It Sucked and Then I Cried

by Heather Armstrong

  It was Leta’s first family meal at a public restaurant where she would be sitting in a high chair all by herself. Before, we would hold her in our laps and eat merrily as she was too young to reach out and grab things. I remember having lunch with a friend and her two sons, ages three and one, when Leta was just three months old. Leta dozed in the car seat for the entire lunch while my friend’s sons talked and GRABBED things and moved their bodies about in wholly acrobatic ways. I remember feeling horrified, that one day my baby would be big enough to shoot her arm across a table and grab something potentially spillable or just plain NOT HERS.

  Of course, time passes and nightmares do come true.

  Leta spent the entire evening grabbing her cousin Noah’s things: his chips, his crayons, his sippy cup. My sister’s twins, two of the most violent toddlers on earth, sat reverently in their high chairs staring in wonder as Leta pounded the table with her fists and grabbed everything within her wingspan. (The only reason I knew it was Noah and not Joshua was because she didn’t dress them alike—very uncommon—and she identified them both when they arrived. Plus, the previous week I had gone to my sister’s house, and when I pulled into her driveway I saw Noah climbing the mailbox in nothing but an undersized T-shirt—no pants and no underwear—and realized that he is the one who has the most self-inflicted bruises.)

  Noah would occasionally turn to his mother and say very quietly, “She’s taking my chips.” Or, “She took my cup.” I was watching her like a hawk, but she timed her illegal grabs right as I turned to take a chip and dip it into salsa. I had to clear a two-foot area around her high chair so that she wouldn’t knock the table over with her banging, and that’s when the public squawking started. Loud, piercing, bird squawks in between holding her breath and making her face turn red—I swear to God she was doing this, THROWING A PUBLIC TANTRUM. THIS WASN’T SUPPOSED TO HAPPEN FOR ANOTHER YEAR! I wanted my money back.

  When you’re childless and young and hopeful, you have this idea of what your children are going to be like, and you make mental notes when you see other kids in public. You say to yourself, “My kid will be cute like that,” or “My kid won’t ever throw a tantrum in public like that little demon.” I had always envisioned a sweet little princess who looked just like me sitting quietly in a high chair, her pressed velvet petticoat creased perfectly as she sat and waited to be handed things in a timely manner. And then you grow up and have kids and realize that YOU HAVE NO SAY, and the only clean thing she can wear is that oversized red shirt that she will smear pears on before you leave the house, and that demon you once witnessed looks more and more human in hindsight.

  One morning in late October it started to snow heavily, and as I was lurching in slow motion toward the window saying, “OH MY GOD!” the power went out. The lights turned off, the heat shut off, and worst of all, the television stopped working.

  I immediately called my friend on the old phone in the basement to see if her power was out, too, and we joked and not joked about how important the television really was to us, and how in situations like that its importance was really driven home, and I realized that if it came down to the world not having television or me cutting off one of my feet I would totally give the world my foot. I love you, world, THAT MUCH.

  I always had a television on in the house as background noise. It was crucial to my sanity to hear human voices during the day, even if those voices weren’t talking to me and were badly acted as in the case of Days of Our Lives. That morning when the power went out I felt like someone had punched me in the gut, kidnapped all my friends, and then left me in a cold house with a baby who couldn’t be entertained by any one thing longer than three minutes. And seriously, I was this close to running out of new things in the house to show her, this close to being me thinking twice that morning about getting out the 409 bottle and saying, “Here, Leta. This thing sprays!”

  I had to gather my wits about me and come up with a quick plan: where could we go? We needed to go somewhere in the truck to stay warm and to kill some television-less time, but I couldn’t think of anything we needed. We’d gone to the grocery store the day before (and the day before that, and the day before that), and all my prescriptions were filled, and I couldn’t show my face at Old Navy ONE MORE TIME or they would think I was stalking them, WHICH I WAS.

