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Our space is changing

March 2, 2021

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.

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Social distance diary – Day 142

August 6, 2020

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 too many 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.

Kids

Six words that changed the way I’ll talk about my body

August 29, 2018

There are certain phrases that come from the mouths of our babes that stop us dead in our tracks. Phrases such as …

“Uh oh …”

“Shut up!”

“Don’t be mad …”

“I can’t hold it.”

“Whoops!”

Late last week we added a new one to the list.

I am a sad, snooze button-slapping sloth. My intent is always to workout in the mornings but, because of my aforementioned condition, I typically have to cram it into the evenings, right between stuffing dinner in my face and washing a child’s butt.

On one seemingly uneventful evening, I was in the basement, 10 minutes into 80 Day Obsession’s Booty day when the chicks came down. JoJo set up a ninja obstacle course and was pushing her sisters to “Jump higher!” “Run faster!” and “Do it like this!” They were running around in their sports bras (hand-me-downs from a work friend’s daughter and their latest obsession) and giggling and burning off energy and radiating innocence.

After about 20 minutes, Spike came running over, panting, and put her hands on her hips.

“Look how much weight I lost!” she declared.

I set my weights down and spun around, propelled by the sobering gravity of the statement spilling out of my 7-year-old’s lips.

“Whoa! I mean, I think you look really strong,” I said, grasping desperately for a solid, child psychologist-endorsed rebound. “And that’s what I like to see.”

She raised her eyebrows, looked over at her biceps, shrugged and went back to the course, pleased by the exchange. That made one of us.

With every squat, every leg lift that followed, I felt myself sinking deeper and deeper into a sinkhole of shame. I finished my workout and went up to tell Hank we were big, fat failures who could not use the words “big”, “fat” or “failure” anymore.

“We have to stop talking about our weight!” I announced. He barely turned from the dishes. “I mean it. Spike just told me she’d lost weight, and I don’t like it. We gotta get it together. Only stuff about being strong, from now on. No more rubbing our bellies, or complaining about how much we ate, or any of that.” He nodded in the agreeable way he does when I make such profound proclamations out of nowhere.

Body image is a struggle handed down from the women before us, who put their eggs in the basket of Jane Fonda, Weight Watchers, Slim-Fast and Oprah. Women who inherited the same battle from the generation that came before them. A generation that sought resolution through grapefruit, diet pills and belt massagers. It is a conflict as old as humankind – the epic tussle between vanity, health and self-acceptance.

Thinking back on my childhood, I can fondly recall my own mother’s affinity for peanut M&Ms. At night, after dinner was cleared and the children had scattered, my mom would sit down on the floor next to her bed and watch L.A. Law with a bag of the multicolored candies in her lap and make me scratch her back. At the time, I thought nothing of her evening ritual. It was endearing and just something she did, like dying her hair or snapping her fingers when she danced.

But in my house now, when I reach up into the cabinet for my after-dinner treat of two pieces of 72% cocoa chocolate, I see my daughters watching. Sometimes they’ll even say, “Watch the sug, mama.” And they’re not saying that because they’re judgmental turds. They’re saying that because I’ve unintentionally conditioned them to say that. I, along with a million forms of media and mixed messages, have formed their thoughts and placed phrases in their minds by vocalizing my own food shortfalls over and over again, in conversations that I thought were benign or far enough away from little impressionable ears.

And now, despite all my best intentions, the thing I always feared is happening. It’s being held up to my face in the form of one innocent little statement: “Look how much weight I lost.”

I naively thought I was following the protocol for bringing up healthy, well-adjusted girls. To their faces, it’s always about nourishing our bodies, getting stronger, treating ourselves well. But it hasn’t been enough. The fabricated shortcomings of our mothers and our mothers’ mothers are infiltrating my adorable chicks and I so desperately want to stop it.

I was talking about Spike’s declaration with a friend at work and she mentioned that even her oldest son, who is 6, has been talking about his “belly” and comparing himself to the other little guys in his grade. He’s 6!

What the hell? Where did it all get so screwed up?

Maybe time has quickened the affliction, but I don’t remember worrying about my body until middle school, around the time the dreaded locker room came into play and sixth graders with C cups started ruining everything. I had a short pixie haircut above my ears, braces, freckles and a chest as flat as an Indiana cornfield. That was when I started comparing myself. We all remember when we started comparing ourselves.

That same friend told me about a project her class did in first grade. They were doing some experiment with pumpkins and the teacher had the students step on a scale, first holding a pumpkin, and then without it, in order to get the weight of the squash. “I still remember pretending to be sick so I wouldn’t have to weigh myself in front of my class,” she shared. “And I wasn’t even that much bigger than the other kids.”

We all carry some of the responsibility, I suppose. For my part, I’ve been known to rub my food baby after a meal or let out a regretful groan after going for the second cinnamon roll or saying stupid shit like, “Oh, I shouldn’t,” when offered an amazing homemade pastry. I think I’m counterbalancing it by screen grabbing inspirational quotes on Instagram like, “Exercise is a celebration of what your body can do. Not a punishment for what you ate.” I think my perception is off.

How do we break the cycle? How do we convince the next generation that as long as they are using their bodies and treating them well and they feel capable in their bodies and they feel at home in their bodies, that they are doing exactly what they need to be doing? How do we make them feel proud not embarrassed, motivated not defeated, informed not passive?

Caring for yourself is a massive responsibility. It’s composed of a thousand decisions in a day and, as any mind-body guru will tell you, the body keeps score. There has to be a shift away from succumbing to the suffocating complexities of the weightloss noise and toward the beauty of caring for this precious gift we were given, this phenomenal space we get to occupy on this planet.

I’m not saying I have the roadmap to get us there. But, thanks to six little words and the mirror only a child can hold up to you, I feel like I’m waking up to the urgency of the issue at our children’s’ feet. The shift has to start somewhere. Let’s lean in a positive direction.

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Kids

From trigger to tantrum: The 3 stages of parent-child confrontation

August 1, 2018

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.

