The Cold Hard Truth

I’m doing my yippy-doodle dance. This is something everyone does, right? I mean, their own versions, of course.

The reason for my outpouring of glee? Well, yesterday my most-excellent frienda Brenda called to tell me there’s a chance—what seems to be a WICKED GOOD chance—that she’s moving to California. And that happens to be where I live. Hooray!

Now I know it’s a big state. It’s not like my homeland, Little Rhodey, where someone asks you if you know a guy from there and half the time it turns out that you do, and that you actually went to prom with him. But where Brenda would move is like—wait, let me check my phone—81.2 miles from here.

So, even though the gal is flush with offers from other places too, she started rambling on, saying if she took the one near us she’d be close enough to come hang out for the weekend. To be a regular at our bourbon-punch Christmas bash. Close enough TO COME TO THE GIRLS’ BIRTHDAY PARTIES.

Now, if she doesn’t move here, her having dangled that in front of me is nothing short of emotional abuse. I’m already far far down the path of picturing Auntie Brenda twisting balloons and doing face painting in our backyard, then staying late to read to the girls before she tucks ‘em into bed. I’m already misty-eyed over how she’ll make my stroller-addicted kids into fierce back-country hikers. I’m laying plans for watching her dog when she travels for work.

My sister- and brother-in-law move every few years, on accounta he’s in the Coast Guard. As the gal who wept when her mother sold her childhood home nearly two decades after having actually lived there—I find the concept of moving often scary. But ya do what you need to do. And my sister-in-law maintains that her best friends are scattered all over the country anyway. So where she lives makes little difference. It’s a varying degree of distance from someone whose area code she’s already used to dialing. If she’s lucky, she gets to stay in the same time zone as her besties.

And even though I always thought of this as her situation, the fact is, some of the people I’d populate on my desert island if I had only 10 others to take with me—some of my nearest and dearest chums in the whole wide universe I’ve come to accept I’ll never live next to. At least until the time comes when I’m ordered to collect them for our move to a desert island.

So anyway, suddenly the thought of frienda-Brenda closeness is at hand. And I really hope I don’t have to do the UN-yippy-doodle dance if she decides to take some other gig. Like, I hope the other far-away company doesn’t have a better 401K plan or something.

That would suck.

Speaking of sucking, the night before we flew to Rhode Island I was reading a bedtime story to Kate. A library book. And I know, I know. I was just talking to a teacher-friend, and I know I should be reading all these kids’ books myself first. But I hadn’t. And the plot took an unexpected twist and some robbers broke into a store.

And as it turned out, the robbers were stymied by the happy accident of a whistling tea kettle going off. That somehow had the burglars thinking a police siren was zooming their way. So they never got away with the goods.

But despite justice prevailing, I closed the book and turned to Kate who had her duvet pulled up to her chin and a terrified look on her face.

“Are there still robbers, Mom?” she asked with a squeak.

Me: “Still? Um, well, uh….

Kate: “Like do robbers just break into stores, or do they go into people’s houses too?”

Me: “Well, I mean generally there’s much more reason to go into a store, right? I mean, stores have cash registers, and robbers certainly do like cash…”

Kate: “But there aren’t robbers in Oakland are there?”

Me: “Here?! In OAKland?! [Fake laughter.] Oh, no, no, nooooo! No robbers here. No reason for you to worry, sweetie. You just get some sleep now because tomorrow we’re going on the airplane to see Grandpa!”

Of course, I have these conversations—I get trapped with some horrible truth I have to share—and it’s inevitably before bed. When I have one foot out the door into the freedom of a child-free evening. And I can just envision what the truth will bring. How I’ll be up all night counseling a sobbing, freaked-out child. The temptation to stop parenting—if only for the two hours before I konk out on the couch myself—is too great. And so I can’t help myself.

I lie!

Inevitably Mark is standing in the kitchen, washing dishes after dinner. And he’ll shake his head and just stare forward out the window into the dark night and mutter to himself, “Nope! No burglars in Oakland…”

Because Mark is a truth-talker. I mean, I know that’s a good thing. And I know what I’m doing isn’t necessarily the right approach. But sometimes I’m at a total loss for what either of us should do.

Like Friday night. We were at dinner at my sister’s in SF. We had two cars with us since Mark met us there after work. And as is often the case, Kate wanted to ride home with Mark, and my barnacle, Paigey, wanted to stay suctioned tightly onto me.

When we got home and tucked the kids in, Mark came into our room where I was changing into my most sexy and alluring flannel granny nightgown. (I am SO on-fire in that thing.)

And Mark says, as if he’s mentioning he had a ham sandwich for lunch, that he happened to tell Kate about 9/11 in the car ride home.

“You WHAT?!” I bellowed, yanking the ruffled yoke of flannel down over my head. “You just kind of casually happened to tell her about 9/11?!”

“Well, it’s not like I brought it up,” he said, all calm. “I mean, we were looking at the skyscrapers downtown, and then she asked me what the tallest building in New York was, and I said, ‘Well, it’s the Empire State building now.’”

“NOW?” I shout-whispered, so as not to wake the children. “You said NOW?”

“Well, yeah,” he said, innocently stepping into his striped PJ bottoms. “I mean, I didn’t stress the word, but I said it. And she totally zoned in on it, and asked me what did I mean by ‘now.’ And then I told her about 9/11.”

And oddly, just minutes after that conversation—which Mark claimed wasn’t rife with gory details—Kate was already drifting off to sleep peacefully in her room. We weren’t dialing some 1-800-SCARED-KID hot line. The terrorists apparently weren’t going to win this one.

“Huh,” I said. “Well… do you want to watch Top Chef?”

I think it’s awesome and brave of Mark to talk to Kate about things like this. I need to test the waters more here and butch up to the fact that she can handle it. I need to exhibit more risk-taking behavior when, at the end of a long day of parenting, there might be something that might trigger me to have to spend more time Mamaing. Like, maybe Kate would’ve just said “oh” if I told her sometimes robbers do break into houses, and sometimes it even happens in our happy little hamlet, Oakland.

Last year, when Kate was a wee preschooler (not the sophisticated, worldly kindergartener she is today), I told her about what happened in Haiti. Which led to her asking the inevitable, “Are there ever earthquakes here, Mama?”

And of course, I said, “Here?! Earthquakes in the San Francisco Bay Area?! Why… noooooo!”

I mean, even I felt bad about that doozey of a lie. But really, what was I going to say? “Yes! Why, we’re just a mile or so from a fault line! In fact, we have an earthquake kit packed in our garage with a crowbar and food, and water, and diapers and lots of one-dollar bills so we’re ready for what people refer to as The Big One—a quake of devastating proportions that could level our house, incite looting and rioting, and have public utilities down for days! We also have meeting places established in San Francisco and Oakland in case Daddy’s on the other side of the bridge at work and, well, in case the whole bridge breaks and falls into the water! (All the cell phone lines will probably be tied up.) In fact, most of the people who we meet when we’re away from home think we’re stark-raving mad for living here and ask us, ‘Aren’t you afraid of earthquakes?’ ”

Why yes, honey. We may have great sourdough bread and those big purdy Redwood trees, but the reality is, we live in a primo spot for earthquakes. Heck, and for robbers too!

