twelve a day

Every so often Beatrice goes through a bout of bathroom troubles. She's prone to constipation, and the worse it gets, the Worse It Gets. The number of hours the girl can go without setting foot anywhere near a toilet is downright unsettling. Her almost three-year-old will is made of shiny cold steel.

We cajole, we play pretend, we make a game out of it, and sometimes in the end - okay, often - when I see her dancing around with that telltale swivel I just swoop in and hoist her over my shoulder, running up the stairs and into the bathroom before she knows what hit her. Sometimes that works. 

But sometimes it doesn't, and it gets so bad her legendary ability to deny her own bodily functions fails her and she pees on the living room rug. Twice in a row. That's when I begin to fray. That's when I start talking to her in the least helpful way imaginable, exhorting her to cut the crap, enough already, it's not a big deal, we all do it, lots of times a day in fact, just GO TO THE POTTY when you have to GO TO THE POTTY.

A few nights ago this happened. I was cleaning her up after an accident. I'd been haranguing her the whole time, peeling off her pants, you have to tell me when you have to go to the potty, balling up the wet socks, throwing them towards the hall, you can't do this anymore, this is not working. 

She looked a bit shell shocked. It hit me that she would manage this better if she could. In that moment, she couldn't. Even though I was still angry, my rational mind tried to reel the whole thing in and mitigate the verbal damage I was doing. 

Beatrice, I uttered through still-clenched jaws, Beatrice, I am really upset with you right now. But you know I love you all the time no matter what. 

She looked up at me, so earnest and solemn in her full top-and-no-bottom splendor - a look that our family agrees is only cute when you are very young - wearing her stained purple shirt and nothing else. Surely she smelled like pee but I don't remember. 

Well, when I'm upset, Mama, I like to have a hug.

Oh! That was it. My jaw slackened, I dropped down onto my knees, and she rushed in for a big squeeze, happy relief all over her face. She's a genius. She's also a genius hugger. All my helpless anger melted right down through my center and out my limbs in a matter of seconds. 

Virginia Satir, the family therapist, said that we need four hugs a day to survive, eight to maintain, and twelve to grow. I repeat: twelve! It sounds a little extravagant. Also true. 

So after I read this, I began counting. On Sunday I hit twenty discreet hugs with Beatrice before church started at 10:15. That didn't count all the lap sitting, leaning, climbing on, and general physical closeness that characterizes our time together. Of all my children, her temperament is the snuggliest.   

But Gabriel and Frances? Oy. I might have squeezed in five or six hugs by the end of the day with Gabriel, but definitely no more than four with Frances. I started to get worried. Were they stunted?

I couldn't believe how hard it was to build in more hugs this week. Last week I started working part-time, and I've had to be away more than usual for orientation and trainings. After school activities extend their days. Frances had two sleepovers last weekend (not ideal, which is all I will say about that). When we are home together, I tell them to do things like practice piano and set the table and take a shower and they get annoyed at me. They do not always want a hug from their hygiene and homework enforcer.

I rarely write about Frances and Gabriel nowadays. The age of consent, I've decided, is eight. Gabriel will turn eight in two months and Frances has long since crossed that line. Their stories are theirs now; I can't tell you about them without first seeking their permission. And even then, I have to tread carefully. But Beatrice is still, in some ways, an extension of me. Through my little hug-counting exercise I've realized we are nearly always touching when together, so it is little surprise that writing about her feels as natural and uncomplicated as writing about myself. 

But Gabriel and Frances? I have to reach out to hug them. They have this weird thing called personal space. They need time alone; they need time with their friends. I wish I could write about them. There is so much challenge and mystery in parenting these older, complicated, independent and sophisticated children. They change so fast. I am dizzy, and often at a loss. I sure could use your help. But - I have to honor them by giving them this space, by letting them tell their own stories more and more.

But I think it is safe to share with you that I realized most of the time, they do want an extra hug. Even if it seems like they don't. I grab them on their way through the kitchen and pull them close and usually that proves to be a really good idea.  

Then Frances pushed me away earlier today and I thought to myself: gah! you! how will you get the hugs you need? Then, finally, it hit me: I am not the only hugger in your life. Duh. Mike and I are not the only ones doing the hugging. It seems so obvious but I hadn't thought of it. Today I am certain she hugged her grandma, her friends, a teacher. For all I know, she squeezed her way through thirty hugs. She has a rich life full of loving friends and teachers and family and much of it happens when I'm not around.

Weird. I know I gave them twelve hugs - and most likely many many more than that - every day when they were three and four years old. Now I might give them two. But what a strange feeling, a mix of relief and sadness and pleasure, to realize that they are getting plenty, enough to grow and grow ever farther afield. My wild weedy irrepressible children, out in the world, hugging away. Huh.

Let us hope that we have all been so well-hugged, we know how to give and receive what we need. Friends: tomorrow, don't settle for fewer than twelve. 

hibernation day

Pictures of the snow never seem to capture the beauty one experiences firsthand. I think it's because the blanketing hush of the scene is missing. You can't hear silence in a photograph. 

But I couldn't resist trying. We don't get many big snows around here and this is our second dramatic, heavy snowfall of the season. After Beatrice went down for a nap I went outside to shovel, and it was breathtaking. Everything still, everything white.

Then I came in, and sat down.

I'm so accustomed to maximizing every spare minute - perhaps you know about this? - that spending time gazing out the window is utterly unsettling. Disorienting. Beatrice is sleeping, Mike is reading upstairs, there are 41 more minutes before pick up time: I'm alone. Normally I would be responding to email, calling a medical billing office (there seems to be one of those calls on the to do list every day), carting laundry upstairs, arranging kid stuff. 

