Freaking Nights

Single mom here. Lance in Cincinnati completing his DMA. Me, with two little kids, having moments. Lots of them. While they appear copious, said moments are better qualified than quantified. As in I want to strangle you kids and throw you out the window moments; my throat hurts from yelling moments; aw that’s so sweet and considerate of you moments; and I love you so much you are so darn precious moments.

An attempt to chart out the moments yields occasional surprises. And unyielding guarantees: A morning shower or an important phone call will invariably activate the sibling squabbles. “Then I’m not gonna be your friend,” and “then I’m not gonna give you any stickers” are fierce threats from the mouths of babes. Bedtime, on the other hand, will usher in instant camaraderie, and infinite play.

I sit in the living room in the dark taking it all in: the talk about soon visiting Aba in Cincinnati, the patter of little feet scampering to collect toys and stuffies to shove into the Elmo and Dora knapsacks, Sebastian declaring the flight safety rules and assuring his sister that she can’t fall out of the plane, only off the moon, but that he’ll catch her, and not to worry about an astronaut suit that’s something else altogether.

“Liliana say crescent moon.” “But Sebastin, I don’t wanna be an ascronaut because why you didn’t listen to my words?”

And I teeter: between Omigod that is so freaking SWEET, and these kids freaking need to get to sleep NOW. Lots of freakings you’ll have noticed. But that’s not how I pronounce it when the sentiment erupts from within me.

Yup, nowadays, meltdowns are MY territory. Don’t even try going there you three year old terror, I’m gonna beat you to it! Sure you have an ear-splitting cry but I can curse and bang my hand on the table. And I’m bigger. Top that. I’m also really good, I’ve noticed, at making stupid threats that I’ll never be able to fulfill: If you don’t behave you’re not going to Cincinnati; That’s it, I’ve had it with you, I’m never taking you to visit your Aba again. They do now and again yield results these paroxysms, but they make me feel like crap.

Sebastian comes out of his room an hour after I’d said good-night to ask me for a piece of paper and some crayons and I nearly lose it. I grab a piece of paper, tell him to tell me what he wants to write and I’ll write it (quickly!) and get straight to bed. Four categories, OK: Water. Oxygen pack. Food. And… C’mon, yalla, hurry, I press. Um… friendship. Sigh.

He has a way of stringing me, this kid, when I’m at the end of my rope, with a little tender wisp, that makes me crumple, and smile. Like when someone delivers a kind word while you’re crying, and your tears gush even more fervently. The smile through the tears breaks through the breakdown.

[The other one has her “way”, simply, with an impish smile and a full-bodied laugh.]

When Sebastian showed me the sticker chart he’d written out a few days earlier, I had read the categories rather – well – categorically: cleanup, helping, set the table… put a DVD on in Saturday. I reread the fourth item silently and my heart skipped a beat. (So that Ima can sleep in, is the unwritten clause.) One moment, I beamed and swelled at this token of thoughtfulness. The next moment, I guiltily pondered the priorities I am instilling in my sweet children.

The other night the kids wanted to watch a TV show. And I let them. “The inmates are running the asylum”, I could hear my dad saying. But the guilt swiftly evaporated; the warden was able to take a breather (and fold laundry!). I “let it go” and avoided a marathon of escalating nerves. Letting them fall asleep in front of the TV is an underrated bedtime routine. (Sure, it would have been better if the freaking Cat in the Hat’s raucous thingamajigger adventures settled into some mind-numbing Baby Einstein, but hey, “you get what you get, and you don’t get upset”, as the mantra from Liliana’s daycare goes.) 

OK, I know: this is far from a formula for a regular healthy bedtime routine. But it served me well for a night. It allowed me to inhabit a peaceable rhythm. Perhaps the formula worth exploring is that of figuring out when to step in, and when to step back. I’m still trying to figure out the middle ground.

In the mornings, things are generally less cloudy. Shafts of sunlight seep through the windows and a smile spreads over as I stretch under the covers to the sounds of genuine amity: "Good job Liliana, you did an 'L'", and "Sebastin that's a really beautiful house... which Barbie do you wanna keep?"

Moments later, little sister pronounces “Sebastin: ‘cuddly’” and the two of them storm into my bedroom to demonstrate so that I can snap a photo.

My darling angels. Until the shower!

In the moments vs. the moments, the bad ones linger and the good ones dwell. What lingers I eventually shake off: with a deep breath, a pillow over my head, or a Bellini. What dwells I let into my heart.

