Nonsequitor Snake Poem

Late this afternoon I stood in another woman's kitchen uptown, in my exercise clothes, which I hadn't actually exercised in, and listened as she told me about the news she'd heard from Miami.

The Daily Show, actually: That's where she'd heard it, and I thought: Of course; that's where the news is now.

Not really news, I guess, although she was quite serious in the telling. Anacondas--escaped from a pet store during a hurricane--were breeding and migrating west and north, out of Florida, where enormous reptiles and amphibians can live in the rest of America's collective fear space, coming north, perhaps as far north as New York, and could grow so large as to eat a dog, which is what she said, although I suspected "small child" was what she wanted to say. More shock value. Better audience pleaser.

And I stood there, surrounded by oak paneling and white subway tile, and an eight-burner Viking range, and the sounds of the household as backdrop, and listened to her talking, gesticulating, raised my eyebrows to please her, shook my head in dismay, and tried to picture one, an anaconda, but all I could see were the tiny slithering garter snakes of my childhood, which could make me jump but never truly afraid. nonsequitor

And as she talked, and I tried harder--a swamp from a movie scene, my imaginary snakes increasingly cartoonish, buffoonish, fangless, really, in every possible way--my eye lit upon something I'd never noticed in years of standing in this woman's kitchen: a snake, a thin wooden carving of a snake, hanging vertically by the old butler's pantry, by the window, the open window, spring on the other side of the glass, filtering in through the inch of open space at the bottom, and the park, green at last, or intimations of it anyway, just across the street.

I Am Who I Am

This afternoon I was in a suburban grocery store, pushing my cart up and down the aisles, when I was stopped by a little traffic jam in the middle of the aisle featuring baking supplies. I would have turned around and skipped the rest of the aisle, but I actually had to buy flour, and because I was alone, blessedly alone, I felt no need to be in a rush. 

I had been lost in my thoughts, but because I was waiting, I decided to focus in on the scene, see why we were waiting, and at first all I could take in were the other people in my position: a middle-aged woman with a full cart, a man about my age with a toddler in the front of the cart, two teenage girls buying soda and chips. And then I heard a voice instantly identifiable as that of a Very Old Person and saw the woman whose voice it was, and knew she was as old as my own grandmother: ninety at least.

She was with her daughter. They didn't especially look alike, but I knew it was her daughter as soon as I focused in on their conversation and heard the mother, the elderly woman, say in as loud a voice as she could muster, "Linda, I'm sorry, but I am who I am." She didn't sound very sorry, though, more tired and annoyed, and when I looked at her daughter's face, she too looked tired and annoyed, and suddenly I realized that I wasn't the only person who had heard the old woman speak because the mood--the atmosphere--of our little five cart pile-up had subtly shifted.

I caught the eye of the dad with the toddler, and he smiled, and the middle-aged woman backed up, making more space for the mother and daughter to walk by, which they were doing, slowly but surely, after whatever had transpired between them in that brief but telling exchange. And I knew somehow that I was not the only one thinking how familiar, how significant, this comment had been, this passing of the ultimate frustration from parent to child, and how many millions of times it--the precise sentiment--had been uttered or felt by us, by other parents and children, all over the world, from the beginning of time.

And I found myself wondering just why it is that we can never quite accept our parents as they are, why we can never quite stop wanting them to be, to do, to say just what we need them to be, to do, or to say every single time, even if they exceed our expectations most of the time; I found myself wondering how--in what ways, and when--I will not be completely understood or accepted myself. 

Kid Lit

Whenever the subject comes up of how my life has changed most since becoming a parent, or I am asked what I miss most about my pre-children life, the answer is simple: reading. 

I still read, probably  more than most people, but I used to read pretty much all of the time. I read on the subway, while eating meals, in the bathtub, while stalled in traffic, in line at the bank, in bed at night--there was never a time when I didn't have several books going simultaneously, and I both kept up with new authors and books and tried actively to fill in holes when it came to the classics. Now, I read for work, I read to and with my children, I read for pleasure when I can, in snatches, but I almost never have the luxury of long stretches of time when I can just lay around and lose myself in a book, or two, or four. I miss it sorely.

