Our dog, Mya, has been geriatric for the majority of her generous lifespan. Fourteen in human years, her hips started going about five years ago, and it’s been a heartbreaking decline. But, while she’s all of 1,879 years old in dog years, somehow, the ole girl miraculously soldiers on with several of her favorite hobbies … namely audible farts, burying uneaten pancakes tossed out for the birds and hunting small prey.
The latter was how we discovered a burrow of four tiny bunny babies in our backyard. I was sitting at my desk working one afternoon when I heard commotion and “No! No! No! Drop it! No!” Mya had one of the newborns in her mouth. At Spike’s urging, she opened her jaw and deposited the baby onto the ground. JoJo carefully moved it back to the nest using a washcloth. Thus, days of standing guard by the burrow began.
For more than a week, every time we let Mya out to go potty, someone stayed with her, herding her away from the unsuspecting rabbit toddlers. The girls spent hours cowering next to the bunnies, tracking when they opened their eyes, reporting the day their ears popped up, the moment they tried to hop out. The girls were attached, or, as our summer sitter put it, “invested.”
We lost one fairly early on, the runt of the litter. But for the most part, the babies were thriving, and inching closer to leaving the vulnerable hole in the ground and hopping off beyond the safety of our watch and our fence line and into a bright bunny future.
Then, a few days ago, Hank and I were putting laundry away when we heard a terrible scream. The back door slid open and a hysterical Spike flew up the stairs. She was shaking, violently. Punching. Angry.
The girls had lost themselves in joy for just a moment. Gotten distracted.
They’d been jumping on the trampoline when Spike looked over and saw the tragedy they’d so vigilantly been trying to prevent. Mya had gotten one of the baby bunnies. The others had hopped away and escaped.
As I held her against me – sweaty and hysterical – I felt her convulsing in the frigid, sobering shock of devastation. Of loss. Of heartbreak.
They were just wild bunnies; a dime a dozen. But my girls, Spike in particular, saw them as their babies to protect. “They had their whole lives ahead of them,” she wailed. “They were so happy! Why would Mya eat them? Why?”
I could tell her it was just nature’s way. That animals have instincts and those instincts are powerful and not malicious. I could rattle on and rationalize, but her pain was so raw and immense. She was lost in it. I just let her shake in my arms, instead.
The truth is that I understood her unhinged, involuntary response.
Spike is me, and most moms, really.
The bunnies are my babies.
And Mya is all that’s scary in the world.
Growing up, in my parents’ house, we always watched the news during dinner. I hated it. It fed a seed of fear inside me that my overactive mind was already watering. Planes crashed; kids went missing; people hated people; weapons were in every pocket. It was a mealtime ritual I was eager to abandon when I left their nest. The few times Hank has flipped on the PBS NewsHour in our home and on the Friday nights we have dinner at Mom and Dad’s, those feelings are reaffirmed, only now I understand the magnitude. The ramifications. Planes crash; buildings fall; kids go missing for unspeakable reasons; people hate people; weapons are in every pocket; the planet’s on fire and there’s an abundance of moral bankruptcy at “the top.” I still hate it. The news, that is.
The moment JoJo entered the world and made me a mom, that tiny seed of fear planted somewhere inside me, became a tulip bulb. With every bunny I added to my burrow, that anxiety and need to protect my babies split open and grew bigger. I don’t think that ever goes away. It’s nature. Instinct.
Every time I say yes to a playdate or they go for a long bike ride or swimming in dark water or jump from a high fill-in-the-blank or the school bus is a five minutes late, a few drops of worry water fall upon my fear, and it swells.
Motherhood is about finding your footing on the slippery ground of how much you should hover over the burrow, keeping all the dogs away, while still fostering their desire and muscle to hop past the fence when the time comes. The thought of getting the timing wrong or mistaking a wolf for a well-wisher makes me feel claustrophobic.
JoJo is nearly a teenager. Spike already acts like one. I can feel their urgency to start hopping further and further from the yard, without me shepherding over their shoulders. It means Hank and I are doing our job. It’s also terrifying.
Hold your bunnies close, dear friends. They grow up so, so fast.
The Christmas after Sloppy Joan was born, Santa brought a Step2 Up & Down Roller Coaster. It came in five parts that snapped together to create the perfect tricolor wave of exhilaration. The toy spanned a good portion of our basement, and was a hit with the chicks and their friends. I can still hear a three-year-old Spike: “Now me again, JoJo,” she’d say. “One, two, fwee … blast off!” JoJo was immediately more daring. An angel face with a daredevil spirit, she was going backward and standing on the canary yellow cart within weeks.
If I close my eyes I can still hear the echo of the wheels coasting down the track. The rhythmic roll of plastic on plastic, immediately followed by giggles and proclamations of who was next and how they were going to do it. It might as well have been the biggest coaster at any overpriced amusement park in America.
Over the years, the riders became more inventive and adventurous. Once those little stinkers learned that the coaster could be disassembled, nothing was off the table. They would take pieces of the track and use them as slides, ramps, obstacle course components and, well, a steeper roller coaster. One afternoon, after hearing the same familiar roll at an alarmingly faster cadence, followed by a bang, I came down to see the coaster on the steps. They aren’t stupid though, as JoJo pointed out. They put cushions against the wall at the bottom so they had something to run into.
Time passed, chicks grew, and I started to hear those wheels less and less often. A few months ago, Hank came into the room where I was working and said, “You know we should think about giving that roller coaster to my cousin. He’s got his little boy with one on the way. It would be perfect for them.” I agreed without much thought – our crew was well over the recommended weight limit after all – and we loaded the track and cart into the back of their SUV on a blustery winter morning.
A few hours later, Hank’s cousin’s wife sent me a video of their little boy laughing and smiling and chanting, “Again! Again!” Then those familiar wheels, plastic on plastic, rolling across the waves of color and off the other side. Pure joy.
Once the coaster was gone, we really started looking at the other things collecting dust in our basement. An adjustable toddler basketball hoop, a tiny workbench, fake food in every make and model. Slowly, we began purging the things that didn’t fit our family anymore. Artifacts of expired infancy. Kid stuff.
We were recently gifted a Peloton (yes, we joined the cult!) and decided to rearrange our basement to break up the space in a more meaningful way. Gym equipment on one side, entertainment area in the corner and desks at the bottom of the steps. The toy area, as it turned out, received the smallest piece of the plot.
Once it was all done, Hank casually said, “I noticed something down there. The kids’ area is pretty small. I guess we’re entering a new phase.”
And with that observation, it all came hurling back at me. The giggles, the rides on a 10-foot track that seemed to go on for miles, the picnics, the hours of pretend. Our world, once painted exclusively in primary colors, slowly changed to an entirely different palette when we weren’t looking.
I’m learning that being a mother means endless joy and endless mourning. Just when you’ve made friends with your grief about the passing of one chapter, another ends. If you aren’t quietly accepting that you’ll never look into your baby’s eyes during a 2 a.m. feeding again, you’re swallowing the pain of them walking into kindergarten or losing their endearing speech impediment. It’s a domino trail of sorrow and acceptance. Every new milestone means the loss of something you knew. Something you cherished. Something perhaps you took for granted.
These days I’m more likely to hear the familiar turtle shell and mushroom rewards from Mario Kart rising from the basement than anything else, and that’s OK. But I wish I would have realized how sweet the old sounds were when they came flooding up from beneath me that handful of years ago. The new phases are fine. They’re beautiful in their own ways, and obviously, necessary. It’s just startling how these tectonic plates shift under your feet when you’re busy doing all the other stuff.
Listen to the sounds coming from your basement. Your backyard. Your bath tubs. There’s a bittersweet echo if you can trap it and find a special place for it in your memory.
