Unidentified Flying Childhood

On the way home, I caught sight of a falling item through the bare branches lining the highway. It appeared to be hurtling through the sky. Ready to crash land at any moment. I continued to drive.  The item continued to fall with the same speed and ferocity while never reaching a target. I was mesmerized. I drove. It fell. I watched. It fell. The smoke trailing behind the object serving as the only indication of motion. A picture of perpetual movement with no visible progress. I know that feeling.

I am not the kind of mother who spends all day quietly crafting in the evergreen scented warmth of my kitchen, oven slightly ajar to release heat and the smells of baking. I do not cry when my children leave to begin a new school year or lose a tooth. I am a believer in progress. I am thankful for each new phase. Stepping stones signaling passage from dependence to independence. I celebrate forward motion as I watch them create a life, separate from me and my expectations of who they are. I watch their light bulb moments with curiosity and eagerness. Some days, it seems as if it is moving so quickly. Some days, perpetual movement with no visible progress. We become stuck in the day to day minutia.

I have been in varying stages of parenting young children since I first stepped into the role in 2006. Every two years, another infant. Every two years, a rearranging of the family structure. A re-learning of infancy. A re-tooling of our resources, abilities and boundaries with ourselves and each other. Every two years, my well defined parenting taste buds mature and I must further develop my palate.

When pregnant with our last, I knew we were pushing the reaches of our abilities and resources. I knew we were done.  Thus began a new vision of parenting. A model where another baby would not come home in a striped hat of pink and blue. Things are changing. The baby on my chest is the last. The chalk throwing 2 year old looks older. The 4 year old seems tall, lanky with no sign of his baby cheeks. The 6 year old, a shorter and wittier version of young adult me. Time has finally started moving. Swiftly.

I used to feel unable to say that the fully dependent times are trying. It is difficult to admit that, on some days, you feel like you are hurtling through space, in a dark void filled with only screams, dirty diapers and the incessant need of you.

We are a society that is so focused on the past and future that we neglect our present. In either judgmental hindsight or thoughtful foreshadowing, we ignore the now in its hideous imperfection. The hindsighters who watch you navigate moments of DEFCON 1 parenting and, with lustful implication, say, "Oh enjoy it, it goes by so fast." In hindsight, do we all view childhood as a shooting star? Beautiful, rare and blindingly brief.

Perhaps, in some ways, this is true. We pine for what is gone. We long for what is just outside our future reach. In the present though, we are frozen in lack of noticeable progress. We look forward to the abilities, competencies and skills they have yet to grow into. We pine for full cheeks, soft bellies and toothless grins.

I don't like to drink from the, "This is as good as it gets." fountain. I cherish the soft days of baby. I laugh through the wild rumpus of toddlerhood, I marvel at the knowledge of my newly school aged children's vivid understanding of the complicated world around them. I watch as they embrace every moment as it is happening; maybe children are the only ones who are truly able to.

Peter Pan never wanted to grow up. Wendy, Michael and John, even after the adventure of Neverland, wanted to go home to their mother. I think we all carry a bit of this as we fly through life. Half child/Half grown-up emotion hoping our children slow down, believe in fairies and, no matter where they are in the adventure, always fly home.

Life is happening while we court the great reckoning of longing versus progress. And, while we're here in this daily fall of non-visible momentum, the smoke is signaling that we're traveling. Swiftly.

         

Long Live the Terrible Twos

If you ask a toddler who they are, they will say, "I am ME!" Simple and true. There can only be one you and, never are we more aware of this than during the big, self-pimptastic-realization of age 2. When the world is your oyster and that bitch better produce a pearl. This is the prime of our take. When you are 2, there is very little control over your world. You control only your reaction to the decisions being made for you and around you. In order to swallow that pill, you become one.

If you ask an adult who they are, they wax philosophical. Answering with who they want to be more often than who they currently are. At times, we may not even know. We project our desires with less toddler-like stomping and biting, but, with only a quarter of the badass that toddlerhood organically, and abundantly, produces.

There are times I desire that toddler, Foghorn Leghorn puffed chest pride. Every time I see my daughter strut around new terrain, secure in her right to be there, claiming the space as her own, I am awe-struck. So much sense of self trapped in one, tiny body. I imagine that the internal soundtrack in her head is Danger Zone. 24/7 Danger Zone and so much fantastic, she doesn't need Goose to co-pilot.