Thoughts

Calling a Code Brown

July 26, 2018

Last week, I ran into my sweet new friend in the parking lot at preschool.

“Hey! Did you get a new car?” I asked her.
“No, I got in an accident.”
“Oh my gosh! Why didn’t you say anything?”
“Because I’m not that person. I don’t like to be Debbie Downer.”
“But, I don’t care if you’re Debbie Downer. You got in an accident?”
“I’m just not having a good week. I screamed at the kids yesterday for no reason, and I’m cranky, and …”

I was watching a very familiar ball of yarn – one I personally keep in my nightstand, next to the melatonin and emergency candy bars – unravel.

She’d taken a mental health day from work, she went on to say, because things were just piling up. Between yelling at her boys and being annoyed with her husband and questioning all of those pesky major life questions, she was mentally depleted and in need of a mindless, indulgent Netflix binge. As I stood there, an unforgiving morning wind intruding in our conversation, I listened as this strong woman, who I deeply care for, talked herself down into a hole. It was a ritual I’d practiced myself and with almost all of my girlfriends, my sister, and my own mother. I waited for an opening.

“Listen, I know exactly how you feel. All moms feel that way. We all have those lows and days where we feel totally defeated, and it’s OK! I promise. I was standing with my toes to the edge last week. And now you’re up. We all just take turns.”

I think we can all agree it’s time to call it good on the charade. Being a mom in any capacity on any day that ends in “y” is a crazy occupation. Crazy! Anyone ambitious enough to think they’re going to climb that ladder has another thing comin’. Between the demand and the clients and the hours, mere survival is considered an above par performance on the job. There are two kinds of days: The days you have enough milk for their cereal, and the days you have to go out into the garage and grab a new gallon. The days you catch the bus, and the days you chase it down and get reprimanded by the driver. The days you make it to work without incident and the days you hit the bump and spill coffee down your white button-down blouse sleeve.

I can tell you, within 10 minutes of my children waking, what kind of day lies ahead of me. I can feel it. Like the air before a tornado – Mother Nature’s hot breath. But we don’t show the sweat on our faces, no. We smile and we press on and we push all the shit way down deep because we think it makes us less of a mom or less of a wife or less of a woman if we aren’t acing all the things, all the time. Well, guess what … that’s bullshit.

I always say, God makes ‘em cute so you don’t kill ‘em. In my case, he doubled up just to be sure and made them funny, too.

On one particularly trying morning, I slipped and let the truth serum seep in. When Cheri in my office asked how my morning was, I said, “Oh, I’m fine, thanks, other than the fact that I want to go on strike against my entire family for a few days.” A spark flickered in her eyes. “You know,” she said, like a kid at confession, “once when the kids were little, I told my husband he had to take them and I checked myself into a hotel for the weekend. I just watched TV, did a little shopping, ate.” We laughed like idiots, and I thought about how many other times I should have put out the invitation for other mothers to share their tales from the trenches.

In the parking lot that morning, if I squinted really hard, I could see the little armies waging battle inside my girlfriend. One side was fighting in the name of vulnerability and transparency and saying all of the depressing shit she was really feeling, while the opposition was willing to die on that hill for the sake of smoothing it all over with a laugh and a shrug. I’m familiar with that war, that struggle. How much to share, when to share it, how to sugarcoat it, which parts of the day’s failures I should censor for fear of how it will poison the perception of my otherwise “tidy” life.

We women, we are an efficient bunch. We are anticipatory. We are prepared and organized and concerned. We shoot ourselves in both feet day after day after day by getting everyone up and dressed and fed and out the door. We sign permission slips and send notes about doctor’s appointments and talk to the sitter at length about the quality and quantity of the baby’s bowel movements. We do it because somebody has to do it. But sometimes, being the somebody who does it just chews you up and spits you out.

In holistic nursing, there’s something called a Code Lavender. When the code is called for a caregiver, he or she is given a purple bracelet to wear, signifying they are in emotional distress. People might be a little kinder, a little more understanding, a little quicker to forgive minor oversights. Well, I’d say it’s time for moms to get a code of their own. Code Yellow, maybe? Code Brown? (Signifying we’re in deep shit.) That way, we can offer hugs, or cocktails, or comforting cuss words to our fellow comrades who are momentarily flailing.

If you have a perfect household with a perfect spouse and perfect children and everything is all Marie Kondo perfect everywhere, that is incredible. But, for the rest of us, it’s really easy to feel lonely sometimes. We think we’re alone in thinking our kids are assholes on occasion. We think we’re the only one who wants to stop for a drink after work on Thursdays instead of sitting in the carpool pickup line. We think there’s a conspiracy that our neighbor’s house is always suspiciously clean while ours is reproducing dust at a mind-boggling rate. We hide our secret Lucky Charms addiction and exchange kale salad recipes.

But the Code Brown could revolutionize our sorority.

For example – and this is entirely hypothetical – if I saw you pulling into the local watering hole on a Monday afternoon and we locked eyes, and you just happened to flash your poo-colored wristband, I might offer to pick up your kids and keep them busy for an hour, no questions asked. And you would return the favor two days later, when it was me sporting the bracelet. If you saw me carrying a snot-covered, entirely hysterical child out of the grocery store and glanced down to find a doo-doo-hued decoration south of my fingers, you would know to say a silent prayer for my sanity (and my child). And I would do the same for you that Friday when you replicated the scene in the McDonald’s playdome. It’s an emotional exchange program, rooted in support and understanding.

So, who’s in? Who’s comin’ with me here?

Let’s remove the stigma staining our struggles and choose, instead, to help a sister out. Friends, I do not mind having your children over to play for a bit, no strings or expectations attached. It does not inconvenience me to listen to your recount of just how irrational your daughter got over al dente noodles last night. No one can hear a mother’s cries and gripes like another mother. I say it can’t count as a true failure if you speak it aloud and set it free.

I’m here. And I know you are, too.

