peevish mama

For starters, I could have sworn it was Eddie Murphy in Flubber, not Robin Williams. Shows how much I know. Secondly, I’ve been sort of obsessed with the idea of Flubber lately, and I know no better way to expunge absurdities from my head than to write about them in a public forum. Also, as you may have noticed, I haven’t been writing much lately. Have you noticed? So why not just wow you, and woo you with some seriously shitty shit. Writing about Flubber, after a long absence, over a critical juncture (das right, homeys – I turned 40!) is not exactly the equivalent of throwing the baby out with the bathwater, but kind of. Or hoisting myself on my own petard, but sort of. Or throwing good money after bad, or making a silk purse out of a sow’s ear. Whatever it is, it’s sort of lame, I admit. But here we are. I’m busy, I’m stuck, I’m distracted and I can’t get flubber outta my brain.

We had a little fest in celebration of our birthdays and somehow managed to lure all our best MPLS peeps along with an ALL-STAR cast of out-of-town college buds to our house on a steamy night in late August. I suppose it’s the nature of the beast that fun things vanish in the blink of an eye. You plot and plan, you spiff and shine, you make everything just so, and then your brothers jump out of nowhere wearing Lucha Libre masks ten minutes before the party, sending you into an elated tizzy from which you don’t manage to climb down until after four a.m. And the thing about a tizzy is that although tizzies are a blast, it’s hard to focus in a tizzy. After the party, through that woozy, satisfied, hungover, happy haze, I was haunted by all the people I didn’t get to dig in with, all the people I didn’t get to fully love up. I wondered about all the funny exchanges I missed, all the random connections that were unearthed or newly forged. I looked through pictures for clues, seeing a bunch of really happy people, looking damn good, but I wanted a do-over.

And I wanted to be Flubber. I wanted to be Flubber so I could boing-a-boing-boing into a hundred tiny pieces and spread myself around the party and not miss a thing. I would perch on shoulders, hoop earrings, watches and rims of glasses. I would hang out in guys’ breast pockets, ladies’ cleavage, on cocktail tables and cigarrette packs (which, by the way, I don’t think I’ve ever seen so many non-smokers, smoke so much. It pleases me, I’m not going to lie, because the implication is drunken, decadent abandon and that was, for sure, what we were going for), and I would miss nothing, laugh at everything, and DO! IT! UP!

OH FLUBBBAAAHHHH!!!!! TOGETHER WE WOULD BE UNSTOPPABLE!!! FLUBBBAAAAHHHH!!!! Alas, Flubber is not meant to be and so I have to be happy with my foggy memories, some great pictures, the random tidbits my friends are willing to share, and faith in the party process – once you set everything up, bring everyone together and the magic starting time ticks past, the party swells and takes on a life of its own, following its own course, its own rhythm, and if you’ve brought the right people together, it’ll be fun – no matter what. Even if I didn’t hear it or see it with my own two eyes, I’m pretty sure fun was had. And that’s what it’s all about. Setting aside my own grabby, selfish, Flubber fantasies, fun was had.

But if you think the Flubber obsession ends there, you’d be wrong. A couple days after the party, Doctor Dash and I got on a plane headed to British Columbia. My parents stayed with the kids so that we could take our first extended, grown-up, sans brood vacation in ten years. Before we knew it, we had hopped in a sexy black convertible and were on the road to Whistler, hair flying, wind on our teeth, laughter trailing behind us like streamers. We were giddy. We were Thelma and Louise. Well, maybe not Thelma and Louise, exactly, but you get the gist. It was awesome. For the next three days we gorged on the Pacific Range – we hiked our faces off, took a million pictures, set up self timers on boulders like we used to when we were in our twenties. We rented a canoe and checked it all out from way down low, portaging, paddling, picking our way around sharp turns, disentangling ourselves from the poky, gropy foliage lining the banks. It was AWESOME. It was everything we used to do before kids but couldn’t possibly do now because of the short legs factor. And the whine factor. At night we ventured out and drank beers with tourists and youngsters, wondering where we fit on the spectrum between tourists and youngsters. Actually, I doubt Dash wondered anything of the kind, but despite all evidence to the contrary, I think we still got a little youngster in us. I do. In Vancouver we stayed at the super chicLoden Hotel and ate and walked our way around that beautiful city for two more days. Every day was different. Every day was a blast. And yet, through it all, I missed our guys. Not every minute, not even very much – just when I saw something they would like and my thoughts strayed to them. And at night. And in the morning. And, not surprisingly, the Flubber returned to me. If only I could have left a little piece of myself at home with them. Just enough for them to clutch in their warm little fists as they drifted off to sleep. Wouldn’t that be perfect? Oh, it would be so perfect. Oh, boohoo, FLUBBBEEEERRRRR!!!

