Going the long way, sort of
Until about six weeks ago, we had planned on hopping in the car tonight to begin an epic family trek up the coast. We need to be in Lake Tahoe by Sunday at 2:00 PM because we are attending our first family camp with Pact. More about that later.
The idea was to meander up the coast, stopping when we wanted, wherever we wanted, playing it all by ear. We were going to pack snacks. We were going to play car bingo.
We were going to sing songs and have bonding family time, creating memories that Ruby would cherish for the rest of her life. Of course, that is the ideal version. The reality could have involved threats of pulling over and letting mama out of the car immediately so she could walk home. And in fact, this is likely closer to the reality, since, as luck would have it, the Los Angeles Department of Transportation chose this very weekend to close ten miles of what is arguable the busiest freeway in America, the very one we would have needed to take to get to our destination on time (and don’t believe that photo in the article for a second; the 405 rarely looks that barren).
So serious is this closure, that the DOT has, for the last six weeks, been begging people who do not live in Los Angeles, not to come and telling those that do, to stay home. The closure of this freeway will impact every other freeway in surrounding the general LA area. Which is why we ended up buying overly priced plane tickets. Although, they were less expensive than the divorce that might have resulted from any attempt to drive under these conditions. And fortunately, we’ll still have what is supposed to be a two-hour drive. Bingo, anyone?
If you’ve ever taken the I-405, then you know well the impulse to want to stab yourself in the face. And you also understand what that means for anyone needing to get anywhere this coming weekend. It means something like this:
Naked
Every Wednesday at 5-o’clock, Ruby has swim class. Once her thirty minutes of floating, leaping, belly-flopping and retrieving pink plastic rings has elapsed, it is our routine to head for the locker room and change her into her “soft pants.” This has proven to be a giant effort because while I’m trying to get her wet clothes off and her dry clothes on, she is involuntarily frozen in place like a zombie, transfixed by three 8-year-old girls who are also changing—secretly, beneath towels pulled around their bodies like cocoons—at the same time each week following their swim team practice. Oh, how her eyes swirl when these little girls tramp through the locker room in their swim caps and racer-back suits, dripping wet, shivering and hugging themselves on the way to the showers.
Ruby stares at them as I wiggle her swim suit over her bottom, around her hips and down to her ankles. She stares as I dry her naked body with the mostly wet towel, as I coach her like I might an invalid to step into her underwear (if I remember to bring them) and then into each of her pants legs. Meanwhile, the girls completely ignore her—with the exception of a slight smile offered by one on the very first day of lessons—while they gossip about other kids and prevent any accidental exposure of their privates.
As I’m pulling Ruby’s clothes across her sticky skin, watching her rapturously watching them, I’m aware of the already-in-full-bloom body image issues being modeled not 6 feet away from my daughter. And I’m reminded of 7th grade gym class. And my teacher, Mrs. Allen.
At nearly 6-feet tall, Mrs. Allen was an imposing figure. She wore white tennis socks, white leather athletic shoes and pleated navy blue Bermuda shorts, always with a cotton tank top, usually white. She might wear a wind breaker or warm up pants if it was cold, the kind that made a wooshing noise as she walked. She was big boned and thick-kneed with a voice like ball bearings and short, curly brown hair that looked like it had been plucked from a mannequin head circa 1977. I used to watch for wig confirmation, to see if it would slide around when she scratched her head, something she did often when she wasn’t handling equipment or managing fitness tests.
Whatever our activities, each day at the end of dreaded gym class, we were required to take a dreaded shower and then, to prove it. Mrs. Allen would lean against the doorway of the shower room with a clipboard in her hand, inspecting each girl for shower evidence. I don’t know where I’d learned to be self-conscious but, like the other girls in my class, I wasn’t about to get naked in front of anybody, which of course makes it fairly challenging to shower. But, like the other girls in my class, I managed my way around the requirement quite well.
