Our main babysitter is 23 years old. A gorgeous redhead with long legs and a nervous giggle, she's smart and kind and good and funny and so loved by the girls that they throw their arms around her whenever they see her anywhere. Even at St. James Gate where we went for a beer and a bite and they saw her saddled up to the bar on her laptop on a corner stool trying to people watch and hide from the crowds. I love her too. She feels so very familiar to me.
Recently, she has been cancelling our babysitting gigs at the last minute possible with lots of apologies and promises to do better and each time, rather than giving her the business. I gently explain to her how and why this is not acceptable, make other arrangements, and then check in on her a day or two later. I have talked her through break-ups, move outs, job searches, resume building, heartache, hospital stays, sending texts in the night when a thought comes into my mind. I want her to feel loved and cared for. She's 23. It's hard to know.
When I was 23, I found my poor soul at the end of one of the most important relationships of my life. While other bigger adults knew that this was par for the course, my imminent break up was consuming me, actually consuming me and I was achy and scrawny and scratchy and messy. I'd sent my belongings out to Colorado to move with him, where we'd live "as friends and roommates" because the shit was over and I had somehow agreed to that. I'd quit my job, the job procured with the help of one of my favorite people on earth, a college painting and drawing professor who really guided me in a way I'd not been in my life, and told everyone "So long, suckas!" And then backtracked. "What the f*** was I doing?" I had not thought this plan all the way through. I was going to MOVE to Colorado with my once boyfriend/love of my life, now roommate/pal/friend/what and live there? Maybe this really did require some tears and some sense and somebody help me. I was a tortured mess. Walked all over Boston from one end to the next in the heat of the summer, eating only grapes and Cheerios, taking the occasional psychedelic, and drinking wine. I cried from sun up to sundown and in between worked and walked and cried into the telephone, making teary phone calls at 5 am to anyone who would pick up. I missed appointments and sat in corner seats at the bar thinking I was invisible when I was really lovely and basically had no idea what on earth I was doing.
When I was in my thirties and living in New York, trying my hand at acting and doing stuff I always said I would, I fell hard for a boy who was 23. Ah, the 23 year old boy. He was stunning. Brand new and full of ideas and dreams. An old soul, so we had that, but young and 23. Gorgeous in the way that only a new adult can be. I couldn't bear to prevent him from the starts and stops and joys and pains of my twenties, couldn't even ask that he catch up to me, do what I wanted, be where I was, and it ended as I suppose it should have. Even now, I wonder how this boy grew into a man because there was so much there already...at 23.
When my sitter calls or texts each time to say she's sorry but she had to throw up, missed her train, lost her keys, just cannot pull it together, I swear that this is the absolute last straw. I need someone more reliable, someone who can commit, who cares about my schedule and my needs. I DO need that still. And sometimes I ask someone else to come or trade off my kids for someone else's another day. But when someone comes down with a case of the 23's, they need compassion and they need guidance and they need love. I give the business. I do. I say things like, "You don't want to represent yourself out there like that. You don't want to prove to be untrustworthy. Your word is your bond, you have to give it sincerely." I'm right. But I also remember being and feeling so brand new and believing that everything was just as urgent and important and earth-shattering as the first baby steps of a toddler. The world was opening up. I wanted to and believed I could do anything...if I could just get out of my own way.
When the girls get there, to 23, I hope I can breathe that rarefied air with them, recall when someone gave me a break and a nudge, let me go into the world and said they'd catch me, they'd be there, they'd let me figure it out, and give them the space to fuck up so beautifully. It is a fleeting moment, special and lovely, where you can get away with just about anything. Worn like leggings with short shirts, t-shirts with no bra, high heels with everything. It's for the young. And they look so good doing it, even if they drive you crazy and leave you hanging.
(c) Copyright 2015. Repatriated Mama: Back to the Suburban Grind.
Monday, September 28, 2015
Thursday, June 18, 2015
Back to the Suburban Grind: Tip of the iceberg: An average life
Back to the Suburban Grind: Tip of the iceberg: An average life: This is how I feel right now. I am in 9th grade reading Huckleberry Finn with my class and each time they call Jim a nigger, I cringe. And...
Tip of the iceberg: An average life
This is how I feel right now. I am in 9th grade reading Huckleberry Finn with my class and each time they call Jim a nigger, I cringe. And it's said over and over. Many look at me sympathetically, shrug their shoulders, some even touch me on the arm if they are close enough because we all know, no matter how we all long for the adventure, that poor, ol' Jim and I have more in common than Huck and me. I don't deny that most feel uncomfortable with the language that is explained away with a "that's how people spoke of black folks at that time" but when we move on to "A Farewell to Arms" everyone else can drop their shame, their melancholy, longing for the expectation that I have forgiven this past and that "we've come a long way, baby" and get back to modern living.
