what if the calling crows think you are a makeshift scarecrow built for chasing them away from their dreams? will they peck at you with sharp beaks so far from my grasp? will I be able to run fast enough to save you? the shifting rice tells me to take a deep breath. this isn’t a cornfield and the cranes won’t hurt you. but grey skies mean trouble so run to me anyway my boy. mother needs you in her arms.
Shoebox Poetry: This is the fourth poem in my series based on an old box of photos I inherited when my grandmother died in 2004. The back of this photo reads “Gary in rice field Nov ’53.” It’s a photo of my dad, but it made me think of my own boy. He turned 18 in December and is finishing high school in a few months. This poem poured out instantly along with some tears. I guess I have some feelings.
Here are the other poems in the series if you missed them:
pictures on sundays wearing pure white pearls, flowers, smiles
but not before
we wash in the family tub first dad and then my ten brothers then mother then me cold dirt shame s i n it absorbs deep into my soft skin my thick blood my frail bones leaving me scabbed broken apart dirtier than before but mother covers it all with white
smile, she says but I’m thinking of willow trees carving my name with a sharp knife pomegranate juice running down my chin screaming at the stars
straighten up, she says but I’m thinking of foggy forests walking barefoot through mossy earth honey dripping from my fingertips bathing in the moonlight
be sweet, she says but I’m thinking of roaring waves sunlight on freckled shoulders seaweed stuck between toes salt water taffy kisses
be quiet, she says but I’m thinking of throwing things messy hair and dirty fingernails cadmium yellow, ultramarine blue painting my own life
but not before
pictures on sundays wearing pure white pearls, flowers, smiles
Shoebox Poetry: Last week I rediscovered an old box of photos I inherited when my grandmother died in 2004. This poem is the first in a series of poems using those images as inspiration. Today’s photo is of my grandmother as a young woman. There is no date, but the sweeping handwriting on the back says “Kate, Gill St.” And yes, she told me her entire family bathed in the same water every Sunday before church. Can you even imagine?
We don’t have an origin story, for we met before memories form. Two little girls living across a curved court
named after a man. Pigtailed dancing dolls, we played through seasons until one day you moved and I learned heart-
break. Although I saw your plane fly away, I looked in all our hiding places for you. I’ve never stopped
looking. Time has brought us together over and over—but we always lose each other in the mess. Will this
time be different? I need it to be. You see, I’m tired of playing pretend— saying I’m okay when broken
bits of me want only to be seen. You hugged me tighter this time—do you need me too? Can
we take off our masks and find our old hiding places again? Can we swim together in secrets and show
each other the magical ways we have survived? Grab my hand yet again and let’s run toward the setting sun
together.
*This was written after seeing my childhood friend at a funeral last weekend and never wanting to let her go. Thank you for making sure we made a date to get together. I can’t wait.
I adjust the rearview mirror so I can see him smiling from his car seat in his striped footie pajamas. He turns the tiny gold key to my jewelry box over and over in his small hand. We spent all morning unlocking tiny doors around the house, letting out imaginary rabbits to rush around and find carrots in the carpet.
“The van is dirty,” he says.
We make eye contact in the mirror and he giggles. His bright blue eyes are hidden behind my pink sunglasses and he’s wearing a knit blue cap. I play along.
“Are you sure?” I say. “It looks clean to me.”
“Yes! It’s dirty!”
“Well…what do you think we should do?”
“Car wash!”
He says the words with a squeak at the end. His entire body jerks and the sunglasses fall off his face.
“You think so, huh?” I say.
“Yes! Car wash!”
“I don’t know…”
“Car wash! Car wash! Car wash!”
He knows I’m going to give in and I do. When he sees the yellow duck on the sign he claps his hands and kicks his legs. I put on our song, “Working at the Car Wash” by Rosvelt, and pull the shade back from the sunroof so we can see the bubbles all around us.
“Ready?”
“Yes!”
I watch the joy and excitement on his squishy face as he stares at the green, blue and purple bubbles. We sing, dance, and giggle over the harsh sounds of the water and the fat colorful rollers slapping against the van.
It’s pure joy.
A ritual we’ve discovered together.
An auntie thing.
