The power of fathers (Carl)
So this is my post about Carl and Noah, which sort of touches on Thursday.
The thing is…I can walk out of my house 4 hours after a vomiting episode. And I will still feel bad and guilty because I just want work to STOP and stay home with my kid (and yes, I can if it is “an emergency” but one thing I’ve learned about the job-kid-life dance is that it’s not the clear-cut emergencies that are hard; it’s working out when to give up trying to decide if it is/find alternate care/etc.)
But I will know that Noah will be having the best care. Maybe even just slightly better than me, when it comes to illness, only because I tend to get a little more nervous and communicate that nervousness to Noah. Whereas Carl still will respond and take him to the doctor, but he doesn’t get as tense about it.
And that’s the thing about Carl as a dad…he’s not the second parent, he’s the other-first-parent. There was a time, around when Noah was one, that I didn’t think this would happen. And in some ways I think going back to work hastened the process because as far as the morning routine goes, after Noah and I eat breakfast together and I leave, I have no idea what happens. He shows up eventually at school clean and dressed and with the proper snack/paperwork/whatever. He and Carl have their thing. It helped, to carve out that space without me.
But of course the root of the goodness is that Carl’s an excellent dad. He’s much more in the moment than I am, and it’s a good match - I plan things, sign up for swim lessons on time, and get the laundry done while playing Magnet Man/Baby Cat with Noah along the way (two different games, in case you were wondering); then we head out together to the library and cosy up with some books for quality time. But Carl sits down with Noah and focuses on painting or Legos for 30 intense minutes and then has a mad tickle-fest. He’s really good at just being there in the moment and not obsessing on the mess. It’s quite lovely.
He’s also gentle and kind. He’s always treated everyone in the system with pretty much infinite patience (I’m sure I don’t know who screamed down the stairs that this wasn’t her life and she was going to go fuck random strangers to prove it *cough*) within firm boundaries (I did not go do the fucking) and it turns out that’s the kind of dad he is. He has loads of patience with Noah, but he doesn’t just give him carte blanche to behave however he wants either (when necessary).
When Noah is having big emotions, Carl helps him identify them. Sometimes they paint them out. Sometimes after I leave in the morning they paint a dream Noah had or a nightmare. So I come home a lot of days to a whole little history in art. (We have an easel set up in the kitchen.) They laugh together a lot (actually we all do). There is an ease between them that is so genuine, and so primal. When Noah was in pain today he cried for me and in the next breath he cried for Carl. He truly feels safe with us both.
It’s really lovely. I really hope there is nothing that ever really interferes with that; obviously, if mythology is to be believed, there will come a day that Noah has to take Carl on in some way. But I have faith it will work out. Noah has a real man and a real father. It’s super neat.
More Gen-X grump: Sandra Tsing Loh
First, you have to read this.
You will probably have to pause, breathless, a few times. The leaps are large in this piece, especially when she tries to explain the epiphanies she had about mothering when her SIL became vegetative and the time she spent creative narrative for her SIL’s kids. And a lot of details and the willingness to lay bare go pretty deep, on one level.
But on another level I’m experiencing generational rage all over again. It’s the looking to 70s feminism that does it. Hey, I’m all for feminism. I reap the fruits of its labour despite writing about beauty and fashion and I like being educated and I watch Mad Men in wonder at the whole secretarial pool.
And yet - I remember those days, from the fog of childhood, and I remember how everyone’s (except my parents’, maybe) marriages were falling apart and how someone’s mother was always “on strike” and there would be ashtrays lying near a shattered something - mirror, vase - with the shards still there in the carpet because picking up the pieces would be supporting the patriarchy. (And no, I don’t understand why the men didn’t pick them up.) I remember how several of us kids on the block got into fairly serious trouble setting alcohol - alcohol! - on fire in the basement while (I’m not even kidding) my friend’s mother and her friends looked at their vaginas in mirrors.
Yes, the women who changed their destinies did a great thing and it was hard and scary. But when it came to their kids, it sucked. It was not fun making pancakes with Dustin Hoffman in Kramer vs. Kramer. Remember the scene where the kid is playing with his airplane and he spills the drink all over Dustin Hoffman’s work and there’s tons of crying and stress? It was like that, a lot. It. sucked.
Ass.
And when I read about Tsing Loh’s kids sitting in her car because she isn’t working her ass off to put a deposit on, yes, a crummy apartment where they can, say, store some toys and a toothbrush… it drives me nuts.
Look, I have incredible sympathy for the woman. I really do. It sounds like she burned out for good reasons (5 kids? hospital visits?) and I have a secret soft spot for people who long for more passion or whatever, I really do.
But - grow up. To her husband too. Find the cash between you both to get some kind of housing arrangement that actually works. Stop kidding yourself that the kids are fine. And for fuck’s sake stop reading Germaine Greer or whatever.