But I see Jim and I know him because, though you may be looking at me and seeing an upper middle class, well-educated, articulate, funny, put together (at times) African-American (I prefer Black) woman with a handsome, French husband and two beautiful mixed kids, I come from a long line where Jim and folks like him are roots on my tree. I am, as the expression goes, the tip of the iceberg, but under the surface is a lineage of survivors and thrivers, former slaves and slavers. We are mixed by choice and very often not. I spent my early years and my summers on the front porch of my grandparents' home at the foot of the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia. Though I lived in a white neighborhood in New Jersey and believed myself assimilated, I sat at the feet of my grands and great-grands and heard about racism firsthand. Not just being called "nigger" or "blackie" or "brown sugar" by white kids testing their power and position in the wide streets of the suburbs, but pervasive, oppressive, strangulating cruelty that only served to threaten and stunt the mental, emotional, spiritual, and social growth of black people. These were not stories or headlines. These tales were the lives of my family and my ancestors. No matter where I am in the world, this is the ground beneath me.
I did not grow up the way many envision black people growing up. Not because it is so rare but because you don't know us. And if you do, really do, then I am not talking to you, but I would venture to guess that you don't really. I dream of a life that is banal, no more exciting or charged than that of anyone else, maybe even the default. The life you think of when you think of every day life. And then I wake up and remember that I am black. That I am a black, sensitive, creative woman who, by nature of being black in America, cannot live an average life. That my life is meant to define, describe, explain, assuage, and calm the feelings of other citizens allowed to live their mundane lives while mine is fraught with symbolism and metaphor and hyperbole.
My grandmother told me often that she wanted better for me, for all of us, was grateful for what she'd seen us achieve in such a short amount of time, hoped that "white people were fair and good" to us. There was palpable fear and doubt, but also hope. I wanted to tell her, to show her that all her suffering and her efforts had not been in vain, that we were advancing. That the rapes, assaults, laws, white supremacy, and pervasive and accepted racism were seen as the horrors they were, were being put firmly in the past, and that WE were being seen for the "content of our character." And the advancement of our family specifically was tied to our advancement as black people in America collectively. Many black families will tell you the same. For us to be able to just be average, regular, unspectacular, under the radar, just living our lives gave her hope. It was the tip of the iceberg. She was sure we'd overcome. I carried that hope for her.
There were small things that reminded me we hadn't come as far as I'd hoped. My father getting followed home by the police on a morning run. People assuming he was a ball player because he drove a nice car. Having a very hard time finding an apartment even with full time employment, good credit, and a clean record. Having to consider that I had a clean record. Listening to people tell me, when hearing my experience as a black woman in America that racism wasn't the problem but poverty and elitism. Um, AND those too. Having to qualify that though, yes, micro-aggressions were not the same as being beaten or killed in the street, dealing with them was still incredibly damaging to the psyche. Having someone, a "friend" write something about "hey, blacks, I've suffered too and look at me" on my Facebook wall in response to more proof of the systemic racism that prevails in our country. Imagine trying to be part of a group or society or country but when the conch shell gets passed to you, everyone talks over you. Tells you it's not your turn.
If we meet you with rage, if we meet you with anger, you call us animals and beat us or pepper spray us or shoot us. If we ask for a fair shake, an opportunity, a chance, you say we are angling for special privilege. If we write stories or articles or blogs about our experiences on the outside, you say we, WE are the ones being divisive. If we tell you we are hurting, we are tired, we are traumatized by the rhetoric, by the hatred, by the violence, the unrelenting insensitivity and ignorance, you say buck up. When innocent black men, women, and children are murdered, people who look like us, in epic abuses of power, and no justice comes on their behalf. When we cry for them, brothers, sisters, sons, daughters, fathers, mothers, cousins, friends, we are asked to consider why they were in the wrong place at the wrong time, doing the wrong thing. We are told that if they'd just listened, behaved, respected the law and the policies that were not designed with them in mind, they might have lived another day to face it all again.
This racist system is real and it's killing all of us. Not just Black people, but our country. It's not that we are a nation divided by black and white because that isn't true. It wasn't then and it isn't now. But racism, complacency, white privilege and its hideous cousin, white supremacy do threaten to tear us apart. And everything that anyone finds great about this nation will crumble into the seas like the icebergs of white and blue and purple crumbling under the heat of global warming. We are dying ever so slowly from a disease that feels impossible to stop. We are sure it is going to overtake us, consume us. It just might. Like people suffering from illness, we can resign or we can fight it with all we have. There is prayer, meditation, and there is love. And love...
Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. 5It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. 6Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. 7It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. 1 Corinthians 13
I don't deny it, I am sinking, melting into the sea, afraid I will never be solid again. Each week, as I try to do what everyone else is doing, raising their children, trying to give them values and truths to uphold them, I am crying into the back of my hand, afraid to let them see what lies beneath the surface of their gleaming pyramid called life. I held the hope for my grandmother and now I hold it for my daughters. This conversation is just the start. It's the tip of the iceberg but if we don't tend to it, we are bound to hit the parts below the surface and dash all our dreams of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, for an average life made special by our content, by our character, by our cooperation, and by our love.
RIP to the victims of the cowardly act of terrorism in at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina.
(c) Copyright 2015. Repatriated Mama: Back to the Suburban Grind.
