You at Almost 1

Dear Adele,

Here is you. When you want something, or want to be carried in a certain direction, you point with your index finger, your arm straight, and say “Noinoinoinoinoi.” When you’re holding something–a cup, a fork, a plastic drumstick, and someone (like your mother or father, who don’t want you to hurt yourself or pour water into your lap) tries to take it from you, you look up and say “Aaaaaaaaaa” very gruffly–almost like a growl. Whenever you see me or your father or your brother, you raise your eyebrows and open your mouth and smile and show your four teeth, and sometimes you get so excited to see us that you bounce or kick your legs. You are a diver. When someone holds you, she has to be told to pay attention because you could dive forward any second in an attempt to ask to be put on the ground. You dislike lying on the changing table and cry and fuss mildly whenever I change your diaper, but if you sit on the changing table you get on your knees and pound gently on the window with your hands. You finally no longer bite me when you nurse (about damn time–sorry about all the tugs on your hair–what else was I to do?). You love melon. You will not tolerate being fed by other people, which makes yogurt or ice cream the Biggest Mess in the Universe. You have short, thin hair which I am afraid you might always be dissatisfied with if it doesn’t at least become curly, or a little bit fuller. You are turning, sometimes in a whole circle, while in a sitting position on the floor. You are not yet crawling, but you are leaning forward in About to Crawl position, and you attempt to crawl by rolling around or squirming; when you get tired, you simply rest on your belly for a second with your cheek on the bed or the ground, wherever you happen to be. Like this.

Taking a breather.

You also clap. You rattle the bars of your crib cage. You are full of energy and love and determination. You strike me as a girl who will take no shit. I feel that you might redefine good-natured as someone who takes no shit. I am so proud and so in love, I could cry. We all could. We all do. (Not really. Just me sometimes, and you, if you’re thirsty and no one understands this.)

Here you are again, preparing for another roll.

I am actually an ass-kicker.

I love you.

Mommy

 

Good Thing It Isn’t Mother’s Day Yet

Dear Adele,

I am in a slump.  A plateau of lowness that won’t let up.  I can’t think of anything witty to do for a Q & A.  I’m exhausted and sleepless.  I want to try new medication, but you’re breast feeding–and you LOVE breastfeeding, my god–so I don’t want to switch.  I also don’t want to switch because I DON’T WANT TO BE DEPRESSED ANYMORE, OKAY?  I’ve been on and off medication since forever, and I don’t understand people who don’t need medication to get themselves living their lives, who don’t need a few glasses of wine to take the edge off, who don’t have anxiety attacks in the middle of the night, who don’t get hyper upset over being unable to find a jewelry store to replace a battery in a digital watch.  If you’re one of those people who do not get hyper upset about the lack of a place to fix a digital watch, or the loss of your keys, or the fact that it takes you three months to merely schedule a dentist’s appointment, if you’re one of those people who do get upset about such things but do not feel like such things bring into question the purpose of your life and mean that everything is going to shit everywhere… well, I’d like you to please go away. 

 

Daddies

Dear Adele,

For Easter, you and your brother Ian each got a present from your Aunt Dottie: a white stuffed lamb and a big gray bunny. You were indifferent to both. Your brother, though, loved the bunny. The morning after Easter, he had folded it into his collection of stuffed animals and determined its place around his pillow. He also wanted to adopt the lamb, but we explained that it belonged to you, that you’d share it with him in the future.

The days since Easter have been passing fast–good thing, as I am so damned tired all the time from working and raising you that I have actually taken naps on my office floor. When you become as tired as I am, as your father is, you cry hard and loud and insist on being put to bed. The rest of us should follow your lead. Parents in this country work way too hard because we sort of have to. And so I’ve been tired with anger about this, too, in some way, all the time.

But then I sit with you on the bed while you hold your little starfish and your little fishy and then hand each one to me, fascinated by the process of giving something to someone, of the power in your fingers to hold something and then release it. Back and forth, we pass the toy. Back and forth. You laugh and smile. Back and forth. While we play, Ian takes his giant afternoon nap (thank you god). And I kiss you constantly and can’t wait for Ian to wake up so we can all play together. 

