I’m the Tonya Harding of crawling. I’m not proud of it. In fact, I hate myself for it. I promised myself I’d never be one of those Moms, but I also said I’d never date anyone longer than 2 years without getting engaged. 4 ½ years later, I learned never to proclaim “never” because some friend with a good memory will remind you that you’re doing exactly what you said you’d never do and then your credibility is shot.
Case in point, I said, “I never want to be a competitive Mom, checking my kid’s progress against other kids’…” But since I’ve never actually met a living, breathing Mom (or Dad for that matter) who isn’t competitive when it comes to their kid, it shouldn’t surprise me that I’m on the verge of tears looking at all these little Nancy Kerrigans crawling by my boy. I’m not unhappy for this herd of heads and butts cruising by my guy, I’m just sad for mine. He’s been trying for weeks now, up on all fours, a step, then another, then crawling…backwards. My son’s transmission is stuck in reverse and he can only scoot himself back until he gets his giant head stuck into a tiny space. While the other kids are one unified pack of asses in the air, playing together, my guy is perfectly content playing by himself, bashing a ladle into the ground, or sucking on his big toe like a finger. All his friends are moving forward, taking the next step toward a new milestone, and my guy isn’t even in neutral, he’s in reverse and he’s alone.
I find myself willing him to crawl at all possible times. Tummy time turns into “Tummy Hour”, me with a whistle around my neck coaching him through drills. Time spent in the car seat, stroller, or someone’s arms is restricted to only what’s necessary so as not to stunt his time working out. I rock him back and forth on all fours, giving him a push with an encouraging, “Craaaawl,” but he won’t budge. Finally, at last resort, I get down on all fours, my ass high in the air, my low rise jeans sliding low below my rise, and with one foot in front of the other, I show him how it’s done. But instead of my kid emulating my moves, I turn around to find my husband in the doorway, bordering on a full on pup tent at the site of me down on all fours, panting and crawling like some sort of infant replicating porn star. He suggests maybe we should “hit it” while the kid naps. This infuriates me.
“How can you be turned on when our son might be retarded? Don’t you love your son?” I scream. “His buddies aren’t going to play with him now that they can move and he can’t!”
But he remains un-phased and says, “The kid’ll crawl when he’s ready to crawl. It may not be when you’re ready for him to crawl, but he’ll crawl.” This infuriates me even more.
“You just don’t love him like I do,” I say.
But my MBA husband is suddenly some sort of Zen baby guru and tells me that while he used to think I was the sanest woman he’d ever known, this crawling thing has brought out my “Female Gene.” That’s husband for irrational.
Then I lose it. “I beg to differ. Irrational is asking to “hit it” in the midst of a fight. There will be no hitting it, not until my little boy crawls and my big boy apologizes for accusing me of being a crazy female just because I’m worried my kid’s life will be ruined because he’s the last to crawl.” Wait…
That is a little extreme. I know my kid is fine. I just don’t want him to be…Hmm. Why is this bothering me so much? Why do I care what the other kids are doing when I know my kid is moving along at his own pace, content where he is? Could it be? Could my husband be rig.. No, that’s impossible. If there’s one thing married women know it’s that husbands are never, ever….righ…Are they?
Rationally I know there’s a wide range of normal for kids. My guy got his first tooth at four months, others don’t see a tooth until much later. Some kids are walking by their first birthday, others are barely standing by the same time. They’re all normal; each on his or her own timetable. But it’s easier to remember that when your kid is the first to giggle, rollover, or talk, not when your kid is crawling towards last place, back of the pack.
The constant questions from strangers don’t help. When I was pregnant, I was able to dodge the onslaught of intrusive questions gracefully, without feeling obligated to tell every Tom, Dick, and In-Law how much baby weight I’d gained, if I wanted a boy or a girl, or even though my then unborn child was still unborn, would I be planning to have another. But for some reason, now that he’s here, the barrage of competitive questions and comments: “You know so and so’s kid was crawling at ... “, ”I bet the next time I see him, he’ll be ….”, “You know when my son was a baby….”, feel like judgments against my boy and judgments against me.
It’s not enough to have a happy, healthy baby, he also has to meet everyone else’s expectations. He has to crawl when the UPS man thinks he should, talk when his friends do, and be just like every other baby. Even worse, my concerns about him not crawling have made me into what I hate, an obsessed parent frustrated because my kid isn’t on my timetable.
In reality, knowing your kid is the only one in a group not to do something is terribly painful. At 9 months, my boy doesn’t know the difference. He’s not feeling crawling shame, worried the cool kids won’t like him, but I am. I know what it’s like to be left out, I know what it’s like not to feel like I can't keep up, I know what it’s like to feel like I just can’t move my life forward to the next age appropriate milestone. Every adult knows what it’s like to feel stuck, unable to get the transmission out of reverse and get out of the tiny space you’ve backed yourself into. So while I’m watching my kid rolling while the others are crawling, it’s really my pain I don’t want him to experience. I want to shield him from being left out, from being alone, from being “the one” who just can’t hang with the others. I want to shield him from being me.
There are those parents who are just hyper competitive about life, so they’re hyper competitive about their kids. They’re usually the ones who start every sentence with, “You know me, I’m just not a competitive person…” and then they say something really competitive. But for most parents, we’re making the best choices we can for our kids with the information we have, which is often very little. There’s a lot of guesswork and fear when it comes to our little ones and the only way we’ll know we made the right choices is to see our kids grow up well. Every time someone else does something different with their child, or every time a child surpasses another, it calls into question our choices as parents. The differences in parenting remind us that there’s no insurance guaranteeing our kids will be okay. All we really want as parents is for our kids to be okay.