Which is one of the reasons why, when a friend asked me if I would be willing to co-found a children's literature book group with her inspired by a group she was already in that had become too large, I jumped at the invitation. I have always loved reading children's literature--which really means books targeted to older children and adolescents, not picture or new-reader books--and the thought of having a legitimate reason to devote more time to reading seemed immensely appealing.

It is hard to describe the pleasure I have found in this group, in my rediscovery of books I have loved for thirty years or more, and the license I have given myself, finally, to consider this genre worth serious consideration as a part of my work, something I truly love and a serious intellectual undertaking. Because I have been so thoroughly immersed in the books we have decided to read for our discussions--The Wolves of Willoughby Chase and The Westing Game, for the next gathering--I have been reading other "kid lit" books that would not otherwise have been on my radar, such as The Willoughbys and Haroun and the Sea of Stories, and filling in holes again for the first time in a long time, with books such as the Meet the Austins series, which I somehow managed to miss the first time around, when I was actually a child.

It's funny; people tend to assume that this group, when I mention or describe it, has something to do with my current status as parent, that I am reading as research, or vetting books for my girls, or trying to find books I can read to them as they grow, but one of the many wonderful aspects of this group is that it actually has nothing to do with parenting or children at all, and although some of the members have kids, others do not, and none of us are reading the books we love to read from this genre because of our roles as parents. 

It is refreshing, and more than that, actually, to be a part of something that exists purely due to shared passion and rigorous debate with admirable peers, something that speaks to a part of me I feel connected to sometimes these days by merely a thread--which is partly my own fault, I fully acknowledge--but still. It exists, and I am grateful for it. 

How?

I don't know what happened to sevenhundredfiftywordsbeforenoon--suddenly it's all sevenhundredfiftywordsaftermidnightafteri'vewatchedalotofcrapontv. Working on possible solutions. Not sustainable. 

That being said, it's 11:56--I'll make it brief. For a number of reasons, which I will not elucidate here, at least not now, I have been thinking about the finite nature of the period of parenting young children. A conversation I had this morning with a friend who is a mother of three summed up the essence of my thoughts: she mentioned how her parents will often say they don't remember when she asks them something about her own early childhood, a sentiment--although I've never really processed this as it relates to my life now--my own parents have echoed many times. 

YOU DON'T REMEMBER? 

How is this humanly possible? When you have a small child, regardless of whatever else it is you are doing--brain surgery, teaching fourth grade, cleaning toilets--that small child's existence is so all-consuming, even when it isn't, or you try to pretend that it isn't, that the rest of the world seems actually colored differently--a little tepid, perhaps. With my recent posts in mind, I must point out that I am not making a case here for children as the center of the universe or the sun around which your planet must revolve; I merely mean to say that it is virtually impossible not to be thinking about them on some level pretty much all of the time, for better and for worse. It's just the way it is.

And then tonight, I was reading a book to Lily in which the phrase "just plain" appeared, and I suddenly realized I had totally forgotten about the period of at least a year when Lily liked to strip off all of her clothing and appear in front of me announcing that she felt like being "just plain Lily." How could I forget this? Now, forcing myself, I think I can even remember the first time she did it, my pleasure at the perfection of the description, but how could I have let myself forget it at all? And knowing this, how many other moments have I already forgotten, will I never remember again?

When I ask my parents questions about myself at 3, 4, 5, they are often of a practical or technical nature. Did I have ear infections? How tall was I? What were my favorite toys or friends? They usually squint, look puzzled, then blank. These were loving, present, available parents. My mother cared for us full time during those years. My father kept baby books recording our every word and bite of food. Did I like kindergarten? I ask. Was I ever shy? The look. A moment of recognition, insight. A Yes, I think so, and the squint again. Or maybe that was your sister?

My point is this: How, how can I , will I forget? Must I? Must one? Some of it, I think, with a certain sadness and a sense of relief, which somehow don't seem contradictory. 