  And then I remembered! I needed moisturizer! And moisturizer required a car ride to procure! Off we went to an indoor mall far enough away that it hadn’t been affected by the power outage, where there were horrible stores and horrible window displays full of Things You Don’t Need including black plastic miniskirts and soaps in the shape of Joseph Smith’s head. Were people really buying those plastic miniskirts? Because Hot Topic had at least two full racks of them, which meant they were stocking up for the Thanksgiving Plastic Miniskirt Rush, or no one was buying them, and the last time I checked the Mormons weren’t wearing black plastic anything in public. And I’m sorry, but I’d have a hard time washing my crotch with a soap that was molded to look like a polygamous religious prophet.

  I’d neglected to change out of my pajamas, and I was scurrying through the indoor mall with Leta on my hip, my pajama bottoms hanging sadly over the back of my running shoes. Certainly grounds for divorce. We raced to the only department store in the mall, the only place with those cosmetic counters manned by women whose faces look like they’ve had makeup tattooed on their eyes by a blind surgeon. We found the correct counter and I asked for my brand of moisturizer, and then the tattooed makeup lady, obviously surprised that someone so unkempt and still dressed in her pajamas would even know the importance of using moisturizer—so very, very, important, I had watched enough Bravo to know this—she said to me, “If you wait until Wednesday to buy this bottle of moisturizer you’ll get a free gift.”

  FREE and GIFT in the same sentence? SIGN ME UP!

  Turned out that the snowstorm would be sticking around for three more days, three days that I wouldn’t be able to go on a walk and entertain the baby with the myriad of nontoxic outdoor things she hadn’t yet seen. So I was going to need an excuse to get back into the warm car on Wednesday anyway. Was I a thinker, or what? So we drove all the way to the indoor mall for no reason, and I wasted gas and precious environmental resources, but that Wednesday I wouldn’t have to come up with a plan, AND I’d get a FREE bag with extra eyeliner that I’d never wear!

  That’s called Professional Motherhood.

  Utah celebrated Halloween on October 30 instead of the thirty-first because the actual holiday happened to fall on a Sunday that year. It’s against the commandments to trick-or-treat on Sunday, as that would violate the commandment that says, “Thou shalt not celebrate the demonic holiday of Halloween on the Sabbath. But on any other day it’s okay.”

  One precocious eight-year-old girl who was dressed as a large turtle came to our door and said, “Trick-or-treat. Happy Halloween TOMORROW.” And then she rolled her eyes as if she was being forced against her will to conform with all these morons. God made it snow all day on the thirty-first to punish anyone who didn’t trick-or-treat the night before. He so wasn’t kidding.

  Our Halloween weekend started off with a bang at Jon’s work Halloween party where we were witness to the part of Utah’s population that refuses to practice birth control. There were more than three or four families there with eight or more children. That’s the number that comes after seven, which is really six more than is allowed in some parts of the world. One family dressed their nine children as barn animals. I didn’t know there were that many barn animals in the world, BUT THERE ARE. I sat for most of the party in Jon’s cubicle with the little Leta Frog and let her play with the millions of things on his desk that she hadn’t yet seen. She was entertained for a whole twelve minutes.

  That night we attended a Halloween party at our friend Roger’s house. Jon dressed as Drunkenstein, and I just went as Someone Who Wanted to Get Really Drunk. We stuck with gin all night, and I didn’t make a huge fool of myself WHICH
IS SAYING A LOT. I had a hard time not making a fool of myself at the parties at Roger’s house, because he always had this table there with what seemed like thousands of liquor bottles, and I was allowed to pour my own drink and HOW CAN YOU POSSIBLY NOT GET INTO TROUBLE WITH THAT AROUND? I know that most normal people went to college parties where there were liquor tables, but I went to college in God’s lap. Parties with liquor tables were a relatively new thing in my life, so in Liquor Years I was really only about twelve years old.

  I was also trying to figure out who I was again, at least that was Jon’s theory as to why I partied so hard when given a chance to party. Any time we had a chance to leave the baby at home and spend a few hours alone with people who spoke Adult I went a little nuts. Okay, a lot nuts.