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Kids

Jealousy and a tough awards season

February 1, 2018

Jealousy. The green-headed monster. Riding the bitter train to Envy Town. The desire to possess what someone else possesses or garner the attention someone else has garnered is a totally natural, entirely ugly impulse.

I still remember crowding around a modest 20-inch television in the corner of our kitchen, the camcorder hooked up to the inputs, to watch a video of my older sister reading her winning entry for the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. essay contest. Mom had tears in her eyes. Dad got nostalgic about his writing days in college. At school, they announced her name over the loudspeaker. She had a certificate with a gold seal on it, which made it worth a million dollars in my mind. I was in third grade, she was in fifth, and all of this was very much a big deal.

When I won the same contest two years later, it just wasn’t the same. The shine of victory had been dulled by repetition. There were no tears. Hell, i think we even skipped the banquet where the winners read their essays. It wasn’t the first time my sister did something ahead of me, better than me. But it was one of the first occasions I can recall vividly. That sting of a sibling outshining her housemates. The taste of ice cream in someone else’s honor.

Everybody has those memories! We’re born with comparison and competition coursing through our veins. I remember thinking the attention I received for my own accomplishments just wasn’t as significant as the embarrassing amount of praise my brother – the football player and only boy – or my sister – the equestrian with the shy disposition – got. Of course, their memories are likely skewed the other way. And, in hindsight, the truth is, we were all loved an appropriate amount for three children who experienced predominantly mild, occasionally notable success, and acted like jerks much of the time.

But see, the trick to that clarity rests in the hindsight. When you’re in it, you can’t see it through the green. These days, my view is from the other side of the fence. The parents’ side. And it ain’t pretty, folks.

Last week, Hank and I received an email from the principal at the girls’ school:

[Paraphrased]
Dear Mr. and Mrs. Spike’s Parents,
It is my pleasure to inform you that your kindergartener, Spike, will receive our Perfect Panda award for displaying this month’s life skill, integrity. Please join us at our school assembly to surprise your child and present her with her certificate on Tuesday, January 30.

Sincerely,
Spike’s Principal

I closed the email and immediately jumped on chat. He was already there …

Hank: Go Spikey!
Me: Right?!
Hank: JoJo’s gonna be pissed.
Me: Right.

See, what you don’t know is that the school gives out these awards every month throughout the school year. And every month for the past 2.5 school years, our JoJo has come home with a sad, shattered spirit after learning she, once again, was not named a Perfect Panda. Spike, as the universe would have it, came in and cleared one just five months into her academic career. That burns a bit on the way down.

This was tricky. As the parent, you certainly don’t want to detract from one child’s accomplishment. But when you have an emotionally fragile child, you don’t want them spiraling, either. What to do … What to do …

I took every opportunity to initiate damage control early. For instance, when JoJo scored in her game Saturday, but Spike did not, I was quick to point out that Spike cheered for her big sis even though she didn’t get a bucket earlier in the day. JoJo nodded and smiled at her sister across the backseat. Then returned to her pack of Oreos. (Quick side note: What the hell is going on with the snacks at youth sporting events guys?)

Then I turned things up a notch. It was Sunday morning and all three of the chicks were tearing each other apart. I hit that boiling point that all parents hit after so many consecutive minutes of tattling and whining and sister-on-sister hate hitting.

“Go get your sisters and get in here!” I spewed to Spike.
[The three girls filed in, noses to the floor, and sat down in a row.]
“Mom, she–”
“I don’t care.”
“But she–”
“I don’t care.”
[sighs]
“Here’s the thing, ladies” I began. “We are a tribe. The five of us. We don’t hurt each other. We don’t put each other down and we don’t touch each other out of hate. Over everyone else, we have each other’s backs. Do you understand?”
[hesitant nods]
“Who knows what integrity is?” I asked. (Remember, Spike didn’t know she was getting the Perfect Panda award yet. Pop quiz, suckers.) JoJo raised her hand.
“OK, what is it?” I prompted.
“It’s how you follow the rules.”
“In a way. It’s also what people think of when they think of you as a person. So, let me ask you … What kind of person do you want people to think of when they think of you? You want them to think you are a _____ girl.”
“Brave and kind,” JoJo said.
“OK, brave and kind. Good. Do you think a brave girl calls her sister stupid?”
“No.”
“Do you think a kind girl calls her sister stupid?”
“No.”
“How about you?” I asked, pointing to Spike.
“Kind and does the right thing.”
“Great. Does a kind girl say she hates someone?”
“No.”
“Is telling someone you hate them doing the right thing?”
“No.”
“And you, Sloppy Joan. What kind of girl do you want to be?”
“A princess girl.”
“K. Do you think a princess gets to be mean to people?”
“Yes.”
“No. She doesn’t! So, here’s the bottom line. Stop before you say and do things and ask yourself if a brave girl would do that, or a kind girl would say that. Got it?”
They gave a collective, half-hearted yes, but I wouldn’t be satisfied until they gave each other the obligatory forced group hug. I made ‘em hold it, too.

(Happy byproduct of this fairly typical Come-to-Jesus exchange, it had never occurred to me before that moment to ask them what kind of person they wanted to be. I’d always just told them what kind of person they should be. It was interesting and worth revisiting.)

The momentum from the atta-boy lasted into the evening. They even had a party to celebrate each other, including Hershey kisses on toothpicks and glow rings strung together to form a disco light. I felt like Carol F-ing Brady. I was riding a high, though history told me it was temporary. I even convinced myself that JoJo might just surprise us, I truly believed it. I wanted to believe it.

One Manic Monday later, the day of the ceremony arrived. At 1:50 p.m., we sat waiting in a room adjacent to the gymnasium while all the students got settled into the bleachers. We lined up outside the doors. Two children from each grade would be recognized, and, of course, kindergarteners would go first. I was fidgeting. “Calm down, mama,” Hank warned.

Then he turned to the roars of cheering and applause coming from the gym. “Man, the principal is like a rock god. I wonder if he goes home and tells his wife he totally killed it.” It was true. The dude was absolutely slaying the 5-11-year-old demographic. Every punchline landed.