Time Capsule

Oof. Yesterday's post was so lazy, so vague, so unnecessary, although it elicited a few lovely and helpful emails that render it not totally useless. And it's really late now, loooong day, so in lieu of another filler entry, I give you my first ever and probably only ever time capsule. I'm about to go back to some more practical work here for the next few days so consider this a palate cleanser.

The Contents of Lily's Purse De Jour, for Posterity, Because I Find Them Significant

• one red pen

• two Barack Obama pins from the campaign: one big one reading "Elect Obama 2008" and one tiny one reading "Obama" with a peace sign for the "O;" these are often worn on unexpected parts of her clothing, such as a pants leg 

• the ticket I hadn't known she'd saved from the Nutcracker performance the two of us attended on December 16, 2008

• a small Hello Kitty wallet containing a pot of lavender lipgloss she got at a birthday party and I tried to confiscate and dispose of, unsuccessfully, and the key to her desk, a gift from a dear friend that she cherishes 

• a little pad of paper, one of many diaries in circulation, that she has decorated with Chiquita banana stickers taken from Annika's countless bananas

• 2 cents

That's all. But really, isn't it enough?

Just Wondering

Every once in a while I get a comment, either posted or to my private email account, that makes me a little uneasy about some of the writing I am doing here. Often, these comments are from my father, who so enjoys reading about his grandchildren that I could post what they said verbatim over the course of an hour, which would would entail a lot of lines like, "Mama, can I have a glass of milk?" and "Rai-sins, rai-, rai-, raisins," and my father would almost immediately email me to tell me how moved he was by the "work." 

But it's not just my dad. Others have emailed me to tell me that I am making parenthood seem "idyllic" or that I seem so good at "being in the moment" with my children. Although this is certainly occasionally--maybe even sometimes true--the thought that I am giving this impression in any overarching way smacks of dishonesty and makes me worry I am failing in creating any kind of realistic portrayal of my experience of being a mother. 

There are complicating factors. First of all, this blog is not meant to be an overview of my life. I have made it clear, here and to myself, that I can write about whatever I want to write about as long I'm writing regularly and in some way am moving forward as I write. It's the moving forward part I'm worried about when it comes to my parenting vignettes. I fear I'm being lazy in presenting neatly tied-up anecdotes or charming scenes with a moralistic or saccharine concluding statement when what I should be doing--in spite of the fact--or because of the fact that my girls will read this some day themselves is striving for accuracy. Or rather realism. 

I guess what I'm getting at is that I worry I'm too often leaving out the wrenching, agonizing, messy, soul-crushing parts of my life as a parent in favor of the package with the red shiny bow. The truth, as always, lies somewhere in the middle, is a roiling mixture of both: the joy and the frustration. Just giving myself something to think about as I keep on trucking. Maybe I should make myself write the next time I'm seething with anger or fighting back tears. Fear not: I will be able to find some of these times. Tomorrow, even. We shall see. 

The Walk

I love the concept of "prophecy fulfillment" raised-and coined?--by Liza and will write on it more. I think it is wise to think of ways to counteract it, or to prophecy only for the good, although that, too, I think, can be limiting. Controlling, anyway, on the part of the parents or whomever is sending the messages.

But for tonight, to ease into the weekend, a tidbit, a scene--for me, because I will want to remember it years from now, when Annika asks why her baby book is empty, when Lily asks why I never managed to learn how to use the video camera.

This afternoon, after hours indoors, I asked Lily what she thought we should do for an excursion. Annika was up from her nap, and it was clear all three of us needed a little airing or somebody was going to start yelling; it could have been any of the three. She decided we should go to the toy store, which in New York, in our neighborhood, can just be for a visit; for years we have been making this little trip to play with the trains, to decide what we might like for Christmas, even in March. Lily was just about Annika's age the first time she walked there by herself, but I'm not sure it would have occurred to me to have Annika walk today, had Lily not started preparing her doll carriage.

Annika watched for a few minutes, and then got the little doll stroller for herself, emulating Lily by strapping in the tiniest doll, packing a bottle and a few random things from the floor of the playroom underneath. "You want to take that?" I said to Lily, knowing she did, hoping for a miracle--it's amazing how unfettered I feel now when I walk down the street without, say, a bag of stuffed animals or a ten-pound scooter.

