glad when she let it go, perhaps understanding how hard it was to get the good bits when your siblings are so much older and faster.

I remember lying on that daybed the night after the girl scout picnic in second grade, the one where I ate a hot dog stuffed with Velveeta and wrapped in bacon before grilling. I threw up six or seven times–a little daybed volcano–and have never eaten a hotdog since.

I remember lying there sniffling, lamenting my lack of space and privacy, when my medium brother heard me and tiptoed in. We were not a terribly affectionate family, nor emotionally adept, but he explained with such kindness and enthusiasm how he would make it feel big enough. I still feel deep gratitude for that night. He began to schlepp all kinds of things from his room, my sister’s, the kitchen, wherever. He filled that tiny place from floor to ceiling so I could be pleasantly surprised when he it emptied out again, and there would be room to roll over and even to stand with my hands outstretched.

But by far, my favorite memory of the daybed was a secret I neglected to tell anyone, lest I would have to share that, too. Ours was a frugal household, where finances dictated a thermostat set at a bone-chilling 58 degrees through even the worst of the South Dakota winter nights. But when temperatures outside settled well below zero, maintaining 58 degrees still necessitated occasional blasts of delicious heat. A major duct ran through the wall, all along the length of the back of the daybed. Who would know, with the blue corduroy pillows in place all day, what heavenly heat emanated from the wall behind me? I pressed my socked feet against it, snuggling like a cat to a sunny patch, and dreaming dreams.

These days, we set the thermostat at a balmy 62 at night, and I have a heating pad, which spares my spouse from my icy toes. But I think the comfort it offers is not simply a physical one. It is also a remembrance of those long, cold nights, pressed against the wall in my make-shift little roomlet. It is a reminder that there is always enough room for me, and more than enough of what I really need.

Why I drive like Mr. Magoo, and how that might help me finish my book before I’m dead

**An apology to those of you who accidentally got this yesterday. I guess I blog a little like Mr. Magoo, too.

I was recently explaining to a friend why I have trouble getting much writing done.

I described the runway approach I use to build momentum: collecting my thoughts…exercising to clear my head…I need a full stomach, a glass of water, and my phone nearby, set to vibrate. I like my work area to be clean and organized. In fact, it’s best if the whole house is clean and organized, the bills paid, meal planning done, and groceries in the fridge, so there’s no lingering ‘to do’ list hanging over my head.

I wish I were exaggerating.

I need a writing soundtrack. Headphones are best, with familiar music rambling like an old friend inside my head. I like to drift in and out of a song without it snagging my attention.

Once I actually sit down and face the computer, I usually need to write a healthy chunk of crap before I can access the good stuff. Then, after the initial spew, I need about three or four solid hours of uninterrupted time to make any measurable progress.

As I was describing this process, it suddenly struck me how absurd it all was. Sure, who wouldn’t write best under those circumstances? The problem is that they occur simultaneously maybe once a year; the remainder of the time, I just wish I were seriously writing. I might squeeze out a blog post now and then, but when is The Book going to happen?

Here’s my revelation: I simply can’t wait for the stars to align to produce the perfect writing conditions; if I do, I won’t finish my book until long after I’m dead.

I need to write now, regardless of the circumstances (or, for that matter, the litany of mental obstacles listed previously).

And I’ll bet it’s possible.

After all, I drive best when I’m well-rested, well-fed, and alone in the car, listening to my favorite music. But, I don’t wait to go places until I meet all of the aforementioned conditions. If I need to be somewhere, I go. If I need to get my loved ones around, I do. I take small people to school and to the doctor and the dentist. I fill up with gas and get a few things for dinner. Maybe I parked in the sun so I have to hold the steering wheel with some slightly used tissues I found under the seat. Maybe the playdate gets carsick and I can’t find a plastic bag. No matter. If I need to drive, I drive. Never mind that I have to crank Today’s Hits in order for my two lovely children to refrain from bickering or throwing something at the driver. Shoot, I even have to drive when there is bickering and throwing. I have to drive when people are crying or asking questions like ‘what is god?’ I have to drive when I’m in a bad mood, when I’m sick, and when I’ve been so busy that I’ve forgotten to eat a meal or two. When I need to be somewhere, I go–no matter what is happening in and around me. It might not be graceful. I might careen a bit like Mr. Magoo, but I can get there.

IT’S THE SAME WITH WRITING OR MAKING ART OR PARENTING OR HAVING IMPORTANT CONVERSATIONS OR ANYTHING AT ALL. If we wait for the perfect set of circumstances, we will miss our opportunity completely. End of story.

Charlie work for parents.

For those of you unfamiliar with the concept of Charlie work, it originated on an episode of It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, and refers to the crappy jobs that no one wants to do–like cleaning toilets.

As parents, there are endless rewards and inspiring moments, and you can read all about them in a stack of Hallmark cards, or in one of those Chicken Soup-y books.

Then, there are the boring moments, like when your child is not quite sick enough–when pulling the shades and administrating tylenol is not sufficient–and you are forced to read Rainbow Magic Fairy books aloud all day long.

What remains after all the inspiration and the boredom is the Charlie work. This category includes diaper duty, of course, but the bad jobs continue long past potty-training days. Here’s the very tip top of my current list of Charlie work for parents. Feel free to add to my list.

Attending assemblies. Weirdly, I’ve heard some parents dig these. I don’t know why. They are always scheduled smack in the middle of the day, so you get to hunt for parking at drop off, pick up, AND assembly, but don’t have time to do anything useful in between except lament having to go. You are funneled into a malodorous multi-purpose room, where the floor clings to your shoes with the lingering remains of corn dogs and barf. Time to choose: scrunch onto the end of one of those long clammy tables, or duel for one of the last rusty folding chairs in the back? Choose wisely, because assemblies start late–REALLY late–providing ample time to reflect on “chicken fried steak” and canned peas. An eternity passes.

The room swells with more and more children that are NOT YOURS and are consequently far less tolerable. Someone is being gleefully squashed by their neighbors on the bench. As the collisions escalate, crying starts, triggering an endless lecture. Someone is making fart noises, and at least one or two small people have a sticky appendage lodged in a nostril at any given moment. Make a mental note to use hand sanitizer at the next opportunity. At last, the Principal waves awkwardly, taps the shrieking microphone, and makes the sign for “silent fox.”

The show commences.

Time grinds to a halt while everyone else’s kids do impossibly boring things that you can’t hear anyway. Then, when your own darling child finally lurches onto stage and does the most amazing thing ever, some asshole with a ten-inch lens elbows you out of the way and you miss the shot.

I’d like to see a greeting card for that mess.

How I ruined my kids’ chances of becoming President by microwaving their food in plastic containers before I knew better (plus a million other parenting mistakes)

Parenting was always hard work.

Except, perhaps, in Betty Draper’s world, where you hired someone to cook, clean, and raise your kids while you mooned about in your house dress.

That Mad Men model of parenting never appealed to me, though. I like being involved–hearing what my kids are thinking, helping them solve problems, exploring the world together. I’m certainly not advocating for a hands-off experience. Still, when did parenting become so fraught with pressure and competition? When did my goal to raise happy, healthy children devolve into sheer panic that my children will never achieve their full potential because I failed to be the perfect parent. I admit:

a) I didn’t wait list my children for a competitive nursery school before they were born.

b) Those eighteen-dollar, über green metal sippy cups from Switzerland that I gave my toddlers contained bisphenol A.

c) I’m monolingual. Mostly.

e) I avoid PTA meetings like the plague.

f) The robotics workshops for 3rd graders were completely booked up before I figured out how to log onto the registration site.

What’s going on here?

Am I really stressing out that my kids’ summer day camp might not be academically rigorous enough? Do I really believe that a single parenting misstep will impede their potential progress forever?

Worst of all, I worry about their school. Why is that? The basics are completely covered, and my kids are doing well. They have amazing gardening, art, dance, and computer classes. They have science fairs, field trips, carnivals, committed teachers and parents. Yet, whenever I talk with parents of children at other schools, I feel my blood pressure start to rise. I get school envy. Your kid’s class has launched a website? They are learning Italian? They went on a field trip to China? I am driving myself crazy. I keep losing sight of what is important here. These are kids. They are learning. They are creative. They are happy and growing confident.

At the end of the day, isn’t it more important to teach them to think for themselves and enjoy life? Isn’t that a greater gift than a childhood resume cooked up by parents hell-bent on making sure their child has no leisure time whatsoever? Play is important, too. Extended periods of unstructured time formed the basis of my childhood, and those were the times that I could choose my direction of inquiry; I could develop as the author of my own creative world.

Last year, I was weirdly elated when I dropped my girls off at a camp I like to call: “Lord of the Flies.” It’s just a hundred kids running amok, loosely supervised by pre-teens sporting color-coded bandanas. Campers are singing inane and vaguely inappropriate songs, making endless lanyards, and building forts out of fallen branches.

I think it’s fabulous when children are immersed in another language, taken on a trip, introduced to science, opera, and history. We seek those opportunities and seize them when we can. But in the meantime, let’s not forget to take some time to play and enjoy each other’s company. Life is good.

Learning to have an opinion

I’m not trying to sound pathetic when I say this, but when you are the mother of small children it is so much easier if you have no needs or desires.

Babies can be very sweet, and they can also be ridiculously helpless and demanding. Any ideas you might have about the purpose of evenings or weekends–or NIGHTS, for that matter–are best left repressed. Just go with the flow. If baby is hungry, baby gets fed. If baby needs a fresh diaper, by gum she gets it.

If you are at the playground and the bathrooms are locked you simply do not need to go to the bathroom.

If you are at the zoo and everyone is happy, then it does not matter that you forgot to eat breakfast. And lunch. Or that the only snacks you brought are teething biscuits and boobs. You just wait until you can pry your child away from the lemurs. It’s not like you’re going to die.

On the weekend, you dump the baby with the spouse and race to lay in groceries and supplies for the week. Who knows when you might next escape unchaperoned. It is so much more bearable to drop a small fortune on pre-landfill when no one is screaming or battling diarrhea in your orbit.

If your infant does not nap or tolerate being set down, any serious business just has to wait for the spouse to return. And if he happens to be in Japan like mine often was, you’re just fucked.

Around this time, a friend asked me if I had seen the movie Kill Bill. I laughed maniacally in her face.

“I’m on house arrest,” I explained.

She looked at me quizzically. “It’s out on dvd now,” she countered.

“I know,” I sighed. “It’s just that–” I cut myself short. How could I explain that even if I did manage to get the kid to sleep without dozing off myself, I was still going to have to get up two or three or five times during the night. I wasn’t about to squander the opportunity to restore my sanity on 111 minutes of choreographed violence. Chances are, if something was published, released, sung, built, or exploded between 2003 and 2008 I’ve never heard of it. You can ask, though, and I’ll do my best not to get huffy.

Now that the girls are six and eight, I am realizing that I have completely forgotten how to figure out what I would actually like to be doing. Not only is my spouse willing and able to step in, the girls can amuse themselves for an hour or so, yet I can’t decide how to spend my precious sixty minutes. Occasionally I figure it out at the end of the day, when it’s too late. Oh, yeah. It would have felt great to write and exercise, but I spent the whole day playing with the dollhouse and schlepping the kids around town. If I set clear goals, I could squeeze in dolls and exercise, right?

Lookout world. I’m thinking about formulating an opinion.

Regarding Slasher and his sad demise (part II)

Over the years, my feisty cat Slasher slowed significantly, for which my five-year-old daughter was particularly grateful. They had spent her first four and a half years as sworn enemies, but now, too old to hunt or even make it to the top bunk, he stayed in and spent the whole night on Josie’s bed. Sometimes, the whole day as well. Those two were suddenly inseparable.

By late February, we knew we had an old, ailing cat, but we didn’t realize he was dying, so we headed to paradise for a family vacation. By the second night away, the catsitter was calling. Slasher wasn’t getting up much at all anymore. She brought his water dish onto Josie’s bed and called me to express concern. I spent the next few days anxiously touring volcanoes or pretending to relax on the beach…then hurrying back to the rental to phone the sitter and sob. Poor Hannah. This was not the first time a pet tried to kick the bucket on her watch. She stopped by twice a day and called with updates. Since he was 18 with few systems functioning properly, we all knew what was coming. We just wanted him to hold on until we got there.

When we arrived home, sandy and bleary-eyed, it was four in the morning. I saw immediately that he was skin and bones, lying in a pool of urine. I stripped the bed and cleaned him up as best I could. I tucked Josie in fresh sheets and made a pile of baby blankets beside her for Slasher. In the morning, I tried to move him to a cozy, waterproof spot downstairs where I could comfort him and make vet calls at the same time, but when he collapsed trying to drag himself back to Josie’s bed, I relented.

The next couple of days are a sad, sad blur. Crying while driving. Crying in the grocery store. Crying at NPR stories, at the funnies, and anytime someone asked, “how are you?” Acknowledging his distaste for the vet, we had him put to sleep at home, while we held him and stroked him. No one could get his eyes to close, though, so he continued to stare at me in his scrappy, crusty way. For days.

In my house, it takes quite a while to prepare for an appropriate burial. Photographs must be taken. A coffin must be made…and decorated…and further embellished with sparkly items. A grave marker is necessary, as is the name plaque. This all takes time, as you can imagine. Time when said dead pet remains lying around our house. I noticed that this seemed to cause other parents some anxiety, so I started to tell them about the dead cat before the playdate, and reassure them about proper handwashing, et cetera. That only made things worse.

“Where are you keeping him?” one mother asked, completely perplexed. As I was answering, I realized that letting your child sleep with a dead cat was a little unorthodox. Believe it or not, it didn’t feel anywhere near as creepy as that must sound. He was swaddled in his favorite little blanket, in a shallow wooden box, with a couple of cat toys and a fairly peaceful expression. Except for the staring, I mean. Josie couldn’t sleep without him there, and Slasher wouldn’t have wanted to be anywhere else, so it just made sense at the time. I knew it wasn’t a long-term plan. I think Josie got a couple of nights with him after he was sealed in his coffin, as well, while we prepared for the burial, but then we had to transition her to a stuffed cat, and lots of extra bedtime stories. “Who will bury me when I die?” she asked the night after we finally laid him to rest. I couldn’t answer.

We still miss that guy like crazy, but there’s a new cat now. Elsie plays fetch and sleeps on my head. She squawks and perches on my shoulder and often does that Halloween cat pose with fur on end and back humped into the air. She’s worming her way into my heart, too, but there’s no telling if she’ll schmooze and head to the bars like her predecessor. Just got her outdoor shots and her tags, though, so we’ll know soon enough.

Mastering the Art of Fine

I came from a family where excerpts of Amy Vanderbilt’s Etiquette were read with alarming frequency at the dining table. We must have been slow learners. Though it seems unlikely Amy would have condoned the fork jabbing I got for interrupting my father, I was certainly programmed to follow the rules. Consequently, I know what I’m supposed to say when people ask me how I am. But why ask at all if no one really expects a meaningful answer?

There are those awkward moments, of course–standing next to someone too lurky, quick-witted, or dashing for me to concentrate properly–when I find myself saying, “How are you?”as desperate filler. In such instances, even if I might possibly care about the answer, most likely I cannot even hear it. I am too busy plotting how to weasel out of my clammy-handed corner without drawing too much attention to myself.

But usually I genuinely want to know. Therefore I feel some sort of moral imperative to answer frankly. This can be a very bad idea.

The other day, I was really in the abyss, but I decided to drag myself out for some Culture and Shmoozing. I have no clue why this seemed important in my state, but I got a sitter and shoved myself into something fancy-ish. Hurtling across town, I practiced, “Fine. And you?” in a relaxed and self-confident manner. I knew I was going to see someone who intimidates me terribly. Someone who makes me sweat but could totally change my life if I could just get her attention and assistance. My plan was to have a casual chat, perhaps fawn just enough, and then hit her up for a wee bit of advice and support.

The moment of truth. She turned and smiled when she saw me. “How are things going?” she asked. Guess what? Not well. My oldest child is depressed and anxious. A good friend recently betrayed me. My projects have completely stalled, my husband is out of town, and everything at home is in meltdown mode. To top it off, I threw my back out vomiting repeatedly while dangling from the driver’s seat. (My apologies to the kind people on Reposa Street). I looked at her and started having an out-of-body sort of moment. I saw myself manage a weak smile.

“It’s a mixed bag,” I squeaked before disappearing into the crowd. I figure that’s progress.

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