But I see Jim and I know him because, though you may be looking at me and seeing an upper middle class, well-educated, articulate, funny, put together (at times) African-American (I prefer Black) woman with a handsome, French husband and two beautiful mixed kids, I come from a long line where Jim and folks like him are roots on my tree. I am, as the expression goes, the tip of the iceberg, but under the surface is a lineage of survivors and thrivers, former slaves and slavers. We are mixed by choice and very often not. I spent my early years and my summers on the front porch of my grandparents' home at the foot of the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia. Though I lived in a white neighborhood in New Jersey and believed myself assimilated, I sat at the feet of my grands and great-grands and heard about racism firsthand. Not just being called "nigger" or "blackie" or "brown sugar" by white kids testing their power and position in the wide streets of the suburbs, but pervasive, oppressive, strangulating cruelty that only served to threaten and stunt the mental, emotional, spiritual, and social growth of black people. These were not stories or headlines. These tales were the lives of my family and my ancestors. No matter where I am in the world, this is the ground beneath me.
I did not grow up the way many envision black people growing up. Not because it is so rare but because you don't know us. And if you do, really do, then I am not talking to you, but I would venture to guess that you don't really. I dream of a life that is banal, no more exciting or charged than that of anyone else, maybe even the default. The life you think of when you think of every day life. And then I wake up and remember that I am black. That I am a black, sensitive, creative woman who, by nature of being black in America, cannot live an average life. That my life is meant to define, describe, explain, assuage, and calm the feelings of other citizens allowed to live their mundane lives while mine is fraught with symbolism and metaphor and hyperbole.
There were small things that reminded me we hadn't come as far as I'd hoped. My father getting followed home by the police on a morning run. People assuming he was a ball player because he drove a nice car. Having a very hard time finding an apartment even with full time employment, good credit, and a clean record. Having to consider that I had a clean record. Listening to people tell me, when hearing my experience as a black woman in America that racism wasn't the problem but poverty and elitism. Um, AND those too. Having to qualify that though, yes, micro-aggressions were not the same as being beaten or killed in the street, dealing with them was still incredibly damaging to the psyche. Having someone, a "friend" write something about "hey, blacks, I've suffered too and look at me" on my Facebook wall in response to more proof of the systemic racism that prevails in our country. Imagine trying to be part of a group or society or country but when the conch shell gets passed to you, everyone talks over you. Tells you it's not your turn.
If we meet you with rage, if we meet you with anger, you call us animals and beat us or pepper spray us or shoot us. If we ask for a fair shake, an opportunity, a chance, you say we are angling for special privilege. If we write stories or articles or blogs about our experiences on the outside, you say we, WE are the ones being divisive. If we tell you we are hurting, we are tired, we are traumatized by the rhetoric, by the hatred, by the violence, the unrelenting insensitivity and ignorance, you say buck up. When innocent black men, women, and children are murdered, people who look like us, in epic abuses of power, and no justice comes on their behalf. When we cry for them, brothers, sisters, sons, daughters, fathers, mothers, cousins, friends, we are asked to consider why they were in the wrong place at the wrong time, doing the wrong thing. We are told that if they'd just listened, behaved, respected the law and the policies that were not designed with them in mind, they might have lived another day to face it all again.
This racist system is real and it's killing all of us. Not just Black people, but our country. It's not that we are a nation divided by black and white because that isn't true. It wasn't then and it isn't now. But racism, complacency, white privilege and its hideous cousin, white supremacy do threaten to tear us apart. And everything that anyone finds great about this nation will crumble into the seas like the icebergs of white and blue and purple crumbling under the heat of global warming. We are dying ever so slowly from a disease that feels impossible to stop. We are sure it is going to overtake us, consume us. It just might. Like people suffering from illness, we can resign or we can fight it with all we have. There is prayer, meditation, and there is love. And love...
Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. 5It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. 6Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. 7It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. 1 Corinthians 13
I don't deny it, I am sinking, melting into the sea, afraid I will never be solid again. Each week, as I try to do what everyone else is doing, raising their children, trying to give them values and truths to uphold them, I am crying into the back of my hand, afraid to let them see what lies beneath the surface of their gleaming pyramid called life. I held the hope for my grandmother and now I hold it for my daughters. This conversation is just the start. It's the tip of the iceberg but if we don't tend to it, we are bound to hit the parts below the surface and dash all our dreams of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, for an average life made special by our content, by our character, by our cooperation, and by our love.
RIP to the victims of the cowardly act of terrorism in at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina.
(c) Copyright 2015. Repatriated Mama: Back to the Suburban Grind.
Thursday, May 28, 2015
Back to the Suburban Grind: Color Me Bad
Back to the Suburban Grind: Color Me Bad: I don't know if the confusion is because my husband is French or because he is older than I am, but this whole birthday party planning t...
Color Me Bad
I don't know if the confusion is because my husband is French or because he is older than I am, but this whole birthday party planning thing has blown his mind. The lengths we have gone to to celebrate the birth of these people with their peers in a way fit for a new millennium-born hurts the brain. I honestly cannot say when all this happened because other than roller skating and bowling parties, there was not much else, unless a trip to McDonald's or the local ice cream parlor was your thing, for a child of the 70s to do to celebrate his or her birthday. The cake was almost always made at home and looked like all the cakes at that time--lopsided, licked, amateurish (except for one friend whose mother was a cake decorator and her cakes looked like heaven). The gifts were straight from the Mattel catalog and wrapped with little attention or care. There was pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey, 2 liter Cokes, Sprite, and orange or grape soda, and bowls of junk food to choke a horse. I recall lots of running around and games like Simon Sez, musical chairs, and too much balloon popping, none helium filled. Basically, birthday parties were chaos, cost was minimal, sugar was plentiful, and fun was guaranteed to be a bit Lord of Flies meets Super Friends. It didn't really involve the adults who were there just to keep everyone in the ring.
