If It's Not One Thing, It's Your Mother

by Julia Sweeney

  Plus, it was funny that he was Irish and Chinese. If Mulan and I found a way to produce our own mutual offspring, the result would have his combination of ethnicities. The only thing I could honestly say was that something in me didn’t quite click with this guy. But I chalked it up to my preconceived notions.

  I hired Toby for a two-week trial period—twenty hours a week. We continued to not really click. I rationalized that this was a good thing, a way of maintaining a proper employer-employee distance.

  One day Mulan, Toby, and I went shopping at Whole Foods. We ran into an old boyfriend of mine (Joe #11, whom you’ll meet later). Joe was wide-eyed and smiling, amazed to see Mulan a few years older. Toby was carrying Mulan behind me. As my old boyfriend and I conversed, I realized that he thought the manny was the new man in the Sweeney family. I was flustered at the prospect of explaining the relationships, and more embarrassed that this situation made me so uncomfortable. I stubbornly ignored the whole reality of the encounter—not introducing anybody in that obvious, awkward way so common among socially inept people like myself.

  Either I was a stodgy old reactionary traditionalist, or I was pathetically desperate to seem open-minded and modern. I hated the notion that this whole thing would be so much easier for me if he were gay—or even if he were even just a little effeminate—or if he were much younger, or much, much older. I couldn’t bring myself to hire him permanently. I couldn’t have this life-size reminder of my own inadequacy following me around all the time. When the two weeks were up, I decided to move on . . .

  . . . and into the worst nanny-decision I’d ever made.

  III. The Chinese Pat

  When she came to the door, I honestly thought she was a man. In my whole life I have never seen a woman look so much like a man. And this is saying something coming from me, someone who had assumed that role professionally on stage and screen.

  I played this character on Saturday Night Live called “Pat.” Pat is androgynous, but not in the typical David Bowie, Prince, or even k. d. lang kind of way. Pat is androgynous in an oblivious sort of way. One reason I invented the character of Pat was that I felt like I was encountering a type of androgyny that was not glamorous; it was the androgyny of the harried mother who has no time to take care of herself or the chip-eating male parking lot attendant who seems detached from the world of typical male and female appearances.

  So you see, when I opened the door I was simultaneously the worst and best person to encounter this nanny applicant. The Chinese Pat had a low voice; she had very short hair, in a crew cut; she was chubby in a way that disguised the distinguishing sexual characteristics of her anatomy. However, the Chinese Pat was a woman. She was not transgendered. She told me about her life, which was extraordinary. She was born in southern China, and at age two she’d immigrated to Vietnam with her parents. When she was seven, after the American War, they emigrated again, this time to Paris. She could speak French, Mandarin, Cantonese, and Vietnamese. Not only that, she loved to cook. She said she was good at it.

  I figured she was not really a nanny or a manny, so I called her the “anny.” I immediately liked her. I thought it was so cool, her background. She told me about her girlfriend, a woman she’d been in a relationship with for four years, who worked at the Chinese Embassy downtown.

  I hired her. I confess I loved that everyone thought she was a guy. I thought, Oh my God, I have found the absolute perfect nanny for me. The Chinese Pat had no idea I’d played a character on television whose whole look and demeanor was meant to convey gender confusion.

  After a few months, I would allow the Chinese Pat’s girlfriend to come over to the house as well, especially if I was going to be out late and most of their time was going to be spent sitting in my house while Mulan slept. I got a job offer in New York and I decided to take Mulan and the Chinese Pat along with me. When we went through security at the airport, she was tagged for additional screening. I realized that the female security worker thought she was male, and she signaled for another man to come over to do (excuse me, I cannot think of any other phrase) the pat-down.

  I said something stupid and confusingly vague, like, “You don’t have to do that! You don’t have to do that!” The female security guard looked at me in an uncomprehending manner. I was too embarrassed to say anything else and watched helplessly as the male security officer began his body search and then realized that no, the original female security officer could do the job just fine.