This is insanity, this staring at the snow business! But I can't seem to move.  

Downshifting is harder than it seems. After months spent in high-alert mode, I am only just now regaining the ability to embody slowness. To let go of a sense of urgency crackling beneath the surface, all the time. I didn't choose this; rather time accumulated, the seasons shifted, and now the snow invites me to feel a quiet heaviness in my limbs. 

Winter! Who knew? I thought you were a dreary mess to endure, to tolerate, just for the payoff of spring. Yet this year I am grateful for your white stillness, your peaceful hush. 

more life and less worry: an ode to la nube

Beatrice was painting some rocks. Gabriel and Annika had more elaborate plans for their rocks, but after awhile they forgot about them and watched Beatrice loading more and more paint on her rocks. Then she carefully tore what was left of her pumpkin muffin into stone-like pieces and lined them up next to her rocks. She contemplated them for a moment, then began dabbing blue paint on them. Then she burst out laughing.

I'm painting my muffins. 

Laugh, laugh, guffaw: I'm painting my muffins!!

We all started laughing. Then Gabriel and Annika, exchanging looks, laughing, told her not to eat her painted muffins. She preceded to hold one drippy blue piece up to her mouth, watching their alarmed faces with delight, hesitating, laughing. I'm going to eat it!

DON'T EAT IT! exclaimed the now worried second and third grader. They looked at me, silently pleading for an intervention.

Oh, go ahead, I said. Enjoy.

That's how I roll these days. Do you want to eat a painted blue muffin? Go for it. Sit on your kid when he is complaining in the hopes of muffling his voice? Yes! Sing the song stuck in your head as you walk down the street? Why not? Tell someone when they hurt your feelings? Absolutely.

I finished the first Neapolitan novel, My Brilliant Friend, this morning before the kids woke up. Wow. Wow wow wow. Typically I would put the next volume on hold at the library and wait, or ask around if anyone has a copy I might borrow. But instead I bought the next one in the series. All before 7 am!

There's something about mortality being particularly present just now, something about this strange time we're living. All I have energy for is what matters most, and that has loosened the grip of what-one-does and what-one-should-do over me. Don't get me wrong. I still worry about stupid things like what to do with my gray hair and what people think of me at the grocery store when Beatrice has streaks of dried snot on her cheeks from wiping her nose on her sleeve.

But maybe I worry a little less. It's possible that I put up with less bullshit, less negativity, less falsity. On a very good day, I like to think that I am freer to delight in the strangeness and beauty of everyday life.

When I studied abroad in Spain, I lived with a host couple who were in their 70s. Neither was even close to five feet tall. Surely they were stunted by the deprivations of their childhoods spent in Franco-era southern Spain, but even so their diminutive stature always struck me as funny. Hilarious, actually. They were two round graying elves who spoke with strong accents. I know they found me equally absurd. Dolores had a bad leg that she dragged through the narrow streets on her way to do the daily errands. Her two year old granddaughter, known by all charmingly and simply as La Nina,  did an extraordinary dramatic impression of her limp. Again: you just had to laugh. Santiago wore a purple rubber apron around the house and prided himself in his careful, energetic laundering. He worried a lot, talked a lot, made fantastic gazpacho, and doted on La Nina. His pride and joy though, moreso even than his granddaughter, was his dog. La Nube.

Oh, La Nube! A less cloud-like creature has never walked this earth. She was a pudgy, greying little mutt whose belly grazed the ground. She yipped at strangers. She waddled. She eyed me with watchful suspicion every day of the nine months I lived with her. Her bed, kept tidy by Santiago, was topped with an olive green velveteen coverlet, edged in gold tassels. It was just outside my bedroom door. Around eleven every night, I would be reading or journaling in bed, and I'd hear Santiago shuffle into the passageway outside, cooing: Ah, la Nube, mira la Nube, mi princesa. Look at you, la Nube, so cozy in your bed, my dear heart, la Nube! Are you warm enough, are you going to have sweet dreams? Buenas noches, mi carina.

Objectively, she was an unpleasant smelly old dog, but with his devotion Santiago transformed her into a queen.

One night I was just falling asleep when I heard Santiago coming to visit la Nube before bed. He was chuckling and murmuring to her, something about what a mysterious, dark Moorish lady she was. I couldn't resist. I crept into the hallway, right into Santiago's game. He was stooped over, holding the green and gold coverlet over la Nube's nose so that only her catarct-cloudy eyes were visible. It did make for an exotic veil. Santiago was cracking up, delighted by his princess doggie, tousling her ears. Ah, la Nube, my beautiful moor! I didn't recognize you like that! He kept looking over at me, laughing. Can you believe this dog of mine?

Santiago wasn't embarrassed that I caught him playing dress up with his dog. He was just glad that I too could see la Nube looking so fine.

It was so very weird, the little scene in the narrow dark hallway. That was a hard time in my life, shortly after my dad died and in the midst of a long, drawn-out breakup. I was looking around, grasping for people and experiences to anchor me, to confirm who I was - whomever that was. I had no idea. But Santiago had been there and done that. Now that I am no longer 19, I think I could enjoy his oddball company with far less reservation and a lot more pleasure. It makes me sad to think he has likely died by now.

In his honor, I say yes to weirdness. Yes to play, to dress up, to purple aprons, to beloved smelly dogs. Yes to all of it.

I am sure I have shared this poem with you before. But why not once more? The dead tell us: say yes to joy, to more life and less worry. Yes to creative adventures, to emotional bravery, to going out onto all kinds of limbs. Don't worry. The paint was non-toxic. Carry on, you wild artists!