Pocket Pants

Two is a sweet age.

I summon up the image of my two year old meticulously placing his toy cars, one by one, in a single-file line, arranging and rearranging, with manic precision. I recollect sitting and watching him, a wave of peaceful contentment washing over me.

Then one fine day, that two year old turned three. And those treasured cars were no longer an image of industrious exactitude. No, my toddler -turned -preschooler no longer placed his cars; he threw them. Flung them far and wide.

Yes this is about Alexander’s toy cars. But it is about a lot more: because he threw a lot more than just those cars. A casual walk by a countertop would spawn an offhanded swipe of any and every object that unswervingly nestled there. 

“Shmok”, I mumble. [My Hebrew use of the word is not the same as the English rendering ‘schmuk’; it translates, more accurately, to ‘Asshole’.  Hebrew, paradoxically, keeps me muted.]

“YOU shmok”, my endearing three year old pipes back, a smirk circling his lips. (They certainly are sponges, those critters).

“No you shmok”

 “No you shmok”

and so forth.  

Yes. It’s as it sounds. Forty-something woman having a full-on back-and-forth spat with three year old boy. 

When faced with the repeated task of picking shit up, my capacity for creative and original rejoin, is ostensibly, diminished. Routine and repetition obscure wit and innovation. 

But let’s get back to the cars. Because aligned or scattered, they are treasured.

It’s now evening. I carefully  -- masterfully -- take off Alexander’s pants by the bathroom. It is a technique I have perfected --holding the pockets as I lower the pants to ensure the cars that are crammed in them, don’t tumble out. Once the pants are off, he will take them out of the pockets, revealing one car after another after another, a staggering sleight of hand.

Minutes later, he is bathed and wrapped in a towel. Older kids are watching TV. Baby is contentedly meddling with a box of (child-proof!) vitamins on the carpet. The universe has afforded me a window, a magical porthole; I only have to get the delectable three year old to sleep in this opening and the rest will take care of itself. Easy. Smooth. Sweet.

I fetch the boy’s pajamas.

“No, not these pants, the other pants.”

“What other pants?” I feel my blood pressure begin to climb and quickly move into his dresser. Let’s do this. Other pants. OK. Quick. Clock is ticking.

“How about these? You want the striped ones or the ones with the trucks?

“No I need pocket pants!”

Of course you do: I run back to the dresser.

“OK, check these out, these are perfect pocket pants, look how cool these pockets are”.   

“No I want regular pocket pants!” His voice is forceful, definitive.

OK. I take out the pants I was saving for the morning. 

“No no the ones… you know, the ones I… like, um… the ones I was…” By now his voice has grown shaky beneath his quivering lips. His eyes are moist and his movement is tremulous. He is weary of being misunderstood and is on the verge of becoming softly undone. Explosive tantrums are for earlier hours; this is a raw and tender implosion.

Oh you mean the ones you were wearing? The dirty ones, the ones I already threw in the laundry.

I lay with him on the mattress by our bed. He is wearing the scoured pants that held all his enchanted cars earlier, and churning out his delectable mix of Hebrish: “if I sleep kol layla (all night) on the mizron (mattress), I get a pras (prize).” Right, I assure him, wordlessly trying to figure out when I’ll manage to squeeze a trip to the dollar store the next day. The collection of cars that he must contain in his pockets is expanding beyond capacity as we negotiate the reward system that is designed to reclaim our bed.

Curled up next to him, I close my eyes, part modeling, part rebuffing: This mom has closed shop.  His weary eyes flutter. Moments later he pipes up: “I actually love this mom,” a variation on the more common, “ I’m going to find a new mom” catchphrase acquired from sassy older sis. “This mom?” I repeat. Even the most stalwart supermom needs to be bolstered and cajoled. I smile and watch his eyes close. And I rush out. Rushing is my modus vivendi.

Gotta get to the others, older two who have been on duty, entertaining baby. They need to get to bed too. 

Let’s just say it isn’t easy, it isn’t smooth, it’s bittersweet, but after a while all are asleep and I stumble into bed.

 I don’t know what godforsaken time it is, but I know two things for certain: my husband is fast asleep and there is no way in hell I can ever sleep what with the clang and clatter of cars in our bed. A spongy body sits up, collects the tumbling cars, loads them back in his pockets, where’s the blue one? No the other blue one. (I hand him the pink one and he is assuaged). Rinse. Repeat. All. Bloody. Night. Long.