Look, I’m not saying we all have to be helicopter parents, but can we please, please, please stop pretending that following our bliss is inherently good for our kids? It’s not that I don’t think we should do some of that — hell, I work, and although it’s for money too it’s also for joy. But there are little, trapped people to consider. Carefully. Not drive around in a Volvo deciding it’s okay because they like to read.
I liked to read too. I looked very content. The sad thing was that a lot of the reading was compulsive because my life sucked. A love of books is not the same as security and family love.
So yes - I have to agree there is something to the Bad Mother title here.
Grateful for: the nest
(All pictures are our new place.)
After Emily died and Carl effectively moved to Ottawa and the property next to ours sold to a developer and we put our house on the market, there was that sense that we would never have a home like that again. After all, not only was our previous (and first owned) house ecclectic with an unusual lot, but it was also the site where the system came into its own, so to speak.
That house had the room that Carl and Teresa renovated together and Teresa painstakingly rag-painted light green (about a year behind the trend, so that it was a bit dated, but no one cared) that was to eventually be designated as Emily’s, and the office where Lyr designed a custom-shaped desk and where one of my first actions once re-encorporated was to paint the walls and shelves a grey-purple called in its light form fairy dust and in its darker rainy day. And then of course there was the renovation during Emily’s pregnancy: the tile floor Carl painstakingly and beautifully put in, and the new carpets and linoleum.
That there was also a rather hellish basement and two closets of any sort in the entire house was a whole other thing. It was our nest and the decison to sell it was made maybe a bit cavallierly. In our (the system’s) usual sort of glacial pace of emotional processing, it is still taking some time to get over that loss of hearth and home.
Maybe the challenges of its uniqueness informed our second choice of home though, which is a very, very standard 1960s bungalow (well, standard if you ignore some of the weird renovating that’s taken place and which we fully intend to undo… someday.) We’ve been quick to make it far more “decent” than our old home; there are no odd holes in the walls or ceilings, only a small bit of missing woodwork in the basement, and all the taps have cold water coming from the right hand side.
It’s a great home for having young kids, I have to say. The first floor having the bedrooms, kitchen, and living room all together makes for a sense of connection no matter where someone is working. The large eat-in kitchen means space for trains! in the living room. And the large basement provides excellent work space for Carl and a nice hang out area for watching TV. We still have a “disaster room,” the kitchen down there where the cat took the dropped ceiling down, but it’s nicely hidden away in a corner.
In terms of size it’s still a little big for us, but it is incredibly easy to maintain in many ways. The 1960s spaces - smallish bedrooms, smallish but functional closets, totally ungrand entryways - are easy to clean and the floors are hardwood and ceramic upstairs; berber carpet down the stairs and in most of the rooms down there. Basic tubs, basic sinks, basic countertops.
And yet we’re still warming up to it (and some parts, like the kitchen, require renovation before we really do). But we are. It is starting to feel like home, and we’re gradually finding ways to make it a little bit more us. I am grateful for it, and although its location is occasionally frustratingly far from downtown, the lake makes up for everything.
There are nooks that are becoming us, or maybe that we are becoming, and here are two. The living room is the big one. Lyr and I decorated it together: the leather and attempt at “adult friendly toy storage” is mine; the addition of red and choice of rug is all hers and isn’t she smart about it?
The other big addition is the dining room table, again, last night (sorry for the quality here and on all of these). We’ve gone from a very inexpensive Ikea set that seated 6 at most… if you didn’t mind being a bit squashed… to this large table with its leather chairs. We did get this set used and actually, I confess, the chairs are not as comfortable as I would eventually like once I win the lottery. But the big thing is the size of the table (I laughed when I found it also is from Ikea - we can’t even escape our flat pack destiny by buying from Craigslist). Like this it really can almost seat 10, but there are also two leaves and I can see squishing even 14 people around it.
Even scarier, the way it opens up and holds the leaves underneath, we can stow our power supplies under it and every evening that Carl and I end up communing over our laptops (err, like 80% of the time), it’s totally ready to go. Family and work combined! And yes, it’s a bit odd to squish it against the wall but… that leaves way more space for driving one’s toddler car around, you see. One day we will have a nice light fixture there and it will be properly set out. Really. 2020 maybe?
Then of course there are all the corners that are Noah’s. We still haven’t really addressed his room - that’s probably our holiday project - but nonetheless the sense of toddler is everywhere. This is that funny little space in the kitchen that may become a pantry some day, but right now it stores some of my stuff, some craft supplies, and Noah’s own Ikea table that he either sits at right there, or sometimes we drag it out into the larger space for say, bean washing. Or finger painting.