More than 100 – yes, 100 – days ago, I set out to document this temporary, wild, overwhelming, memorable season of our lives. I never pledged to do it every day, but I certainly didn’t intend to go three months without a word. But things happen, or they don’t as the case may be in these quarantine times, and let’s be honest … there have been toomany words out there lately. The internet and all of its limbs have been heavy with screaming and skepticism and rock hurling and I just couldn’t dip my toes into that boiling water. But here I am, ready to explain my absence and get all caught up in four reader-friendly sections. Here’s the scoop …
The fever of an unknown origin
On April 18, about 12 days after my last post here, the weather broke. It was one of those days Midwesterners relish – the first after months spent chilled under an endless ash sky. The sun felt warm and beckoned us out past the safety of our cul-de-sac. We planned to go visit my mom, who we hadn’t seen in weeks. We were going to sit on the deck outside, masks on, and catch up sans the risk of a failed connection.
Out of an abundance of caution (the most tired phrase of 2020), I took the girls’ temperatures. All clear. I took my own. It was 99.7. “We’re not going,” I text her. “I just won’t take a chance.” Mind you, this was during what would now be considered the dawn of the pandemic. Fear was high and there were even more unknowns than there are now. My parents are both over 65, my father has heart disease, and I was determined to play my part in keeping them safe. I figured it was a fluke, anyway. I’d been working in my front room all day, there are lots of windows letting heat in, I’d been stressed. It would pass.
It didn’t pass. And, spoiler alert, it hasn’t passed.
Over the next 20+ days, I took my temperature at least twice a day, every day. It ranged from 99-100.3. The only constant was that it was constantly elevated. On day 26, I decided to email my family doctor. We did a video chat and she wasn’t quite sure what to do with me. On day 28, she referred me to the clinic where they were sending patients with COVID-19 symptoms. They did a urinalysis, bloodwork, mono test and a chest x-ray. Everything looked great. On day 32, I landed a then-elusive drive-thru COVID test. After 11 days of waiting, it came back negative. In the meantime, plot twist, Sloppy Joan also began running a low-grade fever. What in the actual hell?!
Eventually, they sent me to the land where they send all the misfit toys … Infectious Diseases. I had two visits, a vampire’s Thanksgiving feast worth of blood drawn and lots of rehashing the variables. On day 68, they diagnosed me with a “fever of an unknown origin” and told me to wait it out. As long as nothing changed, nothing had to change. And nothing has changed. They say it can take up to a year to resolve. I feel fine, really. I’ve embraced my role as the family furnace, and the chicks fight over who gets to cuddle up next to me on the couch. I wouldn’t say my temp twister was the key culprit in disappearing from the blog, but it was consuming on many levels for quite some time. I guess “being hot” isn’t as easy as everyone thinks.
The pressure to perform
I’m taking a big leap here in guessing that I wasn’t the only one penning an ambitious list of creative projects at the start of the pandemic. I was going to self-publish a children’s book, journal every morning and, let’s not forget, recommit to Desperately Seeking Superwoman on an at least twice-weekly basis. All of this “extra time” at home was going to be the gift I’d been waiting to unwrap as a writer for more than a decade. The words would pour from me like sugar from a lemonade stand. This was it. This was my time.
Oh, and my body! Let’s get into that. My plan was to start each morning with a gentle walk. To meet the sunrise and greet the day. Every day. I’d then pepper in daytime workouts to really get in there and chisel out those muscles that have eluded me all of my adult life. Exercise would be so convenient; I could do a dab of weights here and a sprinkle of cardio there. Give me a few months in this new arrangement and I’d be runway ready. In retrospect, it was kind of cute, really, and almost like COVID Courtney had never met actual Courtney before. I was fostering this quarantine-induced delusion about what life at home with a full-time job, three kids, a geriatric dog and a murder mystery fever could be like.
Then I came to one day over a plate of Totino’s pizza rolls and realized I hadn’t worn anything without elastic around the waistband in damn near 9 weeks. I was … squishy. Soft, at best. Sure, I’ve been working out consistently, but does that really matter if you’re over-creaming your coffee and partaking in Soy Delicious ice cream appetizers while dinner cooks? I’ve been trying to clean that mess up.
The apathy
Then the apathy set in. I don’t know if it was the e-learning or the constant close proximity to laundry, or the strange food limitations at the grocery store, or the increase in work, or only seeing friends and family in a box on a computer screen, or the email about the third summer concert that got canceled, or being a chronic snacker with a desk now exactly 10 paces from the pantry or the fact that, no matter when I ran it, the stupid, MF’in’ light on the dishwasher is always on. Telling me it’s ready to be emptied for the fifteen-hundredth time this week. In truth, it was all of those things and a million more I didn’t list here for the sake of brevity. The fantasy of my best COVID self, came crashing down before it ever got off the ground.
I wouldn’t say I’ve been in a full blown depression. There was a brief period in my adult life when I was there, and this isn’t that. It’s just this ache for the former, for the familiar comforts of February. For hugs and get-togethers and grasping a buffet spoon without descending into sheer panic. I feel less of all my favorite feelings. Less joy, less excitement, less fire in my belly. These days, it feels like existing, without any of the exclamation marks.
The grind
I know everyone compares the COVID era to the movie Groundhog’s Day, but isn’t it just so accurate? I am on a hamster wheel in a chaotic cage with untidy bedding and I’m just frantically moving my hands and feet to stay upright. Shower, work, make a meal, work, yell at the girls to get off their tablets, work, make a meal, work, work, yell at the girls to get off their tablets, work, switch the laundry, make a meal, clean, work, snuggle for a bit, threaten to throw away all of the tablets, go to bed. Repeat. I never leave the cage. I never get off the wheel.
I love my daughters more than a good non-dairy ice cream, I do. They are the coolest kids I know, and I grew them, and I love them and I want nothing but all the best things in the world for them, but heaven help me … between the bickering and the technology and the blatant disrespect for this house and the woman who has to clean it, it’s been A LOT. It’s been all of the normal parental grievances magnified by infinity.
My life used to exist in buckets – the work bucket, the wife bucket, the mom bucket, the house bucket. And sure, sometimes, on occasion, a little water would splash over from one bucket to the next. I’d spend my lunch hour frantically searching for gold coin chocolates for the class St. Patrick’s Day party or some such task, but in general, I had boundaries. Or at least pencil-drawn lines. In this climate, being a working parent means being available in all ways, at all times, and never running out of water. My buckets runneth over.
Pre-COVID, I’d lined up a summer sitter. When that girl walked through the door in mid-June it was as if the gates parted and an angel flew into my entryway. Just to have another set of hands to make their bowls of ramen and pull them away from the screens for an afternoon was a blessing beyond measure. On her last day, I did all but get down on my hands and knees and beg her not to go. The moment the door shut, I cried. The girls just stood there and stared at me as I wept, so naïve to all the reasons her departure stung.
The “new normal”
So, that pretty much brings us to the present. I know I’m not the only parent who needs a bigger hat rack these days, and honestly I’m thankful that I still have a job and that my family is healthy. There are so many people who haven’t been as lucky, and that’s not lost on me. But there’s also something to be said for commiserating with your community. It’s been a long haul and I don’t see an end on the horizon. It would be a massive misrepresentation for me to pretend that I’m taking it all in stride and killing it over here, though some days that’s accurate. But not most days.
Most days I teeter somewhere between mild anxiety and bursts of rage, which I try to reserve for the category five catastrophes. Spilled bottles of paint, hair dye on the new flooring, etc. and so on. Most days I cry when silly things happen, like I discover the clean clothes I spent hours washing and sorting were thrown into the corner of my daughter’s closet, bags piled on top to cover up the crime. Most days I eat ice cream or chocolate, or chocolate on top of ice cream. Most days I use at least one of the following phrases, if not all: “Ah, you just have to laugh,” or “I’m not your maid,” or “I think I’m being Punk’d,” or “You guys act like we live in a dumpster.” Most days, by the time my husband gets home from work, it feels like I’ve lived three days.