At one point the cars jangle again but this time there is less wiggling and repositioning. There is a static energy that is at odds with the dynamic movement of sleep. I open half an eye and clumsily press the home button on my phone. 6:26 am. The point of no return: he will not go back to sleep.

I turn to my husband and recount the nightly escapades. Silence. Only husbands -- make that fathers -- have this talent for sleeping through anything and everything. I know later he will ask me, ingenuously: “where did Alexander sleep?”

Meanwhile, the boy is tugging at my arm demanding his breakfast. My dogged attempt to drag my ass outta bed is motivated by one marvelous thought: I can get him to daycare and be back home by 8 am. The race is on.

Because mom truth number two hundred and thirteen: few sentiments compare to the warm loving one that washes over you when you wave goodbye to your kids and watch them run off to school. “I actually love this boy” my heart surges, as I drive away.

But bedtime is a long way from those prized moments post- drop off.  A lot can happen in between.

 On one particular and commonplace night, I am especially and regularly bushed. Feeling done with the whole lot of them. And when Alexander tests me at bedtime, I lose it: I fume, I seethe, I flare.

 It feels surprisingly good, and then unsurprisingly bad.  As my fierce pulsations dwindle to a shuddering tremor, the three year old by my side asks timidly, benevolently, “Mama are you ok?” His question strikes me, arrests me; no, are YOU ok? You are the one who has suffered my wrath. With his simple expression of concern, he has – I realize -- perceived a staggering truth: that oftentimes, the perpetrator, even as she is inflicting pain on her victim, is herself driven by pain, that her howls are appeals for love and support.

I cup his face and feel as if I am holding his heart in my hands, bolstered by its vibrations. “Yes, I’m ok. I’m sorry I got mad. I’m sorry I yelled.”

I lie down next to him and extend an arm, wrapping it around him furtively, like a conjurer whose secrets breathe in the still of the night. “This is my favorite snuggle”, he says.

Me too. Tonight I am not rushing. I draw in my breath and close my eyes. “I love you”, he utters, echoing my nightly refrain.

And just like that, in one pithy moment, the day’s exasperating episodes crumple and a mother’s fortitude is restored.

There is immense comfort in the feeling of containing, holding, enclosing something that is dear to you. Alexander’s pocket pants contain his cars. My circling arms, forming an imaginary container, enclose him: we can ease up in our mutual containment, both cherishing our prized possessions.

sweet sweet repose

“When’s the best time to have kids?”
“When they’re asleep!” someone once quipped.

The tongue in cheek here is not lost on young parents. The daily din and hubbub with little ones is constant and we parents need a break as much as they do.

But there is something deeper in that hushed pause, something transcendent even, something deeply poetic --

Your little body
     sprawled 
spent soft

   lips
laced with pleasure

your
undulating breath allows
   me
finally
to breathe
  luxurious
in leisure you
lay
   angled
in repose

you
   soften
my gaze
you hush me
   still
me
fill me
with

   wonder
fill me
  not
 with the love that trickles in but
with the love that spills
    out
you let me

      pause
gaze

gazing is not looking 
it is not finding or seeking
it is seeing
is believing
is simply
    being
still

a separate
    peace
capacious space
expanding     enveloping
    a
moment

  in time

       suspended

the time is now

The Great Pretender

Let’s play “Family”!

Pretend you’re the sister and I’m the mommy, pretend I’m the dog, pretend my name is Flora, Abigail, Elinor…

Liliana frolicks and revels in a world of pretend. As she plays “school” with her popsicle sticks, I marvel at the fluidity with which she weaves in and out of an assortment of characters.

In her pretend play she is constantly taking on different roles, assuming different selves. Intuitively, she internalizes the idea that the ‘self’ is ever shifting, that it is but a mere snapshot of us in a given moment. Through her play, Liliana’s ‘self’ is multifaceted; it is shaped by interactions. The vastly different characters that she assumes, I realize, are not outside of her but within her.

As she plays pretend, Liliana is not stuck in being, but is always on the brink of becoming.

Look up ‘pretend’ in the dictionary and you will encounter the terms ‘make-believe’, or ‘making “as if”’. There is something delightful and expansive in this idea of making “as if”. ‘If’ denotes a condition that spawns potential. When we make “as if” we are opening up a space that encompasses and contains potential.  We rarely know where the bumbling path of “as if” will take us; but we must brace ourselves for the ride. Because it WILL take us places. Funny places, sobering places, earnest places, startling places: all of them, places of discovery. Playing “as if” is very simply, a form of exploration. And the streams of exploration feed into the sea of discovery.