So gradually this place is becoming home. There may be a change on the horizon eventually: if my job continues to work out so well, it may become hard to ignore that between my office and Carl’s office there are several nice neighbourhoods that would put us both at an under-20-min commute, and at least one of us could take transit.
But they have no lakes there!
Baker’s dozen
A friend/coworker (note order of labels :)) and I were chatting about doom and gloom news and I thought I would share one of my favourite nice stories from the past.
I worked at a bakery for two summers before and after camp, and a couple of holiday seasons.
This was not a chocolate eclairs and bagels type bakery; it was owned by a Swiss baker who locked up the booze and the good chocolate he imported from Switzerland, but who left the day’s cash receipts (often on the order of $5,000) in one of the ovens (the bakery’s closed now, so I am not revealing anything to criminals:)). He would come out and yell at anyone who asked for a doughnut. And he charged $3 for a hand-dipped truffle (they were worth it).
I’d've asked for the doughnut, prior to working there. I learned a lot from him about tasting things. Also about craft and artistry, and how to mop a floor properly.
Even so, the first time I wrote out a receipt for a $1500 wedding cake I almost passed out.
So one busy Saturday I had a few people in line when a very disturbed looking guy wearing a t-shirt and tuxedo pants rushed in and paced until he was his turn.
“Do you do wedding cakes?” he asked.
“Yes we do. You can look at this catalogue…”
“No!” he shouted. I mean shouted. “I mean today!” I was a bit floored and said, “Well -no, not unless it’s only for a few people and we can use one of these cakes…”
At this point the owner came in, possibly due to the shouting. And got to the point much faster. “What’s the problem?”
The best man, for so he was, explained that he had been in charge of one wedding detail for a wedding to take place that evening. Transporting the cake. In a minivan. And then he led the owner out to the minivan (I followed; I couldn’t help myself) to witness… the top layer of a large wedding cake which had had something fall over on it. (I never saw what.)
C., the owner, went to get the only other person working on the weekend, the kitchen clean-up boy, and the two of them hauled all the boxes of this now bedraggled wedding cake upstairs. It was a frothy buttercream icing affair of the type that would never be allowed in our bakery.
And he instructed me to get the best man a coffee, and soon appeared with some of that precious locked up liquor to pour into it. He asked the best man when the cake had to be there, and after some consultation on the bakery phone (this was the pre-cell era), figured out that he had two hours to work.
He rebuilt the cake. He couldn’t match the bottom layers for whatever reason (I suspect blatant snobbery) so he took all the icing off the whole thing, filled in the top layer with the closest cake we had ready, and redecorated the entire cake. Mostly with marzipan, which is - to put it mildly - not cheap.
I’d seen C. work before but never on a wedding cake; he usually did those at home. He never stopped moving, or I think, thinking. He never made a step wrong that I saw. He just put his head down and worked in that way people do when they have mastery. It took him exactly 1 hour 58 minutes. It was beautiful - clean lines, and elegant, and the flowers trailing down over it the same shade as the ones that had come off the original cake.
And then he told the best man he’d follow him, in the bakery van, since it had all the right kind of shelving, etc., to carry cakes around.
The best man, who had not dared leave the store the whole time, put his hand to his wallet shakily (since he had by now seen that a chocolate truffle cost $2.50 in our store). “What do I owe you?” he said with that combination of relief and dread that comes of having a problem solved that Visa is going to have to cover.
“Nothing,” said C. “But you owe me a dollar and forty-five cents for the coffee.”
When I was married a few years later, he made my cake too, a white chocolate mousse cake with marzipan roses. I had to pay a discounted price for it, though. But then, no one dropped it.
Weird religion stuff // influences
A lot of time in my life I have wondered why it is that things have gone right for me (us; the ‘I’ in this is very fluid).
I mean a lot has gone badly: sexually & emotionally abused as a kid by various people, some of it in a cult-y context maybe-sorta-possibly (I hang onto my denial) and Emily’s death top the list, although I’d throw in a gang rape at university too, particularly as we stand at the entrance of October again. Focusing on the child-stuff though, I often really have wondered why it is that things went right too. And a lot of it was that there were people to stand in our life as “enlightened witnesses.”
One of the stranger set of witnesses were literally that - Jehovah’s Witnesses, Carrie and Alan. I don’t know what the impulse was that led my mother, Presbyterian by breeding and United Church going at the time, to engage in bible study with two JWs and, more importantly for me, send me off with them once or twice a week for at least a year (I think more because we went to two annual meetings). And if you asked me what the result of that was I would have said until lately it was:
1. An abiding love of maple-frosted doughnuts, perhaps an unusual choice for the clean-bodied JWs as bribe of choice to my 10 year old self
2. A lasting suspicion of anyone that tells you God doesn’t want you to have Easter eggs or a birthday party (No one ever bought into that aspect of the JW faith)
3. Yet Another Contribution to the child prodigy aspect of my youth: not only were the JWs fascinated by my 10 year old ability to read and interpret the Bible in two official languages (I think Lynn may have been floating around here), but this was during the time that Quebec had just de-criminalized JW as a religion (yes, it was illegal) and so there was a sense that anyone that could witness in French was on a fast track to saving the world, or whatever.
