Adult Conversation

by Brandy Ferner

  “You are really open, April, and that is half the battle. You articulate what you feel, which means we can help you move forward more quickly, and hopefully see some positive changes sooner rather than later. You just rattled off a huge list of things you want. That can take months for some people.” I felt like a dog being patted on the head until its tongue dropped out of its mouth. I tightened my jaw to make sure my ego wasn’t drooling.

  “And what you asked in the beginning, about what you’re feeling being normal or not . . .” She paused before continuing. Why was she stopping? Stop stopping. “It is normal for moms to forget how to take care of themselves. They’re so busy trying to get it right by doing for everyone else that they forget about their own needs. Your happiness is critical to the health of your entire family unit.” I almost didn’t hear anything after the “is normal” part, except I for sure noticed she said the word “unit.” #eighthgrader4life.

  It turned out that I wasn’t broken, after all. Maybe I would stop badgering myself now.

  June touched my arm. “That’s where we’re going to start—with helping you tend to yourself. It’s not something most of us mothers instinctively know how to do.”

  But Danielle sure did. Apparently the badgering-myself thing hadn’t just fixed itself in the past ten seconds. Strange.

  “So you’re saying that ‘me time’ shouldn’t have to involve a needle in my gums or a speculum in my lady bits?” I joked.

  “Yes, precisely. Let’s meet next week so we can build off of this strong start.” I wished I could sleep on June’s couch, nuzzled under the teal blanket until next time. “Stop by Jackie’s desk on the way out and she’ll get you scheduled.” The mole. I had forgotten all about Jackie’s grave mistake.

  After all I’d shared with June, I felt inclined to hug her, but that felt too needy, so instead I opted for an awkward wave like Forrest Gump. As I walked down the hall and passed her picture, I felt a stab of guilt. I saw a different woman in that picture this time—one that was caring and down-to-earth. I told myself that in the future, I would try not to be such a judgmental jerkhole.

  CHAPTER NINE

  As in Birth, in Life

  Driving home, the pink and orange cotton-candy clouds reached right down to touch the familiar minimalls and neighborhoods as I mentally replayed pieces from my session with June. Words and images softly floated in and out. I felt peaceful, satisfied, like I’d just gotten a massage. I guess I had, in a way. I felt hopeful that June’s wisdom and my homework assignments would spark something new in my life. I wanted this buzz to last forever.

  I turned onto our street, stopping while the neighbor kids hurried to move their scooters out of my way. I smiled and waved at them, realizing that for the past two hours, I hadn’t even checked my phone to see if anyone needed me. I had truly been off my leash.

  I paused at the door before entering. What was this strange feeling of eagerness to return to my family? I didn’t know, but it was how I wanted motherhood to feel, always.

  I opened the door, stepped over Elliot’s pants, and looked to see Aaron sitting on the couch, eyes down, and typing furiously on his laptop. Elliot was sitting nearby on an armchair, in a deep iPad coma, full slouch. Violet was watching Alice in Wonderland, yet again. She looked up from her movie, noticing me. “Mama, I needs something eat.”

  In that one moment, I felt all of my openness and eagerness implode. Hope turned to stifled rage—specifically at Aaron, who had seemingly not tended to the kids, but had left it for me to do immediately upon my return. If I had to make up for whatever time was allowed to me, did that alone time even exist?

  I headed straight into the kitchen, purse still on my shoulder, to get Violet a bowl of pretzels so I didn’t have to hear the words “something” and “eat” again. Aaron barely looked up from his computer when I handed her the bowl. She was sitting right next to him on the couch.

  “She wasn’t hungry before,” he muttered.

  I focused my attention on Violet instead of Aaron’s lousy excuse, and felt the front of her diaper to see if it needed to be changed. It was squishy and filled to the gills, probably holding about three gallons of pee.

  “No, Mama, no!” she whined, knowing a diaper change was imminent. She crawled over Aaron to the corner of the couch and snuggled into his side, as to say, “Check-mate, bitch.” I saw a flicker of white on her back, and as her little body curled into him harder, it became clear that the maxi pad from earlier was stuck to her back again.

