A Real Nightmare

I had a dream:

I wake this morning, my neck and back sore from sitting in the green vinyl waiting room chairs, hunched over Nolie sleeping on my chest and with one arm cast around Addie in the chair next to me.  I manage to wriggle away from both without waking them, and go to stare through the glass at Eric in his hospital bed, tubes going everywhere, machine lights blinking.  I lean my head against the glass, leave it there a minute. 

In January, Eric and I will have been together six years.  But because the state won't recognized our union, our commitment to each other, I cannot be at his bedside now.  Because I bore the children and he didn't, they are considered "my" offspring only, and the state will not allow them to see their father except through this pane of glass.

This is the worst part of all of this, of course--not being able to be with him while he fights this thing.  But, too, there are other things.  He lost his job when his coworkers found out we were living together.  First, it just started as distancing, an occasional heckling.  But then it got worse, and eventually they "let him go."  His supervisor took him aside and told him he was a good worker, but that him being there was just causing too much disruption with the other workers.  So he was fired.

Which means he has no benefits.  I'm still working, but I don't make nearly what he did, and of course he can't be covered under my benefits because he's a man and I'm a woman.  Which means that all of this--the hospital, the medicine, the tubes--won't be covered by insurance. 

I glance over at Addie and Nolie, officially "my" kids and not "our" kids, and wonder about their future.  Wonder about what it would be like if society embraced them having a mom and a dad, wonder if their lives will be full of struggle, financially and emotionally, because Eric and I cannot marry.  Are not "officially" recognized and always less-than, always second-class. 

The nurse did let me sneak in one night, let me hold his hand.  I leaned in to kiss him, too, but she pulled me back, hissing, "No!  Someone might see you!  You have to go now!"  I could tell she was disgusted.  The kids don't understand why they can't see their dad, sit on his lap.  The recovery is bad enough, but then to also explain why they must be kept apart.  It's too much.

But this is what our neighbors and family and elected officials have decided is right.  They argue that it is better for the kids to be in a "normal" family then to be exposed to what Eric and I have together.  Endorsing what we do in the privacy of the home, they argue, is like endorsing child abuse.  The absurdity of this is too much for me to grasp, my anger at this injustice too enormous.

The kids wake up and need to be fed, so we trudge down to the cafeteria.  The women who work there should know us by now, should wink at the kids and say, "Hey, kiddo."  But they don't.  They know that the kids have a mother and a father, and so they won't speak to us--only stare behind our backs and tsk-tsk.  And continue to cast their votes to keep us second-class.  Lines are drawn, lines are drawn, lines are drawn.

Can you imagine?  Maybe you don't have to.

A Little Squirrelly

 

There's nothing but drama here at toddlerspit.  We're lighting ourselves on fire, dropping ourselves on our heads, driving sixty miles on the freeway with four flat tires. 

Well, flat-ish, anyway.

A couple of days back we were all in the clunky old Subaru and Eric mentions that the car is driving a "little squirrelly."  This is a pretty mild statement, really.  This car has been a "little squirrelly" since we bought it used a few years back.  But Eric saying this should have set off alarm bells, and here's why:  Eric is a chronic understater.  He is probably the kindest, most loyal, most wonderful (and best looking) man I have ever met, but he is definitely not effusive.  Far from it.  His favorite responses are "yeah," "fine," and "alright." 

As in, "How's your hamburger, Eric?" 

"Alright." 

As in, "I just spent an hour getting ready for this party--do I look okay?" 

"Yeah." 

It could be the best hamburger the man has ever eaten, and you'd never know it.  I could look like Jessica Alba, and he'd never tell.  Understaters anonymous, I nominate you a new President:  my husband Eric.

So for Eric to say the Soob is a "little squirrelly" is the equivalent of any other human being saying, "Holy shit!  This mother is about to run us right off the road!  We shouldn't drive it until it's been completely rebuilt from the ground up!"  Right.  Alarm bells.

However, because I should probably be President of "bad listeners" anonymous, I didn't follow up on the squirrelly comment.  Which meant that today, on my way to work (which is 30 miles away in the town of Golden), I discovered that the car wasn't really, uh, staying on the road.  No, strike that.  It was really on the road, as in, all over the road. 