I wrapped myself in a white towel, tucking it at mid chest like I’d learned from my mother, and I did the hokey-pokey in the communal shower like the rest of the troops: Stick one leg in, then the other. Stick one arm in, then the other. I’d splash some water on my chest, shoulders and face (sure, actual showering would have been less effort but this was equally convincing and less…nude). Then I’d show Mrs. Allen the necessary proof to be freed for a day. I was 12 years old.
Later, as a dance major in college—a situation that sometimes required full costume changes not just backstage, but in the wings—I had a very difficult time unlearning the don’t-get-naked-in-the-locker-room rule that had defined my self-loathing since junior high. I’d hidden and hated my body for a long time and that didn’t just magically come undone. And now my four-year-old is learning, from girls only twice her age, that she should be embarrassed and ashamed of her body.
Raising a daughter is treacherous. Short of stripping off my clothes in the locker room every Wednesday, I’m not exactly sure how to combat this message or if anything I say will be half as cool as what those girls do.
Birth control, Part CXXIV: I suffer so that you don’t have to
(*Slightly re-vamped and completely regurgitated from a previous blog post. To my very kind and faithful readers—all my you-go-girl!ers and even to my I-read-your-blog-because-I-love-to-hate-youers— my apologies for being redundant.)
I don’t know what got into me with Ruby’s birthday festivities this year, but I put it in my head that I had to perform like a principal dancer for the Martha Graham Dance Company. If you know anything about Graham technique, then you know it’s all about contractions. As a dance major in college, I worked long hours on getting that perfect I-just-got-punched-in-the-stomach scoop, my upper body curved into a breathless “C.” I don’t dance anymore, except once in a while when I decide to see if I can still do a Grande Plié in open fourth (barely) or when I want to throw a birthday party. In which case, bring down the house lights! It’s all canes and tap shoes and top hats.
I figured 3 was the perfect age to begin memorable traditions, and by that I don’t mean hiring clowns or, worse, participating in the absurd trend of chauffeuring 12 toddlers in a limo to a day at the spa. No, I wanted something born of my own elbow grease, something meaningful yet simple enough so as to be repeatable. The simple thing I fixated on was baking a cake. A box cake, mind you. I know my limits.
I have dreamy aspirations that my child won’t hate me when she’s in high school; that she’ll never roll her eyes at me, talk back or sneak out with her boyfriend; that she won’t drink my vodka and replace it with water; that she’ll always appreciate my sacrifices. Someday, in my imaginary future, she’ll speak lovingly of me with her college roommates as they smoke a joint and eat one of my fabulous cakes that I’ve sent in a care package, complete with rolling papers.
Thanks to my perpetual state of delusion and—I’ll be honest here—my need to overcompensate for those times when I’ve regretted my choice to be a parent, I did the frenetic birthday tap dance that I swore I’d never do. I planned that party and baked that cake, despite a schedule that was more double-booked than a plastic surgeon’s office in Los Angeles before Oscar season.
In roughly 48 hours, I made trips to Children’s Land, Target, Bed Bath & Beyond and the UTC mall; I attended a cocktail party, hosted a swim play-date, received delivery men—not in a housewife-fantasy kind of way, either—made the requisite gift bags, took my kid for a hair appointment, met two work deadlines, baked cupcakes for the kids at school and baked that motherf*#@ing cake.
Did I feel accomplished? Did I feel like the Woman Who Has it All? No. I felt like a Woman on the Edge who’d done 231 things, none of them well. It’s hardly even necessary to mention that tears flowed after I dumped a pan of cupcakes face down on the kitchen floor while removing them from the oven.
But dammit! That cake turned out like no cake ever has before.
Temperatures at Pepper Grove Park hovered around 100 degrees the day of the party, and all the shaded tables were taken. Beverages were rationed because we hadn’t brought nearly enough and because we’d forgotten juice boxes for the kids and because Sam, the guy in charge of packing the cooler, has a penchant for all things mini, including miniature cans of Diet Coke. Now, I understand that he prefers a 6-ounce beverage (they are very cute). But most people? Most of us like our sodas super-sized, thank you very much. I bit my tongue and didn’t say anything about the puny drinks. He had been a huge help, actually, and didn’t deserve my wrath.