So there you have it. Flubber. Genius. Sigh. Who knew?

So, I’d say it took me until about mid-July to hit my stride this summer. It took that long to find a way to be at peace with the level of activity (high), to embrace the heat and sweatiness of summer (moderate), to figure out a way to carve out a wee bit of time on my own (low). I figured out a few things as I was racing around in the minivan or cooling my heels at the pool, just in time for hazy, lazy August.

First of all, I need to consolidate these kids next summer. Getting them each to their own separate activities is hair raising and severely taxing on my temporal and spacial reasoning skills. So next year, for one week, they’ll all be doing ONE camp in ONE place. Even if they all have to go to a My Little Pony camp at Southwest High, I will kill 3 birds with one stone if it’s the last thing I do.

I also realized I don’t always have to go somewhere. I’m an out-of-the-house kinda girl. I never ever ever ever manage to just hang at home (which, I think, goes a long way toward explaining why the syrup bottle is still on the dining room table at 5:00 in the evening.) Most of the time we’ve got somewhere to go, but just as often, the exodus, the springing forth into the world, it’s completely self imposed by the ants in the pants mother who pretends her kids have ants in their pants and that’s why she’s dragging them out of the house all the time when really, let’s be honest, she’s totally the one with the ants in her pants.

Rain is good. Rain forces us to stay put and catch our breath. It soothes our parched nerves and grass. I love rain in the summer – even if it does catch me with all my beach towels hanging out to dry (grrr).

Dinner can be bread and cheese. We have a strange air conditioning system that cools half the house – a Phantom of the Opera air conditioner, if you will (but hopefully you won’t because that is terrible. Apologies!) Fortunately the half with air includes Dash and my bedroom. Unfortunately, it doesn’t include the kitchen. And most of the time, we don’t even bother with it during the day since we’re not home, so hanging out in my steamy kitchen is not high on the list of things I like to do. I really haven’t been cooking as much as assembling meals this summer and you know what? That works just fine.

I can’t write for shit in the summer. I just have to accept it. It’s as if my words are stuck in a big pot of warm honey and pulling them out is too messy and laborious an endeavor to attempt. I’m busy, yes, but also, I may be getting my fill of words out in the world. Catching up with our families in Michigan and Massachusetts, talking, talking, chatting with neighbors at a block party, friends at the farmers market, bored ladies at the pool, people standing with their bikes waiting for the light to change, talking, talking, talking. We are out of hibernation for a few shimmering months and there is much doing to be done. Our heavy humid air is thick with words, more than usual, and that’s enough for me right now.

Summer is flying, just like I knew it would, just as it always does. Every day, I will notice something, really notice something, in an  effort to slow it down. This morning. Devil Baby. Tousled swimming pool bed hair, eyes still puffy from a heavy summer sleep, puts on her rainboots and contemplates saving her forgotten stuffed dog and blankie from the rain. I watch her realize and accept. It’s too late.

A few weeks ago Doctor Dash was reading through some of the earlier nuggets in this blog and he told me that he loved remembering the stuff I had written about. It was a curious statement to me because I’ve only been doing this for a couple years. How much could he have forgotten? The truth is, we forget a lot. We forget most of the little details – the favorite t-shirts, the silly stories, the chatter after the tooth fairy visits, the white lies, the fights, the tears, the giant mosquito bites. We forget the minutiae, and without the minutiae, our memories are flat, colorless, or worse yet, not there at all. I can’t figure out any rhyme or reason to what sticks. And the firsts with our firsts tend to be clearer than the firsts with our seconds and thirds. I can’t remember Supergirl’s first steps, but I remember Saint James’ like they were yesterday. And I actually do remember Devil Baby’s, but that’s just because we were hoping and praying that she would be soothed by her new found locomotion, that some of the energy she spent screaming at us would be redirected to moving her chunky little legs.