But do me a favor and don’t let your Auntie Brenda know.  Let’s just let this be our little secret.

Mothering Out of Bounds

I’m unstoppable. As a mother, that is. And before you hit Play on that Helen Reddy eight-track tape, let me clarify. I don’t mean this as a good thing.

I’m not sure when exactly it started, but I’ve become the person who pulls a Kleenex from my purse for the guy who sneezes behind me in a store check-out line. I’m the daft Perpetual Baby Smiler—never letting any beings under the age of one pass me by without cocking my head, beaming, and saying, “Awww…” I’m the woman standing idiotically in the family-boarding area, even in the rare instances I’m flying without my kids.

Aside from wondering where the hell the old Me went—the one who thought of herself as an individual, not just part of a family unit—aside from that, well, hell, it’s just that this new Me can be so horribly annoying.

If you don’t believe me, ask Mark. We’re deep into this issue he and I. Totally aware of it and working on it, but like some bad rainy-season ant infestation, it just keeps coming back. You know, you spray-slaughter all the ants around the basement door, and next think you know they’ve forming a line trooping through your dining room, swarming over a fallen lump of last week’s oatmeal. It’s the kind of problem you’re certain you will never ever get a handle on.

What exactly am I talking about? Good question. It’s this: I’m a backseat parent.

Mark will be halfway though answering Kate’s plea for dessert, or helping Paige track down her tap shoes and I’ll jump in—totally interrupting, bombarding unheeded—and I’ll start dispatching orders. “Kate, you need to take three more bites of broccoli before I’ll even consider dessert.” “Paige, your tap shoes are in your ballet box on the top shelf of your closet. Do NOT wear them on the hardwood floors.”

Man, it’s annoying.

We’ve talked about this but I still can’t manage to make myself stop. The best explanation I can muster is that I spend my days responding to an endless stream of kid-borne issues. Things that come flying at me mercilessly like centipedes in a video game. To ward them off, I have to aim a kind of Ghostbusters-esque task-zapping uzi at them—Zap! Zap! Zap!—in order to get us to the next level, which is usually something like out the door, down the steps, and into the car for school, with everybody’s clothing on and hair combed.

I’m so used to single-handedly dealing with what life throws at me during the day, that when Mark’s there and I so much as sense that some kid-issue is incoming, I automatically kick into gear, guns blazing. Even though I know Mark can totally handle it on his own.

I guess I’m kinda trigger happy.

We’ve joked that I need classical conditioning to change. But really, more than the salt-lick reward I think what I need is an electric cattle prod deterrent every time I do it.

And just ’cause I have a maternal reflex to do something, doesn’t mean it’s necessarily the right thing to do. I may be feeling over-programmed in the Mama arts, but I’m still doing dopey things like consistently forgetting to carry diapers, and leaving a baggy of Alleve in my purse where Paige can get into it. (Kate recently called out to me, “Paige is about to eat some blue pills she found in your purse!” Guess I need to take to heart this Motherboard tip about stowing my bag at higher ground.)

The younger brother of my most-excellent wonderful and good friend, Mike, is moving to Oakland. I’m all hopped up about this because if I drink enough, turn down the lights, and really squint I can kind of make myself believe that Mike’s brother is really him. Although it turns out that in the sober light of unsquinty day I actually like his brother for who he is. Go figure.

Until he’d found a place to live, Mike’s Brother stayed with us. Just for a handful of days.

And you know what? I think I mothered the poor guy to death! I found myself texting him in the afternoons. Would he be home for dinner? When he was out late one night I went to our chilly guest room to turn on the space heater so the room would be cozy when he got back. One morning I made him—no, foisted upon him after an initial refusal—cinnamon toast. And while shopping at Target, I stumbled upon the map section (those old-school paper things). And I grew inextricably concerned that he needed an Oakland-Berkeley map in order to carry out his house-search. So I bought it for him.

I didn’t do his laundry. And if he sneezed, I left him to figure out like a big boy where to find a Kleenex (on the back of the toilet in any of the bathrooms, and on the bedside tables in every bedroom). I didn’t do those things, but I do have a hazy memory of shouting into the bathroom at him that he was welcome to take any of the towels in the linen closet.

Is all this me smother-mothering someone? Sure, it’s my friend’s younger brother, but the dude’s a grown man with a wife and child of his own. Maybe what I was doing was what any hostess worth her weight in fresh hand towels would do. But in my mind—these days I’m feeling so super centrally Mom-like—I can’t help but think I’m just inappropriately taking those who aren’t even my offspring under my wing.

It’s like in those cooking shows when the reality show chefs sautee a piece of meat. As they hold it over the heat they keep spooning the pan juices over the top again and again. It’s like they’re super-imbuing the meat with extra flavor of itself. It sometimes feels like that with me and my Mama self. Do what I will, every act no matter how juvenile, self-serving, or un-nurturing, still becomes a reinforcement of my essential Mamaness. And the more I wish it were otherwise, the more it seems inescapable (See: The coating of pastel sidewalk chalk on my black biker boots).

Last week the girls and I flew east like confused geese veering off course for winter. The rest of humanity–or at least Kate’s classmates—were all bound for warmer tropical venues, or the ski slopes in Tahoe. But we were simply seeking snow. Sea level snow was fine with us. Along with some quality time with Gramp and Grandma Joan.

And despite the incessant string of blizzards all winter there, the East Coast snow had nearly melted altogether. (Unless you count the mud-splattered ice piles in the far reaches of parking lots.) We were granted only one light dusting, from which we made the teensiest most tragic snowman ever—akin to the pitiful wee Stonehenge in Spinal Tap.

Add to that the fact that back in the Bay Area, meteorologists were flipping their Doppler radars over the potential for snow in San Francisco—something that’s hit the history books something like six times. Thankfully, the SF snow was a no-show, so I didn’t have to berate myself for sidestepping exactly what I was trying to get to the heart of.

Anyway, pardon the weather outburst. Where was I? Oh yes, Rhode Island. Where we love nothing more than the little local library. And where I found the DVD E.T. and decided to indoctrinate Kate in some non-princess-based media.

Of course, she wailed and lamented. Why didn’t she get to pick the movie? Couldn’t she watch Angelina Ballerina—or even a cooking show (what she came to simply call “Ina” in the course of the week) instead?

The movie was rated PG for language (one kid calls another “penis-breath”) and something else I don’t remember. I’d intended for Kate to watch it while Paigey napped. But of course Paige refused sleep, and before I knew it we were all piled on the leather couch tuned in.

And can I just say, E.T.’s death scene is unbearably protracted? I mean, the scene in which he’s zipped in a body bag (one that fits oddly-perfectly for such a uniquely-shaped corpse) and left for dead. I kept checking the girls to see if they were experiencing severe emotional trauma, but they seemed to not really register (or care) what was happening. Maybe they thought E.T. was just being kept fresh in a large Ziplock.