Husbands are a lot of things, but “right” is an attribute I rarely want to give to mine. But right now, faced with the fact that I’ve claimed my child might have a life ruined simply because he’s the last of his buds to crawl, I have to admit, my husband just might be..is probably…is definitely right.
Let’s keep that part to ourselves. Once he finds out, he’s going to revisit the hitting it thing and quite frankly, I’m exhausted because the kid started crawling today. It happened just like that, just like my husband said, when he was ready. And while I’m so happy for him, I’m sad for me. In all my time willing this kid to crawl, I forgot to take into account that he’d be crawling; on the move, full mobility to destroy everything in his path. Gone are the days of toe sucking and ladle banging, he’s got stereos to take apart, screen doors to plow through, computer cords to chew. He’s even trying to stand. He’s moving toward the next milestone. My house is in shambles and I can’t take my eyes off him even to pee, but he’s on the move. He’s in motion. Now I can see that he’s always been moving forward, it’s me who was stuck in reverse.
Monday, June 30, 2008
Thursday, June 19, 2008
The Island Of Lost Best Friends
I wonder if my voicemail is broken. There’s probably a message, it just hasn’t come to me yet. Sometimes that happens, you know. Messages get lost somewhere in space, dangling above the horizon, dropping into your voice mailbox days after intended. That’s probably what happened. My wireless must be broken, too. That’s why I haven’t gotten many emails. Of course there’s always the possibility that no messages, emails, texts, or letters are lost and that I’m actually getting all of them, but then how do you explain so many friends not getting in touch. I mean, if it were a guy I’d recently started dating and I didn’t hear from him, I’d assume…Oh, so that’s what’s happening. I get it now. They’ve moved on. Ever since I had a kid, my friends are breaking up with me.
“Maybe we can hang”.
That’s the sum total of the contents of an email I just received from a friend of 20 years, in town already for a month, who, with 4 days left in LA, might want to hang. I only have two problems with the four words of her email: maybe and hang. I’ve been through “Maybe” before, maybe also means maybe not. So this being her third trip to LA, the first two I didn’t know she was here until she was gone, I’ll assume my friend won’t call, so we won’t get together, and I’ll be left hanging.
I also have a problem with the word hang used in mixed company. By mixed I mean anyone over 17. Last I checked I’m not hoping to meet my friend after Algebra class so we can “hang” and watch the new Duran Duran video. I am an adult with a career, husband and kid. I don’t hang, I make plans.
The truth is, I’m losing friends like baby weight. Slowly but surely, many of my long term friendships have gone by the wayside. Somewhere, I assume off the coast of California maybe near Catalina, lies an island. On it are all my 3 month best friends who went bat shit crazy never to be heard from again, the ones who moved away and apparently lost their phone, email, and letter writing ability, and some of my closest friends who just disappear without a trace. They’ve moved to the Island of Lost Best Friends, a large island filled with people who only know three words, “It’s not personal.”
I first started to notice my friends leaving for The Island when I met the man who would later become my husband. When you’ve been single for a long time, your friends are used to having you all to themselves, they’re not used to sharing. The truth is, when you’re in a relationship, some friends see you as moving on to greener pastures, so they put your friendship out to pasture. And let’s face it, married people spend Saturday nights going out to dinner with other couples. That’s what it comes down to, foursomes who overpay. We don’t have the crazy “funny story nights” with double plans, random hook-ups, and embarrassing drunken moments. But after a while, when you’ve had ten or twenty years of “funny story nights”, they start to feel less funny and more stagnant. It feels like you’ve been doing the same thing year after year because you have. So while every Saturday night may not be raging, no Saturday night is lonely, so I’ll gladly take it.
Then along comes a baby and, after the initial interest in the viewing of the baby, as if a rare painting at the Met, certain friends become rare. With time, away go the insincere offers to help and you begin to notice a lot more people promising to hang but never making an effort. Sure, some assume you are so busy with a baby that you never eat, shower, leave the house, or leave the baby. That’s not me. I shower a lot. I even leave my house. And that’s the easy way out, assuming a friend is busy so you never have to make any effort. Honestly, my free time is far more fractured than in my previous life where my hours weren’t spoken for, but I still have 24 hours in my day, just like you, and can hang them however I’d like. We’ve all got 24 hours in our day. It’s just how we choose to spend them.
From the President to a mother of four, we’ve all got the same amount of time, the same amount of days in a week. We are choosing how to spend every moment, and how NOT to spend every moment. Of course, a single mother of four with a job and no support system has a lot less free time than a 30 year old with a trust fund, but chances are there’s some free time in there, there’s some choices on how to spend time, and with whom to spend it. So if we’re choosing who to spend our time with, then by default we’re choosing who NOT to spend our time with. Our choices are personal.
My husband suggests I finally ask my friend why I’m not important to her, but I already know the answer. I’m not important to her. I don’t need to call her to ask her why she’s not calling me to know that she’s not calling me. Just like a guy who doesn’t call a girl back after a date, a friend is making you unimportant by not making you important. In friendship, everything is personal. Our lives aren’t at the same stage; I’m a reminder of what she doesn’t have, doesn’t want, or isn’t interested in. I’m not her Saturday night friend.