This blog started out as a way for me to slow down time, to take notice of the quotidian, to be present. It is only now, after the passage of a couple years, that we’ve discovered that it also helps us remember. I don’t go back and read, but you’d better believe that someday I will. And I think that my kids will too. So, with that in mind, some minutiae:

Supergirl finally lost some teeth. We seem to spawn late teeth getters, hence late teeth losers. With each baby, we would wonder, gazing at their gummy drooly mouths, whether they would ever get teeth. As Saint James’ and Supergirl’s first birthdays approached (yes, we even kinda freaked the second time around), Doctor Dash took to the internet and I put my ear to the ground. I sorely regretted it when my neighbor, in her Texas drawl, said “Well, ah don’t know, but mah cousin had needle teeth.” NEEDLE TEETH! I gasped. I love their tenacious baby teeth, but my kids hate it. In kindergarten and first grade when their classmates are spitting out teeth left and right, my children frustratedly wiggle their tiny pearlies, hoping in vain for some movement. Supergirl was literally one of the last three kids in her grade to lose a tooth. (It’s incredible that I even know this, but I do. How many times did I invoke those other two names in an attempt to cheer her up about her stubborn baby teeth?) We went to Michigan and she managed to lose three teeth in two days, maximizing the attention as Supergirl is wont to do. Her big teeth are already growing in. Her face will change. I only wish she could keep that little Jack-o-lantern smile for a while longer, because as far as I’m concerned, those big chompers are a one way ticket to big kidhood.

When I started this post it was a nothing kind of afternoon. The kids were dressed for soccer with some time to kill and in the rarest and loveliest of moments had started playing a peaceful game of chess, unbidden by me. This is the kind of thing that would make me roll my eyes if I were reading it, so I’ll assure you that they aren’t usually this highbrow and civilized. Normally when they’re bored they turn on the T.V., play Wii, google Justin Bieber or fight. Supergirl also has this move where she lies on the ground and whines about how bored she is while using her legs to spin herself around like a clock hand. But just this once, on a muggy afternoon, with a basket of folded laundry lurking in the corner, they played chess. I grabbed my camera and just like that, minutiae became memory.

I feel like parenting is all about pressing the re-set button. Every day, multiple times a day, fighting your way through the bickering and the rushing around and the whining and the melted popsicle on the counter (grrr) and the muddy footprints on the carpet (double grrr) to the root of how you really feel about your children. We all have our ways of reminding ourselves that we love them, that we are lucky to have them and that every day that they are healthy and happy, is a blessing indeed. A good night’s sleep works wonders. Sitting down to crank out a bit of creative work does too. But the topper for me is yoga. Today, I walked into yoga feeling like Mommy Dearest, sweat out about a gallon of white wine and nitrates, and emerged feeling like June friggin’ Cleaver. After a quick shower, I got to pick up my laptop (yay!) and some new shades (double yay!), stopped to grab a little grub at The Good Earth and ate in my car in blissful silence, save the sound of the pelting rain. This took no more than two and a half hours and I came home feeling like whatchu got, kids? Who wants a bagel? Watermelon? Cookies?! Who wants to play checkers?! Who wants to dance?! Whatchu got, my beautiful babies? Whatchu got for your mama because she’s feeling good!

For the next few hours, anyway.

You know what I said before? Like, yesterday? Well, fuggedaboutit. In the last twelve hours I’ve gone to Devil Baby’s spring concert and Supergirl’s spring concert and both were so dear, so sweet, so filled with chubby arms and tiny voices in the case of the former, boisterous joy and proud smiles in the case of the latter, that I take it all back about the too much. We can never have too much of this. This is what it’s all about. Some day, breathtakingly soon, we will have no more of these precious little concerts. So I drink it in, wishing there was some way to bottle the joy of children singing. Wouldn’t that be something!

I know I have a teensy little habit of taking something I’m experiencing and projecting it on the whole world, but something is definitely up. All my friends are feeling all freaky deaky, and quite frankly, so am I. We’re careening toward the end of the school year and I feel like we’re all driving runaway cars, pumping the breaks to no avail. Where did the time go? It feels like we were just wiping our brows after putting Christmas away and here we are in a deluge of end of the year obligations. Seriously, could we possibly pile on more stuff right now? End of the year masses, field day, plays, spring concerts, class picnics, graduations, class parties and on and on. On the one hand, it’s absolutely lovely. On the other hand, we may be getting too much of a good thing here. Everybody I know is racing around clutching camcorders with crazed smiles plastered on their faces which do nothing to hide the panic lurking in their eyes.

Yep, PANIC. Because in a few weeks we are ON, babies. ON. ON. ON. 24-7. Children all up in your business ALL THE TIME. No breaks, except for whatever camps and activities you’ve managed to sign them up for, which will require more running around with crazed smiles and more yelling hurry up, grab your waterbottleballracquetfishingrodclubscleatsclarinetloom.

