Watch Your Mouth

• Overheard upon entering house on a rainy day:

Sydney, muttering to self: "It's fucking wet out there."

• Overheard while watching daughter climb into carseat, littered with crumbs and sand:

Sydney, muttering to self: "Look at all this shit."

• Overheard in the early morning hours, from my prone position in our obscenely comfortable king-size bed, sheets pulled up to my ears, groaning at the daybreak peeking through the blinds:

Sydney, talking to Evan: "It's okay, Mommy's coming. Mommy's getting up. Mommy will be here in a minute. It's okay, don't cry. Don't cry, Evan. Why are you crying? Okay, I'm leaving. I can't deal with you right now."

Jedi Meditation

The Force is strong at 5 Trianon Plaza.

Super Cute

What a Good Boy

I've been paying close attention to song lyrics lately. Not sure what that's about, but for whatever reason I've found myself in a state of introspection more frequently displayed by creatures of the adolescent species (commonly known as "teenagers"). One might say I've been brooding. It's not terribly adult and not always particularly productive, but hey--at least I'm not losing myself in back-to-back episodes of The Real Housewives of New York City.*

Anyway, the other day I got stuck on the lyrics of a Bare Naked Ladies song I've always loved:

When I was born, they looked at me and said

What a good boy, what a smart boy, what a strong boy

When you were born, they looked at you and said

What a good girl, what a smart girl, what a pretty girl.

We've got these chains that hang around our necks

People want to strangle us with them

Before we take our first breath

Afraid of change, afraid of staying the same

When temptation comes, we just look away.

I've always loved this song, especially when I first discovered it as a teenager. It spoke to that part of me that felt a certain pressure to be perfect, to be beautiful, to not be too funny because that wasn't feminine, to be smart but not too competitive, to be good. I wasn't like most girls; I didn't like to do my hair or experiment with make-up, I thought cheerleading was sad, I liked to read at parties, I made a lot of jokes and didn't care if people laughed at me instead of with me. I was a tomboy without being particularly good at sports. I chose to go to New College precisely because there were no sororities and people regularly wore pajamas to class.

So the song spoke to me then. It speaks to me now, I suppose, as I consider how to approach raising my children. I was so lucky, in many ways, to have been raised with very few expectations of who I should be; my parents expected me to treat others with respect and to try my best but otherwise, it was all up to me. So you want to run around shirtless in the front yard? Go for it. Not interested in dolls? No problem. Yeah, sure, go ahead and get that Incredible Hulk lunchbox you're drooling over. Oh, hey, the other girls laughed at you for having an Incredible Hulk lunchbox? So what? Fuck 'em.

And that's what I was taught: to be myself, to do what I wanted, to like what I liked and not bother with what I didn't. And I know that I want this for my children, too--to feel loved and valued no matter what they like or who they become--but I'll be damned if it doesn't get a little complicated when you get right down to it.

For example. Sydney is going through a Princess phase. What the hell do I do with this? Of course I don't discourage it but at what point do you draw the line? The other day we were talking about jobs and why Mommy and Daddy work and I asked Sydney what she might want to do when she grows up and she replied "I want to be a Mommy." Okay, I thought, and what else? But I didn't say it, I didn't say anything, I just gave her a hug and a kiss and told myself to be flattered. But seriously--what would you say? I don't want to give her the message that motherhood isn't enough, isn't valuable, isn't something that one should aspire to--but at the same time it scared me a little. Here's my bright, rambunctuous, doodle-bug catching, hell-raising child, and what she wants more than anything is to be a Mommy? Can I blame Walt Disney for this?

And also. Evan. Is it problematic that my anxiety melted away after the ultrasound showed we were having a boy? That I felt significantly less encumbered by the prospect of raising a male child? Is it right that I continue to eschew gender-stereotypical clothing--anything with trains, soccer balls, footballs, baseballs, airplanes, puppies, camouflage--when he is so clearly male, so physical, so fearless, so consumed with toy cars and loud noises and anything with fur? How am I supposed to reject gender stereotypes when a typical afternoon involves my daughter cuddling her babies on the couch while my son pulls the cat's tail and chases Matchbox cars around the table?

But then: Sydney is Evil Kneivel on a bike and Evan loves kisses and cuddling. My daughter digs for bugs and insects so intently, so persistently, that I've given up on attempting to remove the dirt caked under her fingernails each night. And even at the tender young age of 8 months and 2 days, my son displays a wellspring of empathy and tenderness, tearing up at the sound of his sister's cries, cuddling close when someone seems sad or distracted, bursting into radiant smiles at the sound of laughter. So there's some variation there. I guess my job is to step back and let it all unfold.