There are times when the brazenness of her age embarrasses me. Everything is theirs. That wallet in your hand? THEIRS. The grapes in the produce section. THEIRS. The chalk in your toddler's hands? Sorry, THEIRS. The cat's flea collar, your bowl of cereal, the sack of plastic bags in the basement. Right. THEIRS.

Alternatively, in all the well documented take of the toddler age, I see saintly giving. The affection they give to everyone they meet. The trust they extend and their unlimited well of forgiveness. I see those traits more acutely developed in these pint-sized Mother Theresas than in the majority of adult society. So much love to give and everyone is deserving. You only need be in their extended orbit to be a recipient of their time, words, love and attention.

Sure, they could use some polish. The crapping directly in their pants and failure to understand how to use a tissue require finesse, but, when it comes to give and take, good and bad, the light and dark, I have to say, toddlers may have us beat.

Toddler 101: Enter a room and be brazenly YOU.  Make friends with everyone. If anyone steps on your toes, tell them and then, hug it out. Friends may not always agree, but, if we have Goldfish and a few minutes, we'll remember that having relationships is far better than being right and, we'll move on. Everyone can play and if we all pool our snacks, there is plenty to go around. If I get hurt, it's alright to cry. If I need love, I'll ask for a hug. The world is great. People are kind. If you love the music, dance...no matter where you are. If you hurt someone, say sorry. Share.

Long live the Terrible Twos.

Summer's Last Stand

Who doesn't love summer with its endlessness and perpetual abyss of all of your offspring under one roof? I enjoy my weekly shower and cold cup of coffee because life is revitalizing when freezing cold  and roughly scheduled. I also enjoy our 2 1/2 month inch toward poverty as the locusts children eat us out of house and home. Of course you can have all 15 of the Hot Pockets. I was saving them for the apocalypse, but, frankly that seems closer now than ever so, enjoy!

After several months home, the gifts of summer's delight keep on giving, and giving, and giving and...come play with us Danny (elevator doors open in Overlook Hotel).




We're going back to school shopping...forever and ever and ever and ever...


As we drag our weary, bedraggled bodies toward the home stretch, I can think of only two things: How many more days until school starts? and, How did I manage to only get a tan on my feet?

This week has brought more of the same. The zest of the initial June kiddie pool filling has been replaced with August 13ths, "Can't you just go play NEAR the hose. I might turn it on later. I don't know, maybe if you're really thirsty." and our bounding out of the gates trips to the park have turned into, "Hey kids, look out the window! There's the park!" as we speed home from the grocery store. I've caved and they can smell my desperation. Desperation for Moms - the new scent by mothers, for mothers. A scent for the simple, complicated woman who just can't wait for effing school to start. *whisper* DESSSSPERATION.

As swift as sand through the hourglass, so are the the days of our lives...except for the days of summer.

Now what, you ask? Exactly. I am out of ideas. I am out of pipe cleaners, glue and stickers. And, to quote the great philosopher, Prince, "Party over, oops out of time." But, summer still had one sucker punch for me: Several days of torrential downpour. Game on, summer. One more chance to give it my "A game" or, to establish an A game since I've been riding the bench between C - and D, but, with the curve I'm hoping to pull it up to a solid B -.  Here's hoping the kids accept my extra credit sprinkling of dirt on their note to the fairies that I passed off as fairy dust! Fingers crossed!

Now, I give you our rainy day summer projects you will NEVER see on Pinterest:

Weather Hats - They are fashionable and informative. If they are wet, it's raining. If your forehead starts to smoke, the sun is shining. If the forecast calls for thunder and lightning, it's time to ask yourself, Are you a bettin' man? Well, are you?

You are seriously impressed right now. Who wouldn't be? Now taking orders for my shop featured on Regretsy.

Telephone - Ring, Ring? Hello? Hello? HELLOOOOO? Just like when the phone rings during the day in my house, I'm going to ignore these calls too. The kids love that they can scream at each other from different rooms and I love that they are screaming things like, "HI! I CAN'T WAIT TO GO BACK TO SCHOOL SO WE CAN GET AWAY FROM She'sLostIt McOutOfHerMind!" instead of screaming directly into each other's faces about who gets to eat the fruit snack they just found under the radiator vent.




"What is the legal age you can emancipate yourself from your parents?"