I am really of two minds here. On the one hand, I love summer. I love the sun, the heat, the water and the not having to do anything. But then I went and filled us with activities because I’m no fool – the idle is not idyll. The quiet lazy afternoons never pan out the way I envision them. We don’t sit in the shade and eat popsicles and draw and fish and read. Possibly because of the frenetic pace we keep during the rest of the year, my kids want action and adventure. Or T.V. And honestly, we don’t even do that much. I suppose it’s relative, but I DO draw the line sometimes. For example, I drew the line at Irish step dancing earlier this year because of the wigs. I also draw the line at fencing, curling and golf. I don’t like golf. I’m not sure it’s an environmentally sustainable sport – especially in the driest areas of our country. It seems elitist and I will run the risk of subjecting my kids to forever being shitty golfers, but if they want to learn they can learn on their own time and their own dime. Plus the outfits are not cute. I pat myself on the back about golf, but then I signed up Supergirl for another run at Circus Camp, because obviously, the trapeze is a life skill that will serve her well. I signed Saint James up for a month long Junior Naturalist program and a drawing class. Why? Because this is their bliss and what can I do, but follow their bliss? And this is how I get myself in this pickle of the anti-Huck Finn summer.

It’s a paradox and I’m making a huge muddle of trying to explain it, but here it goes.

I sign them up for stuff because I don’t want them to be bored and drive me crazy, but in the end I’m crazy anyway and maybe even contributing to their being bored by keeping us on the run all the time. On the other hand, I only sign them up for stuff they love. These lucky, privileged children just happen to have a lot of interests. Take all that and dip it in guilt for not being 100% perky about all of this because a) I chose this life; and b) shouldn’t I want to be with my kids more more more? and c) I’m damn lucky to even have this to complain about, so I should just shut the hell up. Right? Right.

So I, like many others, spent the last few weeks with the calendar, various program catalogues and a furrowed brow, trying to figure out the right amount of stuff to put in our long summer days and how to physically get everyone where they need to go at the times they need to be there. I won’t know, until I’m neck deep in it, whether I got the right proportions of free time to camp time. And by then my freakydeakiness will have worn off, to be replaced with a numb exasperation with myself and my kids. The days will seem hot and endless and long and then all of a sudden it will be late August and I’ll get all freaky again, dreading the crush of school and all that entails, looking back longingly on our summer that seemed to stretch like taffy, and I’ll wish to be back here, right where I am right now.

Happy belated Mother’s Day to all you sweet mamas out there, including my very own sweet mama, Chuchi. I don’t know about you, but I love Mother’s Day – more than my birthday, more than Christmas, more than Thanksgiving and Fourth of July. Being a mother is something I cherish (despite periodic appearances to the contrary) and it feels good to be fêted for something I’ve earned. I didn’t have much to do with being born and although I suppose we deserve to be congratulated for having survived another year, I don’t feel as comfortable wallowing in all the attention surrounding my birthday. But Mother’s Day is another story altogether. All those unseen and unappreciated things we do to keep our families healthy and happy and together, to keep our homes warm and bright and joyful, to keep ourselves sane and healthy and open, it all does deserve some recognition. We deserve to step out from behind the camera, stove and steering wheel for a day. I say, bring it on, lovies. Bring on the homemade breakfasts (delicious, Doctor Dash). Bring on the flowers and cards and little clay bowls and necklaces and paintings and all the dear dear things that little kids make for their mamas for Mother’s Day. I love it all. I even love the short story penned by Supergirl called “The Butt.” Last year, Saint James wrote me a song on the piano. This year, I get “The Butt.” It’s not about my butt, mind you, but riveting nonetheless.

And although I haven’t been able to spend Mother’s Day with my own mom for years, I think she knows, hope she knows, how much she means to me and how much my parenting mirrors hers. My house isn’t nearly as clean as hers, but in so many other ways, in ways that I can’t help, in ways that I don’t even notice, my mother colors the way I go through my days with my kids. I’m not a mirror image of her, but rather, of the same ilk. As if a painter did a series of paintings, variations on a theme, with obvious, superficial differences, but with a common thread – but what is the thread? Soul? Disposition? Habits? I’m not sure I can put a finger on it, but it’s there.