He turns three on Saturday and I live for these pockets of magic we uncover.
Our shared treasure.
They feel big and important.
And fleeting.
My own children are teenagers, beautiful and complex. We are close and continue to create new memories, but I miss when they were small enough I didn’t have to share them with school or friends.
When they were mine.
I’ve discovered playing with my nephew allows me to slip back into memories of my own kids in a new and different way; to uncover the feelings and sensations of burying them in the sand, snuggling them at bedtime, and holding them when they’ve fallen.
These little snapshots of my kids at his age come into focus with surprising intensity. It’s like remembering an old language I used to speak, slipping on an old sweater, or opening a tiny door.
It’s a wonderful and unexpected gift.
All the love.
All the silliness.
All the tears.
All the firsts.
This week my son got his first bank account and started his first job. As I drive him to work it occurs to me it’s the exact route I took to his preschool. The feelings swelling up are familiar too; another moment of letting go and another shifting of our relationship.
The sadness I expect to come, however, doesn’t.
It feels different.
When I pick up him at 10 p.m. he requests a Happy Meal and hopes he gets a Stitch toy. He talks animately about his job and the people he met. He laughs and we listen to “Pump up the Jam” at high volume and sing along.
My boy.
There you are.
The pandemic and his accidents robbed him of growth and some of the firsts he should have had. It put us in a strange place of adversaries, and we’ve both lost the comfortable way we’d always been together. The silly way we could look back and move forward; our own dance.
Being a parent is like walking blindfolded into the wilderness. You have to use all your senses, listen to your natural instincts, surrender any idea you know what you’re doing, and you can’t call it quits.
Before the pandemic, my kids were involved in all kinds of activities and I felt the rushing movement like a giant truck I was simultaneously riding and driving. We would fight to get out the door and I’d yell. There were too many car meals, bathroom clothing changes, and exhausted tears. I felt overwhelmed and busy, but confident. I did my best, and at the end of the day, I felt good about the efforts I put in.
During the pandemic, all the things my kids claimed to hate but secretly loved, stopped. The life I’d helped them cultivate away from media and technology suddenly revolved around screens. I was here with them all the time, yet I felt like I didn’t really see what was happening. Our lives became a series of solitary moments in our rooms with our phones or computers, interspersed by nature walks and car drives to nowhere. It went on forever, yet it felt like a blip or a bump we’d get past. We expected it would return to normal, but it didn’t.
The pandemic has transformed me as a parent.
This is not what I expected my life to look like at this moment. I suspect some of you, perhaps all of you, can relate in some way.
For me, the fundamental shift is this; my belief my kids will be okay has been replaced with fear and anxiety.
I can trace how it happened.
Early in the pandemic, my son was in a skateboard accident. He got a road rash on his face and arms, knocked out his front teeth, and had a fairly serious concussion. Each first responder and hospital staff member took a moment to yell at him, and by extension me, for him not wearing a helmet. They rubbed it in thoroughly, and I felt their words chipping away the image I had of myself as a mother. I felt bruised and beaten as I nursed my son back to health in a dark room for several weeks, blaming myself for his accident.
A few months later my grandmother died of Covid. I tried to call her once at the hospital, but she was asleep. I didn’t try again. I was scared to talk to her. There’s was so much unsaid between us, and I wanted her to get better so I could say the things. The lost opportunity felt huge while bringing fears of Covid closer to home.
While I tried to convince myself my kids were strong and would fight Covid easily, I was terrified of unknowingly passing Covid onto my mom, who has bad asthma, or to my mother-in-law who is elderly and fighting cancer. Each time I had a tickle in my throat, I’d worry it would develop into something more, and I’d be one of those who weren’t so lucky to fight it off. It wasn’t a rabid fear, but rather a slow-simmering background of fear which chipped away at me bit by bit.
In addition to Covid, I began to fear how people were acting. The division of those who refused masks contrasted with those hoarding supplies and preparing for a sort of social war. All of these things made leaving my house feel risky and dangerous. I stockpiled dried beans, rice, and bottled water. My neighbor and I talked about his guns and how he could protect us; the conversation felt appropriate at the time.