But it isn’t all nail polish stains and Nutella fingerprints. This time has given me gifts as well. I haven’t worn makeup or done my hair in months, and with that extra 45 minutes to sleep in the morning, I feel more rested than I have in years. And more comfortable in my skin, which is pretty awesome, really. The chicks have memorized the entire Hamilton soundtrack, and I love hearing them upstairs screaming out the lyrics to “The Schuyler Sisters”, each with their own assigned role. (Sloppy Joan is Peggy, of course.)
What we knew about being a family has changed. The other day, JoJo looked up at me and said, “It’s just been too much togetherness.” And she was right. But my hope is that we come out of this with a deeper appreciation for the people and activities we took for granted, better communication skills and, perhaps, a renewed thirst for the opportunities that make us feel alive. For all the exclamation points.
I have been 35 now for 250 days. That is enough time to evaluate and declare that 35 really is the absolute weirdest age, perhaps of all the ages.
Maternally
I swear, if I didn’t bear the marks of the before and aftermath, I wouldn’t believe that I brought three children into this world. As close as I try to keep those memories to my heart, they feel so distant; Like a movie I watched only once back in college.
I was as certain as the sun would rise that I would just know when my family was complete. After Spike, our second, was born, I remember feeling like I’d just been introduced to the next key character in an unpredictable play, but certainly not the last. The cast wasn’t quite complete. After the next kid, I thought, then it will feel whole. Then we had Sloppy Joan, and she was the sweetest little surprise, with her old man toupee of black hair and precious features. But I was certainly cognizant of the fact that the feeling never came.
There are moments when I question whether our little family is finished. Moments that flitter in like a lost butterfly and stir up questions and scenarios and doubt. (Hank is sure, I can tell you that. Three weddings will do that to a man.) It’s like I ate an entire margherita pizza, and it was delicious, and my stomach now has more than it can handle, and I don’t want anymore of the pizza, but I still feel like maybe I would like just one more slice, because it is so damn good. But I don’t need that piece, per se.
Talking about fertility at 35 is like looking deep down into the eyes of a desperate child as the ice cream truck drives through the neighborhood. They hear it approaching and they know, if they don’t convince their parent, if they don’t get the money, if they can’t come to a decision, if they hesitate in any way, the moment will be gone. The truck will pass their block and the music will get quieter and quieter and quieter, until is it gone and the opportunity for a frozen treat has passed.
Could I still have a healthy pregnancy and subsequently a healthy baby? Probably. Will I be classified as a “geriatric pregnancy”? Yes. I’m not having a baby, and I don’t think I really want another baby, but 35 is stirring up all these really weird, frantic thoughts. I believe they are originating in my ovaries. I definitely blame my ovaries.
Physically
When I was a junior in high school, I was invited to go to Naples, Florida with one of my best friend’s family for Spring Break. I remember doing Tae-Bo in the den every day for the three weeks leading up to the trip, only to be disappointed by the results. I didn’t have the 6 pack Billy Blanks had promised. Nor were my thighs Barbie slim and toned. But when I look back at those pictures now, I see a fit girl in the prime of her youth. In fact, if I looked now the way I looked then, I would rarely wear clothes. I’m not kidding. I would just sit around in various forms of midriffs and assorted underwear items.
There are portions of my figure that will never go back, and 35 seems to be the age of acceptance in regard to that fact. The backs of my arms, the tiger stripes across my empty baby apartment, these are now permanent fixtures on my frame. And I’m OK with that. But, also, as a woman staring down the barrel of 40, I feel an urgency to get all the other parts in better condition to counterbalance the irreversible flab and stretchy sections.
The other weird thing about being 35 is that other people are starting to see me as 35. In my mind, I’m eternally 26. I look 26 and I’m agile like when I was 26. When I see a bunch of 20-somethings chatting, I feel right at home stepping in and rapping about Bachelor in Paradise and Meghan Markle’s messy bun. Until I reference Saved by the Bell and they don’t know who Mr. Belding is. Then the spool starts to unravel rather rapidly.
I remember they start drinking at 11 p.m., 2 hours past my melatonin meltaway. I have laugh lines and the beginnings of carpal tunnel. They still put oil on in the sun. I can’t do jumping jacks without wearing a diaper. They go to trampoline fitness classes. I need control-top pajamas. They wear high-waisted denim. I’m discussing the lifecycle of a window. They rent … in dangerous parts of town. And, perhaps worst of all, they didn’t watch the reboot of 90210, let alone the untouchable original. And I’m all, “Hello, when Kelly and Brenda wore the same dress to prom and Brenda lost her virginity to Dylan!?”
It’s the same elevated response I get from some of my older co-workers when they talk about David Cassidy, The Blue Lagoon or The Talking Heads.
Typically both sides recognize the glaring differences almost simultaneously, and things dissolve organically. And I’m always left thinking, “That is so weird! I’m so young!” or “I’m not that much younger.” And it’s true in both cases. Because I’m not entirely young … or old. I’m not in the spring or the winter of my life. I’m in limbo; somewhere between summer and fall. Or at least I think I am. I’m probably in some other category that only 20-somethings know about. Gah dang it!
Professionally
Ah, the workforce. The jungle. The true-life version of The Office that won’t be canceled for 30 more seasons. I am fortunate enough to truly love what I do. I get to write. I get to tell stories. I get to be creative. My speciality – social media – is a young person’s game, but it order to do it at a corporate level, one must possess a certain level of experience and restraint.
In the corporate world, I’m not a girl, not yet a boardwoman. I know my stuff but I succumb to seniority on a daily basis. There’s a certain way I like to do business regardless of age, which is with respect for all of the opinions in the room and with the collaboration dialed way up. But that’s not always on the lesson plan in the old school. And when it’s not, I’m very aware of the professional gap in which a 35-year-old career woman resides. I don’t need a ping pong table in the breakroom, but I need to splash some water on my creative roots between the hours of 8am and 5pm. It can’t’ be just a paycheck. I think my generation was one of the first to really call out and name the notion of work/life balance, but there’s a lag in implementation in larger corporate environments. If I reach out, I can almost touch it. Almost.
I wrestle with when to assert myself (probably not often enough) and when to let a more experienced soldier win the war. I have peers who have climbed the ladder and peers who are still on the second rung, and I think we’re all just trying to figure out which asshole designed the five-day workweek and blazers. We’re in a weird place professionally, at 35.
Mentally
Being 35 means having both all of the time in the world and no time at all. If I’m going to Beyonce the situation, I’m done. It’s over. The window for me to reach my potential has been closed, nailed down and sealed shut. Beyonce left Destiny’s Child in 2006, when she was approximately 26 years old. We all know where the story went from there. She’s basically Oprah with a better set of pipes and killer Instagram profile. I mean, her pregnancy announcements alone, come on! When I was 26 I still had vintage cigarette posters on my wall, and those were my “sophisticated artwork”. In comparison to the Queen Bey I have already failed at 35.
If I compare myself to, we’ll go with Jane Lynch, the view is a little brighter. She didn’t land her breakout role (“Best in Show”) until she was in her early 40s, and then she just went full out sprint from there. If I think about it like that, I’ve got a little space here. Not enough space to slack off, but enough to keep plugging away at my dreams.
It’s a mind game I play with myself a lot lately. Do I have enough time to [fill in the blank]? Did I wait too long to [fill in the blank]? Should I have [fill in the blank] years ago? I’ve passed by so many opportunities and yet I have so many stretched out before me. I’m 35 and either my best years are behind me or the best is yet to come. Let’s hope it’s the latter, ay?
All of this to say that 35 has been just so weird. I mean really freaking great, but weird. At least the 250 days of it I’ve experienced so far. I’m confident that, when the time comes, I’ll mourn my 30s (including 35) just as I mourn my 20s in some ways.