I’m not a mother who hides her emotions from the kids. For better or worse, they hear about the dark and the light. I’m a mother who thinks sitting down together for home cooked meals every single day that it’s remotely possible matters a lot. I’m a mother who’s indulgent, who believes in treats and pleasures and the beauty of saying yes some of the time. I’m impatient in so many ways, but I try, mostly unsuccessfully, to quell that in myself. I like plants and sun and watching my kids play sports. I don’t say the rosary in the car like my mom did for my brother’s nail biter tennis matches, but I gasp and eek and cover my eyes with the best of them. I don’t put a premium on my own perfection, but I do value solidity, reliability, warmth. I don’t let them touch my sunglasses, but I do let them play with my shoes. I’m not very subtle about trying to influence my kids to love the things I love: music, books, food. I leave sports to Doctor Dash. And technology. I’m bad at making my kids do chores; bad at taking money from them when they promise to pay me back. I’m a distracted mother a lot of the time, until those moments when I’m not. Be present is my mantra and my greatest seemingly insurmountable challenge.

I don’t like labels like “good” and “bad” as applied to mothering because I can be both within a span of moments. Motherhood is nuanced and complex and nothing short of a million words will do to describe any one particular mother. A million words. Or maybe just one.

Love.

Happy Mother’s Day to Chuchi and to all you other mamas in the trenches with me.

Here’s St. James waiting anxiously to be scooped up for his very first ever weekend away. He’s beyond excited to be going to his oldest buddy’s cabin for a couple nights. I, on the other hand, wish I could have limbered up and climbed right into that little rolling suitcase. Instead I made him a sandwich to take with him.

I’m still in disbelief.

About the sandwich.

But I will say this:

It made me feel better.

Maybe when the only thing you’ve accomplished with your day is eating a bacon cheeseburger and a coconut cupcake, it isn’t wise to attempt to remedy said pathetic situation by trimming your child’s bangs.

And yet, I will.

I wrote another article over at Simple Good and Tasty about making lunch for my kids and ALL that entails. Check it out here if you’re so inclined!

It all started out so innocuously. The time: after school. The scene: the minivan.

Saint James: Do we have anything going on tonight?

Me: Nope. We’re probably going to Punch Pizza later, but that’s it.

Saint James: Can I go down to the park to skate?

Me: Uhhhhhhhhh.

Saint James: I can go by myself. 

Me: Uhhhhhhhh.

Saint James: I can tie my own skates.

Me: Uhhhhhhhh. Uhhhhhhhh. OK. I guess. OK. You can tie your own skates?

And so, for the first time ever, I let my boy walk down to the park on his own. It’s not far. A couple blocks. But it’s out of eyeshot and as he smiled, proud as can be, and trudged off with his skates hooked on his hockey stick like a winter sports lovin’ hobo – I held my breath. And I went into full-on cartoon fantasy crazy head. I imagined slamming the door and running up the stairs to the second floor, then running up the stairs to the third floor, then opening a secret door and running up more and more and more stairs until I was in a super high teetering crows nest on top of our roof, from which I could see the park and my son’s little dark green jacket in the distance. I pictured scurrying back downstairs, opening the front door and pulling a telescope out of my pocket. With a shwooop sound it would extend down to the street, take a right and extend all the way to the park, my eyeball bulging out of the end of it, looking left and right, blinking. Ah, the modern conveniences of Looney Toons. How I wish.

The truth is, every fiber of my being (except for maybe one or two) knows that it’s absolutely OK for him to go the park to skate on his own. And not only is it OK, I think it’s good. For a couple seasons now, I’ve been loving the wilderness that is park pick-up hockey and all the lessons it has to teach.

Saint James is kind of shy, so the fact that he manages to nudge his way into games is surprising and makes me curious. Does he ask? Does he just sneak in and start playing? It’s all very mysterious to me.

He and Supergirl go down with Doctor Dash quite often, and sometimes Saint James comes back flushed and happy. Sometimes he comes back pouty and pissed off that the bigger kids weren’t passing to him. In a life of coached, closely supervised, highly taught, pre-packaged sports, he’s not used to being ignored. There’s always a coach with a whistle, making sure everyone gets a chance. Saint James doesn’t know his place in the pecking order. I don’t think he even knows that there is a pecking order. The way I see it, he should be happy to be on the ice with a bunch of older kids that don’t know him and his geeky snow pants from Adam. He just has to keep showing up and eventually he’ll break into this band of unruly ice rats who are too cool to wear jackets or helmets. Some of them don’t even wear gloves! Gasp! Where are their mothers?!