I haven’t lost all my old friends. The ones who weren’t difficult still aren’t. There are still those old shoe friends who’ve known me through break ups, make-ups, firings, hirings, marriage, and now a baby. They may not always call me on a Saturday night, but they call me on Sunday morning to tell me a funny story about their night. And I tell them about my Saturday night, which restaurant to go to, and how much they’ll overpay. We may hang a lot less, but we’re hanging in there. We’re friends. It’s personal. I’ll take it.
“Maybe we can hang”.
That’s the sum total of the contents of an email I just received from a friend of 20 years, in town already for a month, who, with 4 days left in LA, might want to hang. I only have two problems with the four words of her email: maybe and hang. I’ve been through “Maybe” before, maybe also means maybe not. So this being her third trip to LA, the first two I didn’t know she was here until she was gone, I’ll assume my friend won’t call, so we won’t get together, and I’ll be left hanging.
I also have a problem with the word hang used in mixed company. By mixed I mean anyone over 17. Last I checked I’m not hoping to meet my friend after Algebra class so we can “hang” and watch the new Duran Duran video. I am an adult with a career, husband and kid. I don’t hang, I make plans.
The truth is, I’m losing friends like baby weight. Slowly but surely, many of my long term friendships have gone by the wayside. Somewhere, I assume off the coast of California maybe near Catalina, lies an island. On it are all my 3 month best friends who went bat shit crazy never to be heard from again, the ones who moved away and apparently lost their phone, email, and letter writing ability, and some of my closest friends who just disappear without a trace. They’ve moved to the Island of Lost Best Friends, a large island filled with people who only know three words, “It’s not personal.”
I first started to notice my friends leaving for The Island when I met the man who would later become my husband. When you’ve been single for a long time, your friends are used to having you all to themselves, they’re not used to sharing. The truth is, when you’re in a relationship, some friends see you as moving on to greener pastures, so they put your friendship out to pasture. And let’s face it, married people spend Saturday nights going out to dinner with other couples. That’s what it comes down to, foursomes who overpay. We don’t have the crazy “funny story nights” with double plans, random hook-ups, and embarrassing drunken moments. But after a while, when you’ve had ten or twenty years of “funny story nights”, they start to feel less funny and more stagnant. It feels like you’ve been doing the same thing year after year because you have. So while every Saturday night may not be raging, no Saturday night is lonely, so I’ll gladly take it.
Then along comes a baby and, after the initial interest in the viewing of the baby, as if a rare painting at the Met, certain friends become rare. With time, away go the insincere offers to help and you begin to notice a lot more people promising to hang but never making an effort. Sure, some assume you are so busy with a baby that you never eat, shower, leave the house, or leave the baby. That’s not me. I shower a lot. I even leave my house. And that’s the easy way out, assuming a friend is busy so you never have to make any effort. Honestly, my free time is far more fractured than in my previous life where my hours weren’t spoken for, but I still have 24 hours in my day, just like you, and can hang them however I’d like. We’ve all got 24 hours in our day. It’s just how we choose to spend them.
From the President to a mother of four, we’ve all got the same amount of time, the same amount of days in a week. We are choosing how to spend every moment, and how NOT to spend every moment. Of course, a single mother of four with a job and no support system has a lot less free time than a 30 year old with a trust fund, but chances are there’s some free time in there, there’s some choices on how to spend time, and with whom to spend it. So if we’re choosing who to spend our time with, then by default we’re choosing who NOT to spend our time with. Our choices are personal.
My husband suggests I finally ask my friend why I’m not important to her, but I already know the answer. I’m not important to her. I don’t need to call her to ask her why she’s not calling me to know that she’s not calling me. Just like a guy who doesn’t call a girl back after a date, a friend is making you unimportant by not making you important. In friendship, everything is personal. Our lives aren’t at the same stage; I’m a reminder of what she doesn’t have, doesn’t want, or isn’t interested in. I’m not her Saturday night friend.
I haven’t lost all my old friends. The ones who weren’t difficult still aren’t. There are still those old shoe friends who’ve known me through break ups, make-ups, firings, hirings, marriage, and now a baby. They may not always call me on a Saturday night, but they call me on Sunday morning to tell me a funny story about their night. And I tell them about my Saturday night, which restaurant to go to, and how much they’ll overpay. We may hang a lot less, but we’re hanging in there. We’re friends. It’s personal. I’ll take it.
Wednesday, June 11, 2008
DUMPED
I’m better off. There were things, lots of things that I ignored. I always make things sound better than they are. Of course you could always do worse… there’s worse out there… I’ve had worse. Maybe we should try again, see if we can make it work. I mean after all, we both love the baby so much, or so I thought… I wonder what I did wrong. I wonder if I should call. I wonder where I have some chocolate…damned healthy house, not a Dorito in sight. No, I’m not calling. It’s over… I deserve an explanation, but I’ll have settle for a new pair of shoes…ooh, how bout a pizza! I need something because getting dumped like this, without so much as a reason why... “It’s all my fault, it’s not you, it’s me…” total bullshit. It’s me isn’t it? I did something. Sometimes I say things…I don’t mean to…Well it’s all water under the baby now isn’t it? An explanation won’t change history. I have to move forward now. I have to be strong.... I have to eat a donut. That’s what I have to do. Maybe then I can figure out why my Nanny left me.