  I had started dating a guy who wanted us to go to Mexico City for a long weekend. (Joe #12, see chapter 10!) I liked this guy, but it wasn’t love. In fact, it was the first time I dated someone without any desire to take the relationship further, or to stop it. I liked seeing him occasionally. I was finally having the type of relationship I’d always imagined Barbie having—not a casual fling, but somewhat steady. We weren’t exclusive and neither of us wanted it to go any further. On the other hand, we both really liked to be with each other. Sometimes I wonder if I would have been able to have a relationship like that if I didn’t have a kid. My theory is that having a child took all that loaded stuff off the table.

  I’d never been to Mexico City. At first it seemed outrageous to go so far for a weekend, but he pointed out that Mexico City was a five-hour plane ride from L.A., just like New York City was. Going to New York for three days never seemed out of the question. So why not Mexico City? I hemmed and hawed and eventually decided to go. I had been working with the Chinese Pat for several months by then, and I felt comfortable leaving Mulan with her.

  While in Mexico City, late on Saturday night, I got a phone call from my nanny. She was crying, and I could barely make out what she was saying other than “Mulan is okay. Mulan is okay.” I have never before, or since, had such a feeling of alarm race through my body. The Chinese Pat said she’d been in a car accident with Mulan. The accident had been her fault; she’d driven through a red light. They were safely at my house, and the car had been towed. After reassurances that Mulan was okay, I hung up the phone. And burst into tears.

  My boyfriend asked me what was wrong, and I couldn’t tell him. I didn’t want to tell him what was wrong. I wasn’t even sure why—he would have been comforting and alarmed as well. He had come to care deeply for Mulan. My feeling was this: I am Mulan’s mother, and you are not her father. You cannot share in this fear with me. This is my fear to bear all by myself. This is too big, too scary, too truly intimate to let you in.

  I cried for what seemed like an eternity (but in reality was probably only a few minutes), unable to tell him what had happened. Then I did. And then I began calling to try to get on an earlier flight home.

  Mulan really was fine. In fact, she didn’t even remember the accident. Which seemed odd. She was four years old; she remembered things. I wondered if the Chinese Pat was actually alone in the car at the time of the accident. But then, where was Mulan? With her girlfriend? Was she too afraid to tell me that? And how well did I really know the girlfriend?

  My car was totaled, in that way in which a car doesn’t look totally smashed but everyone agrees that it is not worth it to fix. My business manager took it upon himself to do a search on the driver’s license of the Chinese Pat. You know, just to see if there’d been any previous accidents.

  It tuned out she had two DUIs in the past three years and one misdemeanor for lewd conduct, which had occurred outside a bar.

  Jeeszhus.

  How could I have been so stupid, so careless? Just because I had a fondness for androgyny?

  What really upset me were the DUIs, not the lewd conduct, which I couldn’t be alarmed by until I had more information. Given that she was sexually ambiguous-looking, and given how conservative the police can be, that could have been from simply being at a gay bar, or even just trying to go into a woman’s bathroom. There was no point in asking her about it; the DUIs trumped anything else. I didn’t notice any obvious sign that she had a problem with alcohol. I didn’t recall her ever even drinking around
me. I didn’t really know what her drinking story was. I didn’t know if I could ask, since I was going to have to fire her anyway.

  Because I come from a family with myriad drinking problems, I worried that I had overlooked indicators that another more perceptive person would have noticed. In the end I told her, “I discovered you have a history of drinking and driving citations—” She interrupted me and said, “I understand.” It was awkward and terrible. I felt both angry at and sympathetic to her, two intertwined emotions with which I’d had a lot of experience growing up.