In the words of the great Jimmy Eat World:
It just takes some time
Little girl, you’re in the middle of the ride
Everything, everything will be just fine
Everything, everything will be alright
When our JoJo started popping her top back in 2015, we chalked it up to the age. It’s just a phase, we thought. All kids develop a short fuse during that challenging transition window between toddler and child. But the tantrum tide hasn’t rolled back out to sea. The triggers can be anything from a sister getting too much attention (a spark one might categorize as irrational) to a container of 25,000 rainbow loom loops flipping and raining multicolored chaos out across a patterned bedspread (warranted).
While the tantrums once rumbled in like a summer storm you could spot 50 miles away, now they’re more like an F4 tornado that seems to drop down out of nowhere and elicit mass destruction for all in its path. We go from 0 to fury in 5.2 seconds, and no one is safe from her wrath. I once looked on in horror as she reprimanded a baby – a baby! – for stupidly sucking on her pretend smartphone. It was then I questioned how those nurses ever let me take a human being home from the hospital.
We’ve tried some things to remedy the rage. But in the end, the tantrum cycle always comes back to the same three phases. Picture a bell curve with a crescendo of contempt right at the top.
Level 1: Psychospeak
I love me some Brene Brown, I do. I worship the woman like a Vegas bride worships Elvis. After I read her gospel, “The Gifts of Imperfect Parenting,” I thought I had it. I got cocky. I was going to stop leading my children and instead embark on a journey of growth and discovery beside them. We would learn together, always with love and truth at the heart of our endeavors and conversations. I was going to be a different kind of mom. I even printed her parenting manifesto and framed it. It’s on my dresser. I’m looking at it right now.
My thing with Brene isn’t exclusive. I like to toss in a little Gabriel Bernstein, John O’Leary, Glennon Doyle, Shauna Niequest, Shonda Rhimes, Dalai Lama, Oprah and Tony Robbins for extra flavor. You might say I’m a bit of a self-help junkie. I like to hit the bong of Super Soul Kool-Aid on the regular. And perhaps that’s all to say that my mind’s a little restless, but also, I have an insatiable hunger for perfection and happiness, whatever that means.
When Hurricane JoJo comes ashore, I always reach for my favorite reference guides first. I attempt to tackle the tantrum through reason and empathy. This begins with a simple question:
“What’s wrong, honey?”
Now, where this goes wrong is that it’s rooted in the assumption that a reasonable question will elicit a reasonable response. In reality, it’s met with such sentiments as:
“Spike said I’m writing my 9s backward!”
“She called me a ‘geck’.”
“What’s a geck?”
“I don’t know! But it’s bad!”
“I was the teacher and then she said it was her turn to be the teacher and then I tried to show her how to grade the papers but she said she didn’t want to draw stars and then she took my pink marker and told me I had to be the nurse, not the student, and no one is listening to me and Sloppy Joan always gets everything she wants always because she’s the baby and everybody hates me because I like green jello!”
And so, as anyone would, I pause and consider what to do with such weighty tribulations. I remind myself that, to her, this is a big deal. It is upsetting. It is a reasonable excuse to completely lose her shit and scream-cry and throw things and slam doors. I remind myself that her tantrum is valid, because her feelings are valid, because she is a little human.
Depending on the day, the weather, the circumstances, I might be able to remind myself of these things several times. I might be able to recall Jo Frost, the SuperNanny, the Godmother of meltdowns, and remember I need to invite my daughter to share her feelings, not project my own onto her. I might even share a story from my youth. Perhaps a time when someone didn’t like the same flavor of jello as me and it resulted in emotional distress. Perhaps I’ll sit with her on a pillow of patience and we’ll sort through the whole misunderstanding peacefully, Brene and all her friends smiling over my shoulder.
This is the stage in the game when I redirect. When I send JoJo to her room to collect herself – “an emotional timeout” I call it – which looks like bracelet making or reading or meditating. Hypothetically, this is when her heart rate comes down and she regains composure and we establish resolution.
Hypothetically.
Level 2: Detonation
I try. Really, I do.
But when someone is howling within a sealed enclosure for more than 10 minutes, it can be difficult to keep your cool. I’ll confess that I’m a yeller. It’s not something that I’m proud of. But in my defense, the voice that I was born with – the pitch, the volume, the tenor – doesn’t seem to resonate with my oldest unless I turn it way the hell up. At least not when she’s in full conniption mode.
These fits always reach a pitch where inevitably I need to turn up the dial to be an active participant in the conversation. It just works out that way. In the moment it feels like a necessary element for communication, though one might argue as an observer that, from their perspective, it looks a lot like an adult tantrum.
This was an honest-to-goodness exchange I had with my daughter last week.
“What is wrong? Huh? Tell me, please,” – me, yelling.
“I’m tired!” – JoJo, crying and yelling.
“Then go to bed.”
“I don’t want to go to bed.”
“Then stop crying.”
“But I’m tired.”
“Then go to bed!”
“I don’t want to go to bed!”
To read it now, it seems like a riddle. A joke, at least. And maybe that’s the humor in it. The fact that afterward you can recognize the absurdity of a 35-year-old woman and a 9-year-old girl screaming at each other to stop screaming at each other.
And where is my tribe in these moments, huh? I don’t see Oprah or Tony anywhere in this steaming pile of mess.
This is often the stage in which I resort to threats.
“Do you want to go to Sophie’s party on Saturday?”
“Do you want to go swimming tomorrow?”
“Do you want to start American Ninja Warrior classes?”
“Do you want to make it to 10?”
[Of course she does.]
“Then get it together and knock it off!”
These threats can range from a few hours in her bedroom to a canceled family vacation. Of course, as punishers, we know that the higher the threat, the less likely it will actually be executed, but sometimes you have to go big for effect.
I’m not proud of the things that happen in the Detonation period. I’m just not. Often, it concludes with me slamming her door, which, coincidentally, I likely just yelled at her for doing a few minutes before I jerked the brass knob myself (I know, that sounds dirty).
Level 3: Repentance
It usually hits me like the rancid air 2 miles outside a hog farm. Regret. Lots of it.
Once I’ve walked away, I realize that that was where I went wrong. I turned my back. The instant replay in my mind starts when I hit the steps and turns into a full blown highlight reel of my failures by the time I reach the kitchen. She needed someone and I dropped the ball.
I blew it.
I missed the mark.
I’m worse than a person who kicks puppies.
I let down Brene and Jo and all of the people who tried to coach me to avoid this exact parental calamity.
I breathe on it for a bit, collect my thoughts and go back to her room to apologize. Dr. Dave, a dear friend who specializes in mindfulness, talks about how important it is for us to ask for forgiveness, even from our children. Sometimes especially from our children. But I struggle with the “but”.
My apologies typically sound something like:
“JoJo, I’m sorry I just yelled at you, but you have to understand …” or “Honey, I shouldn’t have raised my voice, and I want to apologize for my behavior. But when you lose it like that …”
Nothing matters after the “but”, we all know that. My 9-year-old knows that. And yet, I can’t break away from the “but”.
The saving grace is that resilience is the ingredient that distinguishes young souls from the middle aged ones. I will feel the aftershocks of a good tantrum for at least 24 hours, while JoJo will be asking for chocolate ice cream after 1. For me, it has to mean something. It has to be a smoke signal that there is trouble in her heart, and we must form a five-part plan to help her channel her aggression immediately. But really, the longer these go on, the more I think she just gets pissed and wants everyone to know. She’s onto the next episode of Little Lunch before I’ve metabolized the emotional post mortem.
And perhaps the most defeating facet of the tantrum cycle, is the inescapable certainty that it will all happen again at any moment. There’s a whole world full of triggers out there, and we’re just waiting to hear the first shot.
Maybe tomorrow will be better. Maybe I’ll be better. Maybe it’s just a phase.
When I signed on for marriage, and then about a year later for motherhood, I didn’t really anticipate the hostile situation I would encounter in the kitchen. I mean, you see women on television cooking and putting dishes on the dinner table. They’re smiling. You grow up with your own mother supplying sustenance in some fashion. She survived. And perhaps because of these positive images, I couldn’t have predicted the mob rebellion and mental anguish that awaited me in that cold, stainless steel dungeon.
In the beginning.
When Hank and I first got married, I thought of supper like an 80-year-old cafeteria worker would think of supper. I made foods to fill all of the compartments on our trays; A meat, a potato, a veggie, a bread and a dessert. Sounds like a lot of work, right? Luckily, this was also a time in my life when I fully embraced convenience foods. I snatched up 10 for $10 just-add-water muffin mixes and sauced vegetables steamer packs like our livelihood depended on it.
There was no planning or hectic schedules to factor in. I just pulled various pouches of processed shit from the pantry, whipped ‘em up and went about our night, watching whatever the F we wanted to on television and talking about whatever the F we wanted to at the table.
My day job was interesting juxtaposition with my domestic demeanor. I worked for a gourmet food and wine magazine from 9 to 5, where I would stand in meat coolers with classically trained chefs as they ran their hands over aged fillets and explained the cheese-making process. Then I came home, threw together my Pillsbury endorsed family meal and all was well. It was a naive time. A blissful time. A time of empty carbs and subtle weight gain. We were just a couple of kids fighting over how soupy the mac and cheese should be and it was glorious.
The family table.
The moment I started bringing other human beings into the world, an unintentional shift took place within my culinary conscious. I made baby food … from scratch. Baby food that looked like the morning after my worst decisions. I set aside steamed sweet potatoes and ripened pears as if they were the Hope Diamond so I could puree perfect jars of goo for my little princesses. I felt so maternal and connected to the earth.
I’d keep spooning it in and they’d keep spitting it out, like sludge from a sewer. Back and forth we’d go for 30 minutes. In the end, I’d have the stuff in my hair and under my fingernails and they looked like they got in a fight with a barrel of bad apples. I should have known then. I mean, my future self could have told my new mother self, but she wouldn’t have listened. I should have seen that they would never appreciate anything I put in their stomachs ever for their whole childhood until the end of time.
The thing about feeding kids is, their dining hopes and desires can be drilled down to five categories: goldfish, highly processed meats such as bologna or hot dogs, mushy foods like applesauce, yogurt and mac and cheese, anything that comes with a toy and cake. I have spent hours at the table fighting over how many bites they have to take and timeouts and bargaining and threatening and tricking and, in the end, unless you have something shaped like a dinosaur or princess on their plate, it just doesn’t matter. Their willpower is too strong.
They will starve.
They will scream.
They will throw shit.
I have friends who gave birth to unicorns. Their children “love salmon” and “try one new vegetable a week,” but my kids didn’t come out with magical cones on their foreheads and they think asparagus is the Devil’s work. There’s no convincing them otherwise.
The infuriating part is the hustle. You spend all day at work, bust ass to get home, start dinner right away, slap it on the table (sweat on your brow) before anyone has the chance to realize they’re hungry and immediately you’re met with the uprising. “I hate this!” “Why’d you put pepper on this?” “That touched something else in the pan.” “This isn’t as good as last time.”
My favorite is the total disdain they have for new things.
“I hate these.”
“Sandwiches?”
“Yes, I hate these sandwiches.”
“Have you ever had them before?”
“No.”
“So how do you know you don’t like them?”
“Because of how they look.”
“How do they look?”
“Like gross sandwiches.”
And on my life goes, with some version of this rewarding dialogue night after night after night. I keep cooking and they keep praying the oven breaks.
Paralyzed by pesticides.
Somewhere in my early 30s, I became obsessed with food documentaries. Food Inc., Cowspiracy, Sugar Coated, Supersize Me, Forks Over Knives, Fed Up, What the Health, you name it, I’ve lost sleep over it. I love spending roughly 120 minutes feeling simultaneously enlightened and terrified, which stresses me out, which then makes me want to turn around and consume all of the offensive, disgusting food items featured in the film I just watched.
Ask me on any given day and I’ll be eliminating something from our diets. I’m an expert Whole30’er. I took you all on a 14-day vegan adventure earlier this year. I’ve called it quits with sugar, my abusive-yet-beautiful boyfriend, more times than I can count. I see something, read something or hear a podcast and I go all in. I clean out my cabinets and pledge my allegiance to a different “ism” on a regular rotation.
The kids notice, sure. They add their commentary to veggie-heavy or new meals to the point where I’ve gotten in the habit of whipping up alternatives for them to place in their judgmental pieholes. But the joke is on me because, remember, they don’t eat anything I make anyway.
I just expect some switch to flip at some point and everyone gets on board with being the family who implements true change and comes out on the other side with amazing results. I secretly yearn to be the woman who cures her foot fungus and starts running ultra marathons by eating only kale and giant mushrooms from the jungle. But I’m more the mom who eats an egg sandwich and fried potatoes before spin class and belches up garlic during sprints.
It’s not for a lack of trying. You guys, I made almond flour scones from scratch the other week. Scones. I expected my patrons to pass out from both the effort and the flavor. The reception was lukewarm at best. So then I start to wonder what the point of putting much thought into any of this really is.
I’ll end it here, with a glimpse into my internal dialogue while meal planning for the week …
I know what I’ll do. I’ll go get my cookbooks out and plan a week of clean meals. If it’s good enough for Gwenyth, it’s good enough for my family, right? These pictures are all so pretty. I bet these people never gets colds.
Hmm, these look really hard. And I’m not really sure where I’d buy yaca. Maybe I’ll do Pinterest instead, but I’m only going to pin from the Vegan board. And the Whole30 board. And maybe one thing from the Yum board.
OK, I’m going to try at least one new recipe this week. It’s good to push these people. The girls can just pick out the parts they don’t like. I have to stop catering to everyone’s different tastes. I’m enabling. Oh gosh, that’s why they throw fits. Enabling and too much tablet time.
Man, this week is really busy. I definitely can’t make anything new on Thursday, that’s for sure. And it’s the girls’ last day of school on Wednesday, and they’ll want one of their favorites.
Ah, screw it … we’ll go with pancakes, tacos and burgers again.
Me and my best friend Cathy sat toward the front of a big, dark theater, a box of Lemonheads and gigantic soda between us, and waited impatiently for the previews to end. We’d been begging to do this for weeks. Finally, with our matching New Kids on the Block t-shirts and stirrup pants, we looked on as the scenes unfolded on the giant screen before us, lighting up our tiny, freshly freckled faces. I was 9 years old. The movie was the incomparable, the phenomenal, “Don’t Tell Mom the Babysitter’s Dead” starring none other than the angelic Christina Applegate.
Stop me if you’ve heard this profound and thought-provoking plot before. Three siblings – a preppy teen, her stoner brother and their tomboy little sister – were left alone while their mom went to explore the Australian outback, as most single moms do. Whilst she was away, the mother hired a 99-year-old babysitter to look after the children. After she, as the title might suggest, passed away, the siblings did as any teenagers would do; They drastically matured. Kenny, the weed-loving brother learned to cook gourmet meals and keep a neat household, while Swell, the oldest sister, took an entry level job as an assistant at a high-profile fashion apparel company.
With her cigarettes, tight french braids, fire engine red lips, and teen gal insights about uniforms, Swell climbed the ranks in just weeks before it inevitably all went to crap when their mom came home to find a raging fashion show playing out in their backyard. Such silly shenanigans!
This walk down memory lane has a point, I promise, and it is this … 7 words, one line. One line that has followed me for 26 years: “I’m right on top of that, Rose!”
There’s this scene in the movie, after Swell first gets the job with Rose, the Senior Vice President of Operations with shoulder pads you could sleep on, where Rose is taking like 5 minutes to onboard her new hire. As a final directive, she tells Swell, “And one more thing, and this is so important … Whenever we’re not alone or I’m on the phone and I ask you something, no matter what it is, you always say, ‘I’m right on top of that, Rose!’ [in a peppy tone] OK?”
