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.