I watched my kids implode in a way I didn’t understand, and still don’t. It wasn’t simply losing school and friends; it was a sort of reckoning of what kind of life they wanted to have. The trajectory of their accomplishments stopped, and they had nothing to be proud of. They had too much time to think about the world, to see all the ugliness of it, and it changed them.
Six months after his first accident, my son had a second one. This time he was hit by a car walking to the store to buy a soda. The police came to the door as I was doing the dinner dishes and I followed in a daze to the hospital. More scraps, another concussion, and a fresh batch of fears for me. The moments of that day play over and over in my head and it’s hard to let him out of my sight. I’m only truly comfortable when he’s home. I worry when he’s at school or with his friends. I obsessively track his phone throughout the day in an attempt to ease the anxiety. If his phone dies or I can’t get in touch with him, I panic.
My daughter, through the isolation from her peers and anxiety of the world, has developed some mental health struggles. I won’t share the specifics to maintain her privacy, but I missed the signs for too long. I felt another blow to my parenting ego, but worse; I felt a terrible sense I’d let her down in all the ways that matter. I had missed the big stuff. I felt selfish and scared.
All of this has changed me as a parent.
I find it hard to return to the way we were before because much of my mental energy has transformed into anxiety and fear.
My kids miss a lot of school and I don’t care about homework. I let them hang with their friends as much as they want, drive them to therapy and support groups. I’ve put thousands of miles on my car listening to their music and hoping they will feel better.
I want them to feel better.
I am also not requiring enough of them so that they can grow in the ways I know they need to. I’m scared to push and to hold them to the standard I did before. They are not falling short; I’ve simply grown fearful of requirements because I don’t want to lose them. I don’t push.
I’m not exaggerating when I tell you I’ve been more worried about my kids dying in the last two years than I did the entire time they were little. I was all about letting them climb a tree, or take a risk. I thought it was good if they got hurt because it showed them a boundary and allowed them to grow.
I’ve lost that.
Now, I fear pushing them will result in dire consequences.
It’s a tightrope of wanting to require more so they feel proud of themselves and grow, but also holding back because I see them as fragile. I know they aren’t as fragile as I’ve made them out to be, but I am.
It feels perilous.
And scary.
How do I become the right kind of hard while still protecting them and myself?
I don’t know.
There’s another component, a sort of social reckoning. What they have experienced has shifted the momentum of their lives. They see their life path, their goals, as something far different than I did at their age. It’s no longer as an individual, but rather how they will be in the world.
They are examining complex things: gender constructs, systematic racism, global warming. There’s a sort of punk rock attitude forming; a kind of new version of the “fuck the man” mentality. Instead of music and drugs, they want marches and social justice reform. They want the world to do better, to be better.
They aren’t going to sleepwalk through their lives, moving from one checked box to the next like I did; high school, college, career, house, kids.
I moved through each thing as if I had no say in the matter; as if all the decisions of my life were preordained and I was simply saying the lines written for me. After all the boxes were checked, I felt cheated and empty. I missed so much because I did what I thought was expected of me. I didn’t slow or pause to examine if the path was what I wanted or if the roles I’d cast myself in fit me anymore.
My kids aren’t doing that.
They think about the kind of lives they want, and although the images are still so unclear, I don’t think they will settle. They don’t believe the story my generation did, and they don’t want the same outcome. I see them looking at me and their father and shaking their heads at how much we don’t question things or fight for a better world. They check us on the language we use and talk about things it’s taken me over 40 years to recognize.
They are facing forward and not shrinking from it. While I see them as fragile, the evidence doesn’t support me. If they can look at the problems in the world with a sort of determined energy of change, how can I see them as weak?
I have hope that all this social awareness is leading to something amazing for their entire generation and, not to be too grandiose, the planet. This outward focus and the ability to accept and empathize with all kinds of people has to be leading to a better world for all of us.
None of this, however, makes it easy to be a mother right now. There are days, more than I care to admit, I wish I could hop into a time machine and do a better job of protecting and shielding my kids. I’d put them in a bubble and not let anything in.
I know that’s not actually true and it’s the fear and the pain talking.
It’s my desire for growth to not hurt, but that’s not how it works.
It hurts.