Lately - remember we had some JWs come to the door and Lynn had a snippy encounter with them and in fact, they came back with a pretty good answer (God can’t be a terrorist ’cause he’s the government - the George W. Bush defense, really)? Well they have kept coming.
And Lyria welcomed them which is typical Lyria - show up anywhere near my house and it radiates herbal tea and cookies, on the right days anyway. And so they’ve kept coming and actually…
… I think I’m kind of glad. And so are other people, or at least, other people participate.
You may be surprised. But let me continue.
I don’t know if all JWs are like Carrie and Alan and these two women. But given how awful so many fundamentalists are I have to kind of explain why these are not.
Today I said point blank that I didn’t see why God would care if people were gay or not, and in fact I believe that if there is a God he made them that way, and that I didn’t want to discuss it because it would just make me frustrated and angry with JWs for their prejudices and is one of the reasons I find it hard to respect their literature, and that was - fine with the JWs in my living room.
Whatever training the JWs get they come to some almost Buddhist-like state - I think it is how they emulate the Jesus they believe in actually. They don’t back down and pretend something’s okay if they don’t think so. They just drop it. But they drop it in the nicest possible way, respectfully, like a yoga instructor admiring your form in a Pilates pose or something.
It’s hard to explain but for me, it’s made the whole experience of choosing to talk religion with these particular people okay. We don’t all agree, and that’s actually okay.
Lynn enjoys them I think because she is having a religious/existential crisis. After all, she loves Noah in her own way and that brings a whole lot of things to a head. It’s one thing to believe in eternal damnation for herself, but what about Noah? And she’s done enough therapy to agree that raising Noah in a fairly normal way - you know, to basically be on the side of God and good and all that - is How Things Will Be. But she isn’t sure if she believes that and how to implement it either way.
I wouldn’t say she is looking to the JWs for an answer. If anything, Lynn can out-Bible them any time. But she is studying the actual women who come quite intently, and it’s not in a mean way (in fact, she has become rather solicitous of their mental health and if she says something disturbing, often gives them a way out… like today she pointed out that Lucifer does what God asks in tempting Job -after- Satan lures Eve out of the Garden of Eden, and that confused things for a while until Lynn allowed that Lucifer might obey God for his own evil ends, or something like that. I lost the thread of it but I saw the relief happen, in the two women.)
I can’t really say what Lynn’s learning, but I think I’m glad she’s having some space to do it anyway. I really haven’t felt ready to try to find her the right people to talk to (whoever that would be). But in the meantime it has been very convenient to have some kind of religious um - instruction? - show up at the door.
But Lyria’s surprised me until today when I realized that the JWs are pretty much the granola Christian cult: they have to take care of their bodies because they will be resurrected in them and God therefore wants them to respect them, and so they don’t consume any drugs (including, MY GOD, caffeine) and the two JWs who come to see us, anyway, say in great innocence things like “well you know how fruits and vegetables don’t have good vitamins in them any more? Well imagine how healthy they were when Adam and Eve ate them! And when God brings paradise on Earth they will be that healthy again!” (And then have a whole digression about figs in a certain area of the former Yugoslavia, now Croatia.)
And although my fae Lyria thinks the idea of God Almighty, you know, Mr. You’d-Better-Shape-Up-God is pretty funny, she is totally down with a future that involves healthier fruit.
So on that level I see why we’re enjoying it.
There’s also the spiritual elephant in the room all the time, of course, which is Emily. It’s one thing to be living with Noah and wondering how to raise him with respect to spirituality and to wonder if we should baptize him or attend a church with him or do a comparative religion thing with him and basically how to shape his moral development.
But it’s an even bigger thing to wonder not only how say, God could have let my baby Emily suffer and die but also to wonder - well - did she have a soul and if so, where is it? Reincarnated? Frolicking? (One of the more horrible episodes with the kinderlynn that has rolled through over and over during since March of 2004 is whether there might be a general sort of afterlife and if so, what if my (abusive) grandfather is there with Emily and if so would he be being nice or being a shit? Because we aren’t there yet to protect her.)
And in the midst of all that - I don’t know.
As a faith itself, I am somewhat uncomfortable with Christianity in general and “young” Christian faiths - faiths that have not, say, had hundreds of years to be corrupt and go on stupid crusades and totally fuck up and have to deal with that a little - kind of make me feel like I’m watching Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure as a serious attempt at world history.