I’ve never been lucky in staff. Two hours into working for me on the 2nd day of my son’s life, my $250 a day baby nurse informed me she needs four hours off every morning and 4 days off the following week and my first nanny was sick 5 out of the 8 weeks she worked for me. So when I met Dalia, I was gun-shy, wounded from the last nanny gone awry. I vowed never to need someone that much again. “I won’t commit to full time,” I told myself assuming that a 3-day a week nanny could be kept at a distance. But with each passing day of witnessing Dalia’s gentle way with my son, I slowly thawed. I made myself vulnerable and let her in.
And then out of the blue, I get a phone call. A stranger claiming to be her “cousin” says, “Dalia won’t be coming to work today. She can’t tell you why. She asked me to call to tell you.” I wonder what that means. Is she just not coming to work today or everyday? Days before, we were laughing and reminiscing about play dates and purees. But now, she’s gone without a trace, leaving my keys in my mailbox without so much as a goodbye or I’ll miss you. By days end, I’m mainlining junk food; just days away from a full on break up-butt, the thought of a nanny-less life just too much for me to bear.
I begin to question my judgment. “How could I have thought we had something when clearly she was cheating on us with another family?” I tell myself as I replay our months together over and over in my head looking for a sign, a red flag, a something that I should have seen. But there is nothing, there were no signs. And as much as I try to forget, I can’t get her out of my head. I turn on the TV only to find HBO featuring “The Black Dahlia.” I can’t watch, I can’t hear her name. I read the Times’ book review, but stop when I see the review of a new novel, “The Last Dahlia.” It seems that my Dalia is gone, but reminders of her are everywhere. And while I know I need to put the past behind me and accept that she’s gone, I just can’t. I want her back. I can’t go through this heartbreak again.
It’s not just being left without help that sends me into a tailspin; it’s the loss for our family and for my son. Sure my boy is little and may not know the difference, but I do. I can feel the loss for him. This is the first of many losses he’ll encounter in his life. He’ll lose friends, family members, someday his parents. Then, he’ll be old enough to feel the burn of having someone leave your life without a goodbye or an explanation. He’ll know what it’s like to go through an experience with someone, think you’re close, only to find that person was passing through your life and you haven’t made an impact. Sure finding the right nanny is hard work, but finding out you meant nothing to someone you cared about his harder. It’s heartbreaking to say goodbye, but worse to find out you were irrelevant. And ultimately, I’m to blame. By bringing someone into our home, I’ve brought loss into my son’s life. Even though he doesn’t yet know how to say hello, he now has to learn how to say goodbye.
I resolve to move forward. At minimum I’ll be teaching my son that a break-up doesn’t have to break you. You get back on the horse, put yourself out there, and try to love again. So I put it out there. “I’m looking, I’m ready to try,” I tell friends. I even think I’ll bite the bullet, ignore the clichés, and go through an online staffing service. “It’s the way everyone’s finding someone now,” I tell myself. Sure enough, resumes and referrals come at me in droves. But after my first interview, a 400-pound woman with a mustache who refers to my son as “chubby,” I realize how much I miss Dalia. She was kind, hard working, gentle, and had no obvious facial hair. She was perfect for our family, I’m only sorry we weren’t perfect for her.
A few days later my phone rings. It’s Dalia and she’s crying. It seems that the other day when she was leaving for work, her husband informed her that he was leaving her life. They sheared 15 years, 3 children and he left with no explanation and no closure. I want to tell her I understand how she feels, the shock, the confusion, the resentment of being left without an explanation, but truthfully you can’t compare the loss of a trusted staff member to the loss of your whole life. No one deserves to be dumped, left to pick up the pieces of their own bad judgment, left to explain to their baby why they have to say goodbye, why they don’t matter.
As much as I want her to return to work to take care of my baby, I know that she’s got her hands full with her own. Hopefully she’ll be back with us, we’d hate to lose her. But just in case, I’ve got some work to do on of my own. So out go the Doritos, the Flaky Flix, and the bulk Cheetos. I’ve got to get in shape, just in case I need to start seeing other nannies.
I’ve never been lucky in staff. Two hours into working for me on the 2nd day of my son’s life, my $250 a day baby nurse informed me she needs four hours off every morning and 4 days off the following week and my first nanny was sick 5 out of the 8 weeks she worked for me. So when I met Dalia, I was gun-shy, wounded from the last nanny gone awry. I vowed never to need someone that much again. “I won’t commit to full time,” I told myself assuming that a 3-day a week nanny could be kept at a distance. But with each passing day of witnessing Dalia’s gentle way with my son, I slowly thawed. I made myself vulnerable and let her in.
And then out of the blue, I get a phone call. A stranger claiming to be her “cousin” says, “Dalia won’t be coming to work today. She can’t tell you why. She asked me to call to tell you.” I wonder what that means. Is she just not coming to work today or everyday? Days before, we were laughing and reminiscing about play dates and purees. But now, she’s gone without a trace, leaving my keys in my mailbox without so much as a goodbye or I’ll miss you. By days end, I’m mainlining junk food; just days away from a full on break up-butt, the thought of a nanny-less life just too much for me to bear.
I begin to question my judgment. “How could I have thought we had something when clearly she was cheating on us with another family?” I tell myself as I replay our months together over and over in my head looking for a sign, a red flag, a something that I should have seen. But there is nothing, there were no signs. And as much as I try to forget, I can’t get her out of my head. I turn on the TV only to find HBO featuring “The Black Dahlia.” I can’t watch, I can’t hear her name. I read the Times’ book review, but stop when I see the review of a new novel, “The Last Dahlia.” It seems that my Dalia is gone, but reminders of her are everywhere. And while I know I need to put the past behind me and accept that she’s gone, I just can’t. I want her back. I can’t go through this heartbreak again.