“And February 12 is Mooooovie Night!” [roaring applause]
“Don’t forget we’re collecting Box Tooooops!” [cheers and high fives]
“And on March 1, the middle school orchestra is cominggggg!” [losing their minds completely]

Then it was time. “Alright, it’s the moment you’ve been waiting for. We’re going to honor our Perfect Pandas now. These students demonstrated integrity in their classrooms during the months of December and January. Let’s start with kindergarten … Spike! Come down and receive your award from a surprise guest!” Out we walked, to a sea of tiny smiling faces and frantically clapping hands.

Our girl was waiting at the bottom of the steps, wearing the biggest smile I’ve ever seen and nutella remnants on her cheeks. We leaned down, hugged her and took our place on the red line, facing the crowd.

“I don’t see her,” I said, through my teeth, scanning for JoJo. “Do you?”
“I’m looking.”
“Oh, there’s her teacher.”
“Op, there she is.”
“She’s crying.”
“She’s definitely crying.”
“Oh, she’s losin’ it.”

We kept smiling. Everything’s good here. Nothing to see. It’s all happy joyful love in our house.

Once they’d made their way through the fifth graders with integrity, we took a seat to watch the rest of the program. Jon Bon Jovi came back to the mic. “Now, to introduce our new life skill, respect, here is the entire second grade class.” Ohhhhhhh shoot … I had completely forgotten about the song! JoJo had to come down and sing in front of everyone! She’d mentioned it this morning. The only question now was, could she rally?

She couldn’t.

With her fingers firmly in her mouth and cherry juice-colored tear tracks down her cheeks, my eldest daughter stood in front of the entire student body and barely mumbled through “It’s about respect, check it out, check it out.” . Her eyes were locked on us, her trader parents and her award-winning little sister. I gave her the best thumb’s up I could muster. Hell, I even shoulder shimmied a little to try and hypeman our way through this nightmare. Nope.

When the program finally came to a close, we walked to the group of second graders. As I approached JoJo, her teacher stopped me.

“She was already having a bad day,” he warned. “Then she took this pretty hard. I think it sent her over the edge.”
“We anticipated that. Thank you.”

He’d barely walked away when I felt her bury her hot crying face in my thigh.

“Hey, JoJo! You sang so well!” I lied.
“It’s no fair that Spikey got a Perfect Panda,” she said, putting all her cards right down on the table.
“We’ll talk about it when we get home,” Hank said.

But the torture wouldn’t stop there. JoJo stood and looked on as Spike posed for group photos, then parent pictures, and then one with the rockstar himself. It was almost too much for one girl to take. How do those Oscar losers do it?

On our way back to the car, I hung back with my big girl. I put my finger under her chin and tilted her face up toward mine. I could see straight through her eyes down into her heavy heart.

“Hey you. I know this is hard, but it would mean so much to your sister if you told her you were proud of her.”
“OK, Mama,” she said.
“You don’t have to. But I know she wants to hear that from you.”

And that brave little girl, she did just that. She got the words out, whether she meant them or not, and I was proud of her. Really proud of her.

Of course by the time I got home that night, JoJo’s true fury over her sister’s recognition had boiled over and we were facing a full-blown hatefest. She didn’t want to see Spike’s certificate again. She didn’t care about the stuffed animal they gave her. She thought it was crap we were having dippy eggs and bacon for dinner just because Spike picked them. Why does she get everything? My third-grade self totally got it.

But I made the decision not to let jealousy hijack this moment for Spike. She’d earned that award. She was killin’ it in kindergarten and that was something to celebrate. So, as we all sat down to our sunny-side up entree, I raised my glass and asked everyone to join me in congratulating our Spikey on a job well done. No one took a knee. The tribe showed up.

Afterward, JoJo came into the basement with me so we could work out; beachbody and American Ninja Warrior training, respectively. As I got all my gear lined up, I decided to try to parent my way through this thing just one more time.

“JoJo, can I tell you something?”
“Sure Mom.”
“You love our family, right?”
“Yeah.”
“Well a family celebrates each other’s victories. They’re there for each other when someone is down, and they’re there for each other when someone is up. Today, it was your turn to celebrate your sister. And maybe tomorrow she’ll be celebrating you. It’s just the way it goes, honey. Try to remember that, OK?”
“Yeah, OK,” she said, before ninja kicking a tower of blocks across the room.

Sometimes I think parenting is like American Ninja Warrior. Maybe even harder. Obstacle after obstacle, with water hazards all over the damn place. You can strategize all you want, but odds are, that shit’s still gonna get ya.

When dealing with a sensitive soul, the big questions become: When do I shield? When do I step back? And when do I support as needed? My JoJo, with her tender skin, has some pretty rough days, but her sister winning an award for integrity just shouldn’t be one of them. A win for someone in our home should be a win for all of us.

One day, she’ll see that. When hindsight’s on her side.

Kids

Little JoJo in the jungle: a tale of survival

December 8, 2017

My oldest daughter – my JoJo – is the second coming of both my face and my fits. And she is struggling to find her place among the elementary elite.

It started when … well it started getting really bad with the arrival of a solution to an 8-year-old dilemma, the Nipit. The Nipit is a genius product my mom discovered through the power of Amazon that’s worn on the elbow and prevents a child from bending their arm enough to get their respective digits to their mouth to suck. While it lacks in discretion – it’s bright, primary colors with loud velcro straps – holy heck it works. I’ve seen my girl with her fingers in her mouth once in the last three months. For a girl who was getting her suck on in the womb, that is nothing short of miraculous.

But, as is the case with most red and blue arm braces, it didn’t take long for the kids at school to take note. It’s different, which means she’s different, which means she’s “weird”, which means she has a giant red target right in the center of her tiny little back. Thus, the bullying began.