"Of course," she said, giving me that "Are you losing it?" look and pointing to Annika, who stood ready by the door, mini stroller in front of her. "And she wants to bring that." 

I looked at Annika hard. She had never seemed such a little girl, less of a baby. She beamed at me, so proud of her stroller, of her packing job. "Baby," she said, pointing at the doll, and I took a deep breath, checked the time on my phone. We set out.

Two hours later, we returned home. No, we did not take a detour to midtown at rush hour, a Circle Line Tour of the city. We walked, Lily pushing her carriage, Annika pushing her stroller, to the toy store, a BLOCK AND A HALF away from our apartment. It is true that we stayed at the toy store for a half hour or so, meeting some kids, checking out the new trains, the Playmobil display, the Easter goods, the bucket of sparkly rubber balls. We purchased one small bottle of "invisible ink," from that company that manufactures old-school gag toys like whoopie cushions and vibrating handshake devices, which Lily refused to use as a joke, per its intent, preferring to explain it to everyone we met, then asking permission to squeeze a small sampling onto their clothing "as an experiment." We stopped so I could show her how you were supposed to do it: Ostentatious fake trip, the dramatic splash of ink across the clean shirt, the horrified expression, the over-the-top apology, and then, the pay-off, the big finish--the disappearing of the ink right in front of our eyes! I was impressed by my performance, a little deflated when she cocked her head, considering, and said, "That's interesting, I guess, but I think I'll use it my way."

But I digress. That's not really what I want to remember at all. I do want to be able to close my eyes and see the two girls, both smiling, walking behind their strollers in their little coats, their cheeks pink, their stride serious. I want to remember that Lily stopped on the sidewalk to get her baby a bottle, and that Annika stopped too, eyes enormous when Lily told her to shush because the babies were sleeping, and that Annika then bent down and found her own little pink bottle, placed it gently on her own tiny baby's body, and looked at Lily for approval, grateful for the "Good job," Annika," she received. 

When we were close to home, I walked behind them, tired from the excursion, from carrying Annika and her stroller across the intersections, from picking up the toys she took off the shelves in the store, from explaining to Lily for the zillionth time why she could not also have the stapler shaped like a cat, from the slow, slow pace, the apologies to the people we all walked into, the fallen strollers, the dropped bottles, the day. But although I was tired, am tired now, all I felt as I watched their little backs ahead of me, Lily's increasingly long-legged, big-kid swagger, Annika's teetering yet confident gait, all that I felt was joy.

More Musing

I usually don't do this--respond to comments in an entry--but I feel like I have more to say on the subject of my most recent entry (could not get online again yesterday--so incredibly annoying) that I thought I'd just plunge in. 

For one thing, I'm not talking about assessing kids based on real things they do or are. Words such as "tall" or "brunette" or "right-handed" do not apply. And I guess in a way I'm not talking as much about labeling as I thought I was. Labels are tricky. As one commenter pointed out, "tomboy" or "daddy's girl" aren't often intended as negative labels, although I am often bothered by the way they are used: to pigeonhole. That's what I'm getting at, I think, is the need--the very real and natural need--we have to make sense of the world around us, and especially of the people who inhabit this world--by attempting to suss out who they are and apply labels that we hope make sense to other people as we communicate with them, and to ourselves, as we process information. 

I don't mean to suggest that we can even stop doing this; I just wish we could rein it in when it comes to small children. I don't think the people who look for signs of Lily in Annika are doing it in anything but a loving, human way, but as an older sister whose younger sister would probably cop to a certain amount of resentment at the constant comparisons, I'd love for Annika to be judged on her own terms--yes, even at the age of one.

Do I sound like I'm being extremist or overly sensitive? That example, of the older/younger siblings, is not the best one for what I am trying to talk about. I guess I just worry that the little boy I know who's always being described as "wild" or the little girl I know who is often referred to as a "little princess" won't have much of a chance of discovering that they're actually somebody else altogether when grown-ups keep pushing them into those boxes.