But again, to invoke the gardening metaphor: a hallmark of a good gardener is one who knows when to prune for the sake of further growth and when to leave the hell alone. As a parent, it's not sufficient to step away and let the magic unfold; our kids need pruning, careful attention, direction and guidance. And this is where I feel stuck.


* What is up with this show? Half of the women aren't even housewives, for god's sake.

Kill the Bird

So where the hell have I been, anyway?

Let's see.

I've been running. A lot, consistently. I've been running for several years now but only recently have I begun to take it seriously: doing tempo runs, interval training, long, meandering, meditative Sunday runs. God, I love the Sunday runs--the 7 or 8 or 10 miles up and down St. Charles Avenue, as the street car clangs past and people stumble by with their dogs and mugs of coffee and the church bells ring and the world seems new. It's beautiful and exhausting and I look forward to it, without fail, every week. So that's good.

I've been struggling. Of course--what parent worth his or her salt doesn't struggle? The evenings are particularly hard. I leave work and pick up my kids and we come home and I start dinner and they both need so much. They need me, more than anything--my presence, my attention, my affection, my lap. I strongly suspect that if I made the mistake of lying down on the floor on a weekday evening that they would swarm and literally devour me, bit by bit. So I try not to put myself in that position; I try to stay busy, to distract, to entertain, to structure, but eventually I give in to my urge to just enjoy my children and fuck--I lay down on the floor. They swarm. They devour. I tickle and poke. They giggle. I laugh. They laugh harder and swarm closer. It's uncomfortable but wonderful and I give myself over to it, the painful parts and the beautiful parts;I let them swarm, I let them nibble; I give and give until they run out of steam and then I send them off to bed and sit and think about everything I could have done differently, and better.

I struggle.

During a long-ish run the other day a song came on my i-Pod mix that I had not heard--or maybe I'd heard but not paid attention to--in quite a while. If you like Tori Amos, you might remember these lyrics that caught my ear:

I know a cat named Easter,
he says Will you ever learn?
You're just an empty cage, girl
If you kill the bird...

2 years ago, not long after I started this blog, I wrote a post about gathering and scattering, how I felt as though motherhood had relegated me to the latter occupation. I remember that time, how I felt both immensely content and intensely sad, and how confusing it was. I think I understand it better now; I understand that motherhood involves both an evolution and a loss of Self, that it requires both selflessness and self-awareness, self-sacrifice and self-care. So where is my Self in all of this?

Situations I Would Like to Avoid

1. While stuck in traffic I become enraged at another driver; I proceed to scream obscenities at said Driver, I give Driver the finger and honk my horn in maniacal fashion. Driver's face comes into view and I realize that Driver is a therapy client.

2. Sydney has a tantrum in the middle of Whole Foods wherein she manages to take down an entire display of jarred pasta sauce. As I kneel beside her flailing figure, covered in splattered sauce and pleading with my child to please calm the fuck down, a fellow shopper walks by and I realize that it is one of my therapy clients.

3. After a particularly vigorous workout I retire to the gym's locker room, where I proceed to change back into my street clothes. I am naked for a brief moment, as is the woman at the locker next to me, who I suddenly recognize as one of my therapy clients. *

4. After utilizing a public restroom I neglect to wash my hands. As I push open the door I realize the woman standing at the sink is one of my therapy clients.

5. I am nursing Evan on a bench in the mall when he decides to pull away from the boob to look around. A stream of breastmilk shoots in an arc above his tiny head, puddling on the bench beside us. As I lean over to wipe up the milk, breast exposed, a therapy client walks by. *

6. After one too many glasses of wine at a wedding (or other social function), I hit the dance floor with an uncontrollable urge to bust the Funky Chicken. Guess who's watching from the other side of the room?


* Already happened.

"We reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals"

Yes, we do.

Or I do, anyway.

Try as I might, I cannot seem to find words sufficient to describe how I felt yesterday, as President Obama (clumsily) took the oath and became the 44 th president of our country. I've come to realize something about myself: that I am much more adept at describing my own negative emotional states than I am at relating more pleasant--optimistic, hopeful, content--affective states. I'll save the deep analytical work for my therapist, but let it be known that one of my resolutions for the New Year is to find a way to write and talk about my happy feelings without feeling or sounding like Joel Osteen.

My favorite synopsis of the day's events and emotions came from my 3 year-old, when asked to tell Mommy (for the 500th time since November 4th) who the President of our country is:

Sydney: "Obama."

Me: "President Obama."

S: "We had computers at school to watch Obama."

M: "You did? Did the kids get to watch, or just the teachers?"

S: "Kids got to watch, but some kids didn't want to so they drawed [sic] instead."

M: "Did you watch or draw?"

S: "Both."