I walk into the kids’ room after a night of moon-diving astronaut activity and notice the accursed paper now replete with illustrations.  In the “friendship” category there is a figure with a curly mop among the stick friends! I’m still coming out on top. 

Spills, Slowness, and Best Days Ever

“You’re NEVER having juice again!!!!” 

Say what???!!! Did I just say that out loud??? How idiotic a statement is that? And this to the angel child, the child who repeatedly admonishes his sister to “ask Ima,” the child who is distressed when I forget to brush his teeth in the morning, the child who cowers in the back-seat when I do an illegal U-turn; the child with whom a disciplinary talk will cover the “rules aren’t always to be followed” terrain.

Meanwhile little sister pipes in sweetly (devilishly!) as she flashes her impish smile, “but I didn’t spill juice”, and caps the experience moments later -- in her sing-songy na-nee-nee-na-na voice, and her uncanny embodiment of the un-translatable word davka (just to spite is the closest I’ve got) -- “I have juuice and you-u-u dooon’t.”

As tears formed in Sebastian’s eyes, remorse settled in mine, and it dawned on me that I have the emotional intelligence of a two year old. But did I mention that this was the third spill that morning?

I subsequently insisted repeatedly that I’m not really mad, really I’m not, and showered my poor boy with kisses, but whom was I kidding, my anger had gotten the worst of me, and my child, any child, is no fool. He maintained: “you are mad.”

Later, it seemed, Sebastian had moved on. But I hadn’t. Something bristly remained lodged, itching me throughout the day. It took me awhile perhaps but I realized what needed to be done: an apology, plain and simple. And I set to formulating and rehearsing, elaborate and complicated. I caught up to him while walking to the car through an idyllic field following a community picnic event, and as we passed a patch of sunflowers and the foliage caught the gleams of the late evening sun, I started: I want to talk to you about something. Remember earlier this morning, when… Sebastian listened and as I continued to develop my sophisticated explanation, I noticed that he’d moved on to something else. I don’t even remember what it was: a dog, a playground, a bicycle, a sunflower. Point is he’d gotten the point. And I didn’t need to harp on it. Because the world is full of marvels, and sadness (or anger) will only serve you for so long.

Six seconds to be exact, according to emotional intelligence experts. Nowadays, when I am seized by my emotions, I ask Sebastian to help me breathe. He has a good laugh at my expense and we both slow down.

Mindful of the value of slowing down, I agreed to let him finish his drawing the other day, before leaving the house for an impending appointment. But the clock was ticking and as he finished coloring and began writing the letters S E B (we had to give him a 9 letter name didn't we) and ‘A’ didn’t follow the ‘B’, I was flung into anxiety mode, tapping my feet edgily and wondering what the hell, besides his name, needed to be written right at this moment. And then I saw the letters unfold: SEB TO IMA (He never writes his name SEB; when he has the time), and the pinch in my heart swelled. When it comes to parenting, the learning curve is high.

It’s a good thing the lessons are frequent, and laden.

Tonight Liliana sat on my lap as I applied ointment to the gash near her eye, and Sebastian sat on Lance’s lap while getting his nails cut. Can’t get much more mundane than that. Suddenly Liliana exclaims: “this is fun!” And we all agreed. We were together. Slowing down. Cozied up. Staring at the paintings on our wall as if watching a movie: an unhurried motion picture.

A few weeks ago, we went to Whistler. It was a cold and rainy couple days in late May. Sitting outside bundled and sopping, eating a beavertail, Sebastian pronounced deliberately: “this is the best day of my whole life”. And we all paused for a moment -- and swiftly joined in – “me too” -- as if a spontaneous prompt had been set. Sebastian’s words had liberated a feel-good mist.

A week later, at a play-date picnic, another “best day ever” pronouncement was declared; and again, more recently, at an outdoor carnival. 

We’ve decided to make a “best day ever” list. Sebastian is numbering it to 62. It’s nice to be reminded of simple pleasures. And to know that joy doesn’t run out. It runs in; and spills over. You just need to slow down to catch the spills. And let them trickle.

pee pee and patterings

“I need to go pee pee,” Sebastian called out. I responded, as any mother would have done, briskly, instinctively: dumped the muffin and the coffee on Lance’s lap and ran. As I ushered Sebastian to the women’s washroom, he stalled. I turned to him with a wave of urgency and then it happened: the moment. “I’ll go in here,” he said, turning to the adjacent door. “Oh ok so… I’ll just wait right out here for you?” Words I had heretofore never uttered. So I stood there: outside the men’s washroom, feeling helpless, awkward, strange. The butterflies that by and large lie dormant in my belly fluttered into my throat as my eyes moistened. The tears didn’t fall. I was too busy, I suppose, puzzling over the novelty of the experience, assimilating it. The dewy droplets hung suspended, then settled, dropping inward as I just. stood there.