Do they really expect me to believe that the prophets wrote down the mind of God that was translated accurately and can be understood in words? Dude!
JWs are kind of a far out branch of this innocence. They commit some of the usual err “sins” of fundamentalism - gays bad, marriage good, Catholics icon worshippers, everyone else wrong.
They also have this (to me) touching and childlike belief that what God wants for us all is to return everyone that’s died onto the Earth into their bodies, but better ones really, and all the animals get along (and the lion shall lie down with the lamb) and there to be no sickness and death or anything - on Earth - and for God to have his council of Really Special Snowflake People (I think this is what keeps a lot of JW psyches going) and run things right. And then we’ll spend our days frolicking about and eating really good fruit and be like Adam and Eve before Eve messed up.
And soon; any day now; in fact the deadline was misunderstood twice I think.
I don’t know what quirk it is in my nature but to me this just about goes along with the whole Wish Foundation sending dying kids off to Disneyland. It’s lovely and you can see that it would really make some people (people less perverse than I) happy. But MY GOD WHY DO KIDS HAVE CANCER! You know?
I just don’t see at all how this can possibly relate to either any understanding I have of human nature, where I think people would immediately start to argue over whose apple was bigger, After Death or No After Death, or the God of the Bible (locusts, etc.) or any God I might care to conceptualize for myself. Etc. ad nauseum.
So for me exploring the JW faith -itself- is kind of like reading light chick lit, where buying shoes and meeting the right man makes you happy. It’s nice to visit for a couple of hours but it in no way relates much to my life except you know, that I think about it and enjoy it and might like shoes a bit myself and it says a little bit about people but not always very much.
And yet.
And yet, and yet, and yet.
I suddenly see how Carrie and Alan, who were gentle and kind and loving and really, despite the whole birthday party thing, amazing Christians - in the sense of hanging out, talking about God and Jesus politely and rationally, and not say -raping- you or even making you feel any less than special - may have helped us keep a concept of a benevolent universe going.
And that the Bible was involved probably helped promote some internal communication between Lynn and us, without which we would have been sunk later on. And bingo, perhaps some of the body-respecting stuff that kept us out of the darkest of self-destruction and mostly thanks to Lyria, came partly out of that. (Although I still think Lyr is just plugged into something totally else and cool.)
It has not escaped my notice that the JWs happen to have shown up on the doorstep right when we may have needed to start to reconnect a bit with spirituality. And that this is not the first time in our collective life that two kind people identifying themselves as Jehovah’s Witnesses have shown up at the door when, perhaps, we could use a little bit of innocence and a trip to Disneyland.
All of which is to say that if there is a benevolent universe - Goddess - God - trinity - AllThing - flow - it certainly works in mysterious ways.
Atalanta at the temple
At the starting post our eyes met and I blushed, the line of heat from neck to groin piercing me, disrupting breath.
All that training to outrun you all; assuring my castle in the clouds would stay unoccupied, my heart unfettered.
It was already lost then, but my legs had learned the lesson of my broken heart. My father left me on a rock for being a girl. He was only the first.
So I turned to the hunt - better predator than prey.
I learned that lesson well. And I threw a few golden apples of my own;
I hope you don’t think your lines were that original.
It was that it was you tossing them my way.
So here I am, caught, the way I never thought I would want to be.
The best race I never won.
Fuck me again,
inside this union.
Fuck me again.
True love is both these things
… making it through a Jonah day of fighting over administratrivia, around and around and around
… having your other love remind you that backing down is not a loss, re: the above
I am one of the world’s top ten luckiest women. I just occasionally forget it.
This too is true
4:24 am
After nursing Noah at 3-ish, I can’t get back to sleep. I watched him breathe in my arms, this 17 lb 6 month old body of his cradled against mine, my arms full at last of baby. And I set him gently down in the hotel playpen and I tucked his lovey around him.
And now I’m awake feeling the emptiness where Emily should be and making the stuffy nose I got from him worse. It doesn’t get any better, really; I think the wave-swells of grief remain just as tidal and it’s only that I’ve learned to lift my feet and float rather than try to plant myself against them. I am so bereft still and I miss the infant she was and the two year she would be today. I miss the girlness of her and I miss her dark brown baby hair and I miss her chin that was so like Noah’s. Even as one of the strongest memories I have of it was it quivering while she had seizure, the rest of her immobile. Just that chin.
And I’m angry at the hospital that took her away from us with its - their, because they were people - uncaring and inattention and sins of omission. I’m angry that Carl’s been hurt enough that part of him seems to have vanished since then. I’m sure the same is true for me. I’m angry at stupid little things too: there was a problem with her headstone and we were moving and they didn’t have our number and I was pregnant and the result is that we only got it all settled in January and so it’s not there yet and that feels - wrong. In another 7 weeks it will be there. But not yet. And I’m just - angry.
