Parenting Tip: Always remember the formula for disaster: TIRED CHILDREN + DESPERATE PARENTS = EPIC MELTDOWN.
One night during that long spring, Will and Vivy would not settle. They were in that overtired, on-the-edge giggling phase, and neither repeated warnings nor empty threats would calm them down. Everything produced a giggle: their stuffed animals, their elbows, even spitting on themselves.
I’d had it.
“You need to stop laughing,” I said, as the clock ticked past 9:30.
More giggles.
“Look, I’m serious,” I pleaded. They didn’t seem to get that, for once, I was serious. “Stop laughing and go to sleep.”
More giggles.
Vivy paused for air long enough to utter, “We can’t.” For reasons unknown, this two-word sentence sent Will into hysterics.
“We . . . can’t . . . stop . . . laughing,” Vivy repeated.
“OK, if you can’t stop laughing, think of something sad,” I said.
“Like what?” Will challenged.
I leaned against the frame of their bedroom door. “Like dead puppies,” I said.
For a moment, there was silence. Both kids looked at me with big, unblinking eyes, eyes that proclaimed bewilderment and innocence and shock. Then Will turned his head to Vivy, and they exhaled simultaneous giggles, breaking into lie-on-their-backs laughter.
I shut the door. I walked to our bedroom. I crumbled. For good this time.
The final score = Kids 2, Dead Puppies 1, Mom 0.
I CAN’T COPE ANYMORE
Pneumonia took me down in April. Insomnia, anxiety, and depression filled the void in May. And June. And part of July.
“I can’t,” I told Chris. “I can’t cope anymore.”
I couldn’t believe I let this happen. Again.
Slowly, over agonizing weeks and months, I realized that I didn’t have to do it all. Chris picked up and held each piece of me. I began to breathe. And sleep.
I became whole again, a different whole.
A Picasso-like whole.
And eventually, my humor returned. Halle-freaking-lujah.
THE SAPPY FILES, PART 5 (OR WHY MY DAUGHTER’S FUTURE THERAPISTS SHOULD ADORE HER)
Dear Vivian,
You are a word lover. I noticed it most this year when words and coherent thoughts left me. Searching for signs of the old me in abandoned journals, I found fragments of poetry you’d spoken.
Ever since you started to speak, you’ve played with words, twisted them, and created something wholly new with them. A long time ago, a famous poet named Coleridge defined poetry as “the best words in the best order.” You, my love, are our poet in residence.
One day, you walked up to me in the kitchen, climbed onto the counter, and said, “Did you know human beings are made of love?”
I’ve saved some of my favorite lines of yours in dog-eared notebooks. It’s time to give them back to you.
On a warm spring day: “Let’s go watch the flowers grow.”
In a park with natural landscaping: “Can we walk through the heavenly grass?”
Seeing trees covered in hoar frost: “They look like snowflakes standing up.”
On saying goodbye to me for two nights: “You’re a come-back-er woman.”
After reading a beloved book: “A kissing hand smells like love.”
Before bedtime: “When I yawn, my brain sounds like a cloud moving by.”
Waiting for Grandma to arrive: “My heart is filled with bursting love.”
After I left for a conference: “My heart is a little smaller when Mommy is away.”
Advising me on how to swing: “Barefoot is always best.”
Defining your playful father: “Adults are grown up kids.”
On eating beets for the first time: “They taste like kisses covered in soil.”
Carpe diem, Vivian . Thank you for teaching me to observe, to record, and to listen, and most of all, to find poetry and laughter everywhere, especially in you and your brother. Somehow, family, when it’s done right, reminds me that—as broken as I’ve been this year and as broken as I am—I am good enough.
Much love,
Mommy
PART SIX
BEYOND KINDERGARTEN, OR PUTTING THE FUN IN DYSFUNCTION
STOP USING YOUR STRAW TO SUCK UP SPAGHETTI
We changed many things from that point on. Chris took on all the cooking, all the grocery shopping, and all the laundry. We hired a cleaning lady five hours per month. At Chris’s insistence, I started writing every Saturday afternoon.