They sure don't make them like this anymore. Or, ever.

Sticks - This game is really neat. You go out in the rain and collect as many sticks as possible. Then, you put the sticks in a giant pile. Then, you pick up large debris, add it to the stick pile and, this is where it gets REALLY interesting, then rake smaller debris into the BIG pile until the yard is 100% absent of debris. After this, you apply for a burn permit through your local fire department and burn any debris that is not usable as mulch. Kids LOVE this game. You can thank me later.

If this doesn't make you want to immediately run out and play "sticks", well, then I guess FUN means something different to you.

I have to say, I think it's clear I nailed it. Speaking of nails....well, we can get to that game next summer. I don't want to give all of  my secrets away in one post.

"My Kids Are My Best Friends!"

I have heard tales of parent - child relationships so strong that they refer to each other as best friends. I can only surmise that this works the same way 18th century courting worked. After being told you were betrothed and had no choice but to be together for life, you figured you'd make the best of it, find out each other's similarities and give it a good old fashioned try. You would drink a lot and fan yourself. In fits of anger, they would throw things at you....mostly breakable things you love. You'd make tea sandwiches. They would eat them, except for the crust.  Back then, divorce was unheard of. And since parenthood is also a life sentence, I think it's a good idea to take a deep breath and settle in. Fortunately, unlike marriage, you do all the diapering in the beginning and get to the dating and drinking together in the later years. This seems like a fair deal. The sweet after the constantly urinated on in public sour.

In some ways, my kids are my best friends. Mostly because baby and toddler hood are a battlefield that we have all fought on together. This makes us soldiers in the same platoon. We're bros. No one knows you like your platoon during war-time. We haven't shared cigarettes or pin-up pictures, but, I have carried them over my shoulder while running from an angry bee and when we have explosions of the diaper variety, I am the medic.  SO yeah, we're tight.

Best friends have secret languages. I speak all four of my children's garbled languages fluently. I know that EOGHRTOUERFSOHGT SOTHEOUHTTT!!!! means, "Hey Mom. I want a sandwich." and I know that ERRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR means, "Head's up. I'm tired. You'd better postpone that grocery store trip until after nap time." Our secret handshakes change daily, but, we have those too. Their current favorite is pull mom's pants down and laugh which I know means, "The four of us will be ganging up on you for the rest of your life. Get used to it!" I then respond with my secret handshake of tripping over my pants and clenching my teeth in half pain/half anger which means, "I know. I'm ready for you. Next time I'm wearing pants 3 sizes too small! SUCKERS!"

Best friends are often well matched. They may love to read, write or go to theatre. My children and I are well matched as well. We are generally cranky, covered in mud and none of us know how to spell. Similarities. Check.

Best friends fight and then make up. Does this even require an example? No, it doesn't.

Best friends borrow each other's clothes.  They wear my underwear on their heads. Close enough.

Best friends tell each other secrets. I know ALL of their secrets. I plan on never telling them...until the truly perfect moment of horrifying embarrassment. That's what best friends do.

Best friends know that no matter what, they have each other's backs. Mean chick at Day Camp who refused to do Twin Day with my daughter, Aggressive Troll on the slide that pushed my toddler into a cardboard box and ANYone who breaks their hearts, this (best) Bud's for you. And, by Bud, I mean my evil, death stare while menacingly peeling an orange.

Ok, I admit it  - we are besties. Now to find a BFF necklace that splits into 5 pieces.

Tripping the Hazmat Fantastic.

Parenthood is a ticking, germ-laden time bomb. A sea of vile, phobia creating quarantine shed scenarios that make even the bravest of the brave fall to their knees (get up, sanitize their knees with a travel sized Wet One, return to their knees, hand sanitize their hands after touching said knees) in horror. I have taken a deep breath and, for the betterment of kindred parenting spirits everywhere, have gone to a dark, dark place in order to tell you about the worst of the worst. Public arenas turned Outbreak. Places soap can not touch. Places soap doesn't bother touching. Places where hand sanitizer is futile. Places of danger. Places I always end up.

Kids, is everyone suited up? Great. Let's get out there and have some FUN.

Remember that scene in E.T.? - The scientists arrive at Elliott's home to study E.T. and his connection to Elliott. They are all wearing hazmat suits with full astronaut helmet. The entire house is connected to the research site by an elaborate series of above ground tunnels? These places are exactly like that except remove ALL attempts of sterilization and order.




I must insist you keep your body completely covered while in the milk crate. Gertie found it in a KFC dumpster.

 1) The Indoor Play Place
The sites! The sounds! The smells! No, it's not Clorox. Take 15 - 40 partially potty trained toddlers, several babies and a smattering of 1/2 tuned in parents and you have the perfect storm that is the indoor play place. Urine. Unrecongnizable assaulted food products. Dirty diapers. Soiled underwear. That is just the coat rack near the entrance. There is, inevitably, a climbing structure that is just big enough for a child to become stuck and terrified and just small enough for you to lay on the floor, stick one leg under the structure for support and flail most useful arm up into the abyss, motioning for your child to grab your limb. During this cirque du soleil feat, you try not to think about the wet spot grazing your hand and are hopeful that your foot is digging in to what could be so many things, but, is probably not the nutrigrain bar you're hoping for. After hours with other parents, exchanging horror stories and on-call pediatric physician numbers for the closest three counties, you leave, shower your children and burn their clothes in the backyard.

2) The Children's Museum
At the children's museum, you can explore your local city. You can learn how to anchor a news desk, work the local market register and learn about transportation. There is one exhibit missing - how to fight off the resurgence of 14th century "black death". Come with questions, leave with the Bubonic Plague. Not on museum t-shirts yet. I'm working on it. The children's museum is a maze of sticky plastic produce and rare childhood viruses. Learn how to make change, ride the subway and survive hand, foot and mouth disease. Be the foreman at a construction site, try on a fireman's helmet and pass on Fifths Disease to your family and friends. Excuse me, your former friends. The children's museum. Discover. Learn. Vomit.

3) The Public Pool
All you need at our local pool is $1 per child, a swim diaper and the intestinal fortitude of a world champion butter eater. From the kiddie area, the regular pool gleams with sparkling chlorine filled water. Water filled with adults. Water filled with the expert level potty trained of America. Over in the kiddie pool? Well, imagine a sewer line. That's it. Just imagine a sewer line. Turned inside out. With lots of crying. And, unusually warm water. Our toddler water area is very festive. Rainbow sprayers, turtles to climb on, and giant shower head sprayers. I see the appeal. So does every 2 year old in New England. The turtle, and its fun shell sprayers, act as a seat AND an unintentional water fountain. Mmmm...can you taste that? That's chlorine and anxiety. Delicious. Between the tears, swim diaper blow-outs and smashed snack shack fries, I make a weekly vow to never return, but, the fanciful rainbow sucks me back in every time. "This time it will be different.", it whispers. "This time, it will be magic. I'm a rainbow...trust me!" The rainbow connection. The lovers, the dreamers and pee.

4) The "Family Restroom"

I appreciate the idea behind the Family Restroom. Logistically, where else could I take a cart filled with a gaggle of children that all inevitably require some sort of restroom attention as soon as the magical, bowel clearing automatic store doors open? I appreciate the consideration. I appreciate the size. I appreciate the intention. But, as we all know, the path to Hell is paved with good intentions. And, the path to the family restroom is paved with e-coli. The real BUMmer about the family restroom is its lies. Its sweet, vile lies. "Oh, come on in! You can ALL fit in here. Yep, the cart too!" You wander in and just like that, you are the fly and this room is the Venus Fly Trap. Upon entry, you have already realized that it is too late. You are right. You can fit 3 - 4 regular sized bathroom stalls in the family restroom. You will find an adult toilet, a toddler toilet, a changing table, a toddler seat, a stool and the sink. 250 square feet of chaos. Think it's hard to keep children from touching the singular toilet in a small stall? Try 3 toilets, 3 trash cans, a painter's step stool placed directly undereath a dangling light fixture and, just for giggles, add enough running room on slippery tile to make this interesting. Imagine the game of Life. Every car is a shopping cart. Every home, a Family Restroom. Every road leads to a hospital and every crank of the wheel, another dose of IV antibiotics. The only improvement I can offer - single use straight jackets. Problem solved. Long story even longer (brace yourself for endlessness), I guess what I'm saying is, I am not down with O.P.P. (Other People's Pottys, Outdoor Port o' Pottys, Ominous Public Pottys, Opulent Porcelain Pottys, Offensive Putrid Pottys....I could go all day). Yeah, you know me. The BOTTOM line? As often as the family restroom horrifies me, it gives me flowers and promises that next time the initials indicating the last cleaning will be in this decade. It will be better. Clean. I believe it because I like flowers and second chances. And scouring my hands with Soft Scrub.