When I turned to Lance, beaming that I’d had a “moment”, he replied casually, “oh yeah, he does that.” And that’s when I wanted to cry. And scream. When the fuck? Where the fuck? What the fuck – did I miss all these last four months while I was consumed with intensive studies?

Four terrible horrible no good very bad months, is what this past semester was. Sure I garnered invaluable literary wisdom, insights, and analytical tools, but for all this sophisticated theoretical flair, bloody nothing that was social media worthy, nothing to post on facebook, nothing to blog about. It was a time of imbalance, of sleep deprivation, of grey rainy days. Time management was a bitch; it eschewed family and individual wellness. Sebastian said to me one night, as I was tucking him in, that he wishes I would get up “early” one morning so that we could work on the book he was writing. And I went to bed, as I routinely did, at around 2 am, after hours of reading, with bloodshot  eyes and a pinch in my heart, knowing that I would wake up just as foggy and hazy, and that the morning would be as always, harried and frantic.

I know that gratitude is the key to happiness blah blah blah. And I can certainly talk about the rarified joy and freedom I discovered when after hours upon hours of studying I stepped outside into the crisp air, and on a rare occasion, picked up Sebastian from school and went grocery shopping with him; about the mundane acts of dishwashing and laundry that became delightfully heightened and served a welcome respite; about the time I took a study break and spent the day blissfully organizing closets while dancing to Cabaret music, marveling at the marvelous sense of freedom I was experiencing.  

But for these heightened moments of the mundane, there was also the pleasure of lying with a cool pillow pressed to the face, feeling glum and despondent. Yes I did plenty of wallowing, plenty of cursing and self-indulgent pitying. And there’s a “key” in there too: to feeling “terribly horribly no good very bad,” and to wishing that your happy friend’s ice cream will fall and land – in Australia. W.B. Yeats said: “Being Irish, he had an abiding sense of tragedy which sustained him through temporary periods of joy.” I do believe there’s a measure of happiness to be had in wallowing moments too. Think sad melancholic music. Think angry white woman music. Think a cozy throw and a tub of chocolate chip cookie ice cream.

Sometimes things just don’t mix. Or maybe it’s that they flow – from one to another -- rather than mix. Gratitude has a flow to it. As does wallowing. Each discrete, each its own sort of good. But the edges are permeable and the distance between the two is wispy. Kinda like that space between a child’s fit of tears and fit of laughter. Maybe they all share similar “patterings”; the need to be in it, whatever it is, in the moment, and to move away from it, in a moment.  

Sebastian is teaching me the importance of “patterings”, or what the rest of us would call patterns. 

There are the color patterings on his coloring sheet, the patterings that he forms for his special objects on top of the bookshelf, the patterings that he wondrously detects on the little stones that he finds in the school playground. I like that in his word “pattering” we hear patter, tiny tappings that insinuate a certain rhythm, a certain cadence. They are small and many, like the rain in many places /from many clouds to be absorbed, to be drunk… (Yehuda Amichai, “Not Like a Cypress”)

In Vancouver, the rain is certainly absorbed. But I only know one person who will drink it, who will get drunk on it, who exclaims, “I like this day” as we walk outside towards her daycare, rain or shine: for Liliana, everything is a laughing matter.  There’s something about this child that makes me laugh, makes me happy. Something, I suppose, that emanates from her laugh, her happiness.

At the dinner table she makes faces, throws back that boisterous laugh, and performs flippant mimics of me, repeating my words with the same (only augmented) intonation and air: “Mamamushka” – big and oozing…  “What happened to my baby? Where’d she go?” affected and teasing.

Hearing your words echoed does something to you. It makes you laugh at yourself. It makes you reflect. It makes you feel a little silly. It makes you realize, ultimately, how much and how little it really matters: all of it. This is perhaps the biggest challenge: to be able to care vigorously about things. And to let things go. To let them go so that you can let them in; this is the paradox.

I’ve noticed that when I get angry and frustrated, when the kids drive me fucking crazy, when a baking endeavor turns into a messy fiasco, 

or when a nightly bath turns into a torrential flood, 

and the inevitable primal scream issues forth from inside me, they laugh. And I follow. They have a way of lightening things, these darn kids, of clearing the space, allowing things to burst and to dock.