Every single day, in every situation, I am the Rose and the Swell.
I tell both myself and everyone around me that everything is under control, even when I’ve spent all the hypothetical petty cash and I have to clean the happy fat vats. I do it because it’s too paralyzing to stop and assess how I’m really doing. Do I really want to know how far behind I am? How depleted? How frazzled?
“I’m right on top of that, Rose!” is no different than, “Just keep swimming! Just keep swimming,” or “Smile and wave, boys”. These fake-it-till-ya-make-it phrases are all the soul’s rebuttal to high demand when it can’t take on one more thing, or manage what it’s already carrying, but it feels impossible to admit it.
I recently went through an intense period professionally. And I have three daughters, so basically every day of my existence is stressful at home. (Beautiful, but stressful, yes, we all agree.) The only option was to put my head down and walk forward through the mud. Like a pregnant tortoise, no doubt, but forward ever still.
I recognized this chapter immediately because it’s one I’ve lived through before, many times. I tell myself if I can just keep unloading dishwashers and packing lunches. Keep detangling and putting up ponytails and putting away laundry. Keep adding tasks to the list and taking 10-minute impromptu meetings. Keep answering emails and writing words. Keep on keeping on.
Because when I lift my head, that’s when I notice that my to-list is substantially longer than my to-done list. Actually scrolling through it, I feel like it’s going to grow rows of teeth and swallow me whole. Big tasks, little tasks, follow ups, follow throughs. There for a span of about four weeks I was positively pounded with expectation. And subsequently, all the anxiety.
But did anyone know?
“I’m right on top of that, Rose!”
Of course they didn’t. Because that would require me saying no to something or asking for help or acknowledging I ran out of time. And I don’t run out of time! Pulling back the curtain to show the panic and tears and ugliness we typically reserve for our own self-loathing is just way too logical, too vulnerable, too honest. Screaming “uncle!” is weak in comparison to the denial-drenched alternative “I’m right on top of that, Rose!”
And I guess what I’m asking is why we do it to ourselves. I can’t be the only one who spends her lunch hour picking up the dog’s arthritis medicine, 3 poster boards for Star of the Week and the special non dairy cheese, glancing at the clock every 2 minutes to make sure there’s enough time. There has to be a silent army of us out there rounding up the oddities that make our tribe’s globe keep rotating on its perfect little axis.
And it’s not like I’m on an island. I have a husband. A good one, in fact. With a car and legs and a cell phone and a wallet. One who I could send an S.O.S. to at any time, no judgment. But I rarely do. I have friends. Good ones, in fact. With phones and mini vans and basements and vodka. Ones who I could text an S.O.S. to at any time, no judgement. But I rarely do. I have a family. A good one, in fact. With houses and a hereditary obligation to unconditionally love me, my partner and my offspring no matter what, and to show up every time no questions asked. But I rarely ask them.
It’s just insane, guys.
As women, our generosity muscle is strong. It gets worked. We see a weak moment for someone else and we offer to help before even thinking it through. We’re there to listen, cook, clean, fold, drive, whatever they need. But when we feel ourselves slipping, drowning, grasping, we push it down and we walk through the mud. The house is a mess and your cousins want to come over for dinner and I have a freelance story due and the dog has raging diarrhea? “I’m right on top of that, Rose! Sounds great!” I’m going out of town and got pulled into a last minute executive presentation and my oil needs changed and I’m getting a sinus infection. “I’m right on top of that, Rose! I’ve got it. No problem!”
And the people who really pay are the ones we love the absolute most. Hot off a stressful day I will scream at my girls to just “Go play anywhere but here!” while I burn an average tasting dinner that no one is going to eat anyway. But I’ll smile and eat my shit politely when a lukewarm acquaintance assigns me 50 action items for a charity event I didn’t even volunteer for or a stranger steals my parking spot at the grocery store in a thunderstorm. I don’t know why.
What would happen if I dropped “I’m right on top of that, Rose!” from my vernacular? What if we all did? What if, instead of “Sure,” “No problem,” “Absolutely,” “I’m fine,” “I’m great,” “I can just swing by on my way to …” we started saying things like, “Can you please,” and “I can’t,” and “I need,” and “It can wait,” and “Not today” and asking, “Is this really that important”? It would take time and a lot of reprogramming but it has to be possible. I see others doing it. Not many others, but others.
Let this be my confession:
On most days, I am only, at best, mildly on top of things. Other days I’m buried somewhere underneath. If you see me walking fast, I’m likely running late. If my head is down, I’m probably lost or checking to see what I need to do next. If I’m at the drugstore, shit’s probably going down. If I’m at the grocery, I’m miserable. If I’m exercising, I’m feeling guilty. If I’m driving, I’m listening to an audiobook about how to be a better human. I am a woman with her chin sticking just out of the water and I recognize your chin, too.
I’m thinking my internal dialogue is as outdated as the hot pink and turquoise referee uniforms in the movie from which it came. I’m working to retire my tired ruminations and responses and downshift into more honesty. We’re always going to be hardwired to gather tasks. It’s our instinct to take inventory of needs and check the temperature of the members of our tribe, and there’s likely no fighting that. But I can certainly tap into my army more. I’ve got some pretty great soldiers among my ranks.
“This is getting out of control!” It was Hank, sending me an instant message in the middle of the day.
“Uh oh, what’s wrong?” I responded.
“First Matt Lauer and now Garrison Keillor!”
I knew what he was talking about right away. I knew because a friend I was close to once upon a Matt Lauer crush had text me the morning’s headline. (That crush had extinguished entirely years ago, after Ann Curry’s abrupt departure and his dickish reaction to the whole situation. I like Ann Curry. She’s that perfect blend of wicked smarts and genuine compassion.) But Hank and Garrison Keillor … That’s something else entirely.
The news of Mr. Keillor would shatter Hank. I can’t tell you how many times my husband (who I often theorize to be 87 years old at heart) made us all listen to Prairie Home Companion on a long Sunday drive. Or how many times he’s read the book “Daddy’s Girl” to the kids. He knows it by heart … “O baby won’t you dance with me … Little baby bouncing on my knee … Wave your hands and shake your feet … Ooohh baby you’re so sweet .”
He keeps it in his top dresser drawer so he’ll always know where it is, the spine soft and worn from his rough fingertips. Now I wonder if I’ll ever hear the lyrics leave his lips again. Those melodic lines, sweetened by his comforting voice under an 8 o’clock moon.
“It makes me sad and scared,” Hank went on. “For you and for our girls. That you have to live in a world where this happens. Where it’s something you have to think about.”
(That’s why I married this one, guys.)
While I assured him that everything was going to be OK. That we would raise our girls to know the boundaries of what’s right and what’s wrong and how to be strong and speak up and speak out and find power in their voice. I don’t think it soothed his burning thoughts.
And it left this interesting questions, too: What is Garrison Keillor to us now, if not a magnetic storyteller and master of words? Is he simply to be known from this day forth as an imposter? A predator? A monster? What’s to become of all those characters left in Lake Wobegon?
Comedians, TV dads, distinguished newsmen, business moguls, film producers, playwrights, media executives, acclaimed actors, presidents and politicians … their talents and contributions obliterated entirely because they couldn’t follow the simplest of unspoken rules. Because they made the mistaken, narcissistic assumption that their power would override the prerequisite for consent. Because they operated under the foolish pretense that they were desired by every woman, simply because she knew his name.
Maybe it’s us. Maybe our expectations are just too high. Maybe it’s too much to expect someone with a gift for music or narrative or business to also be an upstanding citizen of this planet. For them to share something with a woman without expecting something physical in exchange as payment for their genius or attention. Maybe it’s too much to expect that someone tick all the boxes when it comes to character and human decency.
Maybe.
But then, I know many men who tick all those boxes.
Men who expect nothing but mutual respect in return.