"You JUST went to the bathroom before we left the house!"

The undeniable fact is, I still go to all of these places. Frequently. Willingly. Like when a horse is willingly hitched to a plow in a field in the dead of August or, when parents willingly attend Recorder concerts. Willingly means something different when you become a parent. Willingly now means; My kids enjoy or need this so, hook that rope around my waist and send me in to the demon portal closet full of poltergeists. I'm coming through the other side covered in pink slime and clutching my babies. Willingly. Like a thankful for up to to date immunization boosters BOSS.









Ashes to Ashes. Dust to Dust. Creating A Childhood.

My mother was raised by an artist and a military man. She was the lone daughter with two, older brothers. In her family, the men were praised and favored and, while she was loved, the rigidity of her father and his unprocessed childhood of abandonment as the son of an institutionalized mother, he was unsure how to be a father to a girl and far less sure how to raise a woman. There was always underlying anger. Abandonment by a mother is always a gaping wound. Though she was loved deeply by her mother, the overpowering possessiveness and need for control of the household emotions by her father left her a stranger in a strange land. A female in a male favored home with parents who struggled to find a place for her. This, I think, left a theory of feminism where self-love should have resided. An anger and passion fueled by inequality instead of a well groomed seed of self-acceptance. This also left her with a lack of self-understanding and a struggle to define herself. After a short, tumultuous marriage to my father that produced 2 daughters, they divorced and she quickly remarried a military man. A possessive man. A controlling man. A man who needed to control her, us and the emotions of the household. And, there were two more daughters.  She birthed four women. After living in a home that did not favor women. Living in a home where she struggled to find her place. Living with a husband who was possessive, controlling and terribly dark. Some cycles are hard to break.

There is a beauty in our cycles. There is opportunity for change. This is about the stage we set for our children. As artistic directors, the roles our childhoods play in painting the scenery, building the props, channeling the emotion and revealing the final product on the stage or foundation we’ve built for the fleeting years that make our children’s childhoods. It’s about creating what was lost, found or, in some cases, creating what never happened. Pulling the bunny from the empty hat. It is about acknowledging the gifts of the past to better set the scenes of the future. It is about responsibility, decisions and choices. It is about honestly acknowledging failures. It is about everyday redemption.

I am an imperfect parent. I struggle with balance. I struggle with patience. I struggle with guilt. On some days, I struggle with gratitude.  I struggle to find the teaching moments in difficult days and I struggle to find the learning moments when I fail. I am doing the best I can. Some days my best is not good enough. On other days, my best redeems the gnawing guilt.

I am the product of a home with alcohol. A home of quiet, unending fear and failure. A home where what was said made for surface ambivalence and what was not said could fill the pages of sets of encyclopedias. And, now, I am the encyclopedia salesman. It is my job to take what is broken and to piece it together into something worthwhile. Something beautiful. Ashes into Zuzu’s petals.

As I set this new scene for my own four children, I am acutely aware of the parallels drawn. Mother of 4. Mother of 4. Mother of 4. I find that simply having the same number of children as my mother causes an internal panic I can not shake. Does likeness turn to sameness? Will I follow in muddied footsteps?

I often look around my yard and home at the pieces of the childhood we are creating. Library books, dolls and pirate ships. Swimming pools, sand and swing sets. Popsicles in July and fireflies at drive-in movie theatres. And, I wonder…do they know that I am creating a childhood of fantasy and wonder that was not my own? That I can not empathize with the normalcy that I have worked so hard to create? That I am a fraud. Looking at pictures, the ideas of loving families in books and on screen. The burned in my brain childhood stories of others, I am simply weaving a tapestry of childhood – Andy Griffith, pieces of my husband’s idyllic Vermont childhood of exploration and independence and my love. My big love. Some cycles are hard to break. But, I am the creative director. I am the Sheriff of Mayberry. I am Ramona’s mother, packing their suitcases so that they are too heavy to run away. I am George Bailey looking for heavenly gratitude and redemption so that they can say, it’s a wonderful life.





Three of my four - ankle deep in wonder.