Notes From the Underwire: Adventures From My Awkward and Lovely Life

by Quinn Cummings

  For a small additional fee, we can keep your busy beaver right through the Labor Day weekend and deposit him directly into the first day of school.

  When applying, please attach a copy of the child’s Ritalin prescription (we like to pair roommates of similar dosages).

  • CAMP DIVA: Does your six-year-old demand Turandot on the way to school? Does your fifth-grade son feel left out when no one wants to go with him to the Kirov Ballet? Camp Diva is a loving, nurturing environment for the artistic temperament, ages five to thirteen. No class begins before 10:00 a.m., and we always have fresh espresso ready! We offer such classes as The Oeuvre of Harvey Fierstein, Sondheim for Second-Graders, and Tantrum as Performance Art.

  This year we will be doing a full production of Rent, with our returning camper Brian Abromowitz starring in the role of Mimi. But new campers needn’t fret, because we’re going to need lots of great singers and actors to play colorful junkies and homeless people!

  We offer food options for vegetarians, vegans, lactoseintolerant, glucose-sensitive, and the recovering eatingdisordered.

  Please include a portfolio of your child’s work along with your application. Videotapes will be acceptable for dancers, actors, and singers, but please also include recent reviews.

  After weighing all the options, here is the camp Alice will be attending:

  • CAMP CASA: For nearly a decade, Camp Casa has been giving one very special child the kind of one-on-one attention she just won’t get anywhere else. She’ll feel a sense of accomplishment when she empties the dryer for the very first time. She’ll learn science by classifying all the spiders she finds in her backyard playhouse. She’ll take private cooking lessons and learn the traditional Camp Casa breakfast: Cereal-eaten-without-needing-to-wake-up-Mother.

  Afternoon field trips will include the beach (for no additional fee, she will learn to operate a Dustbuster and remove sand from the backseat), the park, the museum, her Aunt and Uncle’s pool, and Trader Joe’s.

  Yeah, right. The reality is, every year I plan for a summer of mellow and inexpensive pleasures. And every year I lose my mind. The best way to describe my parenting skills is to use the model of comic improvisation. When doing comic improv there are a couple of hard and fast rules. If your improv partner walks in and says, “I’m your brother, home from an expedition to Australia where I was artificially inseminating koalas!” you can’t say, “No, you aren’t,” because that brings the improv to a screeching halt. It also makes the other actors onstage want to spit into your latte afterward. No, you must say, “Yes, and as I recall, you’re also a world-class opera singer.” You always say, “Yes, and…” The “and” is everything. The “and” keeps the story going. You add the opera part because most improv people live to ad-lib an opera about extracting koala semen. My whole life is a function of “Yes, and…”:

  Can I carry my purse, the cat carrier, the library books, and a bag of dry-cleaning to the car? Yes, and I can carry a tray of cupcakes for Alice’s class and I can hold between my teeth the bag of live crickets for the class turtle.

  Can I hike twelve miles? Yes and I can wear my iPod so I can listen to a series of lectures on the rulers of Byzantium and I can page through a back issue of Foyer magazine, leading to confusion when I later insist the Empress Theodosia was known for her fondness for recessed lighting.

  Can I make sure my daughter has some pure, uncomplicated, relaxing down-time during her summer vacation?

  Yes.

  And then I hear from a mom friend about a week-long science camp where the kids explore the chemistry behind cosmetics, and who would deny her makeup-fixated daughter the chance to discover the atomic weight of lip gloss? With any luck, Alice will fall in love with chemistry and be distracted from what seems like her inevitable path toward a lifetime behind the counter at Bobbi Brown. Don’t get me wrong; if learning the fifty-eight different names for lipsticks, which could all be described as “pinkish-brown,” is her vocational destiny then I will wish her well. But wouldn’t she make an even better saleswoman if she could pronounce all the ingredients? Also, the camp is cheap.

