the mama

I was trying to leave church this evening after children's choir practice and dinner, and Frances and Gabriel were chasing each other, running wild around the parish hall with a pack of other kids. Beatrice - overtired, pink-cheeked and snotty - was in my arms, alternately smiling at them and arching her back in despondent exhaustion. My eyes fruitlessly scanned the room for our discarded coats. Just then our friend Carolyn walked up to me, the picture of grace, and smiled a peaceful hello at Beatrice. Then she turned to me and said, "And how is the mama?"

Who? What? I felt confused. Did she mean my mom? But that wouldn't make any sense. 

"Do you mean ... me? Moi?"

"Yes! Toi."

Oh. I was a total blank. I couldn't even think of an appropriate string of words to respond with. 

It sounds pretty bad, but I think most mothers can relate at least a little - sometimes our internal and external worlds are so crowded by the needs of others that it's hard to reach down deep in there and take one's own temperature. It's hard to even feel inclined to do so. 

The thing is, my worries are not even that worrisome. But because they are persistent, I'm a little ragged around the edges. The big thing is that Beatrice has been sick. Awhile back she had a high fever that hung on for a couple of days, and now she rattles out an alarming-sounding cough on and off for much of the night, streams baby snot down her sweet little philtrum (a word Frances taught me years ago - so useful!), has minimal tolerance for being out of my arms when in my presence, and struggles to get enough sleep. Basically, she has a nasty cold. It's killing me.

Every time I wake to hear one of those awful coughs on the other side of my bedroom wall, I cringe. I feel like the new door stop in the bathroom, the springy one with a white rubber tip that the children love to push down with their toes so they can listen to it reverberate. (They guffaw and tell me it sounds like a fart. I totally disagree.) After one of those hacking fits, I feel my insides shudder wildly, slowing down only gradually over time, til there are just quiet vibrations buzzing in the dark.     

There have been a couple of intense crises at work. Frances fights about practicing the piano. Gabriel hates when I help with homework. Bea has a cold. This is the relatively reasonable level of problem - of other-worry - that I'm talking about, but geez, do I feel it deep in my bones. 

Thank goodness for stolen yoga interludes, late night talks with dear friends, the everything chocolate-covered section at Trader Joe's, solidarity that I find here, and pink nail polish. Which I will now proceed to apply. 

(Well! All those good things have made appearances in my life recently. Now I know what to say. The mama, it turns out, is just fine.) 

Sweet dreams, friends. 

inside outside

Today everyone was home from school in honor of Dr. King. (That's how an old client referred to him when she told me about the idiosyncratic and poignant ways she observes the holiday a year ago, and now for me she is mingled with this day and all that it represents). 

Many of my old co-workers and friends from Seeds 4 Success came over with their kids in the morning. Our crowd was 11 children strong, between the ages of 2 months and 8 years old (a twelfth little one, in utero, quietly absorbed it all).

Inside, the mamas and the babies sat and talked in the kitchen, while the girls rainbow loomed and colored at the dining room table.

Outside, Gabriel and Eligh held an epic battle with old PVC pipes encased in styrofoam ("swords" from Gabriel's knight-themed 4th birthday party). (Who let me distribute those to a crowd of four year olds?).

There were lots of other moments that tossed gender stereotypes up into the air like multicolored confetti, with the boys hovering quietly over rainbow looms and the girls jumping off furniture (til I kicked them outside). Hmm. So why did I need to grab the camera when everyone was self-segregated and adhering to gendered expectations? Sigh! Not sure. I thought they all looked adorable. Guess I am just one more adult out in the world reinforcing these behaviors whether I like it or not.

But also - it was excellent to be with so many women I care about, to soak in their sensibilities and humor and experience. I like being with a bunch of women who are acting like a bunch of women. So to see all those little heads bent over crafts in the next room? I liked it. And to look out the window at those two boys hollering and laughing and tackling each other? I liked that a lot, too.

And then later, after everyone went home, it was just us.

the reading precipice

Here I sit in my house's silence, with only the occasional gentle shift of the washing machine or a distant airplane's engine passing by to break it, and the upstairs humidifier's whirring to soften it around the edges. I am surrounded by not one, not two, but three (!) loads of laundry on the couch waiting to be folded and put away. Mike is at Lecture, the children are asleep, I am sipping the last bit of hot chocolate and thinking about my day. It's Friday night.

Every Friday Gabriel and his kindergarten class sing a song and do a dance: It's Friday, it's Friday! You got to get down on Friday (low butt wiggle down to the ground). Woop woop woop (here you do the cabbage patch in one direction) - Other way! - (now you do it the other way) Woop woop woop! 

Our whole family loves the Friday dance.

I've been trying to squash a lingering worry about Gabriel and his progress with reading and writing. In recent weeks he seems to have regressed. When I ask him to read a simple word, he looks like he is absenting his body, wandering off to some other planet where mothers don't pressure their children. When he has homework to do he wriggles in his chair and jumps up over and over, driven by the urgent need to play with the magnets on the fridge, tease his sister, or tell his papa about a funny thing that happened at recess. I grow privately worried. Does he have a learning problem? Should we arrange for some kind of extra help? 

Then last night at bedtime he and I finally talked candidly about reading. Normally he shuts down, but something about our mood facilitated a real engagement. He told me he thought he was 'just one step away' from being able to read fluently, and even though writing is really hard and boring to practice sometimes, it's probably just like when he started to ride his bike. At first it was all about struggle and hard practice, then suddenly one day it all came together and he zoomed off and has loved it ever since.