But mostly I’m bereft, again. Today’s the 15th: the longest day I ever had in my life, the day of test results and advice and a baptism and then, in 24 hrs from just about this moment now, a last breath. I still hear that laboured breathing and I still feel just as helpless about it now. That gap never closes.
I miss you so my baby girl. I wish so hard that you were on this journey with us still. I feel so much like I let you down; I’ll never be such a silent patient again but you really paid the price for that life lesson. I wish you too had found out what it’s like to get milk-drunk at the breast; to be rocked to sleep; to look at all the red exit signs on the walk from the dining room to the hotel room here.
Although we never would have come here if it weren’t for losing you. I wonder who we all would have been, you, your dad, and I. I wonder who you were besides Emily; the comet through the night sky. I have an idea now what your birth should have been like, and what it would have been like to bring you home and hold you through the night and get up with you when you woke up in beds both familiar and strange. But I don’t have any real idea who you were; your brother’s so clearly himself that I only know you would have been yourself. Uniquely you. And god, I miss you.
Another bit o’ love
My sister’s in town this weekend. (So is my sister-in-law & two of her kids, but this is about my sister!) She’s not really here to visit family; she & some girlfriends are going to a concert and having fun. I think I’d be jealous except I never did that kind of thing before I had Noah - or at least, not much. So we are hoping to have brunch with her, but maybe not, if she’s tired out & hungover.
I really like my sister as well as love her.
She and I are 5 years apart (she’s the younger) and very different in some ways. I’ve (using I loosely) cultivated eccentricity since elementary school which was only cool where that was valued; she is much more one of the cool kids, at least from my perspective. She’s probably smarter than I am but the family myth was that she had to ‘work harder’ in school (in fact she just had shittier teachers).
And where I dealt with our family by following the rules externally and having my energy go inwards, she rebelled openly… in our teens. In our 20s, I dropped out of school & have mostly muddled along since; she has a degree and professional accreditation and is on a pretty high-rising career arc, although I’m not sure it’s making her happy right now. She lives in the US now; I am glad to be up here.
I and the system still carry a lot of guilt around not protecting her - in myriad ways - growing up.
With all these sibling-laden differences & history it can sometimes be weird between us, or at least kind of quiet and a little awkward. She knows we’re multiple but I haven’t talked about it too much - she doesn’t want or need to explore the abuse stuff, I don’t think. Plus we just relate to her as we do individually. But as I’ve settled into my 30s (and she will be following, this year!) it hasn’t mattered to me so much. I just like her. And although when we did live close by I sucked at seeing her, now that she’s really farther off, I miss her. But I suspect it doesn’t matter so much ’cause we are always - sisters, the good kind.
I’m really lucky to have a sister like her. And Noah’s lucky to have her for an aunt.
Rich in love #6 - way too much on parenting & time
If you, dearest readers, have not yet tired you are insane. But here is the last post in this iteration of the series. Then I can continue with my usual days. (Today we went to the mall just Noah and I and it was a blast. I had a latte (drink of yuppies!) . Tomorrow is the truly exciting day though because I am getting my hair coloured for the first time since fall 2004. At least if Noah doesn’t freak. Yay!)
First a shitload of some of the thinking I’ve done around this.
Here’s the thing. I don’t entirely buy the quantity (structuring every minute of the day around the child) or the quality (structuring in “really good” child time around competing demands of career and adult stuff) time arguments of child rearing.
We could go back and forth all day about whether “a happy mummy” is more important or a “child-centred environment” is more important.
[In fact they're both important and sometimes are going to be absurdly the same and sometimes are going to be in direct conflict. And although I think any adult can be really good or really bad at this, one nice advantage to being multiple is that having fought our way through our own competing/aligning needs and desires and goals, we at least have some sense of how to a) find joy in meeting the needs and demands of others and b) figure out when it is that something is really important to mental health.
Of course all that is an ongoing, flawed process for anyone. There is no One True Way. ]
Still. What I think any child needs overall (above and beyond basic, safe supervision; give me the credit of assuming the basics at all times:)) is for one of their parents or other caregiver to be tuned in enough at any given time to be available to their needs. (Within human standard; there are going to be days when things go wrong.)
Because, you know. Every kid is different and every day is different.
So, if a kid is playing happily alone - let them play! Do your own thing! don’t fuss over them and try to make every moment educational! So they learn to be okay with being alone! And they can get bored and be a kid!
On the other hand, if they’re playing alone and don’t -seem- unhappy or happy, check out whether they are actually happy or not and if they look at you with needful eyes, sit down. If they don’t, back off. Have a routine so that the daily life stuff - homework, playgroup, outdoor play, indoor play, teeth brushing, etc. - generally happen at predictable times so no one needs to stress over them.