The story my kids are living, well…it’s their story. All the things they have been through are shaping and molding them. And they are incredible kids.
My challenge has become to support them, to love them, and to go slower. To continue to sit with them in the discomfort, to listen as they question things, and, most importantly, to see my fear as separate from their experience.
The last one has been the hardest for me.
I have to work on healing my own fears around losing them, and not let my decisions be based on either guilt for what they’ve lost or fear I’ll lose them permanently.
I’m trying my best.
Maybe the pushing will come when it feels right, but for now, I observe and I listen. I try and see the ways I can nudge and build on those. These kids have been through so much, and it’s made them strong.
They are freaking rock stars.
My daughter has started having friends over again and they laugh so much. She pours herself into her artwork. It’s for her, not for show or attention. She does art to express her feelings and she holds people accountable for their actions. She sets boundaries, even with me.
My son began working out at the gym and he plays basketball with his friends. He plays guitar in his room for the pure love of it, not caring to impress anyone or show off. He makes everyone laugh, can size up his teachers, and isn’t afraid to call them out when they are being unfair. He forgives me when I hold too tight or freak out, but doesn’t let me off without a fight.
My kids talk to each other all the time. It’s not fake. It’s not superficial. They talk about real stuff and lean on each other.
All of these things are beautiful and real.
My kids aren’t fragile.
I am.
I’m facing forward and I’m doing the best I can, and for that, I need to give myself grace.
No comparing.
No looking back.
I’ve come to realize, parenting doesn’t get easier, and maybe that’s part of the complexity of my own feelings. A bit of sadness my kisses and hugs aren’t magical anymore. A bit of the rose-colored glasses slipping as my kids enter the imperfect world-not the careful world of fairies and magic I crafted when they were little.
While this part of my life feels unsteady and hard, all I can do is keep loving them and trying to do better. As the Everly Brothers sang:
Love hurts, love scars Love wounds and mars Any heart, not tough Nor strong enough To take a lot of pain Take a lot of pain Love is like a cloud Holds a lot of rain
This morning I woke up early to make steel-cut oatmeal with homemade applesauce. I spooned it into pretty bowls, played the “Moana” soundtrack and tried hard to listen to my kids for the entire drive to school.
Yesterday, I made pink homemade bubble solution and watched all the “tricks” the kids wanted to show me; a bubble stacked on a bubble, a bubble inside another bubble and “look there’s a mosquito inside a bubble!” (That one was impressive).
These were premeditated mothering moments.
I don’t dislike doing these things for my kiddos. Not at all. I’m just finding I must “manufacture” them more than I used to. I don’t have the kind of mental and emotional energy I had for entertaining my kids. It’s not “spontaneous” anymore.
I plan these moments out now and make deals with myself.
Be a patient, good mother all morning and when you get back home you can stare out the window for 30 minutes.
Play three games of Sorry! after homework, then you can make the kids play outside and listen to your audiobook while cooking dinner.
These deals keep me going, because motherhood is hard and I don’t want to share my candy or my blanket.
I don’t want to hear how unfair everything in the world is, how blobfish are the ugliest creatures on earth, every detail of a dream which includes the phrase “and for some random reason” about a thousand times, how adorable sugar gliders are and the life-changing effect a giant pogo stick would have on our family.
I just want to sit in silence and do what I want.
Without guilt.
So, I do extra things when I can muster it up and make deals to push myself. I cut sandwiches into hearts. I fill hot water bottles up before bed. I massage their feet. I listen to the same story over and over.
Sometimes I’m rewarded with moments of pure motherhood bliss.
When my girl puts her hand on my chest because, “I can feel the warmth of your heart momma.” Swoon.
When my boy curls up in my chair, and I rub his head, and he coos the same sound he has made since he was an infant. Nothing better.
But then there are the moments when they are so loud, I can’t even breath. When the sound of their voices, even in play, makes me want to scream.
Yesterday, I read the same paragraph 15 times because the kids were laughing so loud I couldn’t comprehend the words in front of me.
They run by as squirrels, bears, monsters, quickly morphing from one to the next effortlessly with a kind of unhinged glee I can’t ever remember feeling.