It’s not just being left without help that sends me into a tailspin; it’s the loss for our family and for my son. Sure my boy is little and may not know the difference, but I do. I can feel the loss for him. This is the first of many losses he’ll encounter in his life. He’ll lose friends, family members, someday his parents. Then, he’ll be old enough to feel the burn of having someone leave your life without a goodbye or an explanation. He’ll know what it’s like to go through an experience with someone, think you’re close, only to find that person was passing through your life and you haven’t made an impact. Sure finding the right nanny is hard work, but finding out you meant nothing to someone you cared about his harder. It’s heartbreaking to say goodbye, but worse to find out you were irrelevant. And ultimately, I’m to blame. By bringing someone into our home, I’ve brought loss into my son’s life. Even though he doesn’t yet know how to say hello, he now has to learn how to say goodbye.
I resolve to move forward. At minimum I’ll be teaching my son that a break-up doesn’t have to break you. You get back on the horse, put yourself out there, and try to love again. So I put it out there. “I’m looking, I’m ready to try,” I tell friends. I even think I’ll bite the bullet, ignore the clichés, and go through an online staffing service. “It’s the way everyone’s finding someone now,” I tell myself. Sure enough, resumes and referrals come at me in droves. But after my first interview, a 400-pound woman with a mustache who refers to my son as “chubby,” I realize how much I miss Dalia. She was kind, hard working, gentle, and had no obvious facial hair. She was perfect for our family, I’m only sorry we weren’t perfect for her.
A few days later my phone rings. It’s Dalia and she’s crying. It seems that the other day when she was leaving for work, her husband informed her that he was leaving her life. They sheared 15 years, 3 children and he left with no explanation and no closure. I want to tell her I understand how she feels, the shock, the confusion, the resentment of being left without an explanation, but truthfully you can’t compare the loss of a trusted staff member to the loss of your whole life. No one deserves to be dumped, left to pick up the pieces of their own bad judgment, left to explain to their baby why they have to say goodbye, why they don’t matter.
As much as I want her to return to work to take care of my baby, I know that she’s got her hands full with her own. Hopefully she’ll be back with us, we’d hate to lose her. But just in case, I’ve got some work to do on of my own. So out go the Doritos, the Flaky Flix, and the bulk Cheetos. I’ve got to get in shape, just in case I need to start seeing other nannies.
Thursday, June 5, 2008
Sigma Delta Dirty
My Mom picked my nose. That’s the thought that comes to mind as I’m staring down the face of the enemy: my son’s poo. This is certainly not his first, it’s just the first one I’ve dropped on the floor, in the middle of the night, while bracing my squiggly kid on his changing table, in the dark. So I guess I’m not staring it down, more like sniffing it down while trying to keep my kid semi-sleepy enough so he’ll go back to sleep which means I can go back to sleep and hopefully not have another night where I wake up with a face that looks like Bea Arthur’s ass cheeks.
I’ve got two options, 1: pick the kid up, turn on the light, find a Kleenex or whatever I can find akin to a Has-Mat suit with which I can pick up the errant poo, but maybe arouse my arousable kid into thinking 3 am is playtime, or 2: put one hand on the kid’s belly while bending down and using my other, BARE, hand to pick up his poo. My Mom picked my nose, I tell myself over again. She picked my nose, wiped my butt, cleaned my puke, and lived to tell about it. Hmm. I don’t need sleep, do I? My kid doesn’t need sleep, does he? Just turn on the light, walk down the…No, I need sleep. Okay, you can do it. Your Mom did it. You’ll touch worse. You’ve touched worse; remember college? That date with the guy you called Sigma Delta Dirty? That was gross, this is just…
I don’t like creepy crawly things. I’m not a bug person, I’ll go inside if a bee is within 10 feet of me, and I won’t sleep in a house with a spider unless it’s a dead spider whose demise I’ve witnessed. My sisters and I don’t like anything creepy yet our Mom seems to have no problem. On a family vacation to Hawaii, my sisters, and I spent 5 hours in the middle of the night trying to find a Gecko who’d made his bed on my bed. Lest you’re no Gecko expert, I’ll tell you that Geckos specialize in camouflaging themselves; blending in is their forte. Armed with a tennis racket, my Mom walked over, decapitated said Gecko then scooped up the guts, head, and legglets, flushed them down the toilet, and went to bed without so much as an “Eeeew” or “ Groooooos.”
For whatever reason my childhood house seemed to make a regular, pleasant, home for orphaned spiders looking for company. Maybe it was the Northern California climate or maybe the house was the “Motherland” of spiders, but we’d always have some. Invariably, one of us wasn’t going to sleep because of some creature hanging out in a ceiling corner. Me, I was sure the spider would have a kegger on my face or get cozy in my ear if I were to go to sleep in it’s presence. So, I’d call for Mom, she’d come upstairs and with the swift, graceful, move of Bruce Lee, she’d snuff it out and go about her business. But me, not so much.
Still to this day, I have to brace myself when around anything creepy or crawly. Maybe a spider will suddenly jump up at me, tear my face off, and I’ll live a sad, faceless life. An unaccounted for spider in my house once caused me to consider sleeping in a hotel and a rogue mouse who found his way up my middle of the night leg, caused me to spend the next summer month sleeping with the lights on while wearing a turtle neck, leggings, knee socks, and ski cap. I don’t do gross…of any kind.