  In birthing class, we had learned pain-coping techniques for labor in which you breathe in and out easily and naturally, while allowing all of your senses to notice what they’re picking up on. If you’re nailing it, you even start to become curious about what’s going on around you rather than hoping everything will shut the fuck up. My childbirth teacher had explained that in labor, this could be helpful—say, if you’re in the middle of an intense contraction and a nurse wants to ask you what your highest level of education is for her intake form. Instead of saying, “I wish this twat understood that you don’t ask a laboring woman questions during contractions,” you would simply acknowledge what was happening, sans any shitty judgment. You would say to yourself, in your head, “I hear a voice talking to me.” The idea was that in moments where you cannot change what is happening around you, it is sometimes easier to take them in fully—the sounds, the sights, the smells, the physical feelings, the tastes—rather than try to unsuccessfully tune them out, resist them, or wish they were different. I didn’t realize that I’d end up using this practice more for diaper-change protests and eyeball-poking rather than for birth itself.

  The tension in that tiny corner of the couch grew thick as Violet burrowed in even deeper, now bucking her legs furiously to keep me at bay. Aaron leaned out, trying not to get hit by her feet, but still typing away, making no eye contact with either of us. I breathed in.

  I hear the sounds of typing.

  Then I breathed out. I breathed back in again.

  I see Violet kicking.

  I breathed out another audible breath, and in again.

  I see a maxi-pad on a person.

  I breathed out.

  It was working. I felt calm enough to form a more compassionate plan for how to get Violet out of the couch corner rather than pulling her out by her ankles. I breathed in and out again deeply as I moved toward her.

  Aaron, visibly annoyed with Violet and me, was not practicing Zen breathing but, instead, the art of subtle eye rolling. He closed his computer in a huff and fled the scene, heading upstairs to finish working. My cool-headedness immediately shifted to jealousy with a heavy sprinkling of resentment at all the times I’d wanted to flee the scene when Violet started kicking and shit got hard.

  Violet laughed her head off at me trying to wrangle her. She stood up and ran along the couch until I softly tackled her before she knocked the lamp off the end table that her wobbly, cackling body was headed straight for. She giggled wildly at it all, which flipped my switch back closer to calm. There was no ignoring those guttural, toddler laughs. They were the antidote to everything. I pretended to eat her belly which made her laugh so deeply that her chipmunk cheeks shook. Her pure joy melted me until I noticed the zombie in the armchair, holding the iPad.

  “Hey El, has your timer gone off?” He was allotted an hour of screen time per day, which vacillated widely depending on my level of doneness.

  In contrast, I had grown up with zero time limits for watching TV and playing video games. Zero. Marnie and Wayne parented in the golden era, before the all-knowing internet had ruined everything with its studies and parental guidelines. My childhood summers consisted of waking up, browsing through the TV Guide, and highlighting which shows would help me pass every hour of the day until my parents got home around sunset. Price Is Right, then Love Connection, and next was Press Your Luck, and so on. Game shows were the closest thing to reality TV, back then. But with screens everywhere these days, I felt irresponsible
if I didn’t at least try to put some sort of limit on how much my kids came into contact with. Steve Jobs himself hadn’t even let his kids play with screens, or so the Interwebs said.

  “El, are you listening to me?”

  “Uh huh.”

  I pulled his chin up to look at me. “Hi, remember me, your mom? Did your timer go off while I was gone?”

  “Yeah, but Dad said I could keep playing,” he explained as his gaze dropped again.

  “No more.”

  “But Mom, I’m on this level that I’ve never seen before and I’ve never done this good and I can’t save it.” I actually understood his pleading. Beating “The Legend of Zelda” had taken massive effort by way of dedication and research in Nintendo Power magazine when I was a kid. And yet, WWSJD here? (What Would Steve Jobs Do?)

  “You’re done. But you can go outside and play with your friends for a bit until dinner, since you got your homework done.”

  He smiled half-heartedly, his eyes squinting, like he was waiting for a lashing. My head rolled to the side. “You didn’t do your homework? You were getting your binder out when I left. What happened?”