My husband recalls his birthdays celebrated with family. A favorite meal, a lovely cake or tarte. If there were others involved, there was lots of outdoor activity, enjoying nature and its beauty. Kids wore nice clothes and uncomfortable shoes. They were quiet, elegant affairs. Yeah, so...the French do everything in a more sophisticated way. Whatevs.
Our six year old peanut had us choose between a gambling establishment for littles and tweens, silly games and twee rides, jumping parlors and castles, roller skating (She's a novice and my anxiety can't take her and all her friends falling all over the rink.), and this adorable pottery painting place. With foresight that we could never have known was brilliant until the moment our wee one's toe was crushed, leaving her unable to participate in physical activities, we opted for pottery painting at Color Me Mine. We invited all the girls from her class and two other pals who do not go to school with her and pre-ordered the Party Animal package.
The Party Animal package offered a choice of five ceramic animals to paint--a unicorn, a dragon, a kitten, a puppy, and a dolphin. With the party scheduled for just an hour and a 1/2, I figured painting, cupcakes, singing, balloons, done. Ten minutes after all the girls were given their animals to paint, the first was finished. Our staff host, not missing a beat, handed out paper bags to color and design. These bags would be the packaging for the finished products, the carrying cases for the work that we, my husband and I (probably just I), would deliver once the pieces had been fired and collected.
The Party Animal package was also an apt title for our working performance art piece because once these girls were set free from their own parental confines and rules, they let it loose! No matter that we were in an establishment with other people trying to get their creativity on painting plates and cups and ceramic tchtotchkes that said LOVE or were shaped like Winnie the Pooh, these animals were here to party! We served carrots and strawberries and pretzels, had juice boxes and water, and at the end of the fete we all sang "happy birthday" to my daughter standing before a line of mini-cupcakes (vanilla with vanilla frosting) decorated with candles that spelled out "happy birthday." (How apropos.)
The goodie bags I'd put together a few days earlier had fun craft stuffs, stickers, sidewalk chalk, and just one piece of candy (I'm not crazy about sending kids off into the world hopped up on sugary BS but I have no problem searching for grape soda if my oldest says she wants to taste it. Go figure. Hypocrisies of parenting.) Our baby said that her special day, celebrated one month after her actual birthday because of our Spring Break travel, was the best day ever. She has lots of those. Best days ever. My work is done.
...and yet. It sits funny with me this way of celebrating a birthday. True, it was my choice to have the party outside of my home, to turn it into an event, to pay someone else to do what I was unable or unwilling to do. I have had many birthday parties in the house and all of them involved projects. There was a shoe decorating party, tie-dye t-shirt party, princess party with costumes and crown decorating. It has been incredibly difficult for me to let go of the reins and let someone else take over and not because I am a control freak (or not only because of that), but because I have a hard time giving myself permission to not be everything at all times to my children. To everyone really. When I am tired, when I say I am spent, when I say I can't go on, can't do it, I still do. When I say no about something, I try to find a way to surprise a yes. Letting someone else run the party, handle the details and the minutia, put out the fires, and clean up the mess means my role has to change. It means that I cannot hide in the rush of the activity but have to stand stock in the center of it all and just be.
There are so many parties, birthday and other celebrations that have so much fanfare. I recall fabulous birthday parties for the classmates of my girls in Barbados where there was swimming and grilling and clowns and music and open bar and balloons and face painting and jumping castles and costume changes and the presentation of the celebrated as king or queen for a day. It was like a circus or carnival. And now back in the States, there are trips to all sorts of places set up for kids' enjoyment--skating and jumping and driving and water sports and painting, creating, dressing up. Parents spare no expense in honoring the arrival of their little ones to the world. But I miss the chaos of a 70s birthday party, the accidentally marvelous moments as opposed to the orchestrated, manufactured fun. I miss the innocence and the surprise of celebration, the wonder of it all.
All the girl babies from the party will have a little something to remind them of their time celebrating Virginie's birthday, at least for as long as their parents choose to keep it. Our girls will add them to the rows of other memorabilia from their childhood thus far and they will rest with the satisfaction that we showed them how much we love them by feting them so marvelously. But really, the part I like best about the girls' birthdays is when I can recount for them the days they were born. They love to hear the small details, a super hot day with melting pavement and hours wrapped in blankets in the cold room for Lily and a rainy afternoon when I stared out the picture window of my hospital room knowing she was soon to arrive for Virginie. They know these parties with so many celebrants will not last much longer. They have been told that age 10 is our cut off and that we prefer smaller events with just special friends to massive, all out galas.
I'm not crazy about celebrating like that, fearful that using money and gifts and grand events to show how I love them diminishes the greater truth. I want them to feel honored by how we love one another, to know it no matter what I have to give or don't. I want the truth to be that we love each other, celebrate each other, honor each other, care for each other, and will show it with our feelings, our hearts, and our actions. I don't want to buy their happiness or let them think they are owed such extravagance at every milestone, achievement, or event. It can't be about the money. It's purpose and it's value already threatens our daily existence. It's about the love. I can dole that out and sprinkle it everywhere, everyday. And sometimes it has to be enough even on the special days.