  After the Chinese Pat debacle, I had another chance to shift my perspective about nannying and parenting. The truth was that I had changed. I had grown into parenting. It was easier and easier for me—or maybe not exactly easier; maybe I was more used to it. I settled into the job. And I had a deep realization, too. It occurred to me that if you adopt a child, and you aren’t giving her your special cocktail of DNA, the only real thing you have to give her is your influence. All I could pass on to Mulan was my own, tactile, day-in, day-out mothering and caretaking.

  Which meant that it made more sense for me to be with my daughter as much as possible, and less sense to work so much. I didn’t want to be simply the supervisor, or the bystander, or the financier of my child’s upbringing.

  Fortunately, this deepening perspective coincided with something I hadn’t expected. And it made a huge difference: Mulan became interesting.

  Sure, she was interesting before. Sort of like how a stuffed animal is interesting.

  No, that’s not true. She was always much more interesting than that. But once she could talk, once she could understand what I was saying to her, and I could understand what she was saying to me—when we could have even slightly complex conversations, it was a whole new ball game.

  Don’t get me wrong, I love the chubby squishiness of infants and toddlers, the hilarity of their bumbling optimism, the smell of their skin and of course their abundant affection and need to be held. But after a while, it can get boring. Caring for infants is a lot like being a lifeguard—long periods of mind-numbing dullness, broken up by jolts of high adrenaline.

  But Mulan was almost four, and we had begun to actually have an occasional, genuine laugh together. Not a peekaboo laugh, but a laugh based on an idea. It made me want to hang with her. Much more than, say, with an employee. I wouldn’t claim I’m all that patient or perfectly maternal, but if Mulan and I were together all day we’d get into a nice groove.

  There is a term I learned called “parallel play.” It’s how children often interact before they play “with” other kids. They just sort of play on their own, near other kids who are also playing on their own. It’s supposed to be some sort of big accomplishment when a kid graduates from parallel play to interactive play.

  Why is that? Parallel play seems to be such a wonderful thing. There are few things sweeter in this life than being in the same space with someone you love and each of you doing your own thing. Mulan and I learned to parallel play. I would lie on the floor and read The New Yorker and she would play with her Groovy Girls right next to me.

  Here’s the rub: we couldn’t really do that if I were coming home from work all distracted with work in my head. That kind of parallel play intimacy only occurred when we’d been together for most of the day and we were in sync. I had a very hard time transitioning after coming home from a job. In fact, I don’t really know how anyone does it.

  The only thing to do was to basically stop work. Or more accurately, make caring for Mulan my work, and make earning money something I did on the side.

  I began to doubt the idea of “quality” time. I was more into quantity time. I figured that if I spent much, much more time with Mulan, I wouldn’t ever have to be a great mom in any given moment. It would average out. I hated the idea of having to catch up with her. I realized that if you don’t get your kid out of school and ask her what’s going on within ten minutes, the moment is gone; it’s out of her head. Plus, my parenting style was more about hanging out and waiting for my child to bring up things she was thinking about, rather than me trying to squeeze some intimacy and communication out of her in a short amount of time.

  Then, for my next parental epiphany, I realized my biggest advantage in getting Mulan to behave the way I wanted her to behave—at least after she was about four and could better comprehend that everyone else in the world was not just an extension of her—was if she actually cared what I thought. I know I went on a bit earlier about the benefits of carrots and sticks. And it’s true that this did work. And I did and still am employing that particular strategy.

  But there was something deeper going on. I realized that the secret ingredient to parenting was not effort or structure or even carrots and sticks. It was having a deep, intimate relationship with her based on truly being present. Not just physically, but emotionally. When she really cared what I thought we were able to get through ups and downs, to get through momentary parenting lapses and childhood tantrums and resistance.

  The only way I could teach her how to have an intimate, deep relationship was to have one with her, and the only way to have one with her was to be with her a whole lot, and not in a forced, now-we-are-having-quality-time sort of way. But in a long, languorous, no-big-deal sort of way.