  “Dad said that I could play my game first and do homework later.”

  I breathed through my nose like a bull. “No playing outside, Elliot. Homework, now.” I walked into the kitchen because someone had to make dinner. I hated myself for playing the role of subservient housewife, but my other option was hangry kids.

  Four steaming bowls of rice, beans, and the preferred toppings for each person sat on the table, awaiting eaters. Where was my fucking Mary Poppins? Until I became a mother myself, I didn’t realize what a loving gesture providing a meal for someone really was. I missed Marnie’s fried chicken and homemade vegetable soup with hamburger meat.

  “El, will you go tell Dad dinner’s ready?” I asked my little messenger. It was sometimes too humiliating to stand before your husband and kindly let him know that his warm meal awaited downstairs at his earliest convenience, Sire.

  On his way downstairs and back to the table, Elliot shouted, “Dad said he has to work longer since he had to come home early today.”

  Elliot had no idea the gravity of what he’d just said as he dug into his dinner. I purposefully bit down hard on the side of my tongue to trap the words that wanted to be screamed. I sat there staring at Aaron’s beautifully presented burrito bowl—the thoughtful lack of sour cream that he hated, and the addition of his favorite hot sauce— waiting there, uneaten. My hunger got to me. I eased up on my tongue and began to eat food instead of feelings.

  Ten minutes later, Aaron sauntered downstairs in his usual jovial manner, not letting the tension of the day take hold. I was already doing dishes.

  “Dada!” Violet squealed, getting out of her seat and running to him like he was returning home after deployment. “I wanna paint more toes pink.”

  I could barely meet him with anything but a passive gaze. He must’ve noticed because he put his hand on my arm as he walked by and said, “Stop with the dishes. I’ll do them after dinner.”

  I was prepared to explode on him but this was the thing—he was the one who worked to provide for us and he’d come home early today as a favor to me. And now he was offering me what felt like another favor that most other husbands wouldn’t, washing the dishes. I knew there was something fucked up here, but I couldn’t pinpoint it. Sarcasm was all I could turn to. “Your royal dinner is cold,” I mumbled, wiping off my wet hands.

  Aaron sat down at the table, unaffected by my words. Maybe I hadn’t spoken them loud enough. Maybe it was for the best.

  The kids sat on the couch, looking at a Star Wars sticker book together. Their bellies were full, they were cooperating, and not staring at a screen. It was a momentary miracle. I put on the tea kettle and stood over it, watching the blue flame tickle the sides, to avoid Aaron.

  “So how was the meeting thingy today? Was that Mary lady as nice as you’d hoped?” he asked while jamming his fork into rice.

  “Um, it was good.” Being measured took more energy than I had, so I caved. “But I didn’t get to meet with Mary. I got booked with another lady.” I tidied the table. Cleaning was my go-to for spousal anger diversion.

  “What did you guys talk about?”

  I hesitated. This suddenly felt very personal, even too personal to tell Aaron, especially in this moment. But dammit, I needed his help. “We talked about how I need more time alone, other than when I get dental work or a pap smear.” He gave a small laugh, mouth full. “Then she asked me what I would do if I had endless money and a trustworthy babysitter, and I went into this fantasy spiral where I was shopping at Nordstrom and we had a house-cleaner and I was sewing again.” I was finally starting to let go of the day’s crimes against humanity.

  “Weird. How would that help? We don’t have endless money.”

  Never mind. I hate you again.

  “Yeah, I know that, Aaron. But it helped me. So we picked a few of the things to start with and I’m going to find a way to make them happen. That’s my homework.” He looked confused. “I really miss sewing. I miss being creative and getting to do my thing, alone.” He took a slug of his beer. “How can you help me get time to sew?”

  He considered this as he sipped. “I can put both kids to bed a couple nights.”

  “Shit, Aaron, I don’t want to sew after the kids go to bed when I’m exhausted. I want a break during the day. Like instead of being with the kids non-stop.” This should’ve been obvious. If I had wanted to sew after the kids went to bed, I would’ve done so a long time ago and wouldn’t be asking for his goddamn help to make it happen.