  On the Friday night following Halloween Jon put on his mod parka he got from a friend in 1985 when he was on a Mormon mission in Manchester, England, and I dressed up as lead singer Karen O of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs. My costume didn’t involve much except black clothing, a lot of product in my hair, and really dark eyeliner. And I snarled a lot.

  We went to an adult dress-up party, and I can’t believe I just admitted that. It was a party, for adults, and we all dressed up like rock stars. I’m pretty sure that the whole thing was an excuse for the people throwing the party to send their three kids away for the evening, and for the rest of us to get away from our kids for the evening, with a pinch of trying to hold on to our fading coolness thrown in. The best part about the adult dress-up party, of course: the Free Tequila. If there were ever a badge of my cool days it would be how I could hold my tequila. And after that night there was no doubt that I STILL HAD IT.

  No one could figure out my costume, of course, because everyone there stopped watching MTV before it was even invented, and if you’re one of those few people who remember the days when MTV played videos then you’re surely checking your hairline on a daily basis. We were all standing around the snack table when someone asked me to sing a song by the punk band, to demonstrate exactly who I was, and I shook my head no. “I’d rather not publicly embarrass my husband like that.”

  But Jon shrugged and told me to go for it, considering all the other times I had embarrassed him publicly, why stop now? So I put down the half-eaten cracker I had in my mouth, shook all my hair into the front of my face and shouted, “THEY DON’T LOVE YOU LIKE I LOVE YOU, MA-A-A-A-APS WAIT, THEY DON’T LOVE YOU LIKE I LOVE YOU.” And when I opened my eyes no one was saying anything or making any noise so I said, “Who knew maps could love you like that in the first place?” And then the room cleared. Public Embarrassment Number 2,124: ACCOMPLISHED.

  Then we all went into the living room and played this music game where we split up into groups and had to name the song or name the artist or finish the next line in the song. Yes, it was a game. We were playing a game at a party. AND WE WEREN’T EVEN AT CHURCH. I should take a moment here to brag and let you know that I knew the answers to the ones about R.E.M., Electronic, Simon & Garfunkel, and The Carpenters. I even made up a line to a Carly Simon song and got away with it. I was on fire, I was smoking, I was DANGEROUS, and then they broke out all the music before 1975 and I had no idea what anyone was talking about. Even the woman who was wearing tapered, pleated jeans knew more than I did. Can someone please take a marker and write SHAM OF A HUMAN BEING on my forehead.

  The best part of the night was when I went into their laundry room to say hi to their six-month-old terrier mix puppy, Jenny, who attacked me when I opened the door and proceeded to lick off my lipstick and all of my eyeliner. She was the happiest, most loving puppy in the entire world and since I’d had a portion of tequila normally seen only in my 2001 days, I got on the floor and had a huge puppy cuddle fest with that animal. It was purely platonic love, because I was married, and I was committed to a dog at home, and the Constitution prevents marriage between anything but a man and a woman and Jenny was not only not a human but she was also FEMALE.

  I AM WHAT IS WRONG WITH THIS COUNTRY.

  By the end of the night I had the dog in my lap and I was drunkenly singing, “THEY DONT LOVE YOU LIKE I LOVE YOU, MA-A-A-A-ATH, WAIT.” And Jon was sitting next to me, his hand stroking the back of my head, and he leaned over and said, “I love going places with you.” And if that was what being an adult meant, then kids, you’ve got so much to look forward to.

  When Jon and I lived in Los Angeles we used to walk down to Damiano’s Pizza on Fairfax every Friday night. It was just a couple of blocks from our apartment, and we always packed a flask of bourbon to see us on our journey. We’d order the pizza and then wait outside on the bench next to the storefront sneaking sips of bourbon and making friends with the local homeless people and members of the Russian Mafia.

  One night we met an old Russian man named Abee, and oh the stories he had to tell! He was the type of man who wore a frown and tried to make you believe that being alive was the worst thing in the world, but you knew deep down that he loved people and that he’d take a bullet for you in a war.