Sebastian, a little older and more equable, sits on the corner stool at the kitchen table and works on his math homework. He talks through it aloud, including me in the problem solving process. I nod, throw in some hmms for good measure, and let my mind wander to a different array of problems that need solving (math was never my strong suit) – what are we doing for dinner, when do I have to nurse Sophie again, how are we going to negotiate the three pick-ups in three different locations tomorrow afternoon --

Sebastian walks me through his problem solving process and I nod perfunctorily. I’m glad he’s getting it because I sure as hell ain’t. Only moments later, he says “no that can’t be it,” and I let out a regretful “hmmm” and purse my lips in a diffident gesture of helplessness. He goes on to elucidate why that can’t be it and my perfunctory nods make a comeback.  

“That’s why I love math”, he exclaims, “Because you have to keep trying over and over until you get it.”

His comment washes over me at first. And then jars me into awareness: WAIT WHAT??  

WOW! If it were I, I’d be like -- after the first failed attempt -- “fuck this shit, I suck at this, this is the stupidest suck that ever did suck, I give up.”

Psychologist Carol Dweck talks about the fixed vs. growth mindset. According to Dweck, we can be placed on a continuum based on our implicit views on ability; on one end lie those of us who believe our success is based on innate ability (“fixed”), and on the other, those who believe that success is a result of dogged persistent trial and error (“growth”).

Like his sister, Sebastian takes on different roles in solving a problem; he “plays” with different scenarios. He too is not stuck in being, but teeters on the verge of becoming.

As I watch my children play to learn, I realize that I need to learn to play, that I need to un-“fix” and “grow” my mindset. I pretend I’m the sister and she’s the mommy and I instantly get “schooled”:

L: I need your phone

Me: No, why?

L: Because I’m the Mommy.

I wince, smile, accede, and lean further in: to a place where now, my daughter, experiences a sense of command, and I, a sense of vulnerability. Our “as-if” play opens a draft of delicate awareness.

Philosophers, such as Confucius, advocated living “as if”. Sociologists Puett and Gross-Loh are reaffirming this ancient view, claiming that “by engaging in as-if rituals – which are the very opposite of the sincere, authentic approach to ourselves – we will develop into better human beings.” (Stop trying to ‘find yourself’, The Guardian, May 8, 2016)

At the end of the day, I think, I’ve learned something. But the end of the day is not over.

Every parent will tell you that kids are wizards when it comes to timing; that that anticipated and dreaded stretch we call “bed-time” which punctuates a long weary day is the muddied place where children “wake-up”. That this, the point at which you, dear parents, are longing for peace and aching for repose, a glass of wine, a pint of ice cream, a mind-numbing sitcom on Netflix, for collapse on any level surface, this -- is when those wonder-filled creatures take it upon themselves to pull you in, to stretch your day, to curtail your night, to ponder life’s mystifying questions.

Sebastian: “Why are there still so many bad people? Why do people want to be bad?”

Liliana: “How did the first person get here if they weren't in their mommy's tummy?”

Who the hell has the mommy script? I just want to go the fuck to sleep.

But I take a deep breath. And I begin – to pretend.

 Not pretend like I know the answer. Not pretend like there is a singular answer. But making “as if”. This game of pretend, like a child’s pretend play, is not about deception, not about laying claim to, not about phoniness, but about imagination, about make-believe, about drawing forth a wellspring of possibility. Parenting is of course, a timeless game of improvisation.

The empowering thing, I realize, is this: I hold the reins; I drive the agenda. 

The response to the question about bad people ends up winding and turning – becoming -- a discussion on the Jewish concept of Tikkun Olam (the injunction to repair the world), compassion, and how little things measure up. How inviting one person to play with you can save and change that person’s life. Cue in another Jewish proverb: if you’ve saved one life, you’ve saved the world.

Another response – on evolution and God – meanders, shifts, and becomes:

“Was your Safta (grandma) a monkey?”

“So was God born before the monkeys?”

The thing about parenting is that you always get a “do-over”, a second chance, and a third, and fourth, and fifth – to revise the answer, to apologize, to breathe before you speak, to make “as if”.