  “Okay, okay, so you mean like on the weekend or something?”

  “Whatever gets me four hours to myself, during the day.”

  “Hmm, I could take the kids to the museum this Saturday,” he said with a mid-bite smile. He loved museums.

  Thank you, Aaron, and also, fuck you. For holding the cards. For making me ask. I was so tired of permission. So tired of needing him to approve my freedom, my time to breathe, to be human.

  “Okay, thanks,” I muttered, wondering which one of us I hated more.

  For once, the kids’ sudden arguing was a welcome excuse to eject myself from the twisted conversation with Aaron. “Violet, that one’s mine,” Elliot whined, holding a giant Death Star sticker above his head. She appeared to be preparing for a body slam. I jumped up to referee just as she launched. Violet would be no one’s bitch. She just didn’t yet know that you can’t kick someone squarely in the head to assert your power. And so there was Elliot, a tall third-grader brought to his knees—and to tears—by a two-year-old’s foot to the temple. I deeply understood his pain and hugged him tight, while Violet retreated to Aaron.

  “I’m sorry she kicked you, buddy. Those small feet hurt. I know.” Elliot nodded, sniffling his tears away. Aaron was having a serious talk with Violet, the way only a father with a beard can.

  Elliot’s tears were the cue for the commencement of the bedtime pageant of everlasting negotiation and naked toddler screeching. I headed upstairs with Violet while saying for the hundredth time that feet are not for kicking, whilst being kicked. I could hear the clanking of Aaron making good on his offer to do the dishes.

  The night sky darkened, flecked by bright bathroom windows throughout the neighborhood, as Elliot and every other kid half-assedly brushed their teeth before bed. Aaron followed him into his room and shut the door, hunkering down for the long haul, likely knowing that he would probably doze off in there with him. Aaron and I often discussed how there was probably a better, healthier way to have Elliot go to bed (alone), but neither of us ever had the energy to change course and manage the subsequent backlash. And sometimes it was nice to just lie down.

  After some glider snuggles, kisses, and two songs, Violet the squirrely savage finally quieted down and let the sleepiness take hold. I triumphantly made it to the other side of the door without suffering any final slings or arrows. Su
rfacing from the smoke of bedtime was like being high. Total relief.

  I tiptoed downstairs and headed directly to the snack cabinet to eat all the things I couldn’t eat in peace that day, such as a handful of Junior Mints I’d been craving for five hours. Next, I wanted to do a belly flop onto the couch, but toys were strewn everywhere and I needed at least some of the day’s chaos to be turned into order before it would all be undone again in the morning. I knelt down in the family room and began sorting the MagnaTiles and puzzles into the appropriate bins, berating myself for forgetting to have the kids do their own tidying. Around the room were balls of tightly-wrapped diapers that hadn’t made it to the trash yet, hidden like little explosives. As I shuttled them into the kitchen, I noticed that despite Aaron’s kind offer, the dish pile had strangely gotten bigger, rather than smaller. I closed my eyes hard. For fuck’s sake. His version of doing the dishes for me had been rinsing them out and stacking them on top of the existing pile that would still be waiting for me to load into the dishwasher the next morning. I mean, he saved me a ten-second rinsing, but ultimately he hadn’t done the dishes, just postponed my doing them. A fucking bait and switch.

  I was too fried to feel anything anymore, so I chose to ignore the dish mound and crouched back down to tackle the most loathsome layer of the toy debris, which consisted of the never-ending trinkets from birthday parties, dollar-store garbage, and Grandma-given junk that all lived in the Big Bin of Pointless Crap.

  I suddenly remembered the book June had given me. It was still in my purse, which was really just an adult, travelsized version of the Bin of Pointless Crap. I sat down on the couch with the book in my hands, running my fingers over the smooth hardcover. The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing, by Marie Kondo. Maybe this book would change everything in my life. Make motherhood easy. The cover showed a water-colored Japanese-style sky to instill maximum tranquility. It was the teensiest bit smaller than most books—journal-sized—mindfully taking up less space, doing its job from the get-go. Just merely holding the book gave me the feeling that I’d already made progress.