  I could make changes in my life. I would only take writing jobs I could do at home, while Mulan was in preschool. I could reduce my expenses so I didn’t need to work quite as much. But the reality was more mercurial. In show business, you work a lot and then you don’t work at all. You swear off work and then get scared, so you want work and there isn’t any and you get worried about money.

  Eventually I realized I had to try again and hire someone. I still had a fantasy that Mulan would learn Chinese. But she turned out to be stubborn about it. When Lisa had spoken Mandarin to her, Mulan had understood every word but refused to answer in anything but English.

  One day Mulan and I were driving (I swear, half my memories of parenting in Los Angeles are of driving). She was about four and a half by then. I said, “Well, Mu, we need to hire another nanny. I really want you to learn Chinese, and it seems like it makes it easier to be with someone who does speak Mandarin with you, so—”

  “I’d rather learn Spanish,” Mulan interrupted.

  “Really?” I said. “Why?”

  “To be honest, I think I’ll use it more,” she replied.

  “That may be true,” I admitted.

  What really threw me was how Mulan was talking to me at that moment. She was a person, with opinions and preferences. I did end up hiring a few more nannies, including the most spectacular one, Frances. They were all English-speaking young girls in their early twenties who’d moved to Hollywood to find their destinies. And Mulan did learn some Spanish at school, and when we moved to Wilmette, she switched over to French. She’s not fluent in any language other than English.

  But oh boy, is she fluent in English.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Arden

  Women and cats will do as they please, and men and dogs should just relax and get used to the idea.

  —Robert A. Heinlein

  This is how my dog came along and ruined Mulan’s chances for a sibling.

  You see, I started out as a cat person. There was a time when I was single and had four cats, which I guess officially made me a cat lady. I don’t know why I wasn’t more embarrassed about that back then.

  Out of that group of four cats, only one is still around. Her name is Val and she’s a small six-pounder. Now she’s very old, seventeen or eighteen. She stays upstairs in our house here in Illinois. She sleeps most of the day and spends her evenings ranting about her life in deep guttural meows.

  She’s on my lap right now as I type, and my right arm is underneath her belly so I have to be careful as my fingers strike the keys. Mostly she likes to sit on the desk directly in front of my face and peer into the computer screen. This means I have to move my own head around to see what I’m t
yping. Sometimes she does a slow turn to me from the screen, like she has read what I’ve written. The look on her face is “You’ve gotta be kidding.”

  When comparing cats and dogs, one reason I prefer cats is that dogs are often overeager and subservient in a needy way, a way that makes me embarrassed for their dignity.

  I like how cats are aloof. I like how they act like they don’t give a shit if you’re there or not.

  When Mulan was about three years old, we went on a trip to Spokane to visit my parents. When we got back home to Los Angeles, I sat for a little while at the dining room table chatting with our neighbor, Marc, who’d been watching our house while we were away. The front door of the house was open.

  A scrappy dog appeared in the doorway, the afternoon sun on his back. “Oh,” Marc said. “Him. That dog started sleeping on your porch while you were gone.”

  The dog, as if waiting for his cue, walked over to me and sat at my feet. He was gross. He was mangy. He did not have a pleasing appearance. In fact, he was even a little scary-looking. He looked like the dogs in the Mad Max movies, vaguely dingoesque. He had jagged teeth and sometimes his upper lip would catch on the side of his mouth above his teeth, which made him appear to be sneering at me.

  Ick.

  “Why do you think he’s sleeping on my porch?” I asked my neighbor.

  “I don’t know,” he said. “I was thinking you might recognize him. He played with my dogs for one afternoon, but we don’t want another dog.”

  I didn’t want a dog, either. I hadn’t always felt that way. The year before this, I had gone to an auction with a lot of big celebrities. I was cohosting the event. I drank a lot of wine and was having a good time. A darling little toy poodle came up for bid. No one bid on it. I said, “I’ll start things off by bidding six hundred dollars myself!” No one else bid. At the end of the night, I brought him home.