 

Moments

Dear Adele,

Your brother is nearly 3 1/2 years old and he does not use the potty. I am a loving and patient mother, Adele, most of the time, even and especially with potty training. But changing the diaper of a toddler is nasty.  (I apologize to EVERYONE who changes the diapers of older children and adults–obviously, I am weak in many ways.  Please know that I know this.)  Changing the diaper of a larger person is just plain nasty. As a dear friend recently said about something else entirely–holy fucking ick.

Your father and I have been asking Ian about the potty fairly consistently, doing what we can but trying to be mostly hands off. And we’ve gotten no meaningful response. By meaningful response, I mean that your brother does not use the potty. The other day, he carried his little plastic potty around the house on his head, a clear indicator that a) he has never used it, and b) he has no plan to use it anytime soon. We might have to resort to bribery or a disturbingly controlling act this summer, though, as most preschools around here require children to be potty trained, and your brother will start preschool this fall.

 

Needs

Dear Adele,

We need to talk about your needs: They are multiple and constant and they wear my ass out. I put you in day care one extra day this week–one extra day!–because I was exhausted and had a ton of papers to grade and work to do, and the extra separation time really shows. You want to be held a lot, all the time, and this isn’t possible for me, what with your older brother running around and, you know, food to cook, urges to pee, hair to (at least) keep from being oily-looking, laundry to fold, writing to complete. I simply cannot meet your needs all the time, and I cannot meet your brother’s needs all the time, and when this truth takes the form of your crying, or his crying, or something not getting finished, there are days where I just exist as Pissed Off Mama, because I am unable to meet your needs. (Obviously, I don’t mean neglect. I mean, like, not being able to get your brother a glass of milk because we ran out, or having to leave you in your crib crying while I put the laundry away in order to prevent Laundry Jam. Laundry Jam is a damn serious matter. It can devastate a household. Really.)

And Adele, I hate not being able to meet your needs all the time. (“Hate,” Adele, is a bad word, unless you’re talking about Rush Limbaugh, unless you’re actually fantasizing about ways to… because he’s so… and people like this man? he is actually a powerful individual? god, could you vomit? So–take my use of the word “hate” at this moment as a reflection of how difficult this whole mother-thing can be, as a warning of what can happen if you’re too hard on yourself.)

So I took this concern to my therapist, and here’s what she said: In order to grow up and learn to take care of themselves, children need to do the reparative work of their parents not meeting their needs all the time.

Let’s sit with that one for a minute.

Oh… bullshit! You need to meet your children’s needs all the time, as much as possible, and if you don’t you suck, because your children will become needy and desperate and screwed up if you don’t meet all their needs. Everybody knows that, especially those of us who are unlucky enough to come from dysfunctional homes, like me and a lot of other people. But Adele, what I’m coming to realize is this: people like me might comprehend the concept of that reparative work, because we never had our basic emotional needs met in the first place.

So–another reason for me to be absurdly hard on myself now has the potential to be removed from my list. This is good, Adele, because I don’t want you to be absurdly hard on yourself all your life–it makes days that aren’t unpleasant at all quite unpleasant. It keeps you from enjoying your life and each moment in it. In fact, it might keep you from enjoying those wonderful moments when I can meet your needs…

Kissy, kissy.

You like that? Yes you do, yes you do!

I love you.

Mommy

 

Right Conversations

Dear Adele,

My closet is full. It’s small but packed to busting with clothing of various colors and kinds and sizes–mostly cheap crap, like the stuff that so many Americans buy at Ross or TJ Maxx or whatever clearance rack we can find, if we can blast through all the other women, some of whom are like me–desperate to feel good about themselves by buying a pair of pants and a black tee shirt and then walking around in them. The ultimate self-esteem booster, Adele. Really. Going to the grocery store or to work in a new dress and some sandals will make you feel awesome–worthwhile, strong, pretty, capable. It doesn’t take work, or depth, or intelligence. Just throw on a silky skirt and your efforts will have come to fruition.