As in, it felt like the steering wheel and the tires weren't really attached.

We pay good money for an AAA membership.  I own a cell phone with lots of free minutes.  There are ten thousand car dealerships on the way from Denver to Golden.  Did I pull over and call AAA?  No.  I forgot my cell phone today (if you know how anal I am, you know that I almost never do this.  But I did today).  Did I pull over to a gas station or a dealership?  Yes.  Twice.  But there were long lines at both and I don't know how to put air in my tires, so I freaked out and got back on the road, doing a whiny half-cry the whole way there because I was sure I was going to kill myself, leaving my children motherless, or kill someone else, leaving someone else's children motherless. 

And also because I only had three hours to work before I had to turn around and pick Nolie up, and this was going to eat up my whole half workday.  But for some reason, I could not think clearly enough to figure out what to do, except get back on the road and keep driving.  I am not usually stupid, or a wimp.  But today I was both.  I was so freaked out by the time I got to work that I ate a whole package of Newman's Own Chocolate Chip Cookies and bought a sweatshirt in the school's bookstore.  Because when I'm freaked out, I eat!  I shop!  Look out--if bird flu ever hits here or global warming ratchets up or a Republican President gets elected again, I will get so fat Maury Povitch will need to come and cut me out of my house.  He'll be able to use the chainsaw I will have purchased from the Home Shopping Network.  Pull off the road?  Nah.  Eat three pizzas and six dozen doughnuts and max out the credit card?  Perfect response to a crisis.

I did finally pull the car into the Ford dealership in Golden, which wanted $600 to put on four new tires and do an alignment.  They put air back in the tires and I drove it home.  I DROVE IT HOME, PEOPLE!  I am a menace, and should be locked up and put away. 

But not before driving to the polling station, to try to vote the Democrats back into office.  Can I tell you that this did not decrease my stress levels any?  There was at least a one-hour wait at the polls, and the "computers" kept going down.  The only reason I'm not still at the polls is because Nolie threw the loudest fit I have ever seen a child have, people in line started to freak out, and to avoid a riot, the poll workers took pity on me and moved me to the front of the line.

Which was a blessing, except of course that all the sweet old ladies who were the poll workers wanted to "help" me with the baby.  "Is she on the breast?" one wanted to know as she crowded into the tiny voting booth with me.  "Here, I'll help," she said, patting Nolie's back and pulling at my shirt.

"Thanks," I said.  "I think I've got it."

Where is that extra large package of Harry and David truffles I bought last night?  Can I make it to the Gap before I have to pick Addie up from preschool?  Because I'm not even sure my vote got counted:  the polling workers were shouting "The computers are down, the computers are down!" while I was pushing my "cast your vote" button.  And hey, if we ain't got democracy, at least we got capitalism.  And I'm ready to vote.

In the Instant

In her book The Year of Magical Thinking, Joan Didion recounts the experience of losing her husband of many years.  One minute they were sitting down to dinner together, and the next, he lay slumped over, dead from heart failure.  Of that moment, she writes, and writes again:

Life changes fast.

Life changes in the instant.

You sit down to dinner and life as you know it ends.

Addie, Nolie, and I ventured to the gym this morning.  I always feel better when I work out regularly, and I wouldn't mind getting rid of this babygut.  So we head to the gym and the girls hang out in daycare for an hour while I try to run and lift weights and sweat a little.  We get home, and Nolie is thankfully asleep in her carseat so I can make Addie some lunch.  Pretty ordinary stuff.

Addie decides she's done with lunch and starts to climb out of her chair.  As she's doing this, her legs somehow get twisted around her and she ends up falling from the chair, landing on the floor, back-of-the-head first.

I wait just a split second before jumping up and snatching her off the floor.  I've trained myself when my kid falls not to immediately scream out in horror, prancing like a ninny and waving my hands all around (which is my first instinct), because she falls about a thousand times a day, and 999 of those times it's not a big deal to her unless she sees me making a big deal of it.  So, while I used to squeal and flail about when she fell, now I try to be calm, usually cheerily calling out something like "Uh-oh!  Pop up!" until I know it's serious enough to warrant screaming and flailing about.