Build into this some routine time for the adult needs too - date time, exercise time, whatever.
And then pay attention to know when to break the routine and find out what’s up or deliver extra help or extra fun or whatever.
The thing is, running a routine /and/ being tuned in takes a lot of awareness and being present. A Lot. It’s a hard thing to do if 20 million things are running through your head. I already find it hard to do and Noah’s needs are still rather incredibly basic in this regard - but they change constantly. Also, with a baby the communication is less clear than ‘MUMMMEEEEEEEE’. It takes observation to catch the rooting before the fussing before the crying.
So rule #1: Be as tuned in as possible. This includes knowing the stage your kid is at.
I also believe that kids do best as a part of a family. A family’s where you first learn to deal with other people’s needs and personalities and things.
And I think this involves a certain amount of age-appropriate participation.
So for example, I believe in taking one’s (rested, fed) children to the grocery store at all ages, so they gradually learn about food and budgets and the balance between needs and wants, and get some choice in picking out things, and learn manners and public standards of behaviour. I believe participating in house chores in a -positive- age-appropriate way is also key. I think exposing Noah to different situations (again, appropriately) like readings and art galleries and bookstores will be a great joy.
And I think, within very mild reason - right now, lying in a baby-safe crib for 4 minutes while I go to the bathroom - kids need the opportunity to learn that they too can give to the family. I really don’t mean anything crazy here. Just a very gradual safe slide towards consideration for others, too.
What’s more, I think part of being in a family is that you are always going to be surrounded by people with foibles and weird quirks who love you. So some families ski together, because that’s what they do, even if one of the kids isn’t totally thrilled with skiing. Hopefully not so obsessively that their kids miss every weekend birthday party. Some families play video games (hopefully well chosen ones) together. Some families go over to their parents’ for dinner every Sunday and fight with their adult siblings. Some families host cocktail parties and bribe the kids to stay in their rooms.
I personally believe that in the very good and understandable drive to raise kids as well as possible, some people forget that the best most rarified environment can also be very isolating. So your child only eats organic healthy food and participates in stimulating activity - okay, both those things are excellent if you do them too. But sneaking off with an aunt to eat a hot fudge sundae has its own value. Being allowed cake and ice cream down the street has value too.
Pretending that you only eat organic and then sneaking off to eat M&Ms just teaches your kid dishonesty and a kind of disconnect between themselves and the real people that are their family. In my opinion.
(Note that I am not talking about porn or violent movies or sex on the couch or something!!!! Have some sense! And also they aren’t little adults, but that’s a whole other post.)
So rule #2 is Don’t try to separate your kids out from the family. Let ‘em tag along for as much as possible, in the house and out of the house. And then when it’s not appropriate, draw a firm line.
One thing that we, Carl and I both, do in this family is mess about on the Internet. And like, I’m not sure that’s a great thing, and I certainly don’t want my 6 year old going in chat rooms unsupervised ever (or 15 year old but - err yah. AAAAHHH.) I certainly don’t think anything obsessive is good. But, it’s important to each of us for our own reasons. I could make the argument here for me that it keeps our system communicating (it does) and feeling connected (it does) but all of that could just be justifying a bad habit. It may be a bad habit. But even bad habits sometimes have their place.
The question for me really then, in regards to time, is how to reconcile #1 and #2. And I don’t always know. I do know how it works now.
It is totally different from how I thought it would work. When we were pregnant with Emily we had this huge master plan where I’d parent all day and then Carl would come home and take over /some/ days and I would go off into my office and write and also have internet time, and then on weekends again that would happen; we’d each have alone-parenting time, and together parenting time, and I saw internet time as sectioned off from parenting time. Of course we didn’t have a wireless network then. :)
But also it involved more equal parenting in that sense. That hasn’t happened, largely because Carl is responsible for a lot of processes that happen between 6 pm and midnight (and also seems to have to work all day most days. And oh yes weekends too often.) And this is kind of the source of some of my kvetching; it’s really felt like our life isn’t working right. (And yeah, Carl does get some play time but not enough because of his work, and mostly WoW ’cause he’s so burnt out it’s too complicated to do exercise or woodworking, and I still reserve the right to be Grumpy about it. :))
But lately I’ve been just accepting more that it is the way it is right now and riding it a little better. I think I’m adjusting to the parenting bits, at least, and not looking for the “when do I get 2 hours off!”
So.
I get up around 6 and nurse and stay up, unless it was a high-needs night or I’m extra tired, and then I sleep ’til 9 if Noah does. If I stay up I do house/life foo and then write ’til he gets up; during this series & sometimes else I blog, but my eventual goal is to seriously work on the novel in the morning, even if it means getting up earlier. Right now I admit I’m still rather precious about my sleep since I have no confidence I won’t suddenly have to be up 48 hrs straight or something.