Clearly, I have more thinking to do on this subject. No fears: My internet connection is back, and I will be too. Any more thoughts from you? I want to write more about this, I think, in a more fruitful way. 

I have recently been having some fascinating conversations with other parents of small children about the ways in which people so desperately want to pigeonhole small children--to label them as this or that--in ways that to me often have very little to do with the child in question.

I understand the instinct, the need sometimes, to pigeonhole; I do it myself, all of the time. I do think in my case this instinct has lessened with age, in large part because I have realized how useless a tool it is in terms of actually learning anything about a person, but I am not going to lie to you: I do it, still. Don't we all? She's so superficial, I will find myself thinking about a woman I work with who mentions the labels of her designer clothing. And then I will spend a half hour surfing a site on the Internet that rents villas in Italy, not that I'm renting one in the immediate future, but still: It's not rocket science. It's not even work.  And I can talk about clothes with the best of them. Just because it's not how I like to think of myself--a clotheshorse, a fashion person--doesn't make me any less superficial than the person who's less concerned with how she's perceived.

We judge because it helps us feel better about who we are, it helps us make sense of our own insecurities, and it helps us maintain the illusion that we are making the sense of the world around us and the people who inhabit that world, although the truth is that we can't really do that, and ultimately the judging doesn't really assuage our deepest fears. But why, oh why, do we do it to children? Why can't we just let them be?

Let me be more specific, using some recent examples from the world of children I inhabit, including my own. I know a little girl whose father brings her to school each day; not a week goes by that I don't hear someone say, as the two of them pass, "Oh, look! She's such a Daddy's girl." I know a little girl who dresses in pants and shirts in navy and olive green and whose hair is cropped very short: "So boyish, such a tomboy," people murmur as she passes. There is a little boy in our building who plays dress-up and doesn't like cars; "Are you worried? He's so sensitive," a neighbor asks his parents in the lobby one afternoon.  There is Lily, who often gravitates to boys on the playground, just last weekend building sand forts with a group of five or six of them when a mother asked me, "Do you want me to try to get some of the little girls over here for her?" There is Annika, whose ears I already want to cover each time someone says to me, over her head, "I am looking and looking for signs of Lily in her."

Stop looking. No, don't call over the girls for a child who's so profoundly engaged she hasn't looked up from her play in 45 minutes, don't assume anything about a child based on her transportation arrangements (not to mention the vaguely offensive datedness of the "Daddy's girl" term), don't make a kid wear skirts if she doesn't want to or really have an opinion on it at all (don't you have anything better to do?), don't undo decades worth of work on the part of some very determined feminists by making little boys feel self-conscious if they don't feel like smashing each other over the head with blocks, don't use the word sensitive as though it means non-masculine--sensitivity is a rare and commendable commodity usually found in conjunction with wisdom and empathy and we need lots more of it in men and women--and most of all, give children the freedom to figure out who they are on their own terms, without labels they don't know and can't understand, without a lifetime of often misguided judgments on our own parts, without our own secret or overt biases and desires and fears. 

If you want for them, your children, children in general, want this. This freedom. It is perhaps more important than anything else.

Sunday Morning in the City

Massive technological breakdowns here on many fronts, but all is resolved, and so am I: to begin anew, as spring sets in for real.

Yesterday, as is always true these days, our household was awake and active by very early morning, and because my father was here from Massachusetts, and because it is true that most bagels outside of New York (and even many of them inside New York) are inedible, I headed out into the post-dawn of an urban Sunday morning to acquire some good ones and bring them back for us all. 

I love city Sunday mornings, early, early. There is something post-Apocalyptic about the empty streets, the gray silence, the pigeons pecking abandoned fast-food wrappers in the gutters. I remember thinking years and years ago, on an early Sunday morning in another lifetime in another part of town: I can see how someone would think this was depressing--this gritty street scene--but I, I who grew up surrounded by manicured lawn and freshly-mown pastures, a pond with actual swans and flowering dogwood trees, I find it beautiful somehow, alive and real and, well, alive, in a way that my suburban landscapes never are.