  And then her swim coach offers a week’s intensive swimming camp and happens to mention she’s using a pool only three blocks from the science camp, which is good because the swimming camp starts twenty minutes after makeup camp ends. Alice loves swimming. I love when Alice is tired. Also, her most agreeable friend is going. Also, it’s cheap. I quickly calculate that if I pick her up at the exact second science camp ends, scrape off the results of her morning’s experiments, hand her a snack, shout at her to eat the snack for the seven minutes between destinations, teach her to change into a bathing suit in the backseat while still eating, and catapult her through the pre-swim shower room, we can make it work.

  So, that’s it. One week of insanity; the rest of the summer a balancing calmness.

  And then we get a notice from another mom telling me she’d procured Alice a spot at her daughter’s day camp. One does not just give these people money to take one’s child and allow them to accumulate insect bites. No, one must be vetted by a preexisting family. Last fall, after hearing my friend’s daughter gleefully describe the fun she had at day camp that summer, I offhandedly asked my friend to put us on the list. Of course, I completely forgot about it because my name is on lists all over the city for all sorts of things, and no one ever contacts me. I also forgot about the list because my brain works like an Etch A Sketch; even the slightest movement causes it to go completely blank. We were all a little surprised to hear that Alice had secured a two-week spot at the desired camp. I reread the brochure and noted the swimming, the hiking, the T-shirt tie-dyeing day, the make-your-own-pizza day, the camp Olympics day, the…

  I felt breath on my neck. Turning around, I caught Alice reading over my shoulder. Her cheeks were flushed, her pupils were dilated. She whispered, “Please tell me I’m going there.”

  I had so eagerly awaited the day she started reading. That was a very long time ago.

  “But,” I floundered, “you’re supposed to be relaxing.”

  She poked her finger at the brochure and said, enunciating each word, “Arts and Crafts and Karaoke day.”

  Fortuitously, this camp started the week after the chemistry and swimming marathon ended. This one wasn’t cheap, but Grandma graciously offered to cover the cost as a birthday present.

  And we were done.

  And then I got a message from another mother. She had paid for both her kids to go to tennis camp and, owing to a poor decision involving a skateboard, a ramp, and several lawn chairs, her son was now the proud owner of a compound wrist fracture. She was happy to give me the other camp spot, which I wouldn’t even have to pay for. She gave me the dates; tennis camp started the week after the day camp. It was a few minutes from the house. The sane voice in my head told me, “Unless Alice is part racing greyhound she will be sufficiently exercised for the summer.” But the sane voice is small and timid. It was drowned out by the loud chanting, “FREE! CLOSE! FREE! CLOSE!” I borrowed tennis gear and would send her off to discover the joys of whacking at a small yellow ball while sunblock dripped into her eyes.

  We were two days from the end of tennis camp and, I must admit, I was glad. Alice had had nothing short of a perfect summer so far and she was completely content with the level of campitude, but I was starting to lose perspective. There’s something about packing a lunch for a child every day that drains the soul. The fact that I was trying to find the mini-bags of raisins and making sandwiches when it was over a hundred degrees outside just made me irritable and prone to lash out. We had three more weeks before school started. Alice could forage in the kitchen for food like her parents.

  And then the phone rang. It was another friend with children. She had decided to run a ballet camp in her house for the following week. Dance in the morning, crafts and swimming in the afternoon. She was inviting Alice. Ignoring the voices shouting “DO IT! WE’VE GOT A HALF-TANK OF GAS AND HAND-ME-DOWN BALLET
SLIPPERS!” I started to demur. I explained, “Oh, I’d love to, but Alice has been running around all summer. I think she’s too worn out for ballet camp…”

  “No, I’m not.”

  I put my hand over the mouthpiece of the phone and looked over my shoulder. How did my child manage to materialize out of thin air every time camp was mentioned? She bounced from foot to foot.

  “I LOVE ballet camp!” she squealed in delight. I didn’t doubt her sincerity but suspected that under other circumstances, she would have shrieked “I LOVE brain-eating camp!” It was Pavlovian. Alice heard the word “camp,” squealed in delight, and automatically handed me my checkbook. My friend’s house isn’t close, but the price made up for it. On Friday, Alice was determined to be the third Williams sister, winning the French Open before she was old enough to vote. By Monday afternoon, she was certain the New York City Ballet was holding a spot for her.

  Okay. Only one more week of Alice-shaped fun and Quinn-based driving.

  And then a friend of a friend decided to do a three-day etiquette camp the following week. And then Consort found a weekend golf camp for daddies and daughters. And then her friend’s karate instructor had an intensive beginners’ course. I assumed this sudden flurry of end-of-summer camps meant any parent with a skill they could teach to other people’s children had taken a look at their own bank statement.

  I sat down one night in August and did the math. I, who had planned not to do any summer camp at all had already spent only slightly less on camp than I spent on Alice’s school’s tuition the previous year. “Yes, and…” may be fun to watch at the Comedy Store but it’s toxic on your credit score. Alice came rushing up, waving a brochure.

  “Look what just came in the mail,” she crowed and dropped it on top of my checkbook. The day camp was thanking us for our participation this summer and reminding us that they would be doing Winter Holiday Camp from December 17 through December 31.

  I whispered, “I have one more camp for you this summer.”

  Alice gasped in delight.

  “It’s called Camp Alice’s Bedroom. Please go there now. I’ll see you the day after Labor Day.”

  Kraftwerk

  SO FAR, IT APPEARS I HAVEN’T FAILED AT THE MAJOR CHALLENGES of rearing my daughter. Alice is usually clean, she sometimes looks people in the eye, and I haven’t bartered her for a bottle of Night Train. Still, whatever pride I take in having expanded the definition of adequate parenting, I have to admit I fail at one of the more modest yet critical aspects of professional mothering: the Making of Crafts. There are magazine racks dedicated to every sort of project a parent and child can create together while sitting at the kitchen table as a pot of homemade soup bubbles on the stove. There is no holiday so obscure that a photogenic craft can’t be found somewhere to commemorate it. Forget the obvious questions such as “Where the hell do you put the Arbor Day tree made out of recycled neckties, paper clips, and a shipping tube where it isn’t knocking over the giant Columbus Day faux ravioli made from a throw pillow and red poster paint?” Let us go to the more immediate concern.

  I cannot make anything that requires glue.

  This problem goes back to elementary school. I remember with terrible clarity sitting in class staring at a Valentine I had created for my parents. It didn’t resemble the traditional confection of lace and love so much as an accurate 3-D model of the heart of a very elderly person, complete with clogged arteries and tissue necrosis. My entire catalog of school artwork could best be described as “unsettling” or “a cry for help.” It bothers me to think about how many trees lost their lives so I could create something that would lead teachers to say things like “Well, Rome wasn’t built in a day…” while patting my slumped shoulder sympathetically. If there had been a class called Remedial Crafts, I would have been there stringing macaroni jewelry well into high school. Lucky for me, eventually people stop caring if you can create appealing wrapping paper using poster paint and a carved potato so I assumed I could move on with life and be incompetent in new directions.

  Flash forward a couple of decades. Alice took a class on California’s history at the local museum. Since the children were between three and four years old, this was mainly an excuse for the parents to get out of the house while their children ate Pepperidge Farm goldfish crackers in an educational environment. Unfortunately, the (obviously childless) person who devised the class decided it would be nice to have the children make Conestoga wagons out of shoe boxes, construction paper, pipe cleaners, and glue.

  The children did exactly what was expected of them: they wandered off to eat little fish crackers and try to remove one another’s eyes with pipe cleaners. The mothers were left to create whatever tangible keepsakes might justify the money we’d shelled out for the class. If I had been handed a person suffering a gunshot wound and told to stitch him up, I couldn’t have been any more anxious, ill-equipped, or under-qualified. But I tried.