I couldn’t disguise my angst, however, when I realized that in the throes of my cake-baking obsession, party snacks never once crossed my mind. There wasn’t an Elmo cracker or a raisin or a fruit leather or a slice of watermelon to be seen at our party. All the other mothers’ parties had ’em. But not mine. Mine just had the homemade cake.
Pizzas arrived eventually, but I was already in full cardiac arrest at that point. I’m pretty sure veins were bulging from my neck as I tried to politely smile my way through the misery. (When I got home, I had boob sweat on my tank top, and unless I’ve just run three miles on the treadmill, boob sweat is against my religion.)
When it was finally over, we loaded the car as fast as possible and made for home. It was unfortunate that all of my efforts to be The Perfect Mother led me to distraction: In my haste to get out of there, I’d forgotten to buckle Ruby into her car seat. Which was extra-unfortunate since Sam decided to take the on-ramp to the freeway like Javier Bardem would surely take me if we ever crossed paths one summer night on a quiet side street off La Rambla (lord help me if I’m wearing a skirt).
Sam had almost completed the turn when he said to me, “How’d you like those mad skillz, baby?” Then he looked in the rearview mirror. “Oh, shit!” I turned around to see my kid being violently dumped to the floor. She landed there on all fours with the strap of a Pike Place Market canvas bag wrapped around her neck.
She was startled and crying. I checked for injuries and stood soothing her in my arms among the fallen eucalyptus leaves at the freeway on-ramp. Then I handed the human missile her blankie, fastened her seatbelt and quietly apologized to Sam for not latching it in the first place. I let a few beats of silence pass and then let loose with screamed expletives about how best to improve his “mad skillz.” It took everything I had not to bring up the 6-ounce Diet Cokes.
When we got home, I curled up in bed, feeling like I’d just been punched in the stomach, my body in the shape of a perfect “C.”
I don’t think I’ll try another party like this for a long while. Perfection doesn’t really suit me. I’m way more of a flailer, and the sooner I embrace that the better. I’ve come to the conclusion that all the training and technique in the world doesn’t make a bit of difference anyway. Despite my performance, there are certain inevitabilities.
The kid’s gonna hate me in high school. She’s gonna roll her eyes and talk back and sneak out with her friends. She’s gonna drink my booze and try to trick me into thinking she didn’t. And she’ll probably talk to a therapist about the time we didn’t strap her down in the car seat and why it was that she never, ever got to have a normal cake from Costco like all the other kids.
Self portait on a sunny afternoon
I’ve heard it said that “The Terrible Two’s” is a myth and that really, what’s terrible are the threes. Ruby won’t be three for another month but I see what’s ahead because ahead has already mowed me down. Sometime during the last week, my beautiful, darling daughter was snatched up and replaced by a person who looks, sounds and smells exactly like her, but who is, I’ve decided, the child of Satan.
In the past two days alone, I’ve been bitten, scratched, kicked, slapped and punched (twice in the eye and once in public). I’ve been growled at, sneered at, glared at, spit on and stomped away from. I’ve had pee wiped on my jeans with small brown hands while large brown eyes promised it wasn’t urine.
I’d like to say that I handled these moments with calmness and maturity but that would be a lie almost as big as the anger I’m forced to wrestle with given the circumstances. The first few incidents I dealt with well enough; I instantly deferred to the father and walked away. Really pissed off and hyperventilating, but I did walk away. The most recent incidents, however…well. I lost my shit, which I may write more about later.
Shortly after the changeling awoke for her eighth or ninth time last night (I lost count), I told Sam that I wanted out, that I’m just a ghost in our lives anyway, that I wanted to get my own apartment. Of course, it doesn’t matter where I go because as a friend told me once, wherever I go, there I am. I could move down the street or across the Atlantic and there I would be, alone with myself. Well, probably not alone. I have a feeling that Guilt and Remorse would be keeping me company.