I will teach my girls that this world is full of monsters and of men, but more of the latter. And that it’s important to recognize the difference. I guess I started the lesson the day I married their father. The day I picked him and all his decency out of the pool of potential suitors and said, “Yes! That one! I like what he stands for. I shall do life with him, forever.” I think it has to start with strong male figures. It has to start with celebrating the men who aren’t in those headlines. The ones who respect a woman’s mind and humor over any curve or inch of bare skin.
And then you have to offer them awareness. Because their dad can’t protect them always. And neither can their mom. But I can sure as hell encourage them to use their words for justice and their breath for equality, and that they have to grow louder when no one is listening. If a time comes when I need to, I can show them the army of brave women coming forward to say, “This was not right,” and how, sometimes, though not always, consequences do exist. Victims do have the final word. They get their power back.
That’s what I can do.
And as for Mr. Keillor and his brethren of offenders, what a disgraceful party you chose to attend. My only hope is that this onslaught of accusations and dismissals might settle into a wealth of healing, for all those involved. For the men and the woman … and the monsters as well.
Spike was mumbling the words to “You’re Welcome,” which we were listening to for the second time that morning, staring at the car’s shadow on the road below and running her tiny pointer finger over her thin top lip. She always stops trying when Maui raps. I turned down the radio for my usual morning hype sesh.
“Oh man, babe … How ya feelin’ about the field trip today? The zoo is the best. You’re going to have so much fun!”
She whipped her head in my direction and said, “Yeah, did you know that of all the kids in the class there are only two moms who aren’t going?” (I knew one of them was me.)
She wasn’t being deliberately hostile. She wasn’t. She was just using her little innocent mouth to lay out the facts for me on a shitty mom platter. This would be breakfast today.
“Gosh, hon. I didn’t know that.”
“Yeah, you and Jack’s mom.” (Who is a friend of mine.)
“Oh.”
“Yeah, Ms. Kylene’s going to let us be her partner since you won’t be there.”
“Well, that’s special!”
“Yeah, it is.”
Her eyes went back to the shadow. There would be no more talk of this topic for now.
It was that she said it, don’t get me wrong. But more than that, it was the way it lingered … like a pregnancy fart in a sauna. The way the “only” just hung out there so harshly, so ruthlessly, and then it latched on mercilessly to the “mom” and the two words gripped and clawed at each other in the front of my brain.
A played out Chainsmokers song picked up where the Moana soundtrack left off. My heart was drowning in my brutal interpretation of the situation …
You are the only mom not going. The only one who sucks … In a class of 12 kids, there are 10 good moms, one other mom, and you … If good moms and bad moms played Red Rover, you’d be the only one they could send over … Other moms make animal faces on their kids’ sandwiches using grapes and basil leaves. And then there’s you … You let me down.
I couldn’t adjust my schedule and make it happen. It was one of many, many times my cape was at the cleaners and I just couldn’t pull it off. And I hate that. Don’t you hate that? I would be missing – a noticeable gaping hole – in the standard group shot in front of the ZOO sign. I wouldn’t be on the log ride or there to help little people poke the straw through their juice boxes.
And the more I thought about the juice boxes and the group shot and the stupid log ride, the more I really started to go there. You know where … That dark place where jealousy infects your character with toxic judgements and ridicule. I thought of all the mothers in their perfect boyfriend jeans and trendy sweaters pointing out the orangutan baby to my child. I thought about all the embarrassing stories she would tell, and how I wouldn’t be there to laugh awkwardly and explain them. And I thought about how there would be this depressing white space in her preschool scrapbook where her own mother’s face should be. And down and down and down I went.
We pulled in and I held her hand to cross the parking lot. I love holding her hand. Her sweet, phenomenal teacher took the torch from my weakened grip and started hyping Spikey up for the big day. I needed to tap out anyway, obviously.
“Are you excited?” she asked. Spike nodded, shyly. “I can’t wait to be your partner,” her teacher added.
I smiled, squeezed my little bug, wished her the very best of special days, and walked out, feeling heavy as hell.
Every mother who has ever written on or for any platform or publication has covered this topic to an exhausting degree. In fact, you probably aren’t even reading this because you didn’t make it this far in. Same shit, different laxative, right? But people talk about it so much because it’s such a chronic pain. We work so that we can afford to pay a babysitter so that we can go to work. It’s a gross, sad ferris wheel, where all the riders are screaming and crying their heads off on the inside, but they can’t get off. Because if you get off, they might not let you back on when it’s more convenient for you to ride.
That said, I love my job. I’m not even lying. I do. I love it. I’m one of the fortunate people who only cries and screams on the inside on occasion, and usually Mondays. I get to write about topics that typically interest me and often help people and interview amazing people and I’m hyper cognizant of the fact that I’m lucky to get paid to do that. But with that comes the restrictive straight jacket known as the 8-to-5. (Remember the good ole’ days when it was 9-to-5?) It breeds anxiety for mothers and sets the stage for disappointment at almost every turn. Most days I’ve failed before my feet hit the floor.
Now, I know it might look like it, but this is not an argument about whether SAHMs or MOPS or working moms (who have no acronym) have it worse. I’m not dumb enough to take on that debate because there is no winner. In fact, when we argue about such extraneous crap, we all lose. It doesn’t need to be said here, but I’ll put it down just so we’re all 1000% on the same page: Being a mom from any location, in any conditions or in conjunction with any occupational obligations is a bitch. A beautiful, messy bitch that we’re all thankful for every day. Not like every minute of every day, but every day.
So, it wasn’t a shiny moment for me that morning in the car (in my head). And I said to myself, “No, Courtney. No. You will stop drinking the Hate-orade and quit being a chump right this second.” And I did. But it wasn’t until later, after Spikey shared how special her day was and how special everyone made her feel, that the real deep stuff set in. That I was able to sift through the litter box and find the golden turds of wisdom in the situation.
My family is my tribe. But the mass of other people – this vibrant collage of compassionate souls and patient beings – is my village. And I couldn’t mother without the village. Sometimes it’s hard for me to ask for help. And sometimes I resent needing that help, but I do. And sometimes help just shows up, in my friends and my family, and sometimes in people I don’t know that well. And that’s kind of really beautiful actually.
The people in my village pick up where I hit my limitations, where I run out of time, and where I fall short. They hide in the houses and schools and stores I pass through like a wild tornado every day, jumping in when I have to step out. I couldn’t possibly name them all or acknowledge them all, but when I really stop and think about it, they are everywhere in force. My village is big, and it’s kind.
My village has Kay, who potty trained and taught the girls to go down stairs when they were 1 and instilled faith. It has Aimee, who teaches them to read and be modest, and Ms. Kylene who calls them “love bugs” and makes them feel special on the days they otherwise wouldn’t, and Mrs Hurley who shares her own stories of finger sucking so my daughter doesn’t feel like a freak, and Coach Kasey who made Spikey take that unforgettable shot. My neighbors in my village are these gentle souls who let my kids talk their ears off while they wash their cars and who bring over cookies and don’t say a word about the fact our smoke alarm is going off. My village is centered around courageous, selfless women – my mom, my mother-in-law, my sisters, my girlfriends – with a few fellas peppered in.
But it’s even bigger than that. There are strangers in my village who stop by but don’t stay. They pass out smiles and warm gestures that restore my hope when I fear for the state of humanity. They bend down and say sweet things to my girls in the store. They listen to my first grader read and they put the straw in my daughter’s juice box when her mommy has to work.
Listen, sometimes it gets hairy, this mothering thing. There are meetings that can’t be moved and rain dates that crap on good intentions and, to be honest, sometimes there are just days when the best thing you can do for your kids is be away from them. But don’t let all this bologna send you to that dark place. Don’t do it. Look to your village, instead. Leverage your village. Love your village. Express gratitude for your village.