They tear things out of every cupboard to make elaborate costumes, forts and lands, in an endless game of pretend which leaves me feeling dizzy with the speed and ferocity of it all.
Don’t you guys want to watch some TV?
Did I just say that?
Yes, I did.
Ugh.
I am turning 40 years old in April and I think I’m having a stereotypical freak-out. I don’t want to. I keep telling myself, it’s a number and it means nothing.
But, shit, I still have so much stuff to do.
I was supposed to have written lots of books by now, have tons of friends, explored castles and be a serious grownup.
I still sneak candy, forget to brush my teeth and don’t like vegetables (I only pretend to so my kids will eat them). I wear all black like a moody teenager, love Harry Potter, cry when I’m disappointed and don’t know what I’m doing.
When I pay bills and taxes I feel my age. When my back hurts after scrubbing the tub or my hand hurts from sleeping on it wrong, I think maybe this is adult life.
But, I don’t feel like an adult.
Maybe I never well.
I’m just Bridgette, and maybe accepting all my contradictions is the most grownup thing I can do.
I see anger and hurt in her little face, but there isn’t time to address it.
I pack her lunch. I make her toast and oatmeal. I put a little watercolor Valentine heart next to her plate.
“You make me proud every day.
Love,
Mom”
She smiles and says thanks, but I can see it didn’t reach her. The place inside where it is hurting is hidden too deep. I can’t reach it with a card or a hug.
It is time for her to leave for school. She moves slowly, layering three jackets over her flower dress.
“Remember,” I tell her. “You control what kind of day you have.”
“Yeah,” she says and gives me a half hug before walking out the front door.
I watch her stomp away with her head down. She doesn’t look back, but I wave from the door anyway.
I drink my coffee and silently pray for her.
The day drains away. Errands. Cleaning. Driving. Driving. Driving.
Carpool reports she screamed on the way to school because she lost a game.
Brother reports she was yelling at some kid on the playground.
She reports everything is unfair.
Great.
The day isn’t over. We have to make a second trip back to school. She brings her knitting and I think maybe this wave is over.
No.
On the drive back home, she starts in on her brother again. It is over nothing at all.
He tries to tell her he doesn’t want to argue, but she clearly does.
She needs to prove her point and won’t stop.
The sound scrapes along the edges of the car and seems to fill every space.
“Stop it,” I say.
She does not. The sound escalates and I try again.
“Just drop it,” I say louder. “I’m serious. I don’t want to hear it anymore.”
I turn on the music, but she continues even louder.
The sound reminds me of arguing with my brother as a kid.
I want to tear my hair out.
I want to tear her hair out.
“I’m fucking sick of this shit,” I blurt out. “Stop fighting. You have been fighting from the second you woke up. I’m over it. STOP. NOW.”
Even as the words come out, I regret them. I want to force them back down my throat, but the damage is done.
She begins to sob.
You fucked up, I tell myself. You really fucked up.
Even so, I am still angry and my heart has turned into a heavy stone.
“Stop crying,” I yell.
“I can’t!” she yells back. “Don’t you understand I can’t?”
“You can and you will,” I say.
She doesn’t.
The rest of the drive home, I fume and she sobs.
We walk in the door and she loudly clomps up to her room. I stomp into mine muttering about respect and how ridiculous she is being.
I put on my pajamas and wash my face. My anger slowly fades and the sound of her sobs reaches me. A stab of guilt and regret does too.
I take a deep breath and walk into her room.
She is hiding under the blankets crying.
“Can I sit down?”
“Yes.”
“Can I hug you?”
“Yes.”
She lunges into my arms and cries into me.
“I’m a ugly, bad and stupid girl,” she cries. “Nobody will ever forgive me.”
I hate every one of these words.
“Oh love,” I start.
“It is true,” she says. “I am so stupid and dumb.”
I hold her and let her tell me all the things. The boy who told her she looked like a pile of garage. The girls who won’t let her play with them at recess. Her fear she will never learn to ride her bike without training wheels. Her anger at being the littlest in the family.
All. The. Things.
With each word her body softens until she is a mushy, soft baby back in my arms. I cradle her to me and rock gently.