This time, it became obvious pretty quick that this was no ordinary fall.  I grabbed Addie off the floor and checked the back of her head to make sure it wasn't bleeding--it wasn't.  There wasn't even a knot.  But she was arching her back, her arms splayed at her sides, eyes rolled back in head, not breathing. 

I have seen this before.  This summer Addie and I were at the gym so I could take my pre-natal yoga class.  On the way out, Addie fell down some stairs and hit her head and had the same reaction.  I described it later as looking like a seizure--her eyes rolled back, her head lolled around, tongue out; she wasn't breathing, her arms were akimbo, her back arched.  It took several minutes for her to be able to focus on me (these minutes felt like hours, by the way).  It was the most terrifying moment of my life.  There were no articulate thoughts running through my mind at the moment, just raw fear.  After thinking on it later, I believe it was fear that my child would be paralyzed for life, or be epileptic, or in a vegetative state.  Fear that the oh-so-ordinary, in an instant, becomes the life-defining, the life-changing.

At the gym that day, I freaked out, even after Addie had come to and seemed fine.  I had the preschool teacher there call an ambulance.  By the time it got there, Addie was sitting quietly in my lap, having the occasional hiccup kids get after a hard cry.  I kept apologizing to the EMTs for over-reacting--they kindly assured me I did the right thing, and said that we should take her in for monitoring.  So Addie and I crawled in the back of the ambulance and headed to the hospital, and after an hour in the ER, I took her home.  The doctor at the hospital said they sometimes do head CTs for falls like that, but they're more to reassure the parents than anything, and since Addie wasn't puking, she'd probably be fine.  So we just went home. 

Still, I watched her really carefully that day, and for a few days after that, seeking signs that something was wrong, that some hidden contusion was just lurking in her head, waiting to burst.  If she stuttered over a word, I wondered if there was a brain bleed.  If she slept longer than usual, I'd figure she'd died from an aneurysm.  You get the picture. 

But after that happened, too, I began to question my memory of the event.  Had her eyes really rolled back in her head?  Had she really gone unconscious?  Or was I just being overly anxious, overly sensitive?  Good Christ, was I one of those moms?  Maybe I was!  Maybe I had Munchausen's!  Maybe I needed to be hospitalized!

A few months later, we had Nolie in the E.R. for what turned out to be a bad cold (Okay.  Now you're getting the wrong idea.  In my defense, the doctor made us go in.  I didn't want to.  But since she hadn't had her vaccines and was only a few weeks old, we went in.  She was totally fine).  While we were in the waiting room, though, a mom brought her two-year-old in, bleeding from the head, and with the same symptoms Addie had when she had fallen.  I recognized them immediately as what I had seen with Addie this summer and, while I felt really bad for that mom and her baby, a small, secret part of me was also glad to know that I hadn't manufactured the event.

But all that aside, I still completely panicked when Addie fell today.  My hands are shaking as I type this, and I'll probably need to check on her several times today before I feel okay about it (she fell asleep really quick at naptime!  She didn't want to read as many books!).  I'm sort of wondering if those physical symptoms are a result of her getting the wind knocked out of her.  At least I didn't call the ambulance this time, and didn't make Eric drive home from work. 

But I wanted to.  I wanted to call a thousand ambulances to make sure Addie was okay.  And am reminded again that life changes in the instant.

Mirror, Mirror

There's nothing like having your own bad parenting mirrored back at you, via the mouth of a saucy two-year-old.  For instance, this, from Friday, on the way to school:

M:  Addie, we're almost to school!  What do you think you'll get to do today?

A (covering her ears):  Mommy, you're driving me crazy!

 

Or this, from Wednesday afternoon:

M:  Addie, it's time to change your pull-up--it's getting pretty full.

A:  God damn it!

 

And this, from Monday:

A:  Mommy, I'm SO proud of you!  Your tummy is getting SO big!

 

Yeah.  SO proud.

Magnolia Jade

It's weird how you can feel so differently about your kids.  And, of course, we're not supposed to admit that we do feel differently about them.  As I write this, I worry about the girls reading these posts someday and searching for clues of whether I loved one more than the other, favored one over the other.  When you are a child and before you have children, this sort of arithmetic seems a simple matter of more-than and less-than.  After children, you realize such equations never hold.

After I had Addie, I asked my friend Cortney--who had two kids of her own--if she loved the second one as much as the first.

"Yes," she said.  "Absolutely."

"No way.  Tell me the truth.  You can't love the second one as much."

"You can.  I do.  It just happens."

At the time, I didn't believe her.  I couldn't imagine loving anyone as fiercely, as insanely, as protectively as I loved Addie.  The moment she was born, after so much waiting and such a long labor, I fell ridiculously in love with her.  In fact, the phrase "in love" doesn't really capture it.  It was a feeling totally different from any other love I had felt before, more consuming and overwhelming.  I still grasp at words to describe it, and still come up short.  It seemed impossible to me that I could feel that again. 

I was trying to explain this to a pregnant friend the other day who is expecting her second daughter.  She said she almost hoped she wouldn't feel that fierce, insane love a second time.  Worried that it almost undid her the first time around with its manic intensity.  Exactly.

And, in fact, that wasn't how I felt for Nolie when she was born.  For one thing, I didn't have an epidural during Nolie's birth the way I had during Addie's, so I was sort of in shock at how much the whole thing hurt.  Again, the word "hurt" doesn't really capture it, but that's fodder for another post.  Also, I badly hemorrhaged after Nolie's birth, and was pretty out of it and exhausted for several days.  Then Nolie was diagnosed with a severe case of jaundice, which necessitated her being in a bilirubin box, and...well...those days are a blur.  I mean, I knew I loved Nolie, but it was a love that was a little harder to come by.  I fretted over it, worried it into a tight little ball that I watched roll around in my peripheral vision.  I couldn't grab it, clutching it the way I had my love for Addie.

And, too, Nolie's the second.  This is the blessing and the curse, right?  The blessing of being free from the focused scrutiny that curses the firstborn; the curse of never having been the sole center of attention.  The blessing of being outside the neurotic magnifications of new parents; the curse of being familiar, sharing the slide with another child underneath the scope of older, calmer parents.

But now that Nolie is three months old, I find myself falling deeply and strangely in love with this gentle person, in ways different--but equally magical--from how I love Addie.  There is a different history between Nolie and I.  She is, in many ways, my tenacious little miracle baby, the baby who didn't show up on three different pregnancy tests (even though I knew, I KNEW, I was pregnant); the baby whom we thought we lost three months into the pregnancy when I started bleeding profusely; the baby who sent me into labor no fewer than five times before I finally coaxed her out in a castor-oil-induced bullet-train of a rush, so fast the doctor never even made it to the hospital.  She is calmer and quieter than my spirited, ebullient Addie.  She looks into my eyes for the longest time as she nurses, smiling at me and batting her caterpillar lashes.  We look into each other's faces as if sharing the magnificent secret of our connection, only with each other.

In short, we are in love.  A thousand times a day we share our little secret with each other, my Magnolia Jade and I, of this intense, quiet emotion.  Just as my love for Addie is raucous and complicated and fierce, my love for Nolie is sweet and deep and gentle. 

What gifts they give me, these girls of mine...

I'm in Control?

 

 

I've been mulling over a few things lately, like this, quoted by one of my favorite authors--Catherine Newman--in her column Bringing Up Ben and Birdy:

Good Behavior

There are many ways to get children

to behave as you wish.

You can force, plead, and bribe.

You can manipulate, trick, and persuade.

You can use shame, guilt, and reason.

These will all rebound upon you.

You will be in constant conflict.

 

Attend instead to your own actions.

Develop contentment within yourself.

Find peace and love in all you do.

There is no need to control others.

 

If you are able to release even some small part

of your persistent need to control,

you will discover an amazing paradox.

The things you attempted to force

now begin to occur naturally.

People around you begin to change.

Your children find appropriate behavior

emerging from within themselves

and are delighted.

Laughter returns to all.