I still remain amazed by how I love the city, how completely I took to it after years of fear and skepticism, how fully I melted into my neighborhood, each neighborhood after the other, once I found my pace on the sidewalks, exchanged nods with the men selling papers at the corner newsstands, walked the dog, or dogs, around the trees in the patches of earth that persist in growing things in spite of their beds of concrete. But even more, I surprise myself with the beauty I see in my city, and I can call it that now, and how when somebody else says to me, I can't imagine how you ever get used to the loudness, or the commotion or the press of bodies in the subway cars at rush hour, I always feel a little bit confused, as though my brain can't quite process what they are saying enough to send the message to my state-of-consciousness, and it's not that I don't see it or hear it, the dirty, the hot, the loud, the crazy, the sad, the angry, the grayness, the rumble, the siren, the too, too much, it's that I just don't see or hear it that way, that raised eyebrow, vaguely disapproving, faintly superior outsider kind of a way; I never have.

To me, child of a beautiful home in a beautiful yard on a beautiful street in a beautiful town there is so much alive here on every patch of dirty sidewalk, so much beauty in the faces on the stoops at sundown, the transactions at the newsstands, the friction of the shoulders bumped on subway platforms, the arms raised on city corners, the water flowing in the gutters from one street to the next, ad infinitum, as the people walk and climb, run and pass each other, smile and gaze ahead, headed for any of an infinite number of destinations, headed home. 

Hope, and Springtime

Yes, I took a three-day weekend. Everyone needs one every now and again.

I spent this weekend in a very pleasing mix of urban and country environments, attending a children's party in the neighborhood, which reminded me how much I love my pedestrian lifestyle here, and then out at the house in Connecticut, where I walked the yard looking for signs of spring. I love finding them, year after year: the heads of crocuses (croci? probably not.) poking through patches of half-hearted snow, buds on branches, the return of some of the hardier birds.

This year, this spring, in particular, it felt important to have proof: to see tangible evidence of the passing of time, the changing of seasons, the renewal after the cold. As the dogs romped around me, barking at nothing and everything, I squished through the mud, breaking off a few dead canes on the rose bushes, assessing the blueberry and cherry trees, thinking about how--in a few more weeks--I will be able to clear my herb and vegetable gardens for yet another season of growth. 

It is everything to me, this growing of things I have undertaken in my adult life, and I am surprised, in a way, by the importance it has taken on. I didn't anticipate it, the need to get my hands dirty, to create something from nothing, to reap what I sow in such a literal way. I am still puzzling it out, in fact, and I will let you know when I know, or have more insight. For now, I just know that I need it, that it makes me feel purposeful and whole.

As I walked back to the house, after my slow circle, by the messy patch where the peonies will bloom come June, I noticed the persistent stubs of rhubarb pushing through the soil, a sign of spring for cooks and gardeners alike. I started thinking about rhubarb tarts and jam, a picnic table, steak on the grill, and snipping chives for scrambled eggs. I could almost feel my knees damp from the still wet leaves and dirt of the garden. How important it is to believe it will happen.

New York Story

The building we live in is a wonderful mix of young families, older single people, middle-aged couples and almost every other configuration you could imagine. I love this about our building, that it is impossible to stereotype who lives here, that the people we encounter each day range from newborn to 90s and all ages in between. But it is true that I have occasionally worried about a few of the single older people, really only two of them, I guess, the true loners, and it turns out my worries were not unfounded.

Last night I received an email from the president of our coop board asking if I had seen one of these single older men around in recent days. I responded no, that in fact I had not seen him in weeks, come to think of it, and the reason I was able to say this with some assurance was that this man in particular was so clearly alone--wore his isolation like a heavy, impermeable cloak--that he was quite frightening, especially to small children, whom he ignored completely, although he didn't really acknowledge other adults, it must be said. Later, I learned why she had been asking: the police had been called when the neighbor noticed an increasingly foul odor, and the man had been found dead inside his unkempt, dirty apartment. No contact information for anybody could be found in the apartment, not a letter, an address, a phone number, a name. I was told by another neighbor this morning they think he may have been dead in there for a couple of weeks.