Finally Elliot—who thrillingly shares a name with Paige’s erstwhile boyfriend—brings E.T. back to life by invoking the magic words “I love you.” (I wonder if Kate’s teachers tried that with Freezey…) I thought I’d dodged the bullet. But it wasn’t ’til after the hair-raising final bike ride scene, when E.T. was saying his goodbyes before boarding the space ship home, that Paige—who had been otherwise engaged in playing with the dog and flipping through books—suddenly burst into tears. Wailing sobbing miserably inconsolable tears.

“T.C.!” she wailed to the ceiling. “Teeeeee Ceeeeeeeee!!!” she blubbered in a mistakenly-monogrammed moan. This went on for quite some time. And since it was so sudden, I was trying desperately to diagnose the depth of her sorrow. She’d not even been watching the TV when her anguish first erupted.

“What’s wrong, Paigey?” I pleaded. “What are you so sad about?” I asked, hoping she’d say she just ran out of milk in her sippy cup.

No dice. The woe, she reported, was directly related to “T.C. having gone away.” And, as if to spell it out to her moronic mother who clearly wasn’t getting it, she mumbled tragically, “It makes my heart hurt.”

Meanwhile Kate was on my left, watching the movie with the detachment one reserves for ads for professional training institutes.

I was flustered, trying to give Paige some happy thoughts to redirect her emotions. “He’s going home, Paigey!” I offered brightly.

Then Kate added, sighing with the bored air of a teen, “Yeah, Paige. E.T.’s okay. He’s going to see his Mommy.”

Which got me thinking. No one ever really wondered about what E.T.’s poor mother went through the whole time he was having his earthly escapade. Right? I mean, think of the stress one endures losing a child in the mall. Now take that up a few million notches to having them missing on another planet. Sheesh!

I imagine their conversation when he got back on the spaceship went something like:

E.T.’s Mom: “Oh my God, you’re BACK! Come here—I love you so much!”

E.T.: “Hey, Ma. Yeah, I’m fiiiiine.”

E.T.’s Mom: [Holding E.T. at wrinkly brown arms length] “Listen to ME, young alien. Don’t you EVER hop off the spaceship and run away again! I was worried SICK!”

Of course, if I were her I’d also scold him that he didn’t have a sweater on. But that’s just me.

Hit the Road, Angel of Death

When I left Paigey’s preschool one morning a couple weeks ago, I noticed a klatch of women—other Mamas from the school—standing on the lawn. They were dabbing at the corners of their eyes with Kleenex.

It was clear something happened to someone at the school. And somehow I knew it was about a pregnancy.

In the crosswalk I caught up with a woman I knew. A mother of one of Paigey’s classmates. Tugging at her elbow, I implored without greeting her, “Okay, so what happened?”

And damn damn damn my intuition. I was right. A mom from the school whose due date was that very day, had a kicking healthy baby just the day before. But when she went to the hospital that morning, she found out that her baby had died.

So sickeningly sad. Someone said later it was strangled by its own umbilical chord. What brutal live-giveth-and-taketh-away irony.

“Oh God, oh God,” I said, wrapping my arms around my stomach on the sidewalk. “Do you know her name?” Because, as it turned out, I know a pregnant woman—someone I’ve worked with and like a great deal—whose son goes to the preschool. From her Facebook posts, I was pretty sure her due date was that day.

It turned out it was NOT my friend. That in that tiny school there were actually two women with the same due date. And although it didn’t diminish the tragedy of the whole thing, I still felt like I’d dodged a kind of bullet. If only by association.

Do you ever go through phases where your computer monitor fizzles and goes black, your car’s transmission gives out, and you drop your cell phone in the toilet? All in the same week? It’s as if there’s some mechanical technological curse on you. If you touch it, it will cease to function—invariably days after its warranty expired.

I feel like I’m currently in that mode, but with people.

Not long ago my sweet Uncle Adolph (no relation to the Nazi) passed away. It was his time. I mean, he was very old, and had been wrangling with Alzheimer’s. But those things make it no easier to grapple with the fact that someone who you knew is suddenly just not here any more.

Uncle Adolph was married to one of my mom’s favorite sisters, Scottie. I think her real name was Sophie, but I never once heard her called that. The two of them were known as “Scottie and Ade.” How much does that rock?

They lived in a small house on a big piece of land on the outskirts of mom’s home town. And what I remember of him is this: Uncle Adolph had a huge garden. In his day job, he was something else. A custodian of some sort, I think. But in his heart, he was a gardener.

We’d pick things from his garden in the evenings, right before dinnertime. He called cucumbers ‘cukes’ which was weird and cool to me. He didn’t talk much, but he’d wipe dirt off a big yellow squash or an eggplant or a strawberry and say, “Now THAT’S a good one,” then hand it to me.

We lived two hours away, so I didn’t see him often or know him very well. But it always felt special being welcomed as an insider into his garden world.

In fact, whenever I conjure a vegetable garden in my mind’s eye I see Uncle Adolph’s garden. I think of him most of the time I’m chopping up cukes too.

Early last week I got a sister-wide email. The four of us mass communicate this way sometimes. But the contents of this one were a bummer. Dad’s long-time neighbor and best friend Eddie had died. A man in his mid-80s, who you’d have sworn wasn’t a day over 65.

Dad and Eddie did projects. Built birdhouses, step-stools for grandchildren, and did all the standard house maintenance stuff. Eddie had a few years on my father, but was vivacious as all get out, and handy as hell. Dad would ask Eddie to help him do something like bring the AC units from the garage to the upstairs bedrooms. And I can’t say this for sure, but I picture Dad acting in more of a ‘supervisory’ role, while Eddie did the actual (and proverbial) heavy lifting. It wouldn’t be weird to see Eddie dangling from a tree in dad’s yard, sawing off a rotting branch.

Regardless of who did what, or whose tools they used, there was no score-keeping between those two. They were a good team.

Eddie’s wife passed away a couple months ago. He was understandably sad, but hanging in. Back to his projects and puttering, and eating occasional dinners at Dad’s. But then, per my sister’s email, the lights were on in the house when they shouldn’t have been, or something like that, which made Dad concerned. Especially when Eddie didn’t answer the phone.

So Dad let himself in with his key, and found his dear friend sitting slumped over the dinner table. Quietly, suddenly, gone.

Eddie will be sorely missed.

I spent a long time hiding death from Kate. Even if I was doing something like throwing away brown neglected house plants, if she asked me why I was doing it I’d avoid saying they “died.” Silly, I know, but I feared the domino effect of her busy mind. If a plant could die, then couldn’t a person? And if a person could die, then didn’t that mean me or her Dad—or other people she loves—could? Or even her?

I felt utterly unequipped to navigate those conversations. I hate thinking about all that stuff myself. So why not extend her innocence for as long as possible?

Around that time I came across an old book of mine that Kate nearly-instantly love love loved. Oh, and me too. It’s called Koko’s Kitten, and it’s about that gorilla, Koko, who learned to communicate using sign language. And if that wasn’t cute enough, she also became friends with a kitten.

Big tough gorilla. Wee wittle kitten. Lots of pictures of them snuggling. Name one thing better.