Then I often turn AIM on around 10 or 10:30, after Noah and I are connected and stuff (if he doesn’t go down after his nurse, sometimes he has a nap now, too), and surf a bit while I drag the laptop around. He plays on the floor and I sit on the floor and have the computer nearby and type a sentence here and there; we dance around with it there playing iTunes, have a change, flop on the bed, visit the mirrors, type another sentence, whatever. This tends to be high interactive play. When Sass or anyone says that we’ve chatted all day, that means with significant pauses. And if things aren’t going so well, then he comes first obviously.
I can’t say I think this is the ultimate in childrearing, but I am telling you it makes me happy and feeling less isolated and like I have an adult brain to have the combination going. Also, I don’t obsess over his play, so he has some room to explore.
Often I do maybe 20 min of chores while he’s playing, in or out of a bouncy chair or slings depending on the chore. I talk to him while I do, and he seems to like it. I think babies like to be included. And I don’t really think parents should clean exclusively while children are napping; it makes it seem like the cleaning fairy does the work. :)
I nurse in front of the computer and type one handed some of the time. He still nurses about 8-10 times a day, with 6 of those being big feeds and the rest seeming to be sort of comfort sucks. A few select ones I still have in the rocking chair so we can really just be together, but some I type with. I figure with him nursing 4+ hours a day it’s a fair trade off.
While he has naps I either attack my to-do list (I approved the birth announcements! Yes that’s late but I had a Thing about it, like he would drop dead as soon as I did them, probably ’cause of the experience with Emily’s shower gifts.) or I write, or sometimes I just relax and chat. Like Mondays. (hint to someone :))
And so the day goes, unless we go out. I have been trying to get in the habit of going out at times things seem likely to happen - in the morning before a morning nap, in the afternoon after an afternoon nap. Because once spring hits we will have some playgroups and gardens and in the summer hopefully swim lessons and things. But only a few. Because I don’t want to overschedule us despite leaning that way.
But right now we’re still nesting.
He’s starting to consolidate naps again (yay!), so eventually I should be able to get more things done and have more of a routine. But up until now it’s been pretty unpredictable and so I haven’t tended to get into anything that is longer.
Towards the later afternoon - 4-ish - regardless of his naps, I tend to have a drop in my energy level, but he seems to gear up for being awake longer at least, if a bit more inclined towards fretfulness.
So this is when we use our Devices: he has a go in the swing, then we play a bit with him in my lap, then some time in the sling cuddling and playing with soft toys, then some time in the bouncy chair with his fine motor stuff and me chatting with him. In whatever order. If it’s a high needs day we might retire to the basement and hang out on the futon together. This is also when Sass gets home and we often have dates. Sometimes they’re short, short, like 20 minutes. Sometimes they’re longer. They’re pretty patient with one handed typing (no not that kind!) and pauses.
By the way, this does work because Noah is the world’s easiest baby. But, he is, so I am glad to go with the flow. I predict he’ll make up for it once he can talk.
Around 6:30-7 Sassy& head off for their evening life and we have dinner (out of the crock pot a lot, or I make it with him in the swing/sling, or if Carl can hold him with Carl) and then start the bedtime routine. Sometimes dinner happens after the bedtime routine. Lately Noah’s bedtime routine has been go down around 8, wake up around 9 or ten, go back down around 11 or 12, and I haven’t liked that much. But then he sleeps to 6, nurses, and sleeps ’til 8:30 or 9.
Saturdays we have our date, so Noah’s morning tends to be either with Carl if he’s not working, or slightly less interactive (more like the bouncy chair routine). Then the afternoon can be full-on parenting right through, since Carl (if he’s not working) doesn’t have the 4-6 o’clock dip that I do. Or someone will come over. Sometimes this results in personal time for me, although Carl’s still getting over the “oh the baby’s fussing; I will hand him off!” habit that dads seem to get into because mums have The Tits. And we grocery shop.
Sundays are kind of up in the air depending. If Carl’s working it follows the Monday-Friday routine with less AIM. Otherwise it can be any combination of chores, shopping, socializing, or hanging out. Whatever. But with an exercise class!
Now this is what works this week. It may not work next week, or tomorrow.
Some days it hasn’t worked at all and we’ve just focused on Noah, or my clogged tits. And there has been the odd day here and there - usually on a weekend when emotionally I feel like there should be some kind of break happening and when Carl’s worked so much I feel like I can’t even ask for a small thing because he’s overloaded - where I have not been as tuned in as I like. I’m not talking about feeding and diaper changes and all that - those are givens. But where Noah’s gotten crankier than he should have to ’cause I haven’t been paying attