not sure how today ends
an optimistic online journal about love, life, and parenting in a big city
J: O, what are you doing?
O: Watching TV and taking care of my baby, 'cause that's what grown-ups do.
So, yeah, kids notice. They watch, they listen, they learn. And I'm ok with the fact that O has observed my bouncing a crying baby to sleep while catching up on The Daily Show, or more embarrassingly, Hell's Kitchen.
It's just a reminder. You are being watched, and more importantly, your behavior will be emulated, both now and in the future.
O: I'm never going to sleep. I'm going to be awake forever. You can't make me sleep and I won't.
Tonight's bedtime was epic. It was a toy-throwing, tantrum-filled, they-are-lucky-that-they-are-cute, kind of bedtime. It was the kind of bedtime where there had to be ice in the water, where P had to go potty three separate times, where we switched pajamas and rubbed lotion on their feet. It was the kind of bedtime where you wonder what you are doing wrong. (Best guess-everything)
It was the kind of bedtime that made me want a glass of wine.
I remember watching the sitcoms of my childhood, where parents happily bundled the adorable children off to bed: a story book, a kiss on the forehead, tucked in tight, done. That is not what it looks like over here. Maybe at some point, it will, but not now. Right now, it's a battle or maybe a war. Some nights we make ground, and feel like we might be winning. Tonight was not one of those nights.
Tomorrow will be different, maybe better, maybe worse, but they are asleep, for now.
Somebody, send help, or maybe just more wine.
O: Mom, I'm discomfortable. I'm too too hot.
K: Take off your jacket.
O: But then I'll be cold like a popsicle.
When it comes to ambient temperature, O has about a three degree window of comfort. She is hungry constantly, except when she's not, and then she will pick delicately at whatever is placed in front of her. She is often hungry for only one particular food group, usually carbohydrates, namely bread.
O: But Mommy, I'm not apple hungry. I'm bread hungry.
K: Aren't we all, kiddo. Aren't we all?
Hard work and a sandy tushy are rarely comfortable, but so worth it.
I feel responsible to provide for my children's basic needs: food, shelter, clothing, and so on. I even feel responsible to provide them with an engaging and enriching life: swim lessons, education, vacations, trips to museums. As O gets older and more self-sufficient, however, I feel less and less responsible for her overall comfort. Even as I'm typing this I realize how harsh that might sound. I really don't care much about her comfort.
I want her to have agency and understand consequences. I want her to make the choice to not carry her jacket and then deal with the natural consequence that extends from that choice.
But even beyond that, I don't want her to always be comfortable. Most of the big, wonderful things in life are uncomfortable at some point. Learning something new, putting yourself out there for a new relationship, getting your PhD, mastering a skill, swimming in the big pool, these things are not comfortable. They require someone with the resilience to move through discomfort, to see the big picture, to chase the dream.
Unfortunately, what that looks like right now is my dragging a hungry, inappropriately dressed preschooler through the world, while she wails that her bag is too heavy and her shoes hurt her feet, while I stride forward, deaf to her cries and blind to the judgmental stares from anyone in earshot. Mostly.
Mother of the year.
At the beginning of the summer, we bought O a pair of purple Saltwaters. She loved them on sight. She wore them out of the store. Every day that she has worn shoes this summer, she has worn these shiny purple leather sandals. For those of you unfamiliar with Saltwater Sandals, and you shouldn't be because they are the best, they have an old-fashioned buckle around the ankle, the kind with the little metal frame and the little metal post, like the world's tiniest belt buckle. O very quickly realized she could slip the ankle strap of her new favorite purple shoes over her heel, thus removing them independently. About two weeks ago, after a frustrated ten minutes, she managed to undo the buckles independently, once the shoes were already off of her foot. Her current battle is the refastening of that tricky buckle with the strap around her ankle.
O, our neighbor Belle, and those ubiquitous purple Saltwaters
As I stand there, breathing deeply, trying to remember that the important thing is not how fast we can get to the grocery store, but rather her sense of accomplishment at completing this task, coaching her through the buckle's trickery, I hear myself saying, "That's it. One step at a time. Thread the strap through, before you put the post in the hole," on a loop, as calm as I can manage. My inside-self is cursing whoever created this buckle and placed it on the outside of this tiny shoe, in a place nearly impossible for preschool-level fine-motor skills to manage. My inside-self is leaping and jumping and my fingers are itching to take the shoe from her hand and cram the sandal on her foot myself, but somehow, hearing myself say, "one step at a time," has begun to resonate. Sometimes she buckles them, and sometimes she doesn't.
I'm trying to slow down, for them and for me. I am trying not to rush them through their steps, to give them the space and the grace to take them one at a time, on their own terms, at their own pace.
I am learning the value of focus and patience in my own work. I am trying to tackle the thing that is in front of me with as much focus and determination as O has for that tiny purple shoe, one step at a time.
Every now and then, I get these glimpses of peace.
It used to only happen when they were both asleep. At night, after they had both nodded off, I would breathe in the silence of the house, content that they were both right where they belonged, safe and dreaming.
Then, it started happening when one of them was sleeping, or at school, or with a grandparent. O would become engrossed with some made-up play that didn't require my narration, or P would climb into my lap, content to silently twirl a piece of my hair around her tiny finger.
But now, and only very recently, it is happening when they are both awake. The moments are fleeting and mercurial. The slightest noise or distraction can upset them. But with increasing frequency, there is peace in my house. Sometimes, they find a way to play together. Sometimes, they are playing separately, side by side, but lost to each other in a world of imagination. Once, I even discovered O using a picture book to tell P a story, but a heated debate about who should turn the page quickly ended that and resulted in a torn book, pulled hair, and hurt feelings.
Glimpses of peace. I'll take it.
This is the second week of school for LAUSD. It still feels like the middle of summer, but my Facebook feed is full of shiny faces, new shoes, and backpacks. Our tiny friends with older siblings are on different schedules, no longer able to meet up for an impromptu afternoon at the park.
For the first time, I really know some kids and some parents that had their first day of Kindergarten last week. Before this year, it has always been a vague, abstract, someday kind of idea. This year is different. This year it lands heavy on my chest. This year I cried at the pictures of other people's children on their first day of school.
I can't tell you why I cried. Maybe it is because the school looks so big and she still look so small. Maybe it is because I've known him since he was half this age, held his hand and wiped his boogers. Maybe it is because I know how this big new step, not more than any of the others, but in a new sharp way, makes her mom feel that she is losing her, even when she knows that isn't true. Maybe it is because I don't have a plan yet. It's only a year away and I don't have a plan.
But they all did it anyway. The first day of school came and went. The intelligence I've received from the other side, is that somewhere, deep down, all of the work of those first five years pays off. I've heard that they eat more at dinner and fall asleep in a sweaty heap in the middle of bedtime stories. I've heard that after six hours apart, they miss their siblings, who they've been been squabbling with all summer. I've heard it has been a grand adventure.
Whether I am or not, they were all ready.
I'm so glad I have another year.
Enough is enough. I'm starting a village.
This is hard. The days are long and sometimes the nights are even longer. I often wonder how other people are doing it. I think the short answer is, they aren't. They are faking it, just like I am.
I'm done faking it. I'm inviting people into my messy kitchen, pointing out the junk drawer. I'm inviting them to join my village. Because, that is what is at the root of the isolation and the loneliness of modern parenting, we are all hiding our messy kitchen, our four year-old's paci, our bag of Doritos. Our shame is the barricade between us and our chances at community.
Villagers
There are a handful of people in my life that are already in my village, the people who say yes when they can, the people who call on me for help, and I treasure them. They know all about my messy kitchen, and have invited me into theirs. But I seem to run across, on a daily basis, people who are too busy judging to help, or people who are too busy hiding to be helped.
Enough. I'll show you mine, if you show me yours. My house is never as clean as I want it to be. My clothes are all shoved into random drawers. There are always dishes in my sink. We currently have an old Star Wars bed sheet tossed over the TV because we told O it was "broken". I bought O and P a snack pack of Keebler cookies each at the grocery store the other day, just so I could drive the last fifteen minutes of my day in peace. I am often short tempered, usually when, in retrospect I realize, they needed my kindness and patience the most.
If you can live with all of that, then I am inviting you to join my village. Come be beautifully imperfect with me. Come try your best and enjoy the successes and failures that comes along with it. Come have dinner in my messy kitchen. Come share a bottle of wine on my back porch. Let's parent together. Let's share the load.
The only rules: help when you can, and remember everyone you meet is fighting a battle you know nothing about, so be kind.
Oh, and I might ask you to watch my kids for a few hours every now and then.
Now accepting applications.
I write these books. Books is generous, or perhaps, write is generous. I assemble these books for my daughters' birthdays. They are full of photos from the previous year and accompanied by a story. Although, last year, for O's third birthday, I wimped out and did an alphabet book. A is for Absolutely Overwhelmed.
Now, O's fourth birthday has come and gone and I sit staring at the computer screen with P's second birthday standing menacingly over my shoulder. I am two books past deadline. I understand that it's not a real deadline, not a publisher's-breathing-down-your-neck deadline, but rather a self-imposed, pretending-to-have-your-shit-together deadline. And I do, mostly, have my shit together. But the 26th of April has come and gone, and not only is O's 4th book not here, it's not even written. I guess my fear is that it will become too easy not to do it, that I will fall so far behind and the backlog will become insurmountable, and they'll have these two or three lovely memories from their early life, and not the eighteen-volume set I had envisioned, kind of like that baby book that is 1/3 filled out (thanks a lot Mom and Dad). And maybe it's just that, it starts to feel like another failure, and what is modern parenting, if not a series of real or imagined failures?
So this time, I've chosen not to fail, real or imagined. I've chosen to write that book, in spite of being tired, in spite of feeling uninspired, in spite of being so far past my self-imposed deadline, and in spite of the inevitability of next year's book's being due in nine months. I want them to have that record, that eighteen-volume set, and gosh darn it, I need a win.
The first page
The upside is, after an hour or so of nonjudgmental typing, I'm about halfway done. Jim assures me the story is charming and the layout is attractive. I might even believe him tomorrow, but hey, worst case scenario, it will be the Superman IV of an eighteen-part series.
We aren't failing. We may be succeeding in a way that is different than we imagined, but we aren't failing. Today, O told me she thought the most important thing is to be kind. That feels like a win.
O: I don't like his dog slobber, but I love him anyway.
When I was 19, I did a very dumb thing. Actually, when I was 19, I did quite a few dumb things, but that is for another time and place. I was living in a guest house in LA, and I got a dog, not a tiny, fit-in-your-purse kind of dog, but a real, honest-to-goodness, archetypal dog. I got him from a breeder (see, I warned you, very very dumb). He was the last in the litter and I drove my beat-up old mustang all the way to Chatsworth "just to look," and came home with a brown-eyed, brown-nosed, very brown dog, with a white diamond on his chest and the cutest pink puppy belly ever. He puked on me on the ride home.
I was young and short-sighted, and getting a dog was really dumb. I had a busy, unreliable schedule. I really didn't know what I was getting myself into. Sam, Yahoo!, and I figured it out. I taught Sam to sit, fetch, and potty outside. Sam taught me responsibility, the importance of showing up, and what unconditional love could feel like. Because of Sam, I didn't go to the next bar. I needed to go home to walk him. Because of Sam, I didn't go on that last minute, ill-conceived trip to Vegas. Because of Sam, when my life began to feel out of control, when I was self-isolating and being self-destructive, I still had to get out of bed and go buy dog food, and sometimes, that made all the difference. Sam is, without a doubt, the best dumb thing I've ever done.
Somewhere along the way, I met Jim. We were working together and maintaining a strictly professional relationship. According to Jim, he first realized he was interested in me romantically when he caught himself wondering whether or not Sam would like him. At this point, Sam has been my and Jim's dog longer than he was just mine, but I still remind him, Sam was mine first. Jim thinks, cosmically, I got Sam for him, and he might be right.
It never dawned on me, that hot day in Chatsworth, that I was getting my children's first dog. Of course, a little research on the lifespan of a chocolate lab and a little math would have lead me to that possibility, but like I said before, shortsighted. I remember the night we brought O home from the hospital. I was so worried about how my gentle giant would react to this new tiny person in our home. He sniffed her and licked her and she was instantly his, part of our pack. That first night he whimpered anxiously whenever she cried, and ran from her crib to our feet and back again. Now, he sleeps at the foot of P's toddler bed when she is restless at bedtime. He puts up with their clumsy hugs, eye pokes, and ear pulls. He endures the noise and the chaos of our small home, full of small people. In return, we give him as much love as we can muster and all of the food that gets dropped on the floor.
And now he is 12, geriatric for a dog of his size. He doesn't jump on the bed anymore and I think his hearing is going, or perhaps just becoming more selective. He'll still chase a tennis ball until his paws are bloody and the other day, out of nowhere, he jumped straight up on to a three foot wall from a standing position. Some days, he still looks like a puppy. Some days, the reality of losing him hits me like a punch in the gut. Sam and I have been together for a long time.
Sometimes, by being sensible, we talk ourselves out of some of life's biggest joys. Sam is my reminder to do dumb things, to take big risks. You never know how they'll play out, and sometimes, they are so very worth it.
O: I crumbled it up because it was no good. It was broken because I made a mistake.
O has been trying to write her name. At first, she sat happily at the table scrawling her O followed by other various squiggles, lines, and shapes. Unprompted, she asked me to write the letters out on a piece of paper so that she could practice the letters that aren't O. Within minutes, she had crumpled up the paper, frustrated that her letters weren't straight and even, like mine, angry that her V looked like a mountain and not an upside down mountain, mad that she had to struggle through imperfect before she could have perfection. As I sat there with her, explaining hard work, struggle, and the beauty that lies in imperfection, I felt like a hypocrite.
I have been stalled. My computer is filled with half-written blog posts and titles. It is not the first time I have given up on something when I figured out I couldn't do it perfectly. It is kind of my MO. Better to give up and quit then to try and fail. But there is nothing that puts your own behavior in more stark relief than seeing your own bad habits acted out by your children.
So, I am recommitting myself to hard work. I will write even when it feels like a struggle. I will also, and this is the hard one for me, look for that beauty that hides in the cracks of imperfection, and when I find it, I'll be sure to share.