The painted dolphin and dragon sit on the book shelf in the girls' room. They love them and had a great time at the party. Right before bed, Virginie said in the sleepiest voice, "I know you and Papa and Lily love me because you tell me every day. But also thank you for letting me have this party. It was the best day ever." And then I don't feel so bad.
(c) Copyright 2015. Repatriated Mama: Back to the Suburban Grind.
My husband recalls his birthdays celebrated with family. A favorite meal, a lovely cake or tarte. If there were others involved, there was lots of outdoor activity, enjoying nature and its beauty. Kids wore nice clothes and uncomfortable shoes. They were quiet, elegant affairs. Yeah, so...the French do everything in a more sophisticated way. Whatevs.
Our six year old peanut had us choose between a gambling establishment for littles and tweens, silly games and twee rides, jumping parlors and castles, roller skating (She's a novice and my anxiety can't take her and all her friends falling all over the rink.), and this adorable pottery painting place. With foresight that we could never have known was brilliant until the moment our wee one's toe was crushed, leaving her unable to participate in physical activities, we opted for pottery painting at Color Me Mine. We invited all the girls from her class and two other pals who do not go to school with her and pre-ordered the Party Animal package.
The Party Animal package offered a choice of five ceramic animals to paint--a unicorn, a dragon, a kitten, a puppy, and a dolphin. With the party scheduled for just an hour and a 1/2, I figured painting, cupcakes, singing, balloons, done. Ten minutes after all the girls were given their animals to paint, the first was finished. Our staff host, not missing a beat, handed out paper bags to color and design. These bags would be the packaging for the finished products, the carrying cases for the work that we, my husband and I (probably just I), would deliver once the pieces had been fired and collected.
The Party Animal package was also an apt title for our working performance art piece because once these girls were set free from their own parental confines and rules, they let it loose! No matter that we were in an establishment with other people trying to get their creativity on painting plates and cups and ceramic tchtotchkes that said LOVE or were shaped like Winnie the Pooh, these animals were here to party! We served carrots and strawberries and pretzels, had juice boxes and water, and at the end of the fete we all sang "happy birthday" to my daughter standing before a line of mini-cupcakes (vanilla with vanilla frosting) decorated with candles that spelled out "happy birthday." (How apropos.)
The goodie bags I'd put together a few days earlier had fun craft stuffs, stickers, sidewalk chalk, and just one piece of candy (I'm not crazy about sending kids off into the world hopped up on sugary BS but I have no problem searching for grape soda if my oldest says she wants to taste it. Go figure. Hypocrisies of parenting.) Our baby said that her special day, celebrated one month after her actual birthday because of our Spring Break travel, was the best day ever. She has lots of those. Best days ever. My work is done.
...and yet. It sits funny with me this way of celebrating a birthday. True, it was my choice to have the party outside of my home, to turn it into an event, to pay someone else to do what I was unable or unwilling to do. I have had many birthday parties in the house and all of them involved projects. There was a shoe decorating party, tie-dye t-shirt party, princess party with costumes and crown decorating. It has been incredibly difficult for me to let go of the reins and let someone else take over and not because I am a control freak (or not only because of that), but because I have a hard time giving myself permission to not be everything at all times to my children. To everyone really. When I am tired, when I say I am spent, when I say I can't go on, can't do it, I still do. When I say no about something, I try to find a way to surprise a yes. Letting someone else run the party, handle the details and the minutia, put out the fires, and clean up the mess means my role has to change. It means that I cannot hide in the rush of the activity but have to stand stock in the center of it all and just be.
There are so many parties, birthday and other celebrations that have so much fanfare. I recall fabulous birthday parties for the classmates of my girls in Barbados where there was swimming and grilling and clowns and music and open bar and balloons and face painting and jumping castles and costume changes and the presentation of the celebrated as king or queen for a day. It was like a circus or carnival. And now back in the States, there are trips to all sorts of places set up for kids' enjoyment--skating and jumping and driving and water sports and painting, creating, dressing up. Parents spare no expense in honoring the arrival of their little ones to the world. But I miss the chaos of a 70s birthday party, the accidentally marvelous moments as opposed to the orchestrated, manufactured fun. I miss the innocence and the surprise of celebration, the wonder of it all.
All the girl babies from the party will have a little something to remind them of their time celebrating Virginie's birthday, at least for as long as their parents choose to keep it. Our girls will add them to the rows of other memorabilia from their childhood thus far and they will rest with the satisfaction that we showed them how much we love them by feting them so marvelously. But really, the part I like best about the girls' birthdays is when I can recount for them the days they were born. They love to hear the small details, a super hot day with melting pavement and hours wrapped in blankets in the cold room for Lily and a rainy afternoon when I stared out the picture window of my hospital room knowing she was soon to arrive for Virginie. They know these parties with so many celebrants will not last much longer. They have been told that age 10 is our cut off and that we prefer smaller events with just special friends to massive, all out galas.