I’ve thought about this a lot in the last few weeks, and I’ve come to some clarity. I think the issue is, when we look into our child’s eyes, we see someone different. We see an unborn baby that got hiccups every night during our 9 o’clock show. We see the little human who turned everything upside down in the best, scariest way possible, and made us a mother or a father. We see a toddler whose hair grew in from the back forward and stuck straight up while she watched cartoons on lazy weekend mornings. We see her first birthday and her tricycle. We hear the crinkle of her diaper between thick, wobbly legs coming down the hall and her first words … “dada” of course.

When I look at my daughter, I feel her letting go of my hand on the first day of preschool and her pleading eyes when big change came. I feel cuddles from the best spooner on the planet and hear her telling me, at 4, that she was heading off to college just like Steve from Blue’s Clues. I hear her laugh. I see her crooked, gappy smile and pure, well-intentioned heart. I see a thousand tiny little pieces of myself, with her daddy’s build, walking out the door every single morning.

But that’s what I see. And I am her mother.

What kids see is another little second grader in a sea of 7, 8, 9 year olds, crowding the playground and trying not to do anything odd enough to get noticed. They don’t find her to be special in any of the ways that really count. They aren’t looking for that. They’re looking for different. They’re looking for a crack, an opening. They’re waiting for her to get comfortable enough that she shows something they view as a weakness or an eccentricity. If it lends itself to a nickname or a chant, all the better.

When the tiny opening presents itself, they put their toe in first, maybe a snide comment or whisper to a friend. Then they put in their leg, then torso, and eventually their whole body busts down that door, lashing out with hateful, belittling words that feel so good to them, so empowering. Because kids know no consequence. They know instant gratification and survival of the shittiest. It’s jungle rules out there and everyone is potential prey.

In his book, “Born to Run: A Hidden Tribe, Superathletes, and the Greatest Race the World Has Ever Seen”, Christopher McDougall wrote: “Every morning in Africa, a gazelle wakes up, it knows it must outrun the fastest lion or it will be killed. Every morning in Africa, a lion wakes up. It knows it must run faster than the slowest gazelle, or it will starve. It doesn’t matter whether you’re the lion or a gazelle. When the sun comes up, you’d better be running.”

I send my little girl out the door every morning as this special ball of memories and potential, and the second she steps off the porch she’s reduced to bait. And do I blame the kids being unkind? Hell no! They’re just relieved they aren’t the girl with the brace on her elbow. And I totally get it.

Because no one wants to be that girl. Growing up, I had spacey, jagged teeth and a swoopy, horrible set of bangs for a good few years. I had girls pass notes to my BFFs saying they shouldn’t play with me anymore. I had days where I curled up in my mom’s arms, as she rubbed my back in her mustard yellow fabric covered rocking chair with the melodic squeak. Ask any adult and they can name their bully. If they can’t, they were the bully. It’s a rite of passage in some ways. Unfortunately. Stupidly.

It all came to a head recently, as one particular girl turned up the torment on my babe. We’ll call her Delores for the sake of anonymity and movie trivia. Delores has a girl gang. They think JoJo’s a big baby for sucking her fingers (predictable, easy), and they make sure she knows it on a daily basis. We’d been doing the usual coaching behind the scenes … Don’t fight hate with hate … The meaner they are, the kinder you should be … If you feel sad, tell a teacher … Just ignore her … Maybe she was having a bad day or she’s sad about something. Nevertheless, it persisted.

It persisted until earlier this week when JoJo decided to express herself about it. In a drawing. On the back of her homework. Where she’s throwing a bat at Delores’ head. And it’s labeled “JoJo’ and “Delores”. Needless to say, her teacher wasn’t thrilled.

Spike was waiting by the door for me that evening. “Mom, I’m not going to tell you what’s going on, but I will tell you that JoJo got in trouble and she has to go see the counselor tomorrow and if the counselor wants to, she can send JoJo to the principal’s office.” I walked into the living room to find my little criminal, sitting on the couch, red streaks from old tears subtle on her pale cheeks.

“You’ve taken a situation where someone was bullying you,” I explained, “and turned it around so that you are now the one doing the bullying. Do you see why this is wrong?” She nodded, her bottom lip curving down like a fat, grumpy fist in an animated feature. JoJo is certainly my creative chick, and this devilish doodle was, I’m certain, just a way for her to express her frustration, but regardless, it’s not how we roll.

Her teacher referred her to the school counselor, which, to be honest, I was a little relieved about. Finally! A professional can step in here! Somebody equipped with a degree and Inside Out dolls.

The day she was scheduled to meet with the counselor, JoJo was pacing the kitchen, whining. “I don’t want to go to the counselor’s office, Mama. I’m scared. What if I get in trouble?” I challenged her to be brave, and to be honest. I challenged her to step up to all the feelings of anger and sadness and loneliness she’s been feeling and share them with a grownup who could help. (And who she’d listen to more than her own mother.)

And then, I watched her step off the porch and go back out into that dark, vast jungle. Exposed and vulnerable and wearing her Nipit like a juicy, raw steak around her neck on the grasslands. A giant piece of my heart went right onto the bus with her and drove away.

I thought about her all day. I waited for the phone to ring. Maybe the principal would call and say she was suspended for the drawing. A black blemish on her spotless record. Maybe the counselor would call and tell me what a bad mother I was for waiting so long to alert them to the situation. Maybe her emotions would swallow her whole and I’d have to come get her.

But the phone never rang, and soon it was 5 o’clock.

I can always read the general temperature of our household within seconds. When something is wrong with one of the kiddos, it’s like walking into a room carrying balloons and a birthday cake after everyone else was just told someone died. So on this day, I was very tentative coming in from the garage.

“Hi, Mama!” JoJo greeted me. My whole body unclenched.
“Hi, JoJo!”
“Mom, I met with the counselor today and it was great. I didn’t get in trouble for the drawing and she told me I should tell Delores that what she’s doing is hurting my feelings.”
“Right. That’s great, JoJo!”
“Yeah, I feel so much better! Can I call Dad and tell him?”
“Of course.”