We sat outside on a sticky August evening – four tired mothers, spent from trying to keep all the plates spinning on our fingertips and tiptoes and the one woman who made it even close to possible, Kay. We raised salt-rimmed margaritas in celebration of our dear friend’s 59th birthday and looked lovingly upon her.
To know Kay is to know belief. She is proof that God walks among us; That He does some of His best work through others’ hands. She infuses everyone she meets with honesty and love and conviction. She has a peace that only comes with unwavering faith and firm truth and the understanding that you have found your calling. And the best part about all this? For five beautiful years, my girls have rubbed up against these rare qualities in Kay’s home, which is really their second home.
“You really need to do something nice and celebrate.” I said
“Well yeah, you know me.” Kay responded sarcastically.
“No, seriously … you do so much for everyone else.”
“Yeah, well, I have been thinking a lot about my kids and things I need to do and things I’d like to do and, well …” [pregnant pause] “… I do have a date.” [bigger pregnant pause] “I’ve decided to stop watching children around Christmas next year.”
Tears. So many tears.
And then congratulations.
And then more tears. This time with snot.
I knew this day was coming. I mean I practically promised to sell my kidneys to get JoJo in with Kay when we moved back from Indianapolis. I knew she was wonderful and I knew my children needed to be in her home and I was willing to stalk her, beg her and just start dropping my little girl and money off until she settled into the idea. But I didn’t have to do all that. After a good referral from a friend and a pleasant chat, Kay decided to take our then 2 year old. We, I was told, would be the last family she would care for before retiring.
When we had Spike she mentioned that when we were done having kids, she would soon be done as well. She told me the same after we had Sloppy Joan. She planted subtle reminders of her impending retirement along the way – pebbles for us to pick up and remember that her home, sweet as it was, would not be open to us forever.
But still on this suddenly unforgiving summer evening, with the bitter taste of the salt biting my tongue, I felt shocked. My heartbeats were thunderous in my eardrums and my eyes were drowning in hot tears. What would we do without Kay? What would any of us do?
I don’t call Kay a babysitter, a fact that has been pointed out to me by several different people on several different occasions. I’ll say, “Kay, who watches the girls,” or “Our friend, Kay” or “You know, Kay, the baby whisperer,” but never “babysitter”. It just feels so inadequate. A babysitter is a 15 year old who sneaks her boyfriend in the back door and gets gum stuck in her braces. Kay is a miracle worker. Kay speaks child. Kay is the captain and the wind and the vessel itself.
There have been so many times she’s told me something about one of the girls that should have been so obvious, but it took having her gently point it out for me to see it. She’s taught them all how to go up and down stairs. How to pray before meals. How to bump a volleyball and swing a bat. How to roll up their sleeves and get dirty and scoop up crayfish in the creek. She treats each one equally but sees the intricate nooks and folds of their little personalities perfectly.
In 27 years the woman has never taken a sick day. I’m not kidding. She doesn’t take vacations, she doesn’t get the stomach flu, she doesn’t get strep. She’s a machine. And it’s not like she just got good at connecting with kids in her veteran years, either. I rode up to Kay’s daughter’s lakehouse (because they actually want to spend time with all of us outside of the weekdays, proving she is, in fact, a saint) with two freshman in high school who grew up at Kay’s. Their stories were the best. Kay sent a snake home with them and it had 200 babies. Kay let them build a tepee in the ravine next to her house. Kay got them to do things their parents would only dream of. She was a main character in the beginning chapters of their lives, and they would never ever forget her.
And let’s talk about the food at Kay’s.
Kay shops at the exact same grocery store where we shop. Exact same. But for whatever reason (magic pixie dust one can assume) everything is tastier at her table. One of the teenagers I was with confirmed the hypothesis I’d had for years.
“So, you’re saying if I buy a gallon of Hawaiian Punch, and Kay buys the exact same gallon of juice, it will taste better at Kay’s house?”
“Yes.”
“But …”
“I know! I can’t explain it! It’s just better. The fruit snacks are chewier, too.”
Her cheese sandwich is one slice of white bread with a Kraft single on top microwaved for 22 seconds and folded over. The kids go nuts for it. I make it, and nothin’. No love. But the gleaming cherry on top of the sundae that is Kay’s, is the crumbs. Imagine if you will, the broken shards of fried potato that reside in the bottom of a grease-soaked bag of plain potato chips. You’d toss them away, right? Consider that a crime at Kay’s. At Kay’s, everyone has an assigned crumb day. When the bag gets down to potato pieces, she spoons one tablespoon of chip dip (a special Kay kind of chip dip that I have purchased but did not taste like Kay’s special chip dip) into the bottom half of the potato chip bag, which she has cut in half for convenience. She then uses her hands to push and massage and squeeze the dip/chip components together to form the ideal consistency. She hands the crumb day child the dip spoon and gives them the green light to shovel their prize into their watering mouth as the other children at the table look on in complete and utter jealousy. That, my friends, is the crumbs. And it is the holy grail of Kay’s.
Seasons passed. That summer gave way to this past summer and before we knew it, it was fall.
Every year over Fall Break Kay has a wienie roast and bonfire for the kiddos. They push leaves into giant piles and roll down her perfectly sloped hill and laugh and play and torch marshmallows. When I came to pick up the chicks on this special day, Kay called me over to show me pictures on her phone. The kids had found an owl sitting in a tree down in the ravine. How fitting, I thought. An owl, a universal symbol of learning, would preside over this, their final autumn gathering. The lessons learned in this yard, in this home, around that kitchen table, from this woman, are lifelong. She has been their greatest teacher in the years when the rules really matter and the instructions aren’t always clear for tired mothers and well-meaning fathers.
When you make the decision (or the decision makes itself) to be a working mom, you accept the sacrifices but they still keep you up at night. Agony is wrestling with all of the things you’re missing and the precious time you’re losing. Your greatest wish is that you can find a place to take your child where they will be safe and loved and understood. I know people who search and search and search for that kind of environment. We were lucky enough to have it for this short time and our girls will be better people because of it. Kay’s house is an extension of our home. It is warm and welcoming and her entire family has carried our children in their hearts.
Another season passed. And now, here we are at “Christmas time next year”.
It’s time for me to be an adult. (Let me go on record as saying I despise such occasions.) I’m so thrilled for this beautiful woman who’s dedicated so much of herself to other families. She deserves – more than anyone I know – a day off, a vacation, an impulsive decision. She deserves to sit with her grandbabies for hours and share her gifts with other people and to let others stand in her light. I tell the girls why it’s so important we support Kay and celebrate this time for her. Then I turn away from them and cry like the giant woman-baby I am.
I cry every time I think about Sloppy Joan missing those summers down in the ravine, when I pull up to find them sitting on the driveway barefoot with vanilla ice cream running down their sun-kissed arms to their elbows. Or the girls begging to go to “Kay-Kay’s” in footie pajamas with their blankies under their arms. Or Kay giving them kisses on their cheeks and telling them she loves them after they had a tough day. Or all of the 8 million things that only the families who went to Kay’s can appreciate, that won’t be part of our routine anymore. Our days will be a little less full without her.
A few weeks ago she had all of our families over for a Christmas dinner. Kay gathered the children around her dining room table, where they’d sat for so many meals, and she invited them to pray, just as she had so many times. As they folded their precious hands and followed her in making the sign of the cross, I felt those steamy tears I’d felt a year and a half ago rolling down my cheeks. No one could love our little tribe of misfits the way she had. What will we do without Kay? What will any of us do without Kay?
The night Kay told us she would be moving on, I went home and wrote this:
The woman who cares for my children is not a babysitter.
The woman who cares for my children is a maker of memories.
The woman who cares for my children is a friend to me and a light to all.
The woman who cares for my children is the wisdom through trivial tears.
The woman who cares for my children is a compass at the crossroads.
The woman who cares for my children carries them in her heart just as their mother does.
She is a light and a guiding force and a selfless soul whose role in this village will never be forgotten.
I feel it more today, on your last day with our babies, than I did on that August night.