“No matter what you do, I will never love you any less fierce,” I say. “You can never, ever do anything I won’t forgive. Ever. You are my girl and nothing will ever change my love for you. Ever.”
The smile on her face radiates and I am bursting with love.
How could I have ever yelled at this precious face? How could I have forgot for even one second how small and beautiful and tender and perfect she is?
“I’m sorry,” I tell her. “I should not have yelled at you. I lost my temper and it wasn’t OK.”
“You are the best mommy ever,” she says.
We melt into a mushy pile of love under the blankets and talk and talk and talk.
He won’t look at me anymore. I twist my head all around trying to find some angle to reach him, but he is allusive and quick. I don’t know when I lost him, but I feel the separation as sharp and painful as a knife wound. I bleed out silently, letting the anguish take me further and further away.
His feet shuffle slightly and I hear his breathing quicken. The tears are right there. I can almost feel them as if they were forming in my own eyes. He squints hard, fighting them and looks in the direction of the clouds.
“Do you see that?” he says pointing his entire hand upward.
“Yes,” I say without following his gaze.
“I want to go there,” he says.
“So let’s go,” I say.
His breath quickens even more and I look away. I don’t want to break the spell, so I count my intake and outtake of breath.
One.
Two.
Three.
Four.
Five.
“Really?” he says.
“Yes,” I say.
Six.
Seven.
Eight.
“Good,” he says.
I can feel him shift next to me and I stop breathing. I hold everything perfectly still, afraid to shatter this moment or even to crack it a little. It feels like the most fragile thing on the planet and I’m worried that even my thoughts will cause it to flee.
His hand reaches for mine and I stay limp and let him grab it. He squeezes it hard and I match his firmness without moving anything else in my body. My breath is as quiet as I can get it and I’m willing my mind to stay blank.
I feel our feet lift off the ground and I’m terrified. Now I squint my eyes closed, the tears pooling quickly as I feel the air become colder around me. His grip stays tight and I want to look at him. I want to see his face and read all the emotions I know are there.
I don’t risk it. The wind is getting stronger and I feel my hair blowing all around my head, as if it is trying to pull itself free of my scalp. My shoes fall off of my feet and my dress begins flapping loudly in the breeze. Whomp. Whomp. Whomp.
“I got you,” he says.
His voice is almost lost in all the sound around us, but I somehow hear it. My body, all tense and tight in fear, loosens at his words. I open my eyes and look at him.
“I love you mom,” he says.
This time his words are loud and seem to echo around us, bouncing off the clouds and air. His glasses have fallen from his face and his blue eyes have brightened to match the sky around us. His shabby brown hair, always in need of a haircut, looks somewhat perfect up here.
Sunlight is bouncing off his tan face, giving him the glowing effect the leaves in the tree of our backyard get in the early morning light. He is searching my face and seems pleased by what he sees reflecting back at him.
The air is suddenly still and quiet. We stop and he reaches for my other hand. He looks into my face as we circle slowly, the clouds wrapping themselves around us like golden blankets of light. The magic within him, the power I’ve always seen, swirling around us in bursts and bubbles. He giggles and smiles.
“I love you,” I say.
My voice echoes too, bouncing around and coming back in every pitch and tone. Like a chorus of my voices, high and low, singing the words over and over. The words seem alive and powerful, filling up every part of the space around us with great warmth.
We start to descend, the sounds of flapping clothes and wind rushing forward again in a great gust. He lets go of one of my hands and for a moment I fear I will fall, but his other hand is strong and reassuring. I close my eyes to stop them from burning in the wind and don’t open them again until my feet land back in my shoes. His hand drops from mine at the exact same moment.
I turn to look at him, but he is already looking away. I feel the space between us become heavy again, as if a wall was being quickly rebuilt in the span of 10 seconds. He angles away more and more until his back is facing me. I follow his gaze and see he is still staring up at the sky.
There is a massive cloud taking up the entire span of the sky directly in front of him. The cloud is made up of hundreds of textured layers, each varying in color from the palest of pink to the darkest of gold. It is glorious and we both stand still and look at it.
I want to reach for him, to yell and sing out my love in all the voices of the sky, but I don’t move. He knows, I tell myself and nod my head. He begins to walk away without turning around and a smile bursts across my face and fills my soul with the knowledge of it all.