The thing is, there are few situations in life from which we cannot extricate ourselves: You’re unhappy in your marriage, you get a divorce. You don’t like your job, you get a new one. Aren’t crazy about the town in which you live, you move on. But once you’re a parent, you’re always a parent. It’s irrevocable. And nearly unbearable when you can’t stand your child.
Weddings, Spies and Folk Music
I sat down to write this evening with lots to say. I was going to write about the three weddings we’ve attended in the past four weeks and my insights into what was fantastic about two of them and what was completely, utterly, bone achingly wrong about the other, which was every-last-thing, including the fact that my Mother Instinct was stalled again when I inadvertently gave my child her first taste of the bubbly. Sam was aghast but it was an innocent, very dry, very dirty Grey Goose martini-with-three-olives induced mistake. I swear. I would NEVER intentionally put booze in my baby’s glass. I honest to God thought it was Martinelli’s so if any of you over at the Department of Homeland Security (big shout out to Michael Chertoff here) are reading, and I know you are, don’t go calling CPS on me. I mean, you’ve got some pretty serious stuff to deal with right now and should be more concerned with keeping your side of the street clean. But I’m off topic.
I sat down to write and found myself perusing pictures of Ruby from the moment we met her until right now and I’m simply beside myself at how quickly the past ten months have slipped by. It’s a good thing I’ve been too exhausted/overwhelmed/inspired/thrilled/frustrated to notice, otherwise I don’t know that I would have made it this far. It has certainly helped me to BE HERE NOW and not dwell too much on what I should worry about when Ruby is, say, eight or fourteen, because future parent tasks appear so suffocatingly ominous. This is a really big challenge for me since I’m a planner. AND a worrier. It’s what I do. It’s almost defining. So if I don’t have that, then…well…I just might sleep at night. What a concept…at any rate, it’s something I work on.
Which brings me to my point that there is no greater instance of being in the moment than when I’m rocking Ruby to sleep at night. We have our routine (bath, lube, fresh diapie, jammers and reading) which culminates in my singing to her. Incidentally, my friend Samantha heard me singing to Ruby on Thursday and commented on my “lovely voice” which makes me seriously question whether she might be tone deaf. Nevertheless, I have a couple of tunes in my Night-Night repetoire. I begin with the basics: Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star and/or ABC’s, since the transition is simple; I then move into my own personal, longitudinal science experiment of Fifty Nifty United States, sung at an appropriately soft and more nuanced pace than I was taught in 5th grade; I follow that with a random Joan Baez song before the finale of Joni Mitchell’s Circle Game, which Joni herself has stated is best sung off key. And every time I sing this song, with Ruby staring directly and unblinking into my eyes, infinitely connecting us as I could never have imagined possible last June, before this magical child who I get to claim as mine closes her eyes and falls asleep in my arms, I am as present in my life as I have ever been and could go on rocking her forever.
My Theme Song For Today
There are days in my life, and thankfully they are relatively rare, when I feel as though I’ve never before left the house with my child. When I seem to be a complete novice at parenting in particular and human functioning in general. I walk out the door with purpose in my gaze looking in all outward appearances like a fully competent person, having checked and double-checked my baby parapehrnalia, yet somehow have managed to forget any number of essentials and then feel three steps behind all day long. Today was one of those days. And as I fumbled my way through momming this morning, with a cranky baby on one hip slapping my ear, an exploded diaper bag over a shoulder, sunglasses dangling from my lips, hair in my face and the public eyes of scrutiny fixed squarely on my incompetence (no thanks, I’m fine, I got it, I don’t need any assistance), I channeled David Byrne.
And you may ask yourself
What is that beautiful house?
And you may ask yourself
Where does that highway go?
And you may ask yourself
Am I right? …am I wrong?
And you may tell yourself
My god!…what have I done?
It Isn’t Pretty But It’s the Truth
Well, we made it home from our whirlwind, adventurous, rain drenched, fun but not-at-all-restful weekend in Honolulu where Ruby was the Best Baby Ever, only to have her come down with a nasty cold. It’s probably karma for us, since we were so vociferous with pride at her exemplary behavior. At any rate, I blame it all on the 17th flight of her short little life. Due to distractions during the boarding process that are unworthy of comment here, Sam and I apparently failed to thoroughly complete our well-practiced wipe down of the germ tube. Our girl sucked, licked and gummed every surface of that plane and has the snot to prove it.