 

I've had this posted on my monitor for well over a year now.  I think I first copied it because I thought it sounded wise and tao-ish, and I'm a meditating, yoga sort of girl.  Of course, I had no idea how to really put it into practice, because I am also a control freak who is in a pretty much constant state of low-level anxiety (when I'm not in a high state of anxiety, frantically cleaning the house or freaking out at my husband and kids).  So telling me that "there is no need to control others" is like telling the sun not to set.

But now I'm looking at this idea of letting go of control with different eyes, and here's why.  Yesterday, some sort of weird experiment unfolded in my house, seemingly on its own, like a little gift from the universe, unsolicited.  A bunch of stars aligned, somehow, and I had a totally peaceful day at home with both girls.  Here is what I think happened:

1)  The break from potty training allowed all of us to relax.  I wasn't squealing in Addie's ear every two seconds about needing to pee or worrying about her peeing all over tarnation.  Guess what happened?  She went pee on the potty twice, on her own.  I let go of a little control, and voila, Your children find appropriate behavior emerging from within themselves and are delighted.  Weird.

2)  Another of my favorite blogs, The Happiness Project, has this to say about being a more light-hearted parent:  "Most messages to kids are negative: 'stop,' 'don’t,' 'no.' So I try to cast my answers as 'yes.' 'Yes, we’ll go as soon as you’ve finished eating,' not 'We’re not leaving until you’ve finished eating.' It’s not easy to remember to do this, but I’m trying." 

I've definitely been noticing that as Addie is testing her boundaries, I've been saying "no" to her a lot, sometimes without knowing why.  For example, she was sitting pretty close to the tv watching Dora the Explorer last week, and both Eric and I insisted she scoot back.  Why?  Because we had been told to do that as kids.  But it's not like she was right on top of the thing.  It's not like she was drooling on the screen.  There was no good reason she had to be five feet away as opposed to four, that we could think of.  Once we figured this out, we could both relax.  So, yesterday, I tried to think through my responses carefully before just saying "no," and also tried to frame things in terms of "yes" when possible. 

My fear, of course, is that I'll raise a spoiled brat who has never been told no.  Having been raised in a house where discipline was, uh, highly valued, this is slightly scary to me.  But I think the idea is to be a conduit of possibility for your children, not to constantly be closing off opportunities to them.  And, again to my surprise, Addie really responded to this.  She had way fewer tantrums, and some of her anxiety behaviors (like chewing on her wrists) seemed to disappear.  I also felt like less of a jerk.  Find peace and love in all you do. 

3)  This poem, "Things to Think," by Robert Bly has been posted to my mirror for many months now:

Think in ways you've never thought before.
If the phone rings, think of it as carrying a message
Larger than anything you've ever heard,
Vaster than a hundred lines of Yeats.

Think that someone may bring a bear to your door,
Maybe wounded and deranged; or think that a moose
Has risen out of the lake, and he's carrying on his antlers
A child of your own whom you've never seen.

When someone knocks on the door,
Think that he's about
To give you something large: tell you you're forgiven,
Or that it's not necessary to work all the time,
Or that it's been decided that if you lie down no one will die.

 

Now, I'm not so sure I want a deranged bear on my doorstep, but I do love this poem because it suggests to me the beauty of possibility and forgiveness, the power of rest.  If someone called me every day of my life and told me it wasn't necessary to work all the time, it wouldn't be enough.  My feeling like I have to work all the time (and feeling guilty when I don't) has led to a lot of what one friend calls "time-binding," where I'm trying to work when I'm home with the kids, and missing the kids when I'm at work, and feeling inadequate at both tasks because I'm not fully present in either.

Somehow, yesterday, I was able to not time-bind.  I was able to just be with Addie, sitting on the couch reading dozens of stories together, or feeding Nolie on the bed.  Attend instead to your own actions.  Be present. 

Here's hoping the universe sends more useful experiments our way.

Hallotween

 

I love my kids so much.  Like when Addie and I are in bed at night reading books, and she snuggles in my lap, and we sing "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer" or "Over the Rainbow" and we tell stories about crazy-colored elephants and Dora the Explorer and "Ben the Boy" (based loosely on a little boy in her preschool class whom Addie loves). 

