It Takes a Village

Lily woke up in the middle of the night with a fever boiling through her bloodstream.  I knew because she was snuggled up next to me and I felt my own blood start to simmer until I realized that she was tucked in the crook of my arm.  I touched her head, put my hand on her rising belly and she was on fire.  I reached for her little sister on the other side of me and she, thankfully, did not feel the same.  She turned over to avoid my handling of her little body and I tended to her big sister.  That was the first night.

The next evening, antibiotics in hand for the raging ear infection that was plaguing my girl, we tried again.  Lily on my right and Virginie on my left.  Everyone tucked in and medicated or whatever was needed to allow a comfortable night's sleep and healing.  We made it to 3 AM.  At 3 AM, Virginie started wheezing as if she'd swallowed a balloon.  She could not seem to take a full breath without this full, croupy cough taking over her tiny body.  She would cough and tremble and cry, all while trying to fall back to sleep.  I offered her inhaler every fifteen minutes until she could breath easier.  Unfortunately, her coughing woke Lily who began pulling at one of her ears, coughing herself, and complaining of pain. For her there were pain killers and a back rub.  In fact, with each one sandwiching me into the middle of the bed, I rubbed and patted them, arms outstretched, until 5 AM when I heard the last labored breath subside to soft, even whistles.  Then I slept.

I've spent countless nights alone with the girls and most nights they are well, though often chatty and wake in the night.  When they are sick or scared or in need, I am available for them too, will take care of what needs caring for until it is right.  The good days greatly surpass the bad, but the bad ones fuel the fuzzy-brained, rain-clouded, barbed-wire pressured, and angst-filled stories of parenthood.  Those nights leave me feeling so low and lonely, mostly because I am sleep deprived and insane (JEG, you know who you are), like I don't have a prayer or a hand or a friend.

This morning, my neighbor offered to take the girls for a while to play with her children.  She and her husband had run their errands and handled their business and knew that I was alone for the long, holiday weekend with the girls.  I tried to bow out, excuse myself, convince her that it wasn't necessary, that the girls were fine with crazy me.  Though I have longed for a community, a tribe, a village to help me raise my children, I don't think I ever considered what I was really asking for.  It wasn't something mythic, epic, poetic, romantic.  It wasn't only a dream or an expression used in speeches when children had again been marginalized or ignored.  For me, it was having someone that I trusted and that I knew cared for me and my children, take them for a bit.  Nurture them.  Feed them.  Play with them.  Entertain them.  So that I might have a moment to regenerate, take a shower without a guest lecturer present, hell use the bathroom without having a conversation about only God knows what with a person sitting one foot in front of me.  On the floor.

I let the girls go for a bit when a friend called requesting Virginie, the four year old.  My friend's four year old was down for a full afternoon of play that involved multiple costume changes, a bath, coloring, a trip to the pool, all the cool stuff the pre-K set is into.  She went.  She stayed.  I saw her at 6 pm.  Lily, too, stayed out and I did things.  Fun things, housework things, banking things, lying down things, standing up things, alone things.  I later sat in the yard having an afternoon drink with my neighbor while we watched our children ride bikes and scooters up and down the drive.  A family of friends who were walking by on their way to the train station, continuing on to the airport and a European vacation, stopped for a quick beer.  I promised to check in on their house and their visitors. (They were doing a house trade with a family in France.)

I felt the village forming around me.  I always see in my mind a Native American or African tribe of my imagining with huts configured in a circle, women working and tending to their children, men hunting and gathering, doing what they do.  It is an image that comforts me, though it lives in my fantasy and is not drawn from any particular group or tribe.  It's just what I want.  The houses in my neighborhood are close enough for my children, young as they are, to walk from our home to a friend's without my being nervous.  In the nearly two years we have lived here, we have amassed a small tribe of families to whom I would entrust my children, my home, our pet (Baby Dragon, the newt).  There is a wonderful exchange of childcare, babysitting, dinners, evening cocktails, and conversations that gives me peace.  The girls have learned to respect and consider other adults (and children too) and other ways in which families live and households are run.  But as important, I have learned to trust, to fall into the arms of people who want to love and support me, who would allow me to love and support them, who have helped me give and receive in equal measure despite myself.