The laughter drew me to them from my bedroom, where I was folding laundry with my morning coffee. I walk down the stairs and find them sitting on the living room floor with a paper between them. They are taking turns drawing on it and bursting into hysterics, their entire bodies literally shaking from the power of their giggles.
“What’s going on?” I say.
They don’t hear me at first.
“Hey guys,” I try again, attempting to sound casual and not at all like I’m about to start making them clean up. “Whatcha doin?”
They both look up at me like I’m an alien trying to invade their tiny planet.
“Nothing,” they say together and resume whatever nonsense this is, erupting into new fits of laughter as I walk away.
My children have a club. I’m guessing they call it “CoopLa” as I see it scrawled all over the place, but I’m not privy to the information. It looks like a pretty fun club. Their mission seems to be along the lines of:
*Cut up as many things as possible and use all the tape and aluminum foil in the house.
*Be really loud and make sure to laugh and scream out random words frequently, like Moo and Noodles.
*Move around the furniture often and in a dramatic fashion.
*Name every stuffed animal you can find and cover every surface in the house with fluffy cuteness.
They are enthusiastic about everything they do. They fight sometimes, but generally find resolution without intervention. They are tight, like peas and carrots.
There are days when I try hard to join in their fun, but I will never be in the club. I’m the bouncer and owner, but I’ll never quite belong.
They are exclusively exclusive.
Which is as it should be, I tell myself.
Childhood belongs to children.
Right? It’s how I’m supposed to feel. This is their time, not mine. I didn’t give birth to them so I could have friends and comfort.
But fuck. I miss it.
When they were very little, I was everything to them. Comfort. Food. Friendship. Playmate.
I was the sun, the moon and the stars.
But now I am not the only thing in the world filling those needs. They have each other, friends, grandparents, teachers and themselves. They have discovered inner strength and often find contentment in being alone.
All this is what is supposed to happen. This is the parenting process.
It’s beautiful and natural.
But I fucking hate it.
I feel myself being pushed away and pulled back on a daily basis. Give me space, but you better be there for me when I need you. Ask me what I’m doing, but don’t expect me to answer you. I need to know you care, but I don’t want you with me. Give me what I want, but don’t really because I’ll change my mind in five minutes.
The teenage years are still far away, but I feel them coming. This is the sweet spot of parenting right now and I know it. They are somewhat independent, but not disillusioned yet. They want stuff, but it is not their primary focus. They still ask questions and actually listen to the answers.
This is supposed to be the easy part.
It’s not.
There isn’t one.
I walk into my boy’s room and find him listening to the iPod with earbuds in. He is singing and tapping his toes while flipping through an animal magazine.
“Mom, there is this new song on the radio I think you will like,” he says pulling out just one earbud. “You have to hear this.”
I put the earbud in and sit close to him and my heart feels all kinds of confusing shit.
My girl and I go school shopping, just the two of us. She picks out clothes she likes and goes into the dressing room all by herself. Hanging the sign on the door, like she has seen me do a thousand times, and then coming out and modeling the clothes.
I stand there, outside the door, and I don’t even know what to feel.
I make eye contact with a mother of a teenage girl and she looks exhausted. She smiles at me encouragingly, but it looks forced. It is forced.
This shit is hard.
Not the kind of hard babyhood is. Not the sleep deprived, please don’t choke on something small and die. No. More like, my heart breaks every day to see you figure out how fucked up things can be and please don’t let you have the same depression I have.
That kind of hard.
Sometimes I just wander the house, not knowing what to do with myself. I am drawn to them, but also pulled away by a million things always needing to get done. I rush around cleaning, making plans, paying bills, writing and working. I see them slip by me and I reach out, but then they are gone.
I walk into my daughter’s room to deliver laundry and there they are. My boy is reading to his sister. They are snuggled and happy. My girl looks up and gives me the smile she always does and I want to join them. But I don’t. I smile back and walk out of the room.
This morning I woke up early to make steel-cut oatmeal with homemade applesauce. I spooned it into pretty bowls, played the “Moana” soundtrack and tried hard to listen to my kids for the entire drive to school.
Bridgette Tales 