 

Seeing

Dear Adele,

Your father is away, and you’re in day care with your brother, and I decided to use these few hours to walk in the park, the park you’ll grow up in, the park full of trails and buttes and creeks that runs through the middle of our town. I tried to do what Annie Dillard does in Pilgrim in Tinker Creek–I tried to see. I hiked up a butte and watched the panorama of the town in the distance, the clear sky and the houses and a low strip of cloud. Then I hiked down a different butte into a canyon and deliberated sitting on a rock. The rock was covered with black blobs of lichen, a low tree shading it.  I wanted to meditate, or something–I wanted to be where I was, to free my perspective from malaise and upsetedness and worry about my life, about your life, about children everywhere. So I sat. I stared at the grass and watched a tiny fly or maybe a giant gnat land on a blade and spread its wings, and its wings were so thin that I could barely see them at all–transparent black wisps in the shadows of the branches. I looked away for a second and couldn’t find the fly again.

 

Growing in the Window

Dear Adele,

As I walked toward the car yesterday afternoon to run an errand and opened the driver’s door, I glanced at our house and saw your brother Ian, his 3 year old, blond head a little human circle at the bottom of his bedroom window.  I waved.  He smiled and waved back and I saw his mouth say “Mommy.” 

Ian spent a lot of time in his room yesterday, playing with a new (I now realize crappy and cheap) Thomas the Tank Engine plastic play set I bought for him.  And I realized, Adele–after I recovered from the horrible fact that I had bought my son another cheap plastic thing, when a giant cardboard box will do just fine–that as he grows older, he will spend more time in his room.  By himself.  Making games and machines and forts and telling stories, creating conversations between his stuffed rabbit and his Winnie the Pooh and his Tinker Toys, directing their attention to make-believe cheese and crackers (his favorite food, which he says like this, “I would yike some crackers and some cheese”). 

He will also spend a lot of time looking out his window, making sense of what he sees and remembering the view out his window for his entire life.  I flashed forward in that moment, Adele, and thought of your brother looking out that window as a teenager, when his head will be higher than the sash, his hair a different color, his voice low.  And I wondered how things would look to him then: the Crepe Myrtle smaller, the park not as far away, the street unintimidating, the light more orange.  And I wondered if he would be smiling, or wincing, or reading, or on a computer, playing the guitar, a little man in my house and in his.  (No, he will not be thinking about sneaking out.  Forget it.  You can forget it as well.)

Adele, I found myself missing Ian, even though he was right there, and missing you, too.  Because as you grow up, you grow away, you grow into your own mind, your own desires, your own friends and loves.  If there is a natural order of things, this is it–along with our unwillingness to let time go by, to allow a moment to recede, to neglect the spaces in time we experience with our children.   

I love you.

Mommy

 

Pregnancy Potential

Dear Adele,

Valentine’s Day is over, and the gift I received was my period. My first period since I became pregnant with you, Adele. You’re nearly 8 months old now, and all the nursing you do kept it away until now. It lasted only two days. Some very minor cramping, a little mysterious pain in my pelvic region. No big deal.

I am of course lying to you right now to make a point, Adele, because periods are a very, very big deal, but I am of course angry about them because no one ever educated me about them. In my experience, not very many girls or women really understand what happens to your body when you bleed out of your vagina. There. I said it. That’s what happens, Adele. I’m sorry. It sucks, really. You have to figure out how to soak up the blood and keep it from staining your clothes–which still happens even to experts like me. You can get tired and cranky. But most importantly, you can get pregnant if you have periods. It means your body is saying, here you go, get pregnant if you like.

Well, our bodies don’t know shit about what’s right, Adele.

 

Feeling What You Know

Dear Adele,

I want to be honest with you.  Very, very honest.  Which is why you probably won’t read this until you’re a lot older.  But you need to know that I really dislike taking care of you and your brother at the same time.  It overwhlems me and makes me angry and frustrated, and I can get to feel miserable after only an hour or two of it.  I get impatient and worried because I cannot meet all your needs.  I just can’t.  I try and fail and try and fail and it exhausts me.

I am ashamed of myself.  I’m sorry.  If I had a blog to your brother Ian, I would apologize to him, too.  I am a wimp, weak-willed and spoiled, and when you need something and I cannot get it for you or when Ian needs something and I cannot get it for him I just flip out.  I worry and stress and feel guilty.  It is ridiculous.  What am I, five?  I know you’re both fine–great, in fact, lovely and cheerful and contented children in a safe and happy home.  And, as my therapist pointed out to me yesterday, children need parents to fail in some ways so they can learn to take care of themselves.  It’s natural.  It’s part of the whole deal of growing up when it happens in a positive and healthy way.