And while my Mom was a self appointed Spider Murderess and savant at puke pickup, I am having trouble with my duty of touching my kid’s doody. This kid of mine makes something creepy, crawly, or crappy come out of his body all the time and I’m starting to feel like a sewage worked without the double-time on Sunday’s or sweet Union benefits. Sure, I knew there’d be poop. In the beginning it’s not so bad, it’s like the kid shits the inside of a pumpkin. But put a baby on solid food and suddenly you’re in for a whole different kind of thing.
This would be fine if I didn’t have to touch any of this stuff with my actual skin. And short of wearing gloves and a mask around my kid, I’m in for some touchy feely poop and pee time. In fact just the other night, while changing my kid’s drawers he giggled, so I giggled, only to learn that he was giggling because he was peeing. And my giggling back provided him the perfect opportunity to perform a urinary lay-up and tinkle right in my mouth. That’s creepy and crawly.
And now I’m faced with the dropped poop. I can’t honestly leave it there, not only for the cleanliness/disease issues with comes with crap, but for the fact that I’ll undoubtedly forget about it and step in it in the wee morning hours. That’s even more poop touch then I’d bargained for. I can’t wake my husband and say, “Sorry to wake you but the other shoe has dropped and it’s small and stinky.” And I’m fairly certain that if I call the police, we’ll differ on the definition of emergency. So I’m stuck. Either the kid wakes up or I’m going commando on poop touch time.
And so off I go. One hand on the baby’s belly, the other hand going in for the fecal rescue. Like those Swift Water Teams that rescue kid’s from surfing days gone awry, I smoothly pick up the poo, open the garbage with my nearest foot, drop it in, and close the lid. Mission accomplished. Much to my surprise, it’s not that bad. In fact, it’s really not bad at all. It’s sort of a non-issue. Now I get how Mom could clean up or kill all the creepy crawlies in our lives, she had to. Her kids’ comfort was more important than her own and she didn’t have time to be groused out or scared, she just had a mission she needed to swiftly accomplish.
The hard part about being a Mom is you don’t really ever get any time off. There’s no three-day weekend for Mommies. But the good thing about that is you don’t have time for silly issues and fears that plagued you before. In a world of people who compete for who’s busier, new Moms probably win. Even the President gets time off; in this President’s case, a lot of time off. But Mom, not so much. And so with a lack of time comes higher priorities. How and who am I going to spend my time? A spider becomes just a ten second thing you need to deal with on a list of many. Moms just don’t have time to be scared.
With the poo issue behind us, I clean up my kid’s behind. In the dark of the night my boy looks at me and giggles. I swear he’s laughing at me for making such a big deal of nothing so I giggle back. True to form, he gets me, right in the mouth. I just got a warm shot of kid pee. Oh well, I’ll live. Now let’s just hope there are no spiders in his room. Poop and pee I can handle, but creepy crawly things, now that’s gross.
I’ve got two options, 1: pick the kid up, turn on the light, find a Kleenex or whatever I can find akin to a Has-Mat suit with which I can pick up the errant poo, but maybe arouse my arousable kid into thinking 3 am is playtime, or 2: put one hand on the kid’s belly while bending down and using my other, BARE, hand to pick up his poo. My Mom picked my nose, I tell myself over again. She picked my nose, wiped my butt, cleaned my puke, and lived to tell about it. Hmm. I don’t need sleep, do I? My kid doesn’t need sleep, does he? Just turn on the light, walk down the…No, I need sleep. Okay, you can do it. Your Mom did it. You’ll touch worse. You’ve touched worse; remember college? That date with the guy you called Sigma Delta Dirty? That was gross, this is just…
I don’t like creepy crawly things. I’m not a bug person, I’ll go inside if a bee is within 10 feet of me, and I won’t sleep in a house with a spider unless it’s a dead spider whose demise I’ve witnessed. My sisters and I don’t like anything creepy yet our Mom seems to have no problem. On a family vacation to Hawaii, my sisters, and I spent 5 hours in the middle of the night trying to find a Gecko who’d made his bed on my bed. Lest you’re no Gecko expert, I’ll tell you that Geckos specialize in camouflaging themselves; blending in is their forte. Armed with a tennis racket, my Mom walked over, decapitated said Gecko then scooped up the guts, head, and legglets, flushed them down the toilet, and went to bed without so much as an “Eeeew” or “ Groooooos.”
For whatever reason my childhood house seemed to make a regular, pleasant, home for orphaned spiders looking for company. Maybe it was the Northern California climate or maybe the house was the “Motherland” of spiders, but we’d always have some. Invariably, one of us wasn’t going to sleep because of some creature hanging out in a ceiling corner. Me, I was sure the spider would have a kegger on my face or get cozy in my ear if I were to go to sleep in it’s presence. So, I’d call for Mom, she’d come upstairs and with the swift, graceful, move of Bruce Lee, she’d snuff it out and go about her business. But me, not so much.
Still to this day, I have to brace myself when around anything creepy or crawly. Maybe a spider will suddenly jump up at me, tear my face off, and I’ll live a sad, faceless life. An unaccounted for spider in my house once caused me to consider sleeping in a hotel and a rogue mouse who found his way up my middle of the night leg, caused me to spend the next summer month sleeping with the lights on while wearing a turtle neck, leggings, knee socks, and ski cap. I don’t do gross…of any kind.