There’s the possibility that he’ll get roughed up, that some little punk a couple years older will say something mean and the thought of that just about slays me. There’s also the possibility that he’ll skate his face off, forgetting about school, piano and his mother. That the feral boy who’s in all our boys will get to come out and play. That his heart will pound and his lungs will ache and he will know no greater happiness than the present moment. I get that. I want that for him. So I let him go.

Yesterday Nanook, Crackerjack and I headed downtown with our poor neglected, understimulated third born girls to MacPhail Center for Music for a Mom Culture event featuring Adam Levy. Adam Levy plays in a few bands around here, our favorite being Hookers and Blow. We had heard that he started a kid music band and thought it might be entertaining to see this guy do his thing for the kiddos. We’ve enjoyed some silly, dance-a-licious Hookers and Blow adventures and are trying to make up for the serious paucity of story times, music classes, and gymboree type shit that has been the fate of our thirds, so there we were.

Before he came on, there was a music class led by a hefty lady with a guitar. Seriously, is this an archetype for music teachers? The girls were not interested in her operatic crooning of Wheels on the Bus and within minutes I found myself outside of the auditorium digging through my purse for one of the three bags of Cheez Its I had brought with me. As I sat in a corner, I watched some well-scrubbed mommies packing up their elaborate snacks into little glass and stainless steel containers. As my daughter licked cheese dust off her fingers, the well-scrubbed mommies offered their toddlers another bit of edamame, a little more red pepper, just one more cube of tofu. Good God, I thought to myself peevishly. There was a time when I would have felt a tinge of inferiority at such a display of peripatetic culinary organization and motivation, but I have completely retrained my thinking and in a masterful feat of mind judo, I turn the tables and manage to feel superior. While they were chopping tofu into perfect little cubes, I had time to peruse all the dresses from the Golden Globes on line. Who’s the sucker? And then Nanook comes out in her sexy brown thigh high boots and tosses a package of fruit snacks on the table for her daughter and I realize that this right here is one of the reasons why we’re friends. (The fruit snacks, not the boots. Well, maybe the boots too.) Maybe the well-scrubbed mommies will become as lazy as we are someday. Maybe not. The point is, after all the switcheroonies took place, we shared a chuckle about the lovely cheese and fruit snack we had conjured out of our bags and went back to enjoy the show.

But I’m not always this blasé about snacks. In fact, I’m about to lose my shit over this whole snack business because Devil Baby is a relentless snacker. As someone who tends to eat in more of the boa constrictor mode – gigantic meals that leave you so stuffed you can’t even think about food until all of the sudden you are starving and ready for the next gigantic meal – I abhore being asked for food every twenty minutes. It just doesn’t seem to be a healthy habit to be thinking about food, much less eating food, with such frequency. I understand little kids need snacks, so I’ve gotten sucked in to the whole thing – especially since my particular little kid will NOT take “no” for an answer. I dole out snacks for peace. If I cut up an apple, she’ll stop asking for food, at least for a few minutes. If I say no, I will find her hooking up her carabiners and scaling the pantry shelves to help herself to some Oreos. So I give her a snack because at least that way, I get to pick what it is and I don’t find myself prying something unhealthy out of her death grip, or more often, just letting her have it.

Every night she sits with us at dinner, not touching a thing on her plate, and Doctor Dash listens patiently while I bitch: Uh, it’s obscene! She doesn’t eat a bit of protein! She eats crap and carbs all day long, she’s a dough girl, this is horrible! She’s not touching her food! Look how she’s not touching her food. It’s terrible! This has GOT to stop. I can’t stand it. She doesn’t eat a speck of meat! What the hell is wrong with her? Here, Devil Baby, one bite, here it’s dipped in mayonnaise, one bite. Arrrgh. Sweet mother of God I’m so sick of this! etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. This morning Doctor Dash sent me this article from the New York Times before he went to work and I devoured it with my coffee, muttering like a mad woman Yes, yes, yes!

The point of the article is that snacks are ubiquitious these days and heavens knows, no one is in danger of starving. At first when Saint James started playing soccer, I didn’t really care about the snack. It was our only activity and a rice krispy treat or a Kudos once a week seemed like no big deal. In fact, the first time some parents banned the snacks and juice I thought they were total buzz kills. This is childhood! Where’s the sugar? Where’s the sweetness for our perfect little angels? Well, people, I’ve come around. And then some. Those parents probably had older kids and had had their fill of watching their kids’ bulging-eyed fish faces as they frantically sucked down Capri Suns after every single game and every single of their siblings’ games. Obviously the kids are thirsty after a game, so those juice boxes are drained in an instant. That’s kind of gross. What’s wrong with the water bottle we dutifully schlep every time?