I can't quite get my head around this, how a person manages to reach this level of pathological aloneness.  A friend of mine has been researching legacy, and the sociological ramifications of a death when there is nobody to leave things--memories, stories, possessions--to, and I have marveled that he has been able to find such people. But now I know. Sometimes they live just up the stairs. 

I often find myself feeling oppressed by people, closed in on, desperate for just a moment alone. What a luxury it is to feel that way.

Catcher on the Roof

I taught my gardening class today at Lily's school, and about halfway through, as per usual, we went up on the roof so the kids could run around. It was cold, and they quickly invented some kind of a faux ice-skating game that involved plunging headfirst down one of the slides and then sprinting over to a "skate shop" over by a chair, so I stood with my back against a wall and watched them. To my horror, I realized after a few minutes that a few of the kids were deliberately excluding another one, pretending not to hear this child, dismissing this child's ideas and otherwise ensuring that this child remained clearly on the outskirts of the goings-on. 

I'm not sure why I was so horrified. I was a child. I went to school. I remember how mean children can be to each other; I remember the times somebody was mean to me, and the (blessedly few) times I was mean to somebody else, and how it felt afterward, how it still feels now to remember. But seeing it from this perspective, as the parent of a child existing in a little closed circle in which this was happening, although she was neither the perpetrator nor the victim, felt different. To be honest, it made me feel a little bit sick.

I stopped it. I took one of the offenders by the hand and told the child in no uncertain terms that if everyone was not able to, encouraged to participate, then the game would end, that we would immediately descend from the roof. I am not my mother's daughter for nothing; I saw recognition in this child's eyes. I was not messing around. But the truth is that the child who was being shut out will be shut out again, probably tomorrow, and the children shutting out this child will shut out somebody else, probably tomorrow, and what I really wanted to do up there on the roof as I stood with my back against the brick wall watching, remembering, was take the offending children by the shoulders and crouch down to their level and look them straight in the eyes. I wanted to say, to shout, STOP! I wanted to tell them that making somebody else feel small never makes you feel bigger, that every time you are cruel to someone else it chips away a little piece of who you are, that mean people are loved less, love less, and hurt more, that being kind, truly kind and generous to others, especially those you don't love or don't need or don't understand is the best way to give your life purpose and meaning, to mean something more than what you actually are. 

But I didn't, of course. I just stopped it, in the moment, and went back to watching, but a little less cheerfully, a little more warily. I cannot protect my children from this. But I can do all I can to make sure they know which side they want to be on when the meanness starts. From this point on, it will be a central part of my parenting. I wish it didn't have to happen so soon.

Just Another Tuesday

This morning the girls were up early, and I got up, reluctantly, to make breakfast. Lily wanted Cream of Wheat, so I made Annika cereal, too, as she generally goes along with what Lily is having, and set them up at the table so I could go back into the kitchen and make myself some much-needed coffee. When I heard Lily cackling with laughter I popped my head back out to find Annika, chortling herself, rubbing warm cereal into her hair with both of her hands. 

On some mornings, in some moods, this would make me--like Lily--burst into laughter. On other mornings, mornings like this morning, the morning after the Snow Day, a.k.a. the day I decided I wasn't actually paying too much for nursery school, this is enough to bring to tears to my eyes, or at least to make me feel as though the entire day has nowhere to go but straight downhill. I plucked Annika out of the highchair and took the half-finished cereal bowl into the kitchen while she wailed and stomped her little feet. Lily was still sitting at the table, dreamily poking at her cereal, stirring it idly, bringing a spoonful to her mouth and then putting it back in the bowl, untouched, as though to torture me. 

Annika held out her arms to me, and I picked her up, gritting my teeth as she wiped her sticky cereal hands on my sweater, snot and drool dripping onto my shoulders and shoes. I decided to remove all of our clothes--the only realistic solution to the situation--and when I went to put the clothes in the hamper, Annika disappeared into the kitchen in her diaper. I found her licking a finger and touching it to a can of Ajax that was for some reason within reach. Before I could reach her, she touched her finger to her tongue and made not the horrified look of disgust one would hope for but a considering look, as though to say: maybe just a sprinkle on a piece of buttered toast!