And while my Mom was a self appointed Spider Murderess and savant at puke pickup, I am having trouble with my duty of touching my kid’s doody. This kid of mine makes something creepy, crawly, or crappy come out of his body all the time and I’m starting to feel like a sewage worked without the double-time on Sunday’s or sweet Union benefits. Sure, I knew there’d be poop. In the beginning it’s not so bad, it’s like the kid shits the inside of a pumpkin. But put a baby on solid food and suddenly you’re in for a whole different kind of thing.
This would be fine if I didn’t have to touch any of this stuff with my actual skin. And short of wearing gloves and a mask around my kid, I’m in for some touchy feely poop and pee time. In fact just the other night, while changing my kid’s drawers he giggled, so I giggled, only to learn that he was giggling because he was peeing. And my giggling back provided him the perfect opportunity to perform a urinary lay-up and tinkle right in my mouth. That’s creepy and crawly.
And now I’m faced with the dropped poop. I can’t honestly leave it there, not only for the cleanliness/disease issues with comes with crap, but for the fact that I’ll undoubtedly forget about it and step in it in the wee morning hours. That’s even more poop touch then I’d bargained for. I can’t wake my husband and say, “Sorry to wake you but the other shoe has dropped and it’s small and stinky.” And I’m fairly certain that if I call the police, we’ll differ on the definition of emergency. So I’m stuck. Either the kid wakes up or I’m going commando on poop touch time.
And so off I go. One hand on the baby’s belly, the other hand going in for the fecal rescue. Like those Swift Water Teams that rescue kid’s from surfing days gone awry, I smoothly pick up the poo, open the garbage with my nearest foot, drop it in, and close the lid. Mission accomplished. Much to my surprise, it’s not that bad. In fact, it’s really not bad at all. It’s sort of a non-issue. Now I get how Mom could clean up or kill all the creepy crawlies in our lives, she had to. Her kids’ comfort was more important than her own and she didn’t have time to be groused out or scared, she just had a mission she needed to swiftly accomplish.
The hard part about being a Mom is you don’t really ever get any time off. There’s no three-day weekend for Mommies. But the good thing about that is you don’t have time for silly issues and fears that plagued you before. In a world of people who compete for who’s busier, new Moms probably win. Even the President gets time off; in this President’s case, a lot of time off. But Mom, not so much. And so with a lack of time comes higher priorities. How and who am I going to spend my time? A spider becomes just a ten second thing you need to deal with on a list of many. Moms just don’t have time to be scared.
With the poo issue behind us, I clean up my kid’s behind. In the dark of the night my boy looks at me and giggles. I swear he’s laughing at me for making such a big deal of nothing so I giggle back. True to form, he gets me, right in the mouth. I just got a warm shot of kid pee. Oh well, I’ll live. Now let’s just hope there are no spiders in his room. Poop and pee I can handle, but creepy crawly things, now that’s gross.
Tuesday, June 3, 2008
THE GUARDIAN TEST
I don’t like hospitals. Hospitals are places where people go in but they don’t come out. But short of having a home birth I’m sort of stuck. Plus I’m already spread eagle, toes in the air, baby maker on display for what seems like an audience of doctors, nurses, residents, and interns. If one more person comes in this room, I’m going to start selling tickets. Labor and delivery is like a vaginal clown car. As my doctor yells push, I yell back, “Don’t let me dieeeeeee!” I just want to make it through alive. Sure we had 9 months to figure this stuff out, but it’s not that easy to settle on the right one. It’s a choice that could change your kid’s life and now he’s going to be born without one. But since the doctor’s telling me to push, I suppose it’s time. It’s time to have this baby and pick that guardian.
You spend your whole life feeling invincible, but give birth and you start thinking about death. Being a Mom wasn’t the scary part of having a baby for me, it was having the baby that kept me up at night. I’d never been in the hospital before and frankly, most hospitals seem to have a high percentage of dead people. Sure I’d consider how I might go before, but I never had anyone who really cared. My parents and siblings would be sad but they’d be fine. I’ve got about $267 left to my pre-marriage name so there’s little to squabble over and my husband would undoubtedly replace me with a newer, younger model. But my kid, I need to make sure he’ll be looked after.
So how do you decide how to decide? Ideally, we’d pick a family member as the guardian, but with family comes fighting. Either my death would have to coincide with everyone getting along, or we need some other options. I consider picking the person closest to my son until my husband reminds me that will probably be our son’s Nanny. “Right,” I tell him “when she said she’d work weekends, she probably didn’t mean for the rest of her life." I suggest sending our son to one of our wealthiest friends. Sure it seems like a superficial way to go, but it’ll be bad enough to be an orphan, no need to make it worse driving a shitty car and wearing hand me downs. But short of asking for tax returns from all the wealthy candidates, there’s really no way to know.
We’re at a stalemate. We need some help. If only there were a Zagat Survey for friends, then you could pick your Maid of Honor, Best Man, Godparents, and Guardians by checking the boxes, considering all categories equally in an unbiased, unemotional decision. What we need is a Guardian Test.
My husband puts his MBA hat on, setting up spread sheets with all our friends’ names, categorizing them, and color coding them according to marital status, income, religion, and lifestyle. He says he’s “creating a framework” from which we can decide. Framework is one of his fancy business terms like matrix or pre-processing. As far as I can tell all business terms come down to men finding a way to be as organized as women are all the time. So if he needs spreadsheets, have at it as long as I get to give Zero’s to all the Republicans, Divorcees, and low earners. Unfortunately, he gives Zero’s to those he refers as my friends “so liberal, they’re communist.” We’ve basically canceled each other out. And while the remaining list yields some good candidates, there’s only few remaining after we both gives Zero’s to the people our son will actually interact with and see with any regularity.