The village that we have chosen to call home has given me a place in the circle.  The people we have added to our circle have given me no corners to be pushed into and no walls to hide behind.  I am grateful for the connections and the community.  When the nights are insufferable and days or weeks alone threaten my sanity, my village comes to my aid.  It takes a village to raise a child.  This one has raised up my family too.


(c)  Copyright 2013.  Repatriated Mama: Back to the Suburban Grind.

Playing the "we"

When I was younger, I had a few boyfriends that just didn't make the grade with my friends.  They always invited "us" but then would find a moment to corner "me" and mention that our "we" was kinda getting on their nerves.  There were all kinds of different reasons why my beau just didn't cut it, often reasons that I, blinded by love and secret schmoopy-doop whisperings, just couldn't see.  Either he was stand-offish, selfish, self-involved, boring, judgmental, smothering, cruel, belligerent, exhausting, needy, whatever and just made the people in my life wonder how and when I would come to my senses and release the fool from my team.  Before I settled down with the Frenchy who is charming and funny and a little arrogant but also self-depreciating and of course, French and adorable, I really had no idea how putting together a good "we" could allow "me" to have and keep good friends and relations close.

I have witnessed more than a few relationships fall apart because of this situation, but wondered, what happens when the partner in question is not a boyfriend, girlfriend, lover, or pal who can be cut from the squad without legal strings, but is a husband, wife, or business partner?  Can a friendship survive if the number 2 always has to tag along?  Can you tell your friend that you just can't get down with her man?  Out here in the suburbs, people tend to travel in clans.  It's not like my former life in the city where packs of roving artists, actors, writers, and single types, often without children could move in and out of circles, trying on different personas, ideas, and accents.  In the burbs, you and your partner and sometimes your kiddles move as a subset and merge with other subsets. It's awesome when the wives, the husbands, and the children get along on their own accord, when you don't have to remind someone to be on their best behavior, give them pointers on good conversation, worry that while you are having the time of your life, your partner or your kids are picking lint out of their belly buttons or worse, starting a war.

Political blowhards, lecherous Lotharios, Snoopy marshmallows (as my Frenchy calls the less interesting), inappropriate jokers, and flirty kittens can ruin any night out, dinner, or mixed family gathering.  I often wonder, if before heading out the couples have a chat about how to behave. "Please honey, don't tell so and so how gorgeous you thought she was last time.  I think it made her uncomfortable."  or "Can you just try to add something to the conversation, babe?  You have lots to talk about when we are together." I love my Frenchy and I must tell you he is damned funny in French and in English!  But truth be told, sometimes I ask him if he wouldn't mind chiming in, sharing a little bit of himself, letting people see how good, funny, intelligent he is.  I know that often, we fall for our friends and are so excited by them that we don't imagine that their partners will wilt our flowers, bore us to tears, piss us off to raging blindness.  Maybe we don't have to always come as a package.  Perhaps it's best to define that role before we force our others on the group and find the space between us grow.  Perhaps "we" is too much when all we want is "you" and "me."

If someone told me that they loved hanging with me, but would I mind leaving my Gaul at home, I think I would take that as an assault on my taste and style.  Really?  You don't want the good stuff?  Or worse, you think I don't have the good stuff?  Sometimes, it's true, husbands dampen the conversation.  Especially when that convo is meant to be about them individually or collectively or about sex or about running away with the trainer (even in jest) or something so private you only want to share it with a good girlfriend, not her husband.  But other times, a lively repartee between couples, discourse, new ideas, funny tales can solidify a friendship, make scheduling and entertaining that much easier.  And when time is limited, babysitters are scarce, and a good get-together is just what you are looking for, it's nice to know that we can all get along.


(c)  Copyright 2012.  Repatriated Mama:  Back to the Suburban Grind.