“As if”, in its fluidity, allows us not only to respond, but also to question. For As If is closely connected to What If.  What if I were _____?  Well, let’s make “as if”. There is a generative relationship between questioning and learning, between playing and discovering.

In playing “family”, I take on the role of sister, of dog, of baby. And I watch my children take on the roles of brother, of father, of grandmother. As the boundaries become fluid, a rarefied reflection surfaces. I glean their version of familial roles and discern both the apparent and the suggestive: the What Is and the What If.  

We break from who we are when we note the not-so-good patterns we’ve fallen into and then actively work to shift them (i.e. I should probably be less attached to my phone) – “as if” we were different people in that moment. In drawing on different sides of ourselves, we come back slightly changed.

           (Puett and Gross-Loh, The Guardian, Stop trying to ‘find yourself’, May 8, 2016)

In un-“fixing” myself, I am able to allow for “growth”.

The thing about the family circus, with its assortment of characters, is that you’re a part of something that’s greater than the sum of its parts. In playing “family”, I expand my sense of family. 

So does Liliana. Her illustration of her “awsome” family delineates all six of us (named). Plus a dog (un-named)!

The dog, for the time being, will remain “as if.”

Hate, Love, and Life's Fucking Horns

“Anything else?” my obstetrician asks at my two-week post-partum visit, after I casually mention the usual maternal ailments: sleep-deprivation, sleep deprivation. Sleep. Deprivation. 

The soft crinkles around his eyes deepen as his question dangles, patiently, charitably. Here I was getting attention, not giving it, and I wanted desperately to cling to this flash of unchecked vulnerability, to the specter of speaking, and being heard, with no interruptions. Of course there is more. There is always more.

“Um… well: I can’t stand my five-year old daughter”, I sheepishly admit, calling to mind the flames that she fans:

“Ooooooohhhh you so cute babes!” she bounces (by my side) and pounces (on baby). “Ooohh he has such a cute butt ah koochy koochy koochy”. You have a cute butt. “Oh booty-butt booty butt booty-butt,” she chants spiritedly, delivering light rhythmic smacks to baby’s behind. All this while I am trying to nurse the sweet cherub.

My grandmother, in a Hebrew that is tenaciously native and reflexively displaced, would have characterized her great-granddaughter’s impassioned style as ’בכל לבבשך’, a superb phrase that is loosely translated as “with ALL your heart, with your entire being”. In Liliana’s case, it is with all [her] body. And volume. And grit. And guts.

This girl loves life; she takes it by the horns. Her zest, her spunk, her energy, her belly laugh are qualities I have long prized. But the nature of her “bigger than life” temperament summarily transforms an embrace to a smother, a pat to a thump. Meanwhile, my “bigger than life” fatigue teeters on the verge of transforming a gentle plea into a spirited kick in her oh so cute booty-butt.

Liliana is not the only one who lets her emotions rule, who needs to be on stage, front and center; it’s not easy living with a mini-me.

[Her older brother would rather be behind the scenes; or in the orchestra pit, with his dad. His mellow disposition jives elegantly with my emotionally wrought one. And his sweet awkwardness with baby is nothing short of endearing.]

When I lose it and roar at her to go away, she walks off grumbling “fucking Ima”.

Oh yeah. There’s that too: my kids curse. They overheard me saying “these fucking kids are driving me crazy” on the phone one time, when I was “single momming” it while simultaneously completing an intensive teacher education study program. So now, there’s this.

I detect the impish smile on her face and try to wipe the smirk off of mine (her usage of the punctuating adjective is after all, on point) and tell her, sternly, that that language is inappropriate. She then affects a wounded pout and moans: “it’s all because of you”. I bite my tongue and attempt a deep breath, knowing that the inevitable – the “remember what I said?” cry is imminent. Liliana’s arsenal of cries is handily designed. And it drives me fucking mad.

[Meanwhile, Sebastian’s cries over spilled milk or a misplaced rubber band bracelet please me, somewhere deep inside; the pleasure principle, I suppose, has something to do with gender-bending those stereotypes, with raising and cultivating sensitive, emotionally literate boys. I shrug off the speck of “reverse genderism” that drifts by and plow on, guilty pleasure retained, in my decided social betterment.]

"Remember what I said??" No collective restructuring here.

My daughter’s “remember what I said?” wail accompanies a charade of tears and posits but one antidote: a big strapping hug. The kind that requires mobility and free open arms: luxuries I rarely possess these days.