And just like that, progress. A touch of healing for a wounded little soul. She would live to roam the prairie another day.

I, of course, immediately sat down to type a teary note of appreciation to the school counselor, positive she had no clue how thankful I was for her 5-minute pep talk with my daughter. Positive I was being a little over emotional and positive I didn’t care a lick.

And the rest of this week has been better, though I know it’s not the last we’ll hear of Delores and her girl gang. The oldest child is such an experiment. They bring this stuff home to you, and you never know whether they’re being transparent or dramatic. You don’t know what’s normal and what’s a five-alarm fire. All you have to go on is your instinct and your own experiences as a child. (I mean, aren’t we all just projecting our childhood onto our own kids anyway?)

You just want to scream from the top of the school gymnasium, [in the voice of an Indian chief] “This is my daughter, JoJo! She is strong and funny and would be a really great friend! I am proud of her! And if you screw with her, I will squash your milk carton in your tiny horrible face.” But that’s not considered acceptable grownup behavior.

It will always be hard to hear. I’m the one who carries her stories, and because of that, I know what a treasure she is. I have the backstory. I’m invested, mostly because I grew her.

I’m the one who knows she called penguins “herbies” for years, even though everyone thought she was saying “herpes”. I’m the one who put her hair in long, flowing pigtails and cut the feet out of her penguin jammies so she could wear them a few months longer. I am in this thing for the long haul.

And I could sell her good points like popsicles on the Fourth of July. She likes to climb really tricky trees and eat Nutella straight from the jar and she can sing every word to every song from Descendents 2. She dabs like a boss. She’s a talented artist and can turn any strawberry into a rose too beautiful to eat. She always wears two layers of clothing, even in the summer, and changes into her pajamas within an hour of getting home from school. She did hygge before hygge was a thing. I mean, who wouldn’t want to be friends with that girl?

There aren’t a lot of choices here. She has to keep going to school and I have to keep watching her step off our porch, bait though she may be. I can’t change the dichotomy of children, the hunters and the hunted. I can’t make my daughter’s skin thicker, no matter what I feed her at home. The only thing I can do is rock her when she wants me to and keep track of her stories, so she always has someone to remind her just how special she is. Someone who’s invested. Someone who isn’t going anywhere. Someone who, after all the deep lessons have been offered and her worries put to rest, will turn away from tiny ears and say the thing that everyone really wants to say.

“Ah, screw Delores!”

Kids

Giving parenting the finger

October 4, 2017

“We’re going to give it 6 more months, and if she can’t stop, we’ll talk about putting in a rake,” my dentist/friend said, at our last family appointment.

He was referring to JoJo, my pathological finger sucker. This child … ahhhh, this child. God bless her sweet soul, I have a picture of her sucking her fingers in my womb. And then a thousand pictures after that of her doing the same. The habit is rooted in her DNA. It’s just always been part of her, like her laugh or insanely thick hair.

My girls each have their quirks. Spike does this strange thing where she rubs her head back and forth when she’s tired or falling asleep. She told me once it makes her “feel silly and dizzy,” and she’s into that sort of thing. I remember the first time I saw her do it with her chunky little baby head. It totally freaked me out. I have another friend whose twin girls used to bang their heads against the side of their pack n’ play when they went to sleep. I imagine it’s a similar sensation? Kids are so weird.

Sloppy Joan’s thing is rubbing the yarn on her special blanket between her fingers. It’s not as ingrained in her, and obviously conditional upon her having the actual blanket with her, but it’s her habit just the same. Well, that and pooping like 20 times a day.

So, now we come to my dilemma. How to intervene.

In the case of the spit-soaked fingers, it’s a matter of dental despair. I had braces for like 20 years, so the odds weren’t in her favor to begin with, but given her tendencies to put those things in her mouth, those teeth really don’t stand a chance.

The hygienist was kind enough to pull up an image of the rake for JoJo to see. It’s your typical orthodontia gem; a mouth apparatus that looks like a torture device crafted in a dungeon at the turn of the century. We got in the car and she immediately started sobbing.

“What’s wrong, doll?” I asked, over the sound of the sniffles.
“I don’t want a rake!” she wailed.
“Honey, you have six months. You can do it.”
“No, I can’t! It’s too hard!”
“Honey …”
“And I like sucking my fingers!”
“Babe, you have to stop.”
“But why?”
“JoJo, we’ve talked about this … It’s moving your teeth. Plus, you’re putting yucky germs in your mouth every day.”
“But it’s too hard and it’s going to hurt if they put it in,”
“Nah!” I comforted.

[more sobs.]

And every day since then, we’ve engaged in tense exchanges in which she repeatedly puts her fingers – the pointer and middle to be specific – in her mouth and I, running out of patience, remind her to remove them. This might come as a gentle, “Hey, JoJo, fingers,” or, if it’s been a long day, “Honey! Get your fingers out of your mouth! For the love!”

It’s frustrating. Parenting. And you can only do so much. Take this morning, for example. The girls were screwing around wrestling at the bus stop, which is at a busy corner in our neighborhood. I yelled and yelled, “Girls! Don’t do that so close to the road! Girls! Back up!” Nothing. Like I wasn’t even there. Then, Bus #53 pulled up, honking their horn like an ambulance in a traffic jam. It slowed and the door flew open, revealing a red-faced older gentleman behind the wheel. “Hey! You girls shouldn’t do that so close to the road. You could fall into the street and get run over by a car!” Then he drove off. I smiled and yelled from the porch, “Told ya!” I can only do so much.

Hank is, as usual, much more patient about the whole finger thing. He’s always the more patient one. But what is my role here as a mother? If I don’t stay on her, she’s left to her own willpower which is comparable to my own stoned at a donut factory. If I hound her, she gets frustrated with herself, and me, and ends up melting down. I just can’t do it! This is so hard! I hate this!

I have another friend whose son is obsessed with sugar and baked goods. He finds comfort in treats, and it drives her nuts. But this boy, as I explained to her, is everyone’s spirit animal. He fears that the good treats won’t be available if he waits. Something inside him is screaming for that treat, that instant. Like the ocean called to Moana, sugar calls to him, and I get that. That speaks to me. But, as his mother, my friend questions when and how to intervene. I get that, too.

JoJo is hard on herself as it is. And my nudges to quit doing what she’s doing on a 10-minute rotation are not helping. She has a special glove that my mom found online, and when she wears that, she can keep the habit at bay. So, our discussions often turn to her neglect of the glove. Why aren’t you wearing it all the time? Do you want the rake? You have to make up your mind to really try.

But then I really back the train up, and ask myself if an 8 year old is even capable of making a conscious decision to commit to that kind of change. I mean if I can’t toss out a dozen cookies at 34, what would lead me to believe my little girl could halt such a compulsive tendency? And if she is capable of making that choice, how do I encourage her in a healthy way? When I decided to have kids, I was prepared for nose picking and hitting. Biting, sure. Tantrums, absolutely. But no one tells you they’re going to come out sucking fingers and rubbing their heads until a giant bird’s nest forms on the back of their scalp.

Sometimes I can discreetly reach over and touch her leg when I see her going for it, but other times, I find myself completely losing my shit … like when she does it right after walking out of a public bathroom or playing in the campground sandbox. It’s nasty.

I don’t want kids to make fun of her, either. I mean, let’s face it, there are totally normal kids out there getting hammered at the lunch table every day. A second grader who sucks her fingers is as easy a target as the kid who toots during ciphering.

So, there’s my stuff. That’s my battle. What kind of weird shit do your kids do? Do they lick rocks? Hide in chimneys? Pull the wings off of flies? Let’s hear it. And how do you help them? I’ve brought bribery, nasty nail polish and the glove to the table, but I’m at a loss beyond that. The whole thing just really … sucks.

Kids

My village people

May 25, 2017

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.

Your tribe will be the better for it.

Some Kinda Superwoman

Some kinda Superwoman: Kirsten

March 31, 2017

Almost 15 years have passed, but I can still call back the moment I held my first niece, all big-eyed and unassuming. It was the first time I felt comfortable holding a baby. Like, my brain and my body just knew she belonged to me in some small but important way. I remember thinking our family would never be the same, which turned out to be true. Our dynamic shifted on that day. My parents became grandparents, I became an aunt, my brother an uncle and so on. But moreso, the light that had, to that point, shined down on me and my siblings dimmed on our faces on that rainy August day and illuminated this fresh little soul, instead. We had a new axis. And I didn’t care one bit, which is rare for a baby-of-the-family type like myself. I was happy to step aside and let this tiny love nugget soak up all the attention that she so deserved and earned by being offensively adorable and blowing the most endearing spit bubbles.

A few years later, my sister told me she was pregnant again, and just after Christmas, she gave me my second niece. Then a few years later, my third niece. Then we were pregnant together and neither of us found out what we were having, and wouldn’t you know, spring brought a pair of chicks; one for each of us. Then, she got pregnant about four years after that and it was, you guessed it, another girl. At this point, it’s starting to get crazy, right? Well, unbeknownst to any of us, including my sister, she wasn’t quite done. In a surprise turn of events, this past fall Kirsten welcomed her sixth little bambina.

They’re beautiful, each of them. My sister’s husband is Mexican and Kirsten is tall, pale and blonde, so it’s a fun little genetics recipe to play with. Some are blessed with the beautiful olive tone and big brown eyes that will just straight up level you, Disney princess style, and others get to be curly towheads with our family’s signature blinding white complexion. The teams currently stand at Brownies: 2, Blondies: 3, TBD/Mashup: 1.

Sometimes I forget just how sensational my sister’s harem is. And then I have a moment of drowning in my own personal kiddie pool (by comparison) of estrogen. Three girls is a lot of emotion, I tell people. We’re never short on tears, drama or clogged toilets. And then I think about doubling down. I think about that feeling when you finish a half marathon and no way, ever, would you consider turning around and doing it again. But that’s my sister’s life. When I tap out and take my melatonin at 9, whipped and tattered from 13.1 miles complete, my sister is a short highway drive away, winding down from a full 26.2. She is a hardcore, badass marathon mama.

It earns her a bit of grace, I’d say. But she’s built for it. She’s my opposite in most every way. She knows when to just roll around in the sea of torn wrapping paper rather than frantically scoop it up and risk missing the moment. And that, I’d say, makes all the difference. Dancing rather than disinfecting. Laughing rather than laundry. It can all wait, and it will. I mean, the mess is multiplying by six at her house as we speak. But she is the perfect woman, partnered with the perfect man, for bringing a big ole gaggle of gals up right.

The stories that come out of her house are gold, as you might imagine. Someone’s always drawing on someone else’s face with permanent marker or painting themselves from head to toe in Desitin cream. Once a mouse got in the toilet. Her oldest, Olivia, who was much younger at the time, unknowingly sat down to go potty and, upon discovering the rodent clawing and frantically swimming beneath her bottom, screamed, “I pooped a mouse! I pooped a mouse! Mommy, Daddy, I pooped a mouse!” She wouldn’t sit on the can for weeks after that. There are self-administered haircuts that will live on in infamy and scars from sister-on-sister war crimes. But all in all, it’s pretty organized chaos.

People always ask me how she does it, and the truth is, I honestly don’t really know. But like any good journalist, I’m always willing to go straight to the source for you guys. So, settle in for this lovely little testimony from one of my favorite tired, brutiful mothers, who happens to be my big sister.

SOME KINDA SUPERWOMAN: KIRSTEN
– Written by the woman herself

December 26, 2015. I’m brushing my teeth and watching the screen of a digital pregnancy test. I say I’ll never forget it, but does anyone ever really forget those moments? The screen showed a clock flashing, then suddenly a “YES +”. I froze. My heart began to race and I felt hot from the inside out. This was not part of the plan. This was not on the family calendar. I’m ashamed to admit it now, but the reality is that in that moment that was not what I wanted. Two thoughts ran through my mind: First, “What will people think?” and then, “What does this mean for my plans and my dreams?” I had no idea how this surprise would fit into our already crazy family.