I read the book dozens of times to Kate, always avoiding the part where the kitty cat, All Ball, gets killed. Yes, this amazing story of cross-species friendship takes a sudden tragic turn when All Ball gets offed by a car. A brutal plot twist even for us grown-ups. Thankfully, with a pre-literate toddler it’s fairly easy to bluff your way through the sad parts.

I guess one of the reasons I hid death from Kate for so long has to do with my own childhood experience of coming to understand death. I remember it so clearly. I was in the car with my mom, driving by Almacs grocery store, and I suddenly pieced together the fact that “old people die” and my grandmother (Mom’s mom) was old.

I was sobbing. Struck with panic over the unfairness of it. Heartbroken by the thought of Bopchi being gone.

My mother, ever the realist, responded to my fearful questions by saying something like, “Well, yes, she probably will die soon.”

Note: This did not make me feel better.

This is why, after the devastation in Haiti, when Kate nervously asked if we have earthquakes in San Francisco, I paused for a beat then said, “Noooooooo. Earthquakes HERE? Never happen.”

But Kate’s a world-weary kindergartener now. Today’s five-year-olds seem like the third-graders of my youth. Which is to say, she’s hip to death. Our friends’ pets have died. Kate knows my mom died before she was born. And, thanks to my NPR habit, she’s heard on the car radio about soldiers, bomb victims, and others dying. (Try as I do, turning down the volume after something unsavory is broadcast never seems to work.)

Sometimes weighty news like the death of her great grandpa barely registers with Kate. I’ve actually wanted her to feel sadder. (Guess I’ve come a long from the days of throwing out house plants that “weren’t happy anymore.”) Then Kate surprises me by sobbing on her bed and drawing ‘I Miss You’ cards for a neighborhood cat we barely knew.

It must be her way of regulating only what she can manage to process. I should have trusted Nature to have built into her something that helps her do that.

As for me, the day of the sad drop-off at Paige’s school I saw my still-prego friend Margot at afternoon pick-up. I was so thrilled, so very relieved to see her in her healthy baby-filled state, I nearly took a running leap to straddle her belly in a full-body hug.

But I was even happier to hear that nearly two weeks after she was scheduled to make her appearance, her cute-as-the-dickens long-lashed baby girl was born. Hooray! Mother and baby are all aglow and love-drenched and healthy (if not a bit frustrated by all the waiting).

Take that, Angel of Death.

Shit Storm

At age 81 my father has a newborn. He’s no Anthony Quinn, star of the old-school flick Zorba the Greek, who squired a child with his thirty-something wife when he was in his early eighties. (Mr. Quinn did spend the latter part of his life in a home across the bay from my dad’s. But I’m guessing the most they had in common was a hometown.) 

No, my father’s baby is a puppy. Specifically a wire-haired miniature Dachshund.

And Dad and his wife are the consummate new parents. They boast about the little guy sleeping through the night. They fret over him being overstimulated or needing sleep. They bring him to play group. And they talk about his poop. Poop poop poop poop poop.

Coming in from a walk:

“How’d he do?”

“He made a mess  [This being their New England euphamism for fecal matter.] Get him a cookie.”

“Oh! Good DOG! Good DOG, Bruno!” [Yes, the dog's name is Bruno Bruno.]

“But after he went he seemed to be trying to go again.” 

“Really?” 

“I think he might be constipated.” 

“Oh poor baby.”

Did Mark and I talk like this when the girls were babes? I can’t imagine we did—at least not in public—since hearing them seems to dismay me a bit. Though someone discussing so much as a child’s skinned knee can make me light-headed and queasy.

I’m in Rhode Island now, after a fabulous weekend in New Yawk. It’s my, uh, 25-year high school reunion. (Gulp.) And really when I should be focusing all my time and energy on looking 18 again, the theme of our visit thus far has been poo.

So there’s a pizza joint here in Bristol that’s truly world-class. I mean, it well could be why Anthony Quinn moved here when he did. The place has been around forEVER. After I collect my bags from the airport luggage carousel it’s like I’m programmed to go directly there. 

So back when Jesus was a Boy Scout and I too was a youngster, I did something in that restaurant that turned into Bruno family lore. I guess we were gathered around a table, takin’ in a nice pizza pie, and the place—all linoleum-topped tables and sparkle plastic seats that’d sell for a ransom on eBay—was packed. Let’s say, for the sake of fleshing out the scene, that it was a Friday night.

What they all say happened is I banged open the door of the bathroom, it being right off the joint’s main dining area, and announced with my pants and panties around my ankles “I need some help here!”

Mind you, I was young. I’m assuming I was a toddler. 

Anyway, so much about that place hasn’t changed through the years that I wouldn’t be surprised if the next time I’m there some codger sitting at the counter says, “You’re the youngest Bruno girl, right? Well did you know that one night when you were just a little thing…”

But the pizza is good enough that whenever I’m home I muscle through the risk of having someone recount my youthful ass-wiping ineptitude.

In the spirit of all that is shitty, Paige is taking up my legacy. Yesterday we went to the local library. We love doing this since my kids are book geeks, but also because we can walk along the sea wall from Dad’s house and it’s a short walk through town to get there. The kids get books, I grab a decaf Americano at The Beehive Cafe, and my hard-on for small town life is fully actualized. 

So we’re at the bibliotheque and Paige poops. No big. She’s still in dipes. There’s someone in the bathroom, so we wait. I settle in to read Kate an Arthur book, when I see Paige across the room, and notice an unmistakable thick brown smear emerging from the waistline of her diaper up her back and under her shirt. 

Aack! I toss Arthur’s Teacher Troubles over my shoulder like a baseball player throwing a bat, and dive towards Miss Paigey La Poop. 

She’s about to turn and settle her turdy backside onto a large stuffed bean-baggy-type turtle that lives on the floor of the children’s area. And then I see that, lo, she’s already been there. In fact she has left several large clumpish deposits on the turtle’s formerly shit-free shell. 

I grab Paige by what I hope is a clean shirt-sleeve, and pick up the offending reptile, holding it at arm’s length and wishing I carried a pair of tongs in my diaper bag. 

This is when my apprehensions about the friendliness of New Englanders manifests itself into a neurotic full-bore panic. I mean, in the best of situations, in the friendliest of places, I’d feel hard-pressed to comfortably fork over a shit-strewn ANYTHING to anyone. 

But here in Bristol, my wee home town that’s gotten kinda well-heeled over the years, well, let’s just say it’s no friendly feel-good California. As much as I’ve defended New Englanders through the years, the fact is I did notice this summer that other parents don’t extend themselves to smile or chat with you, even when your kids are playing magic princess ballerina (and other tough guy games) at the playground. Yes, here in the land of “who is your father?” social calibrations, this seemed an especially daunting social interaction.

In fact, when I later told my dad this story, he joked, “They didn’t know who you were, did they?”

Anyway, what came next was really just me groveling apologies for my daughter’s scatological proliferation. And the older white-haired librarian shooing me and the offending turtle thing towards the young librarian with a wave of her bejeweled entitled hand. ”Oh, please just bring that to Molly,” she said wincing over her half-glasses.