We lose more contenders when we ask the tougher questions. Would they raise him like we would? Do they like to do what we do? Do they believe what we believe? While friends may share experiences, it doesn’t mean all friends share the same world view. The qualities that make a good parent will make a good guardian, the answer lies in the people who are the best parents.
So I think about what my parents did well, and what they didn’t. And when I think about what they did well, not one thing has to do with politics, religion, location, or lifestyle. The only thing that comes to mind is how my parents loved us. Vacations were great and so were new clothes, but what meant the most to me was time spent sitting in their laps reading a new book, or when my Mom slept on the street to wait in line to get us into a better school. Somehow they always found a way to make sure we had what we needed, not necessarily what we wanted, but always what we needed. We felt safe, cared for, and were encouraged to be strong, open-minded people. We felt loved.
There really only needs to be one question on The Guardian Test: Who will love my kids the most ? Who will sleep on the street to get them into the right school, who will hold their hand when they’re scared, teach them to swim, teach them to drive, remind them to laugh, and encourage them to think and learn with abandon.
With that in mind, the choice seems obvious. And while my husband and I won’t vote for the same Presidential candidate, we did vote for the same Guardian. No one will love my family like my family, so that’s who we chose. Ideally, we never need to put them to the test, but if we do, I hope my death coincides with the moment in time we’re all getting along. If not, I’m going to have to give my Nanny a very impressive raise.
If you want to know whom we chose, you’ll have to wait. I won’t be around when you find out so just look for the person with $276 in one hand and the soft hand of my little one in the other.
You spend your whole life feeling invincible, but give birth and you start thinking about death. Being a Mom wasn’t the scary part of having a baby for me, it was having the baby that kept me up at night. I’d never been in the hospital before and frankly, most hospitals seem to have a high percentage of dead people. Sure I’d consider how I might go before, but I never had anyone who really cared. My parents and siblings would be sad but they’d be fine. I’ve got about $267 left to my pre-marriage name so there’s little to squabble over and my husband would undoubtedly replace me with a newer, younger model. But my kid, I need to make sure he’ll be looked after.
So how do you decide how to decide? Ideally, we’d pick a family member as the guardian, but with family comes fighting. Either my death would have to coincide with everyone getting along, or we need some other options. I consider picking the person closest to my son until my husband reminds me that will probably be our son’s Nanny. “Right,” I tell him “when she said she’d work weekends, she probably didn’t mean for the rest of her life." I suggest sending our son to one of our wealthiest friends. Sure it seems like a superficial way to go, but it’ll be bad enough to be an orphan, no need to make it worse driving a shitty car and wearing hand me downs. But short of asking for tax returns from all the wealthy candidates, there’s really no way to know.
We’re at a stalemate. We need some help. If only there were a Zagat Survey for friends, then you could pick your Maid of Honor, Best Man, Godparents, and Guardians by checking the boxes, considering all categories equally in an unbiased, unemotional decision. What we need is a Guardian Test.
My husband puts his MBA hat on, setting up spread sheets with all our friends’ names, categorizing them, and color coding them according to marital status, income, religion, and lifestyle. He says he’s “creating a framework” from which we can decide. Framework is one of his fancy business terms like matrix or pre-processing. As far as I can tell all business terms come down to men finding a way to be as organized as women are all the time. So if he needs spreadsheets, have at it as long as I get to give Zero’s to all the Republicans, Divorcees, and low earners. Unfortunately, he gives Zero’s to those he refers as my friends “so liberal, they’re communist.” We’ve basically canceled each other out. And while the remaining list yields some good candidates, there’s only few remaining after we both gives Zero’s to the people our son will actually interact with and see with any regularity.
We lose more contenders when we ask the tougher questions. Would they raise him like we would? Do they like to do what we do? Do they believe what we believe? While friends may share experiences, it doesn’t mean all friends share the same world view. The qualities that make a good parent will make a good guardian, the answer lies in the people who are the best parents.
So I think about what my parents did well, and what they didn’t. And when I think about what they did well, not one thing has to do with politics, religion, location, or lifestyle. The only thing that comes to mind is how my parents loved us. Vacations were great and so were new clothes, but what meant the most to me was time spent sitting in their laps reading a new book, or when my Mom slept on the street to wait in line to get us into a better school. Somehow they always found a way to make sure we had what we needed, not necessarily what we wanted, but always what we needed. We felt safe, cared for, and were encouraged to be strong, open-minded people. We felt loved.
There really only needs to be one question on The Guardian Test: Who will love my kids the most ? Who will sleep on the street to get them into the right school, who will hold their hand when they’re scared, teach them to swim, teach them to drive, remind them to laugh, and encourage them to think and learn with abandon.
With that in mind, the choice seems obvious. And while my husband and I won’t vote for the same Presidential candidate, we did vote for the same Guardian. No one will love my family like my family, so that’s who we chose. Ideally, we never need to put them to the test, but if we do, I hope my death coincides with the moment in time we’re all getting along. If not, I’m going to have to give my Nanny a very impressive raise.
If you want to know whom we chose, you’ll have to wait. I won’t be around when you find out so just look for the person with $276 in one hand and the soft hand of my little one in the other.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