But I’m getting ahead of myself here. Let me introduce myself.

I’m the manager of this circus. I’m the one who attempts to hold this show together while delivering an appearance that resembles anything even near the neighborhood of normal. My fearless husband is our ring leader, and, doing various acts and flips and stunts in rings on either side of us, you will find six beautiful, intelligent, strong-willed, persistent, messy, hilarious, challenging little girls. Yes, I know, I know … SIX GIRLS! No, we were not trying for a boy. No, we aren’t Catholic. Each one of these little tyrants can take us from gut-wrenching laughter to the edge of a cliff in a matter of seconds, and to say it’s like a rollercoaster ride would be a laughable understatement.

On any given day, there will be at least one room (usually more) that I walk into and then immediately turn around, walk out, and shut the door. Today that would be Sloan’s (our fifth) and Izzy’s (our third). I truly believe that I would have better luck trying to teach those pigs to fly than I would have keeping this place clean. If you come over, you’re going to stick to my counters. You’re going to find more apple cores around my house than in the pages of a Berenstain Bears book. There’s no guarantee that a little surprise won’t still be lurking in the toilet when you go into our bathrooms. (WHY WON’T THEY FLUSH?!) I’ve also seriously considered just giving up and telling people we run a fruit fly breeding program. I mean we’ve got reproduction down in this neck of the woods. In other words, if you stop by unannounced and miss the very tiny window where I have tidied enough to present my pretend house to planned company, please bring a hazmat suit.

The truth is, whenever anyone asks me how we do it all, my answer is easy … we don’t! Hang around for 20 minutes and you’ll see for yourself.

I am not supermom. Mass chaos is considered the routine. I forget things all the time. I can’t tell you how many rolls of toilet paper we go through because, honestly, it’s too frightening to keep track. I yell. A lot. I go to the grocery store more than the bathroom. And you should see us all in the car. It’s like a clown car, only instead of men-children with their faces painted in freaky patterns, it’s grumpy, needy little gremlins fighting the entire trip over who looked at who first. (Did I mention they all suffer from extreme motion sickness? That’s right. Envy me, people.) Someone always feels left out or let down. Someone is always hungry. Someone always has to pee at the worst possible time. I’d love to tell you I’m Carol Brady reincarnate. I’d love to say that I’m patiently and calmly helping them learn to solve their problems and hug it out, but I’m not. I’m human. I’m reactive. I’m selfish.

This brings me back to the little surprise I mentioned earlier.

Two days after finding out I was pregnant I started bleeding. I wholeheartedly thought I was having a miscarriage. That was such a strange moment. Strange because I was terrified, and strange because just hours before, I’d felt so much uncertainty about what this baby even meant. This was one of those moments when I had to stop and get my poop together. (Yes, I said poop. I’ve adapted to censorship.) I had to start reevaluating what family means. I had to realize what I would be losing in this new adventure (plans, so-called dreams, schedules and calendars) didn’t amount to a hill of beans, as my dad would say, compared to this new little life.

Having a large family is extremely uncomfortable. That’s the honest-to-God truth. Nothing is easy. Nothing ever goes as planned. As I’m writing this, my husband is picking blue slime out of our three-year-old’s hair. We weren’t put on this earth to be comfortable, though. I truly believe we were put here to be challenged. That’s how we change and grow. I know it’s cheesy, but I often think about diamonds and how much pressure it takes to transform them from a nasty lump of coal into something beautiful. Challenges do that. They teach us. They mold us. I pray that when this journey of motherhood slows down, and my little gremlins are grown, I will see that I have helped mold my kids into loving, God-fearing women. I hope to accomplish that for them, but I know they are doing that for me.

We always talk about our responsibilities as parents and how difficult they can be. God help us all, it really is difficult. But what we don’t discuss enough is what we get out of it. Each and every one of my babies has a totally different personality, and each one of them teaches me something different about myself. It’s like being in a fun house and having six images, all different, but all reflecting me. They are my mirrors, pointing out everything beautiful in my life, but also every flaw. Sometimes what I see is hard to swallow, and even harder to accept, but without them I’d never unlock that piece of myself. I wouldn’t challenge myself to keep growing, and keep going.

Everyone tells you that your kids grow up fast. I have a 14-year-old! Trust me, it does go fast. Every day with them is a gift. I won’t pretend for one second that I appreciate this gift the way I should on a daily basis. I won’t pretend that there aren’t times I think, Man, two kids would have been so much easier. What I will say, though, is that I will be eternally grateful for the moments I laid in bed feeling like the biggest failure in the world (and there are a lot of them), because those are the moments that humbled me. The ones that built and are building me. Those are the moments I had to pray for strength and step outside my comfort zone. I can’t quit this gig. I can’t give up. I have to become more. I have to keep pushing myself. The stakes are too high. I have to keep running, knowing each day I’m a little more equipped for the marathon. Eventually, I will get to a finish line and all the inconveniences and all the mistakes made and lessons learned will amount to something so much bigger than me.

When our little surprise baby was three weeks old, she gave her mama another big scare. She came down with a pretty serious infection. What followed were months of uncertainty. Months of stress. Out little seven-pound gift from God once again brought me a reminder: Life is so precious and makes you no promises. When I look at her, the reflection is one of gratitude and appreciation for what God has entrusted to me.

I used to worry about what everyone thought of me. I used to strive for the façade of perfection, or even normalcy. My large family may look like an inconvenient mess to many, but I just don’t care anymore. God knew it would take six girls to get through my thick skull that His purpose is so much bigger than anyone’s opinion. Love is not some beautiful fairytale. Love is hard. Its fabric is flaws and mistakes, discipline and tears. It’s laying in bed at night feeling like you can’t do this anymore only to get up the next day and try again. That’s the gift my large, insane, beautiful family brought me. The gift of love.