I guess seniority in the Children’s Room means not having to deal with poop explosions.

Molly later compounded my angst by pointing out that there was not a removeable cover on Turdy Turtle that would allow it to be washed, then scoffed at my offer to replace the thing. In other words, I was shit out of luck in terms of being able to fix the problem. 

Later in the day I chatted on the phone with a classmate I’ll see at my reunion this weekend. She shared her own tale of public poop shame. One in which all eyes trailed her as she walked through a fancy restaurant holding her son. She had no idea why until on the sidewalk she noticed poop literally dripping through his pant legs.

The fact is that if you have a child you’ve likely had an unfortunate episode involving their excretions. 

What’s your story?

Love Tackles

I don’t know the first thing about football, but in getting to know—and love—Mark’s college friends, I’ve learned a thing or two about tackling.

The night before our wedding, there was a lobster bake in a tent in my dad’s backyard. It was where Mark and I got that first intense wedding-weekend hit of love from so many fine folk coming from far afield to see us get marinated. It was also, it so happens, the same day my father kidnapped our friend Gary. But that’s another story.

So there I was reveling in the love and the people and the chardonnay and the Rhode Island summer heat, chatting with someone or other, when I was suddenly, quite literally, swept off my feet. It was one of those “it happened so fast” kinda moments. I wasn’t sure where it came from or what it was, but I found myself lifted up and then pinned down onto my father’s desk. The perpetrator—whose head was tucked down somewhere in my midsection—was human. But that was all I could tell.

It took longer than my barely-there patience could handle to determine what was happening. But then the perp looked up, and with her huge grin and mop of strawberry blond hair yelled in high-def close range, “We are HERE, girlfriend! Let the games begin!”

It was Becca. Mark’s glorious fabulous college friend, Becca. Whose house I have the great pleasure of being at this very weekend. In what has most-excellently become an annual pilgrimage to Minnesota for lakeside hi-jinx. Because, six years and six children between us later, we are still giddy-tackle happy to see each other. Though blessedly, in recent reunions she has not knocked the wind out of me.

I mean, I really shouldn’t be pointing fingers here. Since another of Mark’s divine college cohorts, the aforementioned kidnapped Gary—or Uncle Gary as he’s now known to the kidlings—is here with us too. And years before Becca ever tackled me on my wedding weekend, I had the social misfortune of tackling him.

I blame it all on the event’s bartender, who clearly over-served me. Or maybe it was the humid Midwestern lakefront air that clouded my judgment. At any rate, we were at another of Mark’s college friend’s matrimonial celebrations. And I’d had a few.

I was walking from some lake-facing veranda back into the room with the band. And there was Gary. Standing on or near the dance floor. Looking so, well, tackle-able. Some so-bad-it’s-good 80s song was playing, and like some figure skater who visualizes a move before taking to the ice, I saw in my mind’s eye what I would do. That I would run up to Gary, jump with my legs outstretched to straddle his waist, and we would swing jauntily about the dance floor. Like some Travolta-Thurman dance scene from Pulp Fiction.

Compelled by alcohol-borne bad judgment and feeling exceedingly exuberant I ran with the chin-down determination of an Olympic pole-vaulter, and threw myself upon the utterly unawares (and might I add slight-of-build) Gary.

And let’s just say what happened looked nothing like what I’d envisioned.

I flattened him to the ground like a fly. He was stunned, dismayed, and likely injured. I imagine the dress of my skirt landed in a position that revealed parts of me best left to the bride’s grandmother’s imagination.

It was mortifying, and yet, Gary’s good nature managed to rise above. In my vodka-soaked haze I seem to remember him lending me a shoulder as we both limped off the dance floor, me slurring loud apologies in his ear.

Good times.

Ever the mini-me, Kate kept the flame alive when Gary met up with us earlier today. Since his arrival she’s been climbing onto his back and hanging off his neck like one of those long-armed monkey dolls. Despite our once-yearly time together, she’s instantly drawn to him. And though she may nearly choke the dear man with affection at times, she hasn’t (thus far) leveled him to the ground.

With Kate on Gary like her own personal climbing wall, in the other room toddlers Paige and Leo are squaring off. Squatting down and looking each other straight in the eyes, they lunge forward like two Sumo wrestlers going in for the kill. Paige has six months on Leo, so their playing ground is fairly even now. But by next year’s trip he’ll clearly dominate their happy head-butting encounters.

And so the tackling continues. Passed on to the next generation.

As for us big kids, in an hour or so when we arrive at the lake house, I expect the most tackling we’ll be doing will involve the cases of beer that Becca’s husband and Gary both brew by profession. But don’t for a minute think that means we love each other any less.

Boy Parts

On her last day of preschool, Kate brought home a portfolio of all her artwork. It was made of colored poster board that the teachers stapled together and each kid got to decorate.

Kate had written her name on hers. She also covered the thing with drawings of flowers, rainbows, and penises.

Dismayed, I reached inside the portfolio. The top five papers I yanked out featured more of the same. KATE KATE KATE scrawled on each page. Rainbows, flowers, stick figures with pigtails, and penises. Lots and lots of free-floating larger-than-life penises.

Picasso had a Blue Period and a Rose Period. Could Kate be going through some kind of Penis Period? And if so, for the love of God, why hadn’t the teachers informed us of this? For all I know, these hippie California preschools, they probably just encouraged her to draw an equal number of vaginas.

Now, due to nothing that Mark or I have done knowingly, Kate appears to have a healthy self-esteem. (For now, at least.) At summer camp in Rhode Island, she didn’t fret for a minute about not knowing any of the other kids. She’s game for adventures. Loves new people. Never shies away from reporting that her “story,” “painting,” or “dance performance” was the best in her class.

But her Achilles heel—the thing she often beats herself up over—is her inability to draw hearts. This came up when we were at my dad’s this summer. Out of the blue, a sudden outburst of dramatic blubbering about, “I can NOT draw hearts! Kaylee can do hearts! I will never ever NEVER know how to draw a heart.” Waaaah! Waaaah! WAAAAAAH!

Then she threw herself across the couch, clutching a pencil tragically to her breast.

My lazy mother instinct kicked in. I looked up from my People magazine and turned to my father—who is actually quite a handy artist—and foisted this nagging issue his way.

“Grandpa is great at drawing!” I said brightly. “I bet he’d LOVE to teach you how to draw a heart.”

I’m not sure exactly what happened next, as the article about former-Heff-girlfriend Kendra Wilcox’s new baby was thoroughly engrossing. But I think I remember there being a directive about making a kinda curvy “m” for the top part. Then closing off the bottom with a “v.”

Voila! A heart!

There seemed to be all kind of high-fiving and “that’s the most beautiful heart I’ve ever seen” grandparently reinforcement. I believe Kate ran over to proudly thrust her drawing on top of of my article on the recent Jonas Brothers marriage. “Oooh great,” I said automatically, casually sliding my magazine free.