Lily finally managed to swallow down three or four tiny bites of her chosen breakfast and emerged from the bedroom wearing a predictably bizarre outfit of mostly navy blue fuzzy clothes, all of which were so coated in layers of dog fur that even I was embarrassed. I couldn't find a lint roller, and I couldn't find a roll of tape, so I told Lily that I would brush her off at school, where there was lots of tape, but that we had to leave, at which point she said, "Mama, I'm so, so hungry," and I noticed Annika feeding Scout segments of clementine she'd found somewhere in the apartment. They looked partially fossilized.

I'm not sure what my point is. I believe there actually isn't one, or a moral, or anything more to add except that at the bookend of this day, when I arranged the little hamburgers that had been handsomely rejected the night before by a number of discriminating children on a plate on the counter and bent to tie my shoe, Scout managed in one surprisingly graceful motion to swoop up behind me, consume three in one miraculous bite, and slink out as fast as it is possible to slink to a protected spot under the dining room table where he alternately licked his paws and rolled around on his back, leaving more tufts of white fur on the floor, awaiting tomorrow morning's preparations.

Growing Down

Took a three day weekend there, but I'm back. The no weekend thing is proving difficult. It's hard to start up again after even two days off. Although it's really nice having the days off when I'm in it. I reserve the right to change my mind if the transition back in proves too difficult. I'm also, it must be said, in a funny place right now: so much on my mind, so hard to sift through it all and know what to write about.

I do keep thinking about something Lily said as we were walking up the street a few days ago. She was asking me about people's birthdays, when was so-and-so's birthday, how did I remember everybody's birthdays, and on and on. Finally, she couldn't think of any more names to ask, and we just walked in silence for a few moments, hugging ourselves in the cold. Then, she said, a bit dejected, "Grownups know so much. I'll never know as much as a grownup."

I'll admit; I was taken aback. Lately I've been feeling as though what I know would fit on the head of a pin. "Like what?" I asked, without stopping to think. I was genuinely curious.

"Like when everybody's birthday is," she answered.

I started thinking about how daunting it must seem to her that so often when she asks me a question, I do know the answer, or can fudge one on the spot. I know when all of my family member's birthdays are, and I know how to crack eggs without getting the shell in the bowl, and I know how to make music play from my computer, and I know how to write in cursive. I know how to give a pill to a dog, and how to drive stick shift, and how to sew a button back on her shirt. When I have to tell Lily, in fact, that I DON'T know something, she always seems surprised, come to think of it, a reaction that is not shared by certain others in my life, who have, on occasion, accused me of being a know-it-all.

But from where I'm sitting, it so often seems as though I know less and less. Working with teenagers underscores this; although they don't know how to talk to each other, or when somebody likes them, or how to choose the most flattering shirt, they know so much. Have any of you looked at an SAT in the last couple of decades? If you want to feel like an idiot, check out a practice book in a bookstore someday and see how much you once knew that you will never know again. Think about how many entire fields of knowledge--algebra, that Robert Frost poem you had to memorize, chemistry, Latin, playing the cello--have gone by the wayside, left so far behind you can't even remember the very first line of "Fire and Ice." Which, if I remember correctly, is about five lines long altogether.

Now of course this is not the kind of knowing I am saying I feel so bad at lately. I actually have no problem telling a fifteen-year-old who asks me if he will ever need to know sine, cosine and tangent again in his life that the answer is unequivocally no. Unless it kicks in past forty, I suppose. But somehow, I don't think so. No, the kind of knowing I feel so inept at these days is more the art of living kind of knowing, the kind of knowing, come to think of it, at which Lily excels. 

So what I should have said, when she worried out loud that she would never know as much as a grownup, is this: No, sweetheart, You know oh so much more. Just don't forget it as you grow up, and you'll be fine. Now, tell me how I can remember?