I'm not crazy about celebrating like that, fearful that using money and gifts and grand events to show how I love them diminishes the greater truth. I want them to feel honored by how we love one another, to know it no matter what I have to give or don't. I want the truth to be that we love each other, celebrate each other, honor each other, care for each other, and will show it with our feelings, our hearts, and our actions. I don't want to buy their happiness or let them think they are owed such extravagance at every milestone, achievement, or event. It can't be about the money. It's purpose and it's value already threatens our daily existence. It's about the love. I can dole that out and sprinkle it everywhere, everyday. And sometimes it has to be enough even on the special days.
The painted dolphin and dragon sit on the book shelf in the girls' room. They love them and had a great time at the party. Right before bed, Virginie said in the sleepiest voice, "I know you and Papa and Lily love me because you tell me every day. But also thank you for letting me have this party. It was the best day ever." And then I don't feel so bad.
(c) Copyright 2015. Repatriated Mama: Back to the Suburban Grind.
Sunday, May 10, 2015
Back to the Suburban Grind: Mother's Day: broken and fixed
Back to the Suburban Grind: Mother's Day: broken and fixed: Delicious treats dreamed up by my love, fabulous gifts, and the comfort of family makes Mother's Day special or at least appropriately c...
Mother's Day: broken and fixed
Delicious treats dreamed up by my love, fabulous gifts, and the comfort of family makes Mother's Day special or at least appropriately celebrated in the eyes of our everyday-is-a-party culture. I don't need pomp and circumstance and surely don't stand on ceremony, not for this made up day. Mother's Day is always a strange one for me. My husband, who is a private chef, almost always works so that the lady of the house can celebrate with her family in grand fashion. THAT is her Mother's Day.
Mine, at least for the past few years, looks more like this: my husband leaves for a beautiful destination of the rich and famous by private jet or souped up, tinted-window SUV to prepare luxury meals and treats for his clients, and I finish out the week of school, activities, play dates, grocery shopping, story reading (now listening since the 6 year old is thrilled to show off her reading), and socializing on my own. It's our rhythm and save the early school drop off on Friday when both girls need to be ready early enough to drop by 8 am, I can and do handle it.
I am too keenly aware of how quickly my children are growing up. Little chubby hands and fat, yummy fingers have become strong and elegant, rolly-poly bodies have elongated into graceful torsos, arms and legs for days, and beautiful faces resting on long necks. I measure time by these changes, recall real life events by growing and falling teeth, short or long hair, training wheels or riding free. In a mother's calendar there are also injuries and ailments as mile markers, moments that stop one's heart, and shore up strengths one did not know were there.
I remember when Lily broke her finger one summer when her cousin was visiting and recall her saying with pride after she'd been X-rayed and splinted, "I can't believe I broke a bone!" She was beaming and proud of her ability to hurt, to suffer, and to endure. She was so human in that moment and she brought my fantasy of being able to protect them, live the hurts for them, take the force of the blow, crashing to the ground. And months later when Virginie, walking with some friends along the creek that either trickles or rages through our town depending on the season, tripped and cut her chin requiring three stitches, I regretted the choice I made to allow her the opportunity to explore and court danger.
It's the delusion I have of shielding my children from life's pains and ills and woes, and physical safety seems a good place to practice. How many times a day do I say, "Be careful! Watch out! Don't touch that! Don't slip! Don't fall! Look out! Why would you do that? You are going to hurt yourself!" And hurt sucks. The iconic images of motherhood show women cuddling and comforting their children, holding them close, wiping tears and touching boo-boo's. The urban mythology of mothers lifting cars, running into burning buildings, staring down wild animals or humans to keep their babes safe only emphasizes this expectation.
When I arrived to a screaming Virginie, hurt on an after-school play date, her middle toe on her left foot smashed by a falling board, I immediately knew it was bad. She was screaming bloody murder. There was blood everywhere. Her tears were fat, her fear palpable, and I needed to make it right. Though I hate driving, especially on any road with more than 2 cars, I packed up my peanut in the car with her favorite things and some warm clothes and raced her to the ER. I carried her in and though I did not scream like Shirley MacLaine in "Terms of Endearment", I would have if the staff wasn't so efficient. I hadn't taken the time to truly look at her little toe because I'd gone into autopilot, but now we had time to be together...and I peeked.
She looked at me with those longing, big, brown eyes, eyelashes glued together with tears, and asked, "Is it bad? Is it bad, Mama?"
"It's alright, Peanut. We are going to get you better. These people here are going to help us. Just hold onto Mommy if you feel scared." And she squeezed. And I squeezed back. Also the tears. Her toe looked so, so terrible and it was. I wondered how this tiny thing had suffered, what she must have felt and thought, when pain, pain like that is still relatively new. I thought about all the hurts I'd ever had, all the hurts from which I will need to shield her, all the shoring up, all the armor, and I wished that I could take the hit. I silently prayed, "Why didn't you let it happen to me? Why did it have to be her?" And I became steely because we had hours to go and I was angry and hurt for her and I could only be by her side and bombard her with love and comfort. (Broken)
She was wheeled into a room for an X-ray to make sure that her toe wasn't broken. It was cold in the room and made heavy by the lead aprons we wore to shield our organs from the radiation. Hers was a ladybug. Mine was blue. She lay there on that table, following directions and holding still, tiny tears falling to her ears, balling her hands into fists. She was pulling it together. She looked at me and I smiled and she at me. She got to wheel herself back in a wheelchair (a wheelchair!) to our triage curtain and she beamed. Though she could "feel her heartbeat in her toe" we were coming to the other side of this ordeal. When she was back on her bed, I got on with her and we cuddled. She asked me if it was okay for me to be on the bed with her to which I replied, "Mommy makes her own rules when it comes to her babies. If you need me here, then YES, it's more than okay."