So I realize I’m veering around like a drunken old lady with my flower hat all akilter. On the one hand I scoff at the mommies with the super healthy snacks in pcb-free bento boxes. On the other hand, I would be happy if snacks and juice were banned from all sporting events from here on in. I just think we don’t need to be EATING all the time. It’s about DELAYED GRATIFICATION. The reason I bring snacks around now to a much greater degree than I did with Saint James and Supergirl is because, unlike my other kids, Devil Baby will kick my ass all over the soccer field if I don’t have something for her to graze on while the others play. I didn’t used to be this way. I’m not a Boy Scout by nature. I don’t like to plan ahead. That’s why I nursed my kids – zero prep, zero planning, just a little exhibitionism – that much I can handle. If we really find ourselves starving out in the world, we can always drive somewhere and get a bite, right? If I had packed snacks for the park every single time, how many ravenous hair raising drives to Galoonies for steak and cheese subs would we have missed out on? Practically all of them! And now that Galoonies is gone, I’m so glad we weren’t sitting in the sand eating carrot sticks all those times.

Today I was visiting a potential pre-school for Devil Baby for next year and the tour guide was describing snack time; she said they provide Club Crackers, Ritz Crackers, gold fish and the like and one of the other mothers raised her hand and asked: Are the snacks just crackers or do you include vegetables and protein? I couldn’t help myself. I had to turn around and take a look. And guess what!!! Sister didn’t look so svelte. Maybe she’s a music teacher. Or maybe someone should tell her that if her snack features all the basic food groups, it’s not a snack – IT’S A MEAL!!! 

Maybe that’s why my on-the-go snacks are so half-assed. I don’t really want to admit that I’m planning ahead – I want to pretend we are unfettered by and independent of the tyranny of food. If we happen to squeak by a morning without digging into the celophane, so much the better, no big deal, no harm – no foul, I can save it for the next time. But you better believe if I had boiled edamame or cubed tofu, I’d be busting that out before the first stomach rumble.

Food for thought.

“Everything happens only a certain number of times, and a very small number really. How many more times will you remember a certain afternoon of your childhood, some afternoon that is so deeply a part of your being that you can’t even conceive of your life without it? Perhaps four or five times more, perhaps not even that. How many more times will you watch the full moon rise? Perhaps twenty. And yet it all seems limitless.” Paul Bowles

I came across this quotation weeks and weeks ago over at Sweet Juniper (a blog I love written by a stay-at-home dad and a fellow Detroit homey and ex-attorney). It’s been been steeping in my mind all these many weeks and unbeknownst to me, coloring the mundane in deeper, richer shades. Sometimes you read something and it stops you cold. Sometimes you read something and it creeps up on you. In either case, one small string of words allows you to see something in a completely new light – manages to unearth the thing behind the thing.   

I constantly struggle with the idea of being present, being awake, staying in the moment, living in the now. Especially when it comes to my kids. It’s something I aspire to, it’s something I work on, but it’s not something for which I have a natural aptitude. I am analytical. I am a worrier. I am hyper verbal. I am impatient. I am easily bored. I am a malcontent. And all of these things conspire against me to take me out of the moment. I go to yoga not only for my body, but to try to quiet my mind. I write this blog in an attempt to pay attention, to elevate the minutae to the level it deserves, to give the stuff of life the credit it is due, to remember. I make promises to myself. I start fresh nearly every day. Sometimes more than once a day.

I look into my childrens’ eyes, at the striations in their irises and try to stamp them into my memory: Saint James: stormy sky filled with black birds, Supergirl: green grass and honey, Devil Baby: blue cotton candy and swirls of sweet cream.

But inevitably, I fail. The whining gets under my skin, someone runs through the house in muddy shoes, I have to make dinner, the laptop beckons, I just want to collapse on the couch to watch a show with Doctor Dash, the phone rings. It is so easy to get pushed out of the moment. And such a struggle to get in, to stay in.

And if you think I’m so intent on being present for the benefit of my kids, you would be wrong. I seek this for purely self-interested reasons. In the most ludicrous feat of mental and temporal contortionism, I find myself worrying about a certain time in the future when I will be filled with regrets at all the small moments with my children that were lost, ignored, overlooked, or just plain wished away. I will ache for the time when all they wanted was my attention, my time, me. I manage to have piercing nostalgia for the time that I’m in right now. How is this possible? Why don’t I just fully relish every waking moment with these guys now, and save myself the regrets later? It seems so simple, but the doing of it is anything but.