  Jon and I really warmed up to Abee, and we saw him several times on our drunken Damiano journeys. We’d see him and scream, “Abee!” and he’d scoff because that’s what his role was, to scoff and be angry, but then we’d catch a small smile creep across his face. One Friday night Jon and I were talking to Abee and being terribly giddy and probably obnoxious in our drunkenness, and when Jon went inside to grab our slices I turned to Abee and said, “Man, he’s crazy,” referring to Jon and trying to get Abee on my side.

  Abee immediately shook his head, scoffed again, and muttered in his Russian accent, “You make him that way.”

  And now, now whenever I nag Jon about something, something stupid because there’s no need for nagging, he’ll turn to me and say, in a fake Russian accent, “You make me this way!”

  That shared history and his willingness to revisit it is one of the many reasons I cannot thank him enough for sticking with me, for not leaving when he would have been justified in leaving.

  Jon and I used to go to the gym together in the morning before the baby was born. We used to do a lot of things before the baby was born, and going to the gym and staying awake past 10 PM were forced to the bottom on our list of priorities. I started to work out in the basement during Leta’s first nap, by myself with a big bottle of water and a computer full of MP3s. We didn’t have any exercise equipment, just a set of seven steep stairs that I’d go up and down five hundred times. And that last sentence just proves to you how insane the author really is.

  I was always listening to music that Jon and I discovered together in LA, and so consequently, I was always reminded of my time in California when I ran the stairs in the basement: the crazy hours I used to work, the forty-five-minute commute to the office, the months that I dated Jason, Paul, August, Scott, Eric, Mark, and a few others whose memories were a little fuzzy, and thank God for fuzziness.

  One morning in the middle of a workout while the baby slept upstairs, a Liz Phair song came on, and there was a line in that song that brought back the strongest memory of LA that I had, that of reconnecting with Jon and knowing that my life was going to change. It went: “But I can’t imagine it in better terms/Than naked, half-awake, about to shave and go to work/I won’t decorate my love.”

  In him I’d found the person whom I knew I would never get tired of, even in the most monotonous of times, even in the routine of being together every single day. I never thought I would find that.

  I never thought I’d find the man who’d love to read my daughter her bedtime story, and one night after her bath as they sat cuddled together in her room reading Dr. Seuss books, I prepared a pan of Jon’s favorite buffalo wings to put in the oven. I counted out six for me and six for him, and then I had a premonition and put one extra on the pan. Normally I would have just prepared the whole bag of fifty wings, but isn’t there some saying about moderation in all things? Yeah, that’s a dumb saying, but I wanted to be able to eat wings every night that week so I had to show so
me restraint.

  Once they were out of the oven and cool enough to eat I ate my six and he ate his six in less than thirty seconds. And there sat that extra one I had put into the mix, and it sat there begging to be eaten. And Jon looked at me, and I looked at him, and he looked at me, and I looked at him, and this would have continued for infinity, but Jon finally asked, “How hungry are you?”

  And I knew he needed that extra wing. That’s why I had plucked it from the bag and placed it on the pan, because I knew that he was going to need that one extra morsel of Heaven. And I know that sometimes I am the most crass and awful person alive, but I love my husband. And I gave him that extra wing. It was my little way of saying, hey, I notice you didn’t leave. Thank you.

  Dear Leta,

  Today you turn nine months old. This means that you have been outside of my womb for as long as you were inside it. At first it seemed you didn’t like it on this side that much, but in the last month you have turned into one of the most giggly, tender, and joyous creatures that ever lived, at least when you’re not screeching or trying to dig my eyes out of their sockets. That hurt.

  When you were just weeks old and the transition in our lives was going a little haywire, people used to say to me, wait until she’s three months old, or wait until she’s six months old. Then, they said, things would be a lot better. Well, I waited and waited, and after the three-and six-month marks I was getting a little worried because you still seemed a little upset that I had taken away your placenta. But here at nine months, oh dear little Leta, we have hit that magical time when things are okay. This month I finally remembered why I wanted to procreate in the first place because you are just so cute that the frightening thought of one day trying to have another baby POPPED INTO MY HEAD, OH MY GOD. Someone please pinch me or throw water in my face and rid me of that nonsense.