After a long afternoon into evening, Virginie ended up losing her toenail and getting five stitches to close her toe. A piece of antibiotic gauze was put in place to hopefully facilitate regrowth of her nail. She will have to get a boot to walk and is taking antibiotics to protect against infection. Sutures, rather than stitches, were used to close her toe because, as the doctor said, "This is not like the stitches in her chin that we put in to allow minimal scarring. This is her toe and it needs more time to heal. If it scars, it's in a place where no one can see it...unless she is wearing sandals." She'll have her tiny scars tucked on her foot, shared only with those she allows close.
And so will I. Teeny, tiny little scars made each time I see them hurt, whether on accident or on purpose, lacerate my heart. I will see the stitching, the jagged lines where the skin came back together. Those are for the physical ouches. And of the psychological tears? The emotional punctures? Hidden wounds? As she lay on the suturing table, wrapped in the cocoon to prevent her from moving, fear, frustration, pain on her face, I put my nose to hers, felt her eyelashes on my cheek, and whispered to her about the unicorns and sweets we think about before we dream. We talked about how we were together and how I would never leave her, would always be nose to nose, eyelashes to cheek, butterfly kisses, even when I wasn't really there. She quieted herself, went inside, and she believed me. She trusted me. Even in her hurt she believed that I would give her everything I had, that I was somehow feeling her pain or that I would at least walk with her through it. Comfort.
My husband is not here and we are not having a crazy display of elegant foods. I won't drink a mimosa in bed, nor will I sit with my feet up or even sleep past 6:45 am. I won't play queen for a day or do "something special for myself," at least not the kind of special that many believe moms are looking for. I am relieved that my girl is alright. I am proud of myself for getting in the car and driving her to the hospital and keeping a cool head. I am grateful for the people in my life who know what an accomplishment that is for me.
While sitting in the emergency room before Virginie was seen by a doctor I thought, "My baby will be scarred. She's only six years old and something is already broken. Her perfect little feet, her tiny toenails are gone." Yes, I know it's ridiculous. When they are those cute, little cherubs, smooth-skinned and innocent, we try so desperately to keep them clean of wounds, bruises, hurts. They are the best of us, the good in us, the pure. Each fall, scrape, tumble left me holding my breath, hoping it wouldn't be too bad, that it would heal quickly and leave no trace on their bodies or in their hearts.
Two days after she was hurt, Virginie is hopping on one foot through the house, laughing and smiling and chatting as she always has. Her foot is wrapped and the gauze is looking worse for the wear even after just two days. She's been fixed, is on the mend, will come out unscathed if not unscarred. But it's me, Mommy, who is taking a little longer to heal. Being a mom (for me) means going all the way in. Into the pain, into the hurt, into the past, into the joy, into a depth of love that frankly, nothing in my life before ever prepared me for. It's breaking and putting myself back together all the time. Its carrying the hurt with them and for them. It is doing my best to keep them from being broken.
We're together this morning and we are whole.
Happy Mother's Day.
(c) 2015. Repatriated Mama: Back to the Suburban Grind.
Mine, at least for the past few years, looks more like this: my husband leaves for a beautiful destination of the rich and famous by private jet or souped up, tinted-window SUV to prepare luxury meals and treats for his clients, and I finish out the week of school, activities, play dates, grocery shopping, story reading (now listening since the 6 year old is thrilled to show off her reading), and socializing on my own. It's our rhythm and save the early school drop off on Friday when both girls need to be ready early enough to drop by 8 am, I can and do handle it.
I am too keenly aware of how quickly my children are growing up. Little chubby hands and fat, yummy fingers have become strong and elegant, rolly-poly bodies have elongated into graceful torsos, arms and legs for days, and beautiful faces resting on long necks. I measure time by these changes, recall real life events by growing and falling teeth, short or long hair, training wheels or riding free. In a mother's calendar there are also injuries and ailments as mile markers, moments that stop one's heart, and shore up strengths one did not know were there.
I remember when Lily broke her finger one summer when her cousin was visiting and recall her saying with pride after she'd been X-rayed and splinted, "I can't believe I broke a bone!" She was beaming and proud of her ability to hurt, to suffer, and to endure. She was so human in that moment and she brought my fantasy of being able to protect them, live the hurts for them, take the force of the blow, crashing to the ground. And months later when Virginie, walking with some friends along the creek that either trickles or rages through our town depending on the season, tripped and cut her chin requiring three stitches, I regretted the choice I made to allow her the opportunity to explore and court danger.
It's the delusion I have of shielding my children from life's pains and ills and woes, and physical safety seems a good place to practice. How many times a day do I say, "Be careful! Watch out! Don't touch that! Don't slip! Don't fall! Look out! Why would you do that? You are going to hurt yourself!" And hurt sucks. The iconic images of motherhood show women cuddling and comforting their children, holding them close, wiping tears and touching boo-boo's. The urban mythology of mothers lifting cars, running into burning buildings, staring down wild animals or humans to keep their babes safe only emphasizes this expectation.