Which is where Paul Bowles’ beautiful words come into play. We all know that whatever phase of life we are in is fleeting, that time flies, that all those cliches and platitudes are true, but perhaps that’s all too amorphous to mean anything. The notion that specific things happen a certain number of times is chilling. But it’s concrete and something I can wrap my head around. It is something I can call to mind and feel in my bones every time Saint James climbs into my lap. Every time Doctor Dash carries Supergirl to bed after she has fallen asleep in ours. Every time I read a book. Every time I make a puttanesca sauce. Every time I hug Devil Baby in the morning, breathing in the biscuity smell of baby dreams and pee. How many more times will I get to do that? It’s pretty easy to figure out. She’ll probably be out of nighttime pull-ups by this spring and after that, mornings will never smell the same. How many more letters to Santa will Saint James write? One? Maybe two? And what about all of those things that have already been counted to their finite end? How many times did I nurse my babies? When I was in it, it seemed limitless, infinite, but now, on the other side, it’s one of the things I miss the most.

It’s not possible to live in a count down. It’s not right. But the idea that every act, memory, sensation, emotion has a number while terrifying, is oddly helpful to me. It gives me something to hold on to, a foothold, a way to stop myself from spinning and taking everything for granted. It makes it easier to stop and look and say yes, I’m here.

One morning you notice your kids hug you goodbye as soon as they spot the bus, before it gets too close. And then when they get on the bus, you see one hop into the first seat, the other move to the very back, as far apart as two siblings can possibly get. You watch and wait, a twitch in your wrist where a wave waits to flutter free. You see both kids on their knees in sweet profile, their noses, shoulders and words pointed excitedly at someone in the seat behind them. They don’t look back at you. The bus door closes with a sigh. And all is right in their world.

The other day, Saint James and Supergirl shared a hearty chuckle at my expense, for the first, but undoubtedly not the last, time. It started with a little laminated map of the world that’s been floating around the house for eons. Every time I clean up, it gets propped on a windowsill in the kitchen, shuffled into my planner or a stack of place mats, or stuffed into the cupboard where we keep the playdough and paints. It hangs around the kitchen mostly, but I have found it fraternizing with the dust bunnies under Saint James’ bed and once it was in my tub, a world patiently waiting to float away.

I’m convinced someone is paying my kids to quietly and deliberately carry things around the house because this is what they do with a thoroughness and alacrity that can only come from mucho cashola. I picture their employer as a shadowy figure sitting with his back to them, a halo of cigar smoke around his bald head muttering in a ripped paper voice: You just move things, right? Ya take your toys, don’t even play with them, you just move ‘em. Up the stairs, down the stairs, just put ‘em in a different spot. The floor’s good. Always good. And if it’s not a toy, even better. More money for moving household items. Kitchen stuff. Always good. The whisks, the oven mitts, the tape. Always good. Always good. Take ‘em to another room. Better yet, take ‘em to your mother’s car. Drop ‘em. Always remember, a ladle in the minivan is a beautiful thing. Same goes for a box of bandaids in the freezer. Stuffed unicorn under the sink. Always good. Always good. Don’t over think. Just keep moving. You pick it up, carry it, drop it. Simple. Capish? My children nod solemnly, their eyes as big as saucers.

This all by way of saying, the mapa mundi has got some legs. So the other day I decided to put an end to its shifty and peripatetic ways and tape it to a wall. Specifically, the wall next to the toilet in the kids’ bathroom. Supergirl, who never misses a thing, came sliding out of the bathroom with an exaggerated, Disney tween show intoned Can someone please explain, like, WHY there’s a map, like, in the bathroom? To which I responded, simply: So you can learn about the world while you poo. And that’s when it happened. She and Saint James chuckled, and then they LOOKED AT EACH OTHER and laughed some more. And then they repeated what I said, and laughed even more! They were sharing a laugh. At me. At something I said. I walked away with a secret grin, letting them revel in a rare moment of solidarity and mirth.

With that little exchange, I realized that their sense of humor is evolving, ever so subtly. They are precariously perched in that spot where I can make them laugh because I’m so smart and funny and that spot where they can laugh at me because they’re so smart and funny. I can tickle them and still make them laugh. I can make a cross-eyed bucktooth face and still make them laugh. But not for long. Someday, that behavior will elicit nothing but groans and eye rolling and the only giggles I’ll get will come from general battiness, slips of the tongue and tumbles of words. Lucky, for all of us, I’ve got those in spades.