  I cut. I glued. I attached tiny wheels made from toilet paper rolls. In total candor, it did end up resembling one of the covered wagons our pioneer forefathers used to travel across this great land. Unfortunately, it resembled the wagon after an especially ghastly migration where the native people threw rocks at it, shot it with flaming arrows, and stomped on what was left. If you looked at my wagon you would have sworn you could hear tiny pioneers sobbing from within. I shifted the remains into a paper bag and furtively bore it home. Later, Consort found the Bag of Shame and asked Alice about the class. “That’s mine!” she said brightly. For a preschooler, it was some fine work.

  I didn’t correct her.

  The years passed. Alice learned how to use scissors deftly. I learned to sense when the silence from the other room meant the scissors had left her paper and were now being used on her sheets. Her artwork improved. My ability to open a juice box with my knees and incisors while driving improved. She achieved legible printing and then handwriting. I finally learned to read her father’s handwriting, a dazzling array of blots and strokes which bears a strong resemblance to Morse code in linguini. I took pride in these small glimmers of competence and clung to the delusion that Alice hadn’t noticed how none of my new skills utilized a glue stick. I assumed she wasn’t aware how I would start twisting my hair every time we walked near a craft store. I hoped that if I was not perfect, I was at least worthy of imitation in her eyes. And for a while, I was.

  Not long ago, Alice and I were reading in perfect contentment. Or rather, I thought Alice was reading. I turned a page of my book and caught her eye as she stared thoughtfully at me. I asked why I was suddenly more interesting than those Magic Tree House kids.

  “You read knitting books all the time,” she said in a pensive tone. “And you’re always in a good mood after you read them…”

  Yes, I acknowledged. There’s nothing like a chapter about tightening my buttonholes to make me happy. But it seems I had interrupted her, and she continued.

  “…But you never actually knit.”

  Sharper than a serpent’s tongue is an observant child. Now I had to confront my psychological irregularities, something I was planning to do in retirement, along with daytime drinking.

  I do love to read knitting books. The pictures in knitting books leave me with nothing but happy scenes in my head:

  I could make Consort and Alice these matching reindeer sweaters. They could wear them when they are playing in the snow. I could make a third matching sweater for the dog and a coordinating beanie for the cat! And a cast-cozy to go over whichever arm I injure trying to put a beanie on the cat!

  1 could make this blanket and drape it over the spot on the couch, just like in this picture. It will be an elegant way to cover the juice stain that didn’t completely come out.

  Everyone needs more pot holders.

  However, actually knitting fills my head with one horrible, demoralizing question: Why does nearly everything I knit—infant cardigan, hat, sleeve—develop an uncanny resemblance to a gene sequence? The only
things that don’t resemble the traditional double helix are the pot holders I knit. These resemble tumors.

  The secret ingredient to my freakish skill, or lack thereof, is gauge. For the non-knitter reading this, gauge is the number of stitches per inch to be expected from the yarn and the knitting scheme. At the beginning of any pattern, you will find a gauge guide showing how many stitches and rows it should take to create a sample size. In theory, this keeps you from creating a seventeen-foot-long sleeve. But when I see a phrase like Gauge: 9 sts and 13 rows = 4" over Stockingette stitch I start chewing my cuticles. I’ll begin there, sure. The first three rows will be a model of conformity and balance. But I had carpal tunnel syndrome when I was pregnant and while it went slinking away within eighteen hours of my giving birth to Alice, it left me with some capricious nerve damage to my hands. I say capricious because I can type endlessly with no ill effect but if I bend my arm in the way a knitter is inclined to, within minutes the crunching inflammation comes rushing back, all too eager to remind me how it’s the boss of me.

  What happens is that my thumb and first three fingers go completely numb. After a couple of minutes, I can look down and watch what feels like someone else’s hand knitting and purling away. If this other knitter were competent, it would actually be kind of fun. But since I have no feeling in the fingers creating the appropriate tension, I start playing something like Red Light, Green Light with the yarn. My fingers start relaxing until I could conceivably use the slackened yarn as a wee jump rope, then seeing that, I tighten up. But I tighten too much, having no digital feedback, so within a row, I have something between my fingers that looks like a garrote for a chinchilla.