So learning something new is really hard?

Oh yes, he agreed. 

Then I suggested that a person might have a lot of different feelings about learning something new. They might be excited one minute, and scared the next.

Or they might be really sad.

Why sad?

(At this point he was curled around a pillow on his bed, leaning against me). Sad because Mama, I don't want to change. I want to be just like this, and if I learn to read books all by myself I'll be different. I won't be myself anymore. 

And then he started to cry, and cry and cry, and choked out that he didn't want to grow up, and have his body and his thoughts and his feelings change, because he likes to be himself the way he is now. He doesn't want to be someone different. And then: He doesn't want to grow up and move away from us. 

Oh! I encircled him with my own big body, trying not to cry myself (how many times have Mike and I said to each other, after bedtime: Gabriel can never change, he is so perfect just like this? Then of course we say it again 6 months later, and 6 months after that). 

And then, through sobs: Mama, what do you do when you grow up and have to move away from your family, but don't have a new family of your own yet? Who do you hug and say I love you to at night? 

Oh oh oh. I told him he never has to move away from us. He asked if he could live with us with his new family when he is a papa someday, and I said YES, please do! (Rachel Eash-Scott, are you out there? I told him about you and your family and he found it very reassuring). 

Dear readers, this torrent of tears and worries about growing up and separating from us all came from a talk about being on the cusp of learning to read. I sometimes forget that these developmental milestones involve the whole kid, not just the intellect or the body. Readiness is about all of it.

I told him I would read out loud to him until he went to college, and laughed a little, imagining being snuggled up with what I expect will be a very big kid on the couch, our heads bent over the old copy of George and Martha. 

The tears had stopped, and a red-eyed, tired little boy looked at me and asked earnestly, why will you stop when I go to college?

I told him I'll never stop. He will always be himself, and I will always be myself, and we will always read stories together. That seemed to satisfy my sweet boy, who stepped down from the edge of the cliff, snuggled under the covers, and was sound asleep within minutes. 

friday morning mouse

We have a mouse problem.

It made for a very exciting morning on Friday before school, with all three children tickled silly by the sight of the tiniest fury creature trapped beneath a narrow spouted bowl normally used for the wet ingredients, and Mike and I - for the first time ever - deciding depriving them of a pet is probably criminal and we should get a dog.

...But not now! Later. (Talking about a dog happens to be more fun than addressing the mouse problem).

This week was my first back at work after winter break. The first day, when I dropped Beatrice off at her sitter Danielle's house, it was almost as hard to leave as when I first started back in August. After three weeks together, my tolerance for separation was nil. When I rushed to pick up the baby in the late afternoon, feeling quite proud of myself - of us! - for keeping it together that day, she seemed distressed, rather than relaxed and happy in the glow of our reunion as she used to. I picked her up and she reached unmistakably for Danielle. I passed her back to Danielle and the baby smiled at me in gratitude, then grabbed at my necklace without looking at me, absorbed in pursuit of its glimmer - like she normally does with everyone else while I hold her. At one point she even turned away and nuzzled her face, shy, into Danielle's shoulder.

I found myself nervously chatting about how surprising and strange it was to see Beatrice acting with Danielle the way she normally acts with me around friends. And gee, wasn't it nice that Bea had such a strong attachment to Danielle, and was so comfortable and happy at her house?

I hope it doesn't make you sad, said wise Danielle.

Oh, no no, maybe like ... 5% sad, I said, smiling. 10% max. It's just a little bit, mixed in with being glad this is working so well.

But then the rest of the day I felt ill. And the next morning when Beatrice woke early and I brought her into bed to nurse - as is our wont - I snuggled her close and covered her in excessive kisses with a desperation that a baby can surely detect and might be inclined to pull away from in disgust (though she didn't, bless her darling heart).

The rest of the week wasn't quite as painful at pick up, but Beatrice continued to have a hard time transitioning. We usually sit at the kitchen table and talk a little in the afternoons, as Gabriel and Danielle's kids play and snack and Beatrice nurses. This used to be comfortable for her, but now the presence of two caregivers lingering seems to put her on edge. She looks to Danielle, shouts a bit, looks back at me. Maybe now that she's older she doesn't know who she will be with, or when we'll finally leave, and it's unnerving.

Or maybe she just loves Danielle better. (Not really. Right? Ha ha ha?)

I need a heart lobotomy. I need a surgeon to take a scalpel to the site of my deepest feelings and do something, turn down the volume, excise the part that makes love so excruciating. 10% sad?? How cavalier! How silly, how optimistic. I was 99% sad within minutes, and now, after a week, maybe I'm at 72%. Not only am I sad, my confidence is shaken. I'm questioning the way I let the baby wander about and pull the scrap paper out of the shelf, the way I hoist her around the kitchen and talk to the big kids, the way I put her to bed at night. The way - let's just be out with it - I leave her with another mother who stays home and crafts and cooks the way I once did while I go to work four days a week.

Lest you worry, I do know the baby is very attached to her own mother, adores her papa and her siblings, and seems undeniably happy in the bosom of her family. She is growing and becoming herself beautifully. My job is a satisfying, meaningful, challenging privilege that I feel very lucky to have.

But. This pulled-in-two-directions mothering stuff can be so hard.

(I won't even get into the challenges of mouse poop under the oven.)