I realize now that I should have taken more care that day to focus in on the “hearts” Kate was so delightedly producing. The hearts that Teacher Grandpa was administering praise-filled wallops to her little back for. Because—and I don’t want to say that any form of art is “wrong” or “bad”—but the fact is, after scrutinizing Kate’s preschool drawings the other day, I suddenly realized that the things that I thought were boy parts, were blessedly not those at all. They were, at least in the eyes of the artist, hearts.

Alas, when we go back to Grandpa’s in October, I think it’s time for he and Kate to go back to the drawing board.

Digging Out

One night last week my sister walked into her kitchen to find her nine-year-old son in a laundry bag. A bag that he’d voluntarily put himself in. Because I guess that’s what you do when you’re a nine-year-old boy.

It was mesh, so it wasn’t like he was struggling for air or anything. And he wasn’t alone. He was hanging out with his best friend. His friend who, for nearly A HALF-HOUR, had been trying unsuccessfully to un-knot the top of the bag.

And here’s the thing. My sister was upstairs THE WHOLE TIME. Had the boys thought to get her for help? Apparently not. She even asked if they didn’t find her because they thought she might be mad or something. They said no. Word was, they just hadn’t thought to get her.

I can’t help but think this is a boy thing. Like the young male version of not asking for directions.

As my sister was working to free him he tells her, “I’m starting to feel kinda weird in here.”

Uh, YEAH.

I’d have lasted four seconds in there before screaming and thrashing around like a Tazmanian Devil. Not only would someone upstairs know I needed help, the whole block would.

But the fact is, sometimes you get yourself into a tight spot and it’s kinda hard to know how dig yourself out. I was like that for a short while when I get back from Little Rhody. Not in a super bad place, but just glum. The craptastic Bay Area weather plus a large dose of nothing-much-going-on had me in a vague fog. And seeing as I generally operate like a chihuahua on caffeine (at least, in the words of my dear friend Kevin), this nebulous floating about was distasteful.

So I did what any sane woman would do. I started washing down pillows.

You know, took on an extremely low priority project and threw myself into it as if I was single-handedly redoing the Sistine Chapel ceiling. Oh, did I wash pillows. Then I tossed them in the dryer with tennis balls to dry and fluff ‘em all up nice. Once one set was done I’d nearly yank a pillow from beneath Mark’s sleeping head to start in on more.

It was a strange yet effective form of therapy. I was making just enough progress on an utterly unnecessary project that my morose mood was replaced by a mild sense of satisfaction. And since I have an addictive personality, I took my usual more-is-more approach. (Note: If anyone in my neighborhood would like their pillows laundered, please leave them on my front porch. I probably won’t hear the doorbell ring since the tennis balls in the dryer are fairly loud.)

Today, having come near the end of what turns out to be our thrillingly-large pillow inventory, I stumbled across a twin duvet I forgot we had. Perfect for Paige’s new Big Girl Bed! And an excellent item to, well, wash.

Pillow mites are watching their nightly newscasts and shielding their children’s eyes from pictures of me. I’m like the Saddam Hussein of the pillow mite community.

I’m considering opening a bed and breakfast for severe allergy sufferers. Why hoard all this pristine hypo-allergenic bedding for my family’s sole use?

Anyway, speaking of Paigey’s Big Girl Bed—and believe me, she and I seem to spend half our days discussing its merits—the other thing I’ve been doing to occupy myself is re-arranging the furniture in her room. This, it turns out, is also good therapy—albeit somewhat disorienting to the poor girl. She leaves her room for a five-minute snack, and on her way back in slams into a dresser I’ve impulsively moved catty-corner in her doorway.

I just can’t help myself. I’ve explored varying degrees of good and bad feng shui (a bed facing towards the door = a no-no). I’ve exhausted nearly every configuration of the contents of the room. And finally on this “project” I’m also slapping my hands together with a smug sense of accomplishment. I’ve settled on one layout I’ve been willing to keep in place for three days now. This, it seems, is progress.

Other things have helped my disposition get sunnier, despite the thick Bay Area fog. We’re off to Palm Springs at the end of the week—a trip I hastily planned in a desperate heat-seeking mission. And one day after our return from there, we set out for our Minnesotan lake vaycay.

And back on the homefront I signed up for a boot camp. You know, I’m paying some petite drill sargeant to yell at and disparage me as I do wind sprints by Lake Merrit, then fall to the sidewalk for endless rounds of push-ups. At 6:30 in the morning. This started today in fact, and aside from the regular Advil-overdosing I anticipate I’ll be doing, I think this ass-kickin’ is just what my lazy ass needed.

Though waking up at 5:45 was especially brutal. Miss Paige, ever the ringer for sleep, has been discombobulated of late. For years babysitters have gloated about “how easily she goes down.” But in the past few weeks her Sleep Super Power has been out of whack. At bedtime she’ll appear to have fallen asleep, but 45 minutes later will call out, “I want MY MAMA!” in her most desperate and dramatic wail. We’re popping up two to three times a night to settle her down, like she’s a newborn again. You’d think the steady thrum of the tennis balls in the dryer would soothe her back to sleep. But no dice. Much more of this and I’ll be asking for my money back.

Then in the morning, the poor thing calls out to us as if she’s shackled to the mattress. This happens to be my favorite non-intelligent behavior in my children: the fact that once they moved into twin beds they didn’t figure out that they were FREE TO GET OUT on their own.

But really, like I said, sometimes you’re just feeling stuck—be it in a laundry bag, a funk, or a bed that you forgot isn’t your crib any more.

So what’s been happening most mornings is we send Kate into Paige’s room to tell her she can get out of bed. Then she pops right out like a trained Cocker Spaniel and shows up in the kitchen, beaming and wild-haired, announcing proudly, “I got up, Mama!”

Hopefully by the time she goes away to college we’ll get her self-prompting to get out of bed. In the meantime, she’s one member of the family I’m happy to keep in the fog.

WMNRSMTR

Years ago, driving across the Bay Bridge, I saw a car with the license plate WMNRSMTR.

As you may know (from my excessive blathering about it), I’m from Rhode Island. A place where vanity license plates—and those with low numbers—are regarded as the pinnacle of social worth.

Not to show off or anything, but my first car, a major jalopy, had the most-excellent plate, KB 2. It was because I was dating the son of a Department of Transportation employee. That car’s been off the road for twenty years now, but my Dad (FB 14) is still proud of that license plate.

Aaaanyway, I was driving behind WMNRSMTR. It was clear that there was a message in there, but not so clear what it was. And I’m usually great with word things. It’s those pastel dotty posters you’re supposed to stare at until you see the wolf baying at the moon that I have trouble with. I almost never succeed at having the image emerge, and end up just lying to whomever I’m shopping with at Spencer’s that I saw it.

But I digress.

So here’s me, alone in my car, trying to crack the code:

“Wim… Nurse.. Mutter…”

“Wih Minners Matter?”

Then more determined:

“Wim NERsum Terr!”

“Wimin URS Tur!”

And finally:

“Wim NER Smerrterr?”

[Click!]

“WOMEN ARE SMARTER!”

Yeah, yeah, I get the irony.