When I arrived to a screaming Virginie, hurt on an after-school play date, her middle toe on her left foot smashed by a falling board, I immediately knew it was bad. She was screaming bloody murder. There was blood everywhere. Her tears were fat, her fear palpable, and I needed to make it right. Though I hate driving, especially on any road with more than 2 cars, I packed up my peanut in the car with her favorite things and some warm clothes and raced her to the ER. I carried her in and though I did not scream like Shirley MacLaine in "Terms of Endearment", I would have if the staff wasn't so efficient. I hadn't taken the time to truly look at her little toe because I'd gone into autopilot, but now we had time to be together...and I peeked.
She looked at me with those longing, big, brown eyes, eyelashes glued together with tears, and asked, "Is it bad? Is it bad, Mama?"
"It's alright, Peanut. We are going to get you better. These people here are going to help us. Just hold onto Mommy if you feel scared." And she squeezed. And I squeezed back. Also the tears. Her toe looked so, so terrible and it was. I wondered how this tiny thing had suffered, what she must have felt and thought, when pain, pain like that is still relatively new. I thought about all the hurts I'd ever had, all the hurts from which I will need to shield her, all the shoring up, all the armor, and I wished that I could take the hit. I silently prayed, "Why didn't you let it happen to me? Why did it have to be her?" And I became steely because we had hours to go and I was angry and hurt for her and I could only be by her side and bombard her with love and comfort. (Broken)
She was wheeled into a room for an X-ray to make sure that her toe wasn't broken. It was cold in the room and made heavy by the lead aprons we wore to shield our organs from the radiation. Hers was a ladybug. Mine was blue. She lay there on that table, following directions and holding still, tiny tears falling to her ears, balling her hands into fists. She was pulling it together. She looked at me and I smiled and she at me. She got to wheel herself back in a wheelchair (a wheelchair!) to our triage curtain and she beamed. Though she could "feel her heartbeat in her toe" we were coming to the other side of this ordeal. When she was back on her bed, I got on with her and we cuddled. She asked me if it was okay for me to be on the bed with her to which I replied, "Mommy makes her own rules when it comes to her babies. If you need me here, then YES, it's more than okay."
After a long afternoon into evening, Virginie ended up losing her toenail and getting five stitches to close her toe. A piece of antibiotic gauze was put in place to hopefully facilitate regrowth of her nail. She will have to get a boot to walk and is taking antibiotics to protect against infection. Sutures, rather than stitches, were used to close her toe because, as the doctor said, "This is not like the stitches in her chin that we put in to allow minimal scarring. This is her toe and it needs more time to heal. If it scars, it's in a place where no one can see it...unless she is wearing sandals." She'll have her tiny scars tucked on her foot, shared only with those she allows close.
And so will I. Teeny, tiny little scars made each time I see them hurt, whether on accident or on purpose, lacerate my heart. I will see the stitching, the jagged lines where the skin came back together. Those are for the physical ouches. And of the psychological tears? The emotional punctures? Hidden wounds? As she lay on the suturing table, wrapped in the cocoon to prevent her from moving, fear, frustration, pain on her face, I put my nose to hers, felt her eyelashes on my cheek, and whispered to her about the unicorns and sweets we think about before we dream. We talked about how we were together and how I would never leave her, would always be nose to nose, eyelashes to cheek, butterfly kisses, even when I wasn't really there. She quieted herself, went inside, and she believed me. She trusted me. Even in her hurt she believed that I would give her everything I had, that I was somehow feeling her pain or that I would at least walk with her through it. Comfort.
My husband is not here and we are not having a crazy display of elegant foods. I won't drink a mimosa in bed, nor will I sit with my feet up or even sleep past 6:45 am. I won't play queen for a day or do "something special for myself," at least not the kind of special that many believe moms are looking for. I am relieved that my girl is alright. I am proud of myself for getting in the car and driving her to the hospital and keeping a cool head. I am grateful for the people in my life who know what an accomplishment that is for me.
While sitting in the emergency room before Virginie was seen by a doctor I thought, "My baby will be scarred. She's only six years old and something is already broken. Her perfect little feet, her tiny toenails are gone." Yes, I know it's ridiculous. When they are those cute, little cherubs, smooth-skinned and innocent, we try so desperately to keep them clean of wounds, bruises, hurts. They are the best of us, the good in us, the pure. Each fall, scrape, tumble left me holding my breath, hoping it wouldn't be too bad, that it would heal quickly and leave no trace on their bodies or in their hearts.
Two days after she was hurt, Virginie is hopping on one foot through the house, laughing and smiling and chatting as she always has. Her foot is wrapped and the gauze is looking worse for the wear even after just two days. She's been fixed, is on the mend, will come out unscathed if not unscarred. But it's me, Mommy, who is taking a little longer to heal. Being a mom (for me) means going all the way in. Into the pain, into the hurt, into the past, into the joy, into a depth of love that frankly, nothing in my life before ever prepared me for. It's breaking and putting myself back together all the time. Its carrying the hurt with them and for them. It is doing my best to keep them from being broken.
We're together this morning and we are whole.
Happy Mother's Day.
(c) 2015. Repatriated Mama: Back to the Suburban Grind.
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