Will and Viv started first grade, and I registered them in Friday afternoon music lessons because I wanted my kids to learn how to do something.
I don’t know what moron invented parented music lessons, the ones where Mom or Dad has to be present and assist. My guess is that it was some capitalist upstart who hoped to crack the Forbes 500 list before he hit thirty. It clearly wasn’t a parent.
What happened to the music lessons of yesteryear, which involved dropping your kid off at the house of an elderly woman, then going alone to a smoke-filled coffee shop to pass the time? And now music lessons are fun. Fun? Back in the day, music students just put in time. Playing the organ, as I once did, had nothing to do with fun.
Being stupid, Chris and I enrolled Will and Viv in one of those fun, parented music lessons. After we re-mortgaged our house to pay the fees, we bought a keyboard. Better a $100 used keyboard than a piano, I thought. Not that we could wedge a 500-pound behemoth amid our Hoarders-R-Us style of decorating even if we wanted to.
Because we had twins, the music teacher told me that both Chris and I both would have to attend each music lesson. Now, before I go any further, it’s important to mention that I’m pretty sure Chris’s kindergarten report card read, “Does not play well with others.” Although he would singlehandedly hold off a mob to protect his family, he is not a group man, nor does he enjoy new situations. So, when we arrived at a music studio the size of a walk-in closet, he wasn’t pleased that he had to squeeze himself onto the floor between six kids, six keyboards, six women, and enough puppets to make one believe Jim Henson was still alive.
After learning a song that would be stuck in my head the rest of the year, keyboard time began. Chris flipped. It wasn’t the insidious theme song that sent him over the edge, but the fact that Will played the black keys with his forehead.
“I’m taking him out to the car,” he said.
“No, you’re not.”
A mini-domestic argument ensued, with the teacher refereeing.
After the length of time it would take to read War and Peace aloud in Pig Latin, the lesson ended, and all four of us left, three in silence and Viv belting out the song I wanted to forget.
The week passed slowly, and practice times more slowly still. Trying to make two six-year-olds practice after their first lesson was not that difficult; however, trying to make two six-year-olds practice what they were supposed to was—especially when they’d discovered that their electronic keyboard had a “sound effect” key. If they played middle C, they got a rooster crowing. If they played another key, an AK-47 assaulted their ears.
With the discovery of that magical button, practice time was as easy as locking kids in a pantry with freshly made cookies and asking them to refrain.
Still, onward I soldiered, insistent that my kids would practice what they were supposed to so neither would be the worst student at the next lesson.
Parenting Tip: As long as your child isn’t the worst in his class, he will succeed. If he is the worst, drink more wine.
“Will, come on,” I urged. “Just play it one more time.
Please?” Begrudgingly, he began.
“Mommy will be right back,” I said. “Keep playing.” I went to look for alcohol. As I shut the fridge door, the music changed. “William,” I yelled. “Playing the vomit key does not count as practicing music.”
At that point, I gave up. Whether it was the vomit key, the helicopter key,
or the rooster key, the kids were practicing something.
Driving to the second lesson, I hatched a plan to prevent Chris from going ballistic. “OK,” I said to him, “your job is to be Viv’s dad and to pretend that Will is not your kid. So when he’s crab-walking under the keyboards or using his elbows to play, I’ll handle it. All you have to do is give me a sympathetic smile. Got it?”
“So I can just eye you like you’re a hot mom I’ve never slept with?” He winked.
I smiled. Chris never got the chance, though. Minutes later, when we walked into the studio, the teacher said to him, “You know, you really don’t need to be here. One parent is enough. Why don’t you go have a coffee?”
Yup, Chris had managed to get himself kicked out of a parented music class. I’m pretty sure he did his happy dance when the door closed behind him. And I’m pretty sure I heard the AK-47 key go off in my head.
Sometime during that first month of music lessons, I decided that if I were going to miss happy hour with my teaching colleagues on a Friday to learn about Captain Natural and turtle-shaped half notes, then I should at least get to go out for dinner afterwards.
This epiphany came on the drive home. I didn’t want to cook. I didn’t want Chris to cook either since we had no groceries. I careened into our driveway, and Viv hopped out to run into the bathroom. I followed.
I should have know better than to leave Will unattended in the garage. Usually, he’d discover another Rubbermaid crate of LEGO that Chris had purchased at a garage sale, or a power tool that could render him limbless. Granted, a lack of limbs would make it harder for him to sneak out to the garage, but I preferred my son’s self-mutilation to be limited to picking his cuticles until they bled.
Lying somewhere between the Dremel and the Ode-to-Star-Wars LEGO collection were the bike helmets. Chris subscribed to the theory that more was better, so why buy one full-priced bike helmet that fit your child when you could purchase twelve slightly cracked helmets that were too big or too small? It was the Goldilocks approach to outfitting children, though rare was the day that we got to the “This one’s just right” resolution.
With Viv in the house already, I clambered up the garage stairs armed with purses, backpacks, lunch bags, and music bags. Once in the kitchen, I unloaded my donkey self and noticed grocery bags on the counter. Thanks to Chris, we had food again.
“Can you help me put them away?” he asked.
I grumbled the Marge Simpson back-of-the-throat growl I’d perfected, forgetting how lucky I was. I dropped my own bags and began flinging gummy bears into the pantry like they were going into forced hibernation. Viv showed me her athleticism by scaling our side-by-side freezer with frozen fish stick and bagel gear. The real challenge was to get the boxes in there and slam the door before an avalanche of insta-dinners hit you. She was good at this. She’d been in training for a while.
“Where’s Will?” I asked.
Viv readjusted her grip on the freezer’s top shelf. “I don’t know,” she said. “I think he’s still outside.”
I put down my comfort food—a jar of peanut butter the size of a Smart car—and headed out to the garage.
I hip-checked the door. And there he was, one six-year-old circling on his bike.
“Hi Mom,” he said. “I have a helmet on.”
And he did. It didn’t matter that it was sitting vertical on the back of his head, not unlike how female graduates in the 1980s wore their mortar board so that it—and their hair—could defy gravity.
“Hey, Will,” I said. I looked at the concrete floor and saw a collection of bike helmets strewn all over. He was using them as traffic cones. I walked over and picked them up.
And that was when I noticed it. One old pink helmet, the kind with no vent holes, lay upwards, like a bowl. And there was something in the bowl.
“Will?” I said. “Did you put water in that bike helmet?”
He smiled.
“Oh no. You didn’t. Not your sister’s,” I stammered.
His smile widened.
“Will? Peeing in your sister’s bike helmet is not a good idea.”
“I know.”
“It’s disgusting. Why would you do that?”
“I had to pee.”
“We have a toilet.”
“I didn’t want to take off my shoes. And you said I shouldn’t pee in the front yard anymore.”
“Right. Don’t ever do that again,” I said. “And don’t tell your sister. Or your father.”
I picked up the newfound potty, kicked off my shoes in the back entrance, and disposed of the entire helmet.
“Mom?” I heard from the kitchen. “Can you help me? I can’t get the fries back in the freezer. And things keep hitting me on the head.”
“I’ll take over,” I said, relieved she didn’t ask to wear a helmet.
Chris took one look at me and listened to my Friday-night-dining-out proposal. He agreed, especially with the part about me needing a glass of wine.
We seemed to have more luck teaching Will and Viv about manners in restaurants.
We first started with “May I please have . . . .” Next in the series of lessons on how to appear to be more evolved than a dog came the “side order.”
Viv got this immediately. “May I please have the chicken fingers with a side of salt?”
Will, too, was a quick study. “May I please have the ketchup with a side of spaghetti?”
I smiled again. There is nothing that makes a nuclear family look more Pleasantville than smiles and nods.
Parenting Tip: When you’re out in public with your children, the simple actions of smiling and nodding will ensure passersby that you look like you know what you’re doing.
Chris ordered something healthy, and I ordered last.
“What’s your house red?” I asked.
Viv held up her Crayola.
I ignored her.
“I’ll have the Shiraz,” I said.
“Mom,” Viv said. “You forgot your manners.”
Right.
“May I please have a big glass of Shiraz?”
Viv’s smile oozed condescension.
We colored the paper tablecloth. I drank wine. Our kids blew bubbles and saliva in their chocolate milk. I drank wine. Chris pretended to listen to me while watching the baseball game on a TV suspended over my head.
A magician who could double as a pedophile wandered over and pulled random objects out of my kids’ ears while making a few bad sports jokes that involved the word “balls.” I drank.
The food came.
“Say thank you,” I instructed, moving my wine glass closer to me.
And we began that beautiful family time together, known as the MEAL, which stands for Mommy Eats, Always Last. For moms with young children, their own caloric consumption only happened when nearly every family member had finished.
Parenting Tip: Realizing that “meal” stands for “Mommy Eats, Always Last” will help you become accustomed to choking down cold food.
I ate my burger, making some remark about my iron level being down because Chris insisted on eating fish four times a week in the name of health or upping our mercury levels.
I passed Viv a napkin. And another one. And one more still.
I looked over at Will, who added spaghetti to his bowl of ketchup. He was being remarkably neat, albeit inefficient.
I said, “Stop using your straw to suck up spaghetti.”
“But Mom,” he explained after a slurp, “I invented this. It’s called a Spaghetti Sucker Upper.”
“Right. Well stop using your Spaghetti Sucker Upper. Now, Edison.”
“Hey,” Chris said, talking to the TV, “they’re calling the bullpen. You’ll never guess who’s going to close.”
“I need more wine,” I said.
My Sanity Sucker Upper was in overdrive.
YOU CAN’T SHOOT PEOPLE IN CHURCH
I don’t remember learning to skate; I just remember doing it. Like most rural Canadian ki
ds, I could walk out the back door to a natural ice surface. By the time January rolled around, however, the snow was usually too heavy to clear. Instead, we’d head to the rink on Friday night for public skating. Mom and Dad would down a few rum and Cokes while we’d play crack-the-whip and make skating trains long before the helmet era.
Will and Viv didn’t have this luxury. I was not about to build a skating rink in our backyard like my outdoorsy brother did in his gentrified neighborhood. My main excuse was that we lived on a hill, but that just concealed the fact that I hated tying skate laces. It was also why I didn’t do crafts or perform open-heart surgery: they all required a dexterity I did not possess.
Viv and Will took skating lessons, as in the beginner I-can’t-stand-up kind. They may have held the record for being the only six-year-old Canadians who didn’t know how to skate, which was rather embarrassing since both Chris and I were once proficient on blades.
Instead of sucking it up and teaching them, I took the middle-class approach, signed up my kids for skating lessons, and told Chris he was going to take them. He agreed without complaint, likely because memories of my post-pneumonia-insomnia crash remained a little too fresh in both our minds.
Parenting Tip: Paying other people to teach your children things you’re more than capable of teaching them is a perfectly acceptable middle-class folly.
Ten minutes before they had to leave for the first lesson, Viv was wearing her pink ankle socks that were the thickness of tissue paper. I asked her to put on socks that were longer and thicker. She explained—rightly—that she didn’t have any.
“Put on a pair of Will’s,” I said.
“I don’t want to wear his,” she said. “They’re boy socks.”
“No, they’re not. Mommy has socks like that.”
Her eyes widened, her resolve stiffened. “People will think I’m a boy.”
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