Or when Nolie wakes up in the morning, stretchy and farty, making a little moonpie face before breaking into gigantic smiles of glee at the sight of me, as if she were hurrying through sleep all night just to wake up to my face.

 

But, man, there are so many ways for these kids to be annoying.  For instance, Nolie has been super-addicted to the boob lately, probably because she's been sick and is going through the three-month growth spurt.  She has developed a finely-tuned boob radar that sets off an alarm if my breasts are more than 2.5 inches from her face at all times.  It goes like this:  I'll feed her until she sleeps, waiting until her breath sounds have deepened and she's stopped murmuring and twitching and you could drop her off the balcony, bounce her off the awning and into a pricker bush and she wouldn't wake up.  Then, ever so slowly, I'll try to pull my bra up and my shirt down to avoid the phenomenon I call "boob freeze":  to put it bluntly, your nipple is wet from the kid eating and then she's blowing cold nose air on it while she sleeps.  This may sound sexy (rowr) but it is totally uncomfortable, kind of like an ice cream headache in your areola.

 

So, I get the boob covered, and immediately she wakes and wants to eat some more.  I know, I know, I should be grateful she’s a good eater and is growing and all that glass-is-half-full stuff.  But mostly it’s totally annoying.  And cold.

 

Even given Nolie’s superior nipple chilling skills, though, Addie is by far the more annoying child at the moment.  (I feel compelled here to reiterate how much I love my children—how beautiful and smart and sweet they are.  But they are annoying, too.  They just are).  Addie is at that in-between age where holidays like Halloween and Christmas are subjects of interest but not yet obsession.  In other words, Addie is interested in the idea of costumes and trick-or-treating, but we could have easily got away without doing either yesterday without any major meltdowns.

 

Still, when I saw the fleece Piglet costume at Target a few weeks back, I had to get it.  Addie loves Winnie the Pooh and friends, and it was a cheap, warm, practical costume, so I got it.  And, as predicted, Addie loved it.  For several days, in fact, we couldn’t get her out of it.  She would stand in front of the full-length mirror, preening, admiring her Piglet ears and long tail.  “Can you see my tail, Mommy?” she would ask, stroking it.  “Yes, honey.  I see your tail,” I would nod.  Five minutes later:  "Can you see my tail, Mommy?"  "Yep, honey.  Still there."

 

Finally, I was able to pry the thing off her long enough to wash it and then stash it in my closet so that it wouldn’t be totally worn out for Halloween proper.  I got it out a few days ago to prime the pump for the big day, and Addie has been pretty excited, randomly screaming “It’s almost Halloween!” throughout the day.

 

Addie’s preschool had planned Halloween festivities for yesterday, including a little parade where all the kids could put on their costumes and troll for treats in the different classrooms.  I was pretty excited about this, figuring Addie would get a kick out of being Piglet in front of the other kids and seeing their costumes.

 

I got her out of bed yesterday morning, and prepared to get her dressed in said costume.

 

Nothing doing.   Here’s where things went wrong:

 

M:  Addie!  Happy Halloween, honey!  Are you ready to be Piglet?

 

A:  No!

 

M:  What do you mean, no?  You love your Piglet costume!  You love to wear it!  It’s comfy and cozy!

 

A:  No!

 

M:  You’re not serious.  All the other kids are going to be wearing their costumes.  Don’t you want to wear yours, like the other kids?

 

A (a little more interested now):  What will Rhea be wearing?  And Benjamin?  And Brooke?

 

M (stuttering a little):  Uh, I don’t know.  There will probably be pirates and witches and ghosts and [big mistake coming] maybe even Winnie the Pooh!

 

A (brightening):  Winnie the Pooh?  I want to be Winnie the Pooh!

 

M:  What?  I mean…what?  You can’t be Winne the Pooh.  You’re Piglet!  You love Piglet!

 

A:  I’m NOT Piglet, I’m Addie!  And I want to be Winnie the Pooh!  I WANT TO BE WINNIE THE POOH!

 

[Exit scene, with Addie crying all the way to the car and hiccupping, “I want to be Pooh!,” dressed in her regular clothes, me lugging the Piglet costume along with the 10,000 other things we need to get out of the house in the morning].

 

Like I said.  Annoying.