Still, I lay the baby down and walk over to her, arms outstretched. My initial annoyance at being displaced is assuaged as I feel her taut body soften in my arms. I linger a little, inhaling her warmth and alleviating my guilt for wanting to thwack her only moments earlier.

The value of a hug is something I am acutely sensitive to. I long for it dreadfully as I sit nursing, wedged, repeatedly, in the same corner of the couch, feeling blessed and stuck at once. But when my dear husband walks in the door, the kids beat me to it. “ABA ABA ABA”, their frenzied yells explode and pierce the air as their buoyant steps dash across the floor. I have no chance. I affect a faint smile. On the inside, a tantrum is bubbling, howling: “REMEMBER WHAT I SAID?”

Kids instinctively know that feelings must be expressed; they must be let out; they must be heard. But what they boast in intuition, they lack in delicacy. Inner tantrums need to be translated into outer words; in order to be understood and accepted, their expression must be tempered. Yet we big people, trained in the path of mitigation, often temper our temper, to the point of bottling it in.  Neither the tempestuous nor the temperate paths are altogether effective.

How do we navigate being heard and getting what we want, at any age? Are we to be direct or delicate? Arouse emotion or appeal to reason? There is a subtle line between letting out and holding in. Or holding out and letting in. It’s hardly linear. Oftentimes, it’s as much about giving and believing than it is about asking and wanting. Like pieces of a mobile, we are perched: hovering on the brink of motion, pining to sway to the music. The thread that connects us floats lightly. You move one piece and the assembled pieces, are in turn, set in motion.

On one of Lance’s orchestra rehearsal evenings – an ill fated Tuesday or Thursday -- I routinely braced myself for the looming bedtime frenzy. Baby was awake and fussy, and kids were bouncing off the walls. I stammered something about needing to go take care of baby, and Liliana suggested that I take him with me to her bed. Visions of bed acrobatics, dramatic tears, and “booty butt” slapping swirled in my head. But I released my breath and slowly climbed, babe in arms, into her bed. I could feel my breath shortening as I let out the typical bedtime commands: Head. On. Pillow. Now. After some shifting and bounding, she moved her pillow to my end of the bed, and there, leaning against the big yellow pouf, I sat, one hand stroking her hair, one cradling baby, focusing desperately on my exhale. Moments later, Liliana turned to me with a glimmer in her eye and whispered: “best night ever”. We hadn’t been doing anything out of the ordinary, just sitting there: In the dark, in close contact. I smiled and moved my hand to stroke her cheek.

Mere moments later her narrowing almond eyes flickered as her belly expanded, making way for the kind of laugh that swells and balloons.  She was poised to unleash her latest concoction: “Best. Fucking. Ima. Ever!”  The child for whom life is to be writ and lived LARGE needs a plentiful supply of punctuation, and she had found a mark that was juicy and apt.

I burst out laughing. My guard had dissolved. Best fucking Ima ever is something I can live with. Merrily.

That we, humans, ever trying to navigate fraught relationships, can go from “fucking Ima” to “best fucking Ima” in a flash, is reassuring. Of course the direction can also be reversed. But there is something slippery and gooey and good about the mercurial space between the two. Was it my hand on her head that changed her mood? Was it her words that changed mine? Does the behavior affect the mood or does the mood affect the behavior? Perhaps they are two sides of the same coin, as is the ear-splitting belly laugh that refreshes me at turns, and that irks me at others. Relationships are nuanced and complex. One of the few things that seem certain is that change is bound to happen when you least expect it. Nothing is irreversible. Twists of attitude, shifts of perspective -- all are faces of the enduring coin.

As I walked out of the kids’ room that night, Liliana’s words still trickling over me, I grasped something: her need for love and attention was met. I know what it’s like when it’s not, and I know what it’s like when it is. And when it is, there’s no denying it: best fucking feeling ever! Be it a vigorous embrace or a muted kiss on the forehead.

Life’s horns have their soft spots.

I look at my five-year old twisting baby Alexander into knots, and note the babe’s bright open smile. “He loves me”, she pronounces, “look, he’s smiling”. Yes he does, I accede. He is sporting a jovial smile indeed. 

“Oh I love the baby”, she avows. I love you, my baby, I say. And she laughingly counters: “I’m not a baby”, as she folds into my arms. I smile. Sometimes life’s horns are to be given, not taken. Flip it and reverse it! Let her love life. I am living love. 

Exhale.