And speaking of women, but really just a total tangent, I realized the other day that my gynecologist’s office is on BUSH Street. No joke! How good is that?

So a couple months ago I went on a day-long yoga retreat in Marin. I’ve done this before but always with my friend and faithful neighb, Jennifer. This time I was flying solo. So at the lunch break I was sitting somewhat dorkishly at the big communal table, having one of my twice-a-decade moments of shyness. Just hoping one of the other yoginis might put their play-with-the-outcast-on-the-playground skills to work.

A trio of older women, in their 60s or so, were sitting to my right. And one of them got to talking in a loud and animated enough way that I felt I could scoop hippie vegan soup into my mouth and look at her. You know, pretend that she was talking to me too.

She’d lived in a chicken coop in Georgia, she said. Yes, a chicken coop. Starting when she was 20 until about—long pause, looking up sideways to think—until she was 26. “It had a packed clay floor,” she pointed out. As if we’d all maybe been picturing parquet. They cooked on a grill and had an outdoor water drum that was painted black that they used as a shower.

I was instantly jealous.

When I was 20 I was living in Ohio. Sure that’s rustic and all, but I mean, I had indoor plumbing.

She’d moved to Georgia from Minnesota with her “pack,” as she called them. A group of about eight who I couldn’t help but imagine as a bra-disparaging partner-swapping commune-like klatch.

Again, more envy. Or maybe just deep deep fascination.

And they were potters, of course. That’s to say, throwers of pots. (By this point in the story I think I’d pulled my chair nearly an inch from her, abandoning my soup, enraptured.) They—her “pack”–had waited for their potter’s wheels to arrive in the mail first, then they hit the road for Georgia.

I couldn’t help but wonder how many pottery wheels they had, and why they didn’t just have them shipped straight to Georgia. But I didn’t want to ask too many questions. After all, I was kind of auditing the story as it was.

After more good stuff about one klatch member who was a professor getting fired, and some details on the rigors of heat-free winter-living, she mentioned  she now owns a gallery in Berkeley. The woman at her left has a gallery there too. They said the names of the places, which I of course instantly forgot, but in my mind I envisioned visiting there a lot. Buying stuff. Becoming an apprentice. Keeping a pet cat there.

Even though I kinda hate pottery.

Then this other woman pulls up a chair with her bowl of soup. And for a moment my verging-on-creepy fixation with the gray-haired pot-throwers was broken.

The new woman started chatting with the instructor about how she’s out of town so often for work. So, I summon some social courage and ask her what she does.

And DO YOU KNOW WHAT SHE SAID? She said she is a bee broker.

A BEE broker!!

I didn’t know what that was but I instantly wanted to be one too. BEES! Of course!

So, I say, “So, uh, what is a bee broker?”

And do you know what she said? She said that she has some big rig that’s filled with hives that she brings down to Modesto to the almond farms. She then sets her bees free in the fields. It’s like the farmers rent them! Then at night when it gets all chilly the bees fly back into the truck to go to sleep with in the hive, or have sex with the queen, or do whatever it is they do in there. Then Ms. Bee Broker heads off to another farm.

I almost hugged her.

Now I was going to have to split my weekends between Modesto and the Berkeley pottery studios.

All this talk was more energizing than all the hold-one-nostril breathing and triangle-posing the first half of the retreat had served up. I loved every one of these women. If these gals by were so amazing, what were the ones crouched over their vegan soup over there like? I wanted to start going from woman to woman, looking intently into each of their faces and interviewing them all documentary-style.

I mean, I was feeling like the odds that the next person I’d talk to would be a Bed, Bath & Beyond employee was pretty low. But the thing is, if she had been, I think I would have suddenly slipped into a reverential trance, and praised all that was holy about mattress pads. I was ready to find the love in everyone.

Without drugs!

After lunch and before my yoga, we all hiked to the beach. This hike is pretty crazy gorgeous. If you’re ever in California, call me and I’ll take you to this place. It’s along a super lush valley where these Buddhists have a homestead. You pass all their perfect vegetable and flower gardens, then a silly idyllic horse pasture, and then the path narrows and it’s all just and trees and flowers and birds and butterflies and nature and shit.

What I mean is, it sure is purdy there.

Then when you arrive at the beach, you get that positive ion hit. Whatever that high is that you get from the ocean water. Someone told me about this once and I still believe that there’s something to it, even if it’s really not true.

But clearly in the mode that I was in I needed no more highs of any sort.

Beachside I wandered up to a group of co-yoga-retreaters and sat on a driftwood log with them. (See how socially brave I was getting?) We were looking out at the water, and I was feeling certain one of them was about to tell me something that would make me weep and hug her ankles and think that the world was a beautiful beautiful place. You know. I was just waiting for that.

Even better, I got some excellent book recommendations. These gals were older, but let’s just say we were reading at the same level. We all clucked with praise for that great hedgehog novel. And then they bantered about the name of a few other amazing reads. Eventually I’d borrowed a pencil from one of them and an ATM receipt from another and wrote the all the titles all down. We even talked about our favorite children’s lit because—get this—one of them had been a children’s librarian for, like, 30 years or something. Joy!

If I were to spelunk a few layers down on my desk today, I may even find that paper today and read those books.

Just a day or two after it opened, I went to see the Sex and the City movie with a Mama Posse friend. I never read movie reviews. Having even the smallest inkling of what to expect in a movie destroys it for me. I spend the whole time waiting for whichever scene it is that’s funny or dumb, and I can’t even enjoy my wine. (Yes, smuggling red wine and plastic cups into the movies has become par for the course for me and the Mamas.)

But in the days leading out to my Moms Night Out, Mark, bless his heart, made sure I knew how utterly decimated this movie had gotten by reviewers. It’s badness delighted him.

But whatEVER. We still went. And all of Oakland was out in their fancy. I mean, black girls in stilettos and what looked like prom dresses. I mean, it’s Oakland. If there was any Prada, I didn’t see it.

Me, I was in flip flops.

And do you know what? I LIKED the movie. Sure it was vapid and silly and predictable, and there were probably some culturally-offensive jokes, but it was entertaining. Yes, I actually chuckled—full-out laughed a bit too—and found it perfectly un-intellectually engaging.

On the way out, I think I even complimented a woman on her purple clutch, awash with feel-good audience-mate comraderie.

I’m not exactly sure what all those reviews said—because if I’m disinclined to read reviews before seeing a movie I’m even disinclineder to read them after. Maybe those writers were preparing to see Amistad, and were taken aback when the movie was more about Manolo Blahnik shoes, low-cal cocktails, and menopause. You know, I think they were missing the point.

While I’m at it, do you know what movie I also saw last week? The latest Twilight movie. Oh yes I did.

And I LIKED THAT TOO.

Sure, I’d had—-okay—a few Mai Tais beforehand. But even without cheap rum coursing through my veins I think I’d be squealing over the dreamy barely-legal cast and walloping my poor friend’s arm during the shirtless scenes. It was entertaining. I enjoyed myself.

And where’s the shame in that?