She woke up on Tuesday morning in a listless stupor only to be jarred into full consciousness by a sticky, rattling cough and repetitive sneeze/farts, the forces of which jarred me. She spent all day Tuesday sleeping in my arms, nuzzled into my chest which would have been the most adorable thing ever were it not so worrisome. If I even tried to lay her down next to me, she would wake up in tears. And so it was, all day Tuesday that I lay in bed with Ruby on top of me. On Wednesday morning, I took her to the doctor who diagnosed her with a virus and warned me that, though mild, it would probably get worse before it got better. That Dr. Dern sure knows what she’s talking about. By Wednesday night, we had a crying, sniffling, sneezing, coughing, AlkaSeltzer advertisment baby on our hands. Ruby slept in 45-minute blocks but only with me; she would have nothing to do with Sam. If he even attempted to help me out by changing her diaper, she would wail and kick until she’d been safely returned to my arms. All night, I lay awake with her attached to me, sleeping in fits. Sam was able to catch a few hours of sleep before he left for work at 5:30 and Ruby and I got out of bed at 5:34. Then, Ruby proceeded to cry, inconsolably for 3 and-a-half hours.
It is at this point that I have to say two things:
1. My hat is off to (and I am in deep praise of) those parents around the globe who survive, with body and mind in tact, a baby with colic. I barely endured 3 hours and had I been able to drive Ruby in the car as comfort, I surely would have driven directly into a wall at high speed.
And,
2. As ashamed as I am to admit it, I lost my shit and yelled at my sick, crying daughter.
It’s true. I failed in the parent department, big time. My baby was crying and crying and crying and crying and I could do nothing for her and my skin was crawling and my brain was cracking and I finally couldn’t take it any more and I looked at her as she was sitting on my bed, reaching out for my exhausted mommie arms, and I yelled at her out of sheer exasperation “what do you want me to do?”! It hurts me to even put this down in writing. When I described to Sam what I’d done, I actually told him I yelled “toward” her because I could hardly bring myself to admit that I yelled at my baby.
In a flash of sanity, I placed her gently (though with a bit of resentment) in her crib, closed her bedroom door and put myself in a time out (aka shower) while she screamed at deafening levels that resonated through two closed doors and 15 minutes of deep breathing. When I thought I’d pulled myself together enough to be the adult again, I went to her room, scooped her into my arms, sat in the glider and began to cry. When she saw this, her face twisted into one of disbelief and she began to cry harder. Which only made me more upset. Exasperated again, I this time set her on the carpet in her room (shrieking ensued), calmly walked to the kitchen to make a bottle then went back to my bedroom to call Sam. It was 9:00am and I felt like the entire day had already happened. Ruby was still crying harder than I’d ever heard her cry before. And while I was talking with Sam, my voice quivering as I urged him to leave work and come help me, Ruby comes crawling out of her room, shrieking, dripping snot and drool inching down the hall toward me. She was so small and so helpless and I was the mean lady. I swear at that moment my heart broke into tiny little fragments. Horrified by my behavior and filled with regret at my inept handling of the situation, I hung up with Sam, grabbed Ruby in my arms and held her tight, saying all the while how sorry I was and how much I loved her. She calmed down immediately and fell asleep on my chest, in our bed, where we waited for reinforcements.
I can’t write any more about this. It really is painful for me to look at it. Sam says that it likely won’t be the last time I yell at Ruby nor will it be the last time I feel bad about it. I know this is probably true but yelling is unproductive; certainly, yelling at a sick 9 month old serves no purpose whatsoever. I’ve pulled it together since then and have managed to make it through to today, where Ruby is beginning to feel better. But I’ve definitely had a peek into what kind of parent I can be when things are NOT going so well and the baby isn’t the Best Baby Ever. I think I have some work to do.