Now I’m writing books with Sebastian and waiting outside washrooms while he goes pee. Letting it go -- and letting it in.

On ugliness. And musical theatre.

It starts innocently enough: a child’s obsession with rescue vehicles. “What does the police do?” They help people. “How do they help people?” Well… I can feel my tongue slipping down the inexorable icy slope; broaching the subject of ‘bad’ hurtful people would be inevitable. And so an innocent question from a five year old evolves into a discussion on murder and prison.

The conversational topics I have covered lately with my five -year old encompass cancer, murder, prison, alzheimer’s… and there's always the eternal, undying subject of death.

Just the other night, following the previous night’s discussion on cancer which he had prompted just as I was leaving his bedroom, Sebastian asked: “When we’re died are we died forever or do we come back as a baby and then grow again. I tried to leave the unknowns open and to suggest a faith-based response. People have different beliefs. What do you want to believe? He thought for a moment. Then: “Does what each person believes happen to each person?” Hm. Stuck. My pragmatic kindergartner wanted hard facts. With tears in his eyes, he pleaded, “but how do you know? What if you really stay died?” He then decided he was going to die at age 100 and turned away to beckon the night's soft slumber. I smiled through the tears and turned to Liliana. She, at age three has but thoughts of jellybeans and puddles. And poo poo and pee pee: the eternally comical things in life.

Liliana doesn’t receive knowledge; she invents it. This is a child who cannot be read to or sung to; she insists on “reading” her own books, “singing” her own songs. She marches to the beat of her own drum. I like her stories. I hope she scribbles them and blares them -- big, bright, colorful, and delicious. The world needs them. I need them.

Because what’s out there is less than palatable. Indeed, this has been a season of horrible, violent stories. Over the winter break, I read Margaret Atwood’s Onyx and Crake, a futuristic fantasy of a dystopian world in which genetic engineering has run amok and global devastation has spread. And saw The Girl with the Dragon Tatoo. Echoing Sebastian’s enduring question and plea, I found myself imploring: Why?

I remember the first time Sebastian was hit or pushed by another boy. He was two or three at the time and all he could do in the wake of the incident was to repeat “Why? Why?” through his throbbing tears. The idea that hurt could be intentional was beyond his comprehension. I wanted to give an arm and a leg to return to the moment before, to wipe away this ugly blotch from my toddler’s as yet tender existence.

As badly as we wish to, we can’t shield our children from life’s ugly stuff. But we can teach them how to respond to it: with empathy, with loving-kindness, with courage and compassion.

A few days ago, when I didn’t promptly cooperate with his specific and elaborate game request, Sebastian told me he’s the police and will take me and put me in jail. Ha. But just yesterday, while watching some cartoon on television, where one of the characters got teased, he asked in terrible distress, “But Why?” His why’s are the path to clarity, for better or for worse.

I can only endeavor to imbue the sadness and the fear with some teachable moment, some instance of compassion: to blend the awful with the hopeful, the sad with the happy.

Sebastian’s favorite movie nowadays is RENT. (His mother’s role as bohemian in Jonathan Larson’s raucous drama accounts for the then 3 -year old’s rather early introduction to this piece.) 

A little while ago he decided to broaden his repertoire of songs/scenes and we watched the I’ll Cover You Reprise – a stirring and heart-rending scene, where Collins sings to his deceased lover Angel at her funeral (Angel, the transvestite, is, as she would have wanted it, eternally a she to Sebastian. I repeatedly have to catch myself speaking of her as him. He corrects me every time.) Sebastian wants to know why Collins is crying as he sings, why he’s sad, why this song is so beautiful, why it is, as I have put it, sad and happy?  I say a few words about longing and enduring love. This is me blending.

I’ll Cover You is now one of his favorite scenes. I don’t know how much of the “happy and sad” he actually gets. But there’s a delicate poignancy in his endeavor to get it, to understand, to experience. As I watch him watching this moving scene, I feel it: that happy-sadness.

Not every musical scene around here is so tender. Tonight, the kids dumped the contents of every toy bin singing out “It’s a hard knock life for us”. I felt my blood boiling and was tempted to chime in “’stead of kisses you’ll get kicked”.  Then Sebastian started singing, in a sweet melodious voice: “No day but today”. I hearkened to my glorious heydays on the Venice Theatre stage, shut my eyes to the mess around me and belted out: “How about looooovve, measure in love, seasons of love”…

Forget the ugly. We’ll clean up tomorrow.