I’m hardly going to defend the artistic merit of either movie. But I will say, that in a theater full of women who likely spent their days working in courtrooms, or classrooms, or at The Sunglass Hut—or hell, wrangling with clay or bees or young children—for us gals it felt good to put our hair down and our feet up and let the low-browness of it all wash over us. I mean, isn’t that why men watch wrestling?

From what I can tell, despite what movies we may make a big show of going to, that license plate was right. Women are smarter.

Limbo

Greetings from Nowhere. Well, alright. I guess officially I’m in Oakland. But my psyche feels trapped somewhere between where I just was—my beloved, belittled home state of Rhode Island—and wherever it is l’ll be next.

Or maybe it’s just that where I am now ain’t where I want to be.

My pre-vacation freelance work dried up, at least temporarily. I’m utterly rusty at this stay-at-home mom thing. (But working hard at bringing the passion back into laundry.) And, unsurprisingly, I’m deep into my annual Post-Trip-Home Funk.

The relentlessly dismal, cold weather here is just the icing on the cake.

I always bill myself at being bad with change, but that’s maybe not entirely accurate. If I were to self-diagnose with a bit more precision, I might venture to say it’s not the new things that bother me as much as the down time preceding them.

And right now that seems to be squarely where I am. Nowhere. Swimming in limbo. Stuck between The Then—freelancing, sunny Rhode Island beaches, the world’s best 4th of July parade—and The Soon To Be—our summer pilgrimage to Minnesota, the start of the school year, and, well, hopefully something else. Hopefully some other compelling something-or-other will come into the mix.

But until those things happen, I’m just here. I’m like some Pong-like screen saver, gliding about, bouncing off the edges, then floating off in another unintentional direction.

Rinse. Repeat.

And it’s not only the craptastic weather that’s responsible. For starters, the neighborhood’s been nearly dismantled in the short time we were away. The fam across the street moved deeper into Suburbia. Our friends to the left are on their East Coast summer trip, poorly timed on the heels of ours. And whenever it is they return it’s only to unpack and repack for their Montana house. (Poor dears.) And to complete the circle of abandonment, the cute Ken ‘n Barbie neighbs behind us are in the final stages of job talks that’ll likely take them out of state.

I’m clearly at the vortex of somewhere no one wants to be.

To ground myself, I called my yoga studio last week to get on the list for a popular class. Whatever’s ailing me is certainly nothing that 90 minutes of Oming and Pranayama can’t fix. But it turned out that my favorite instructor is out of town. I can’t even strike a corpse pose right now.

And from what I can tell my whole family’s in limbo. Like a determined sherpa, Paige hauled her diaper-clad ass up onto a twin bed at my dad’s house, planted a flag, and renounced crib-sleeping forever. Well, at least until we got back to California, where we still haven’t managed to buy her a Big Girl Bed. I did get a new rug for her room, and a fluffy pink blanket for the much-anticipated BG Bed. But until we borrow a friend’s truck for an Ikea run, Paige is dejectedly relegated to crib-dom. At naps and night-time she wears me down with dramatic flourishes of dismay, looking over her shoulder with big hurt eyes, like I’m shoving her into a dog cage.

As for Kate, she’s winding down her days in preschool—only 8 to go—and is weeks away from the dazzling new realm of Kindergarten. (If a twin bed makes Paige a big girl, precocious Kate nearly wants to wear make-up to kindergarten.) On a daily basis Kate alternates between practicing her hippie “Rainbow of Friends” graduation song, despairing the loss of her preschool posse, and wondering which of her dresses the kindergarten boys will find the cutest.

Add to all this a veneer of jet lag. As if us McClusky gals aren’t out-of-whack enough, Mark’s fresh back from the Tour de France. Happily reunited with us—in body at least. He still wants to sleep half-way through the work day, and is hungry for breakfast in the middle of the night. All that, plus his body’s in shock from not having fois gras at every meal.

Before I know it, we’ll all push past this nebulous nether realm. I can almost smell the change in the air like the onset of rain. But it’s still just out of reach. And I just hope my patience can endure.

My inner child keeps asking, “Are we there yet? Are we there yet?” And my Mama self summons the automatic response, “Not yet, Kristen. But soon.”

Hotline to Dada

I have a sister named Marie. I’ll wait a minute while you go ahead and make your Italian-American pot shots about her name. 

Done?

Okay then. Well, on Monday she and her family came over to hang out before going out to dinner for my dad’s birthday. 

Marie is 12 years older than me. And she started younger on the baby-making. So, my two- and four-year-olds have cousins who are 19 and 21.

Since we live a country’s-length apart, we rarely get to see them. They are “big boys,” and handsome to boot. So Kate and Paige were in hardcore show-off flirty-girl modes. We were all convened in the living room, where the girls had a captive audience.

There was some dancing, some serving of wooden toy cupcakes, and some modeling of pigtails. And at one point Paige grabbed a cordless phone off the coffee table, dialed what seemed to be a number in Tokyo, and commenced a long smiley please-watch-me-being-so-cute conversation. Everyone seemed to enjoy this part of the show, so I didn’t immediately grab the phone away from her. 

As she coyly babbled, someone asked who she was talking to. 

“Dadda!” she announced. “Hi Dadda! Hi Dadda!”

Eventually, I took the phone from her and hung it up. We had a reservation to make.

The nine of us started in on various coat-fetching and bathroom-visiting activities. During that wave of pre-departure mayhem, Mark called from Whistler. “I’ll call him from the car!” I bellowed to my dad, while yanking boots onto Kate. 

When we finally connected en route to the restaurant, Mark tells me, “So I called your Dad’s house about ten minutes ago. Before the phone even rang I hear Paige saying, ‘Hi Dadda!’ and giggling.”

Mark spent the next few minutes having a one-sided chat with Paigey Wigs, who looked around the living room at us wide-eyed, triumphantly announcing, “Dadda! Dadda!”

When Mark urged her, “Okay, Paige, give the phone to Mama now,” she began on a round of “Mama Dada! Mama Dada!” And of course, kept clutching the phone.

Cracking up, Mark finally gave up and hung up. Attempts to call back resulted in a long stream of busy signals.

And now? Paige is convinced that all the phones at my dad’s house are direct lines to Mark.

And really, why shouldn’t she be?

Over the past couple days if she’s out of my sight for a minute, I’ll likely hear her chanting, “Dada! Dada! Dada!” It’s a sure-fire tip-off that she’s found a phone.

Poor dear. As it is, she’s been climbing into bed with me in the morning and asking ”Oooh Dada?” which I’ve interpreted to mean “Where’s my father who’s usually here with you, and why the hell has he been gone for so long?” Turns out she doesn’t understand about the whole Olympics thing—that they’re far away and they go on for a while. And then, after spending so much play-time “calling” Mark on toy phones, she finally found one that really makes contact. But whenever she gets ahold of it, I wrestle it away from her.

The reality is, if it weren’t for my fear that she’ll dial her way to Denmark, I’d love for her to think she can summon Mark at will. She’s got plenty of time to understand the true logistics of telephonics. In the meantime, I’m doing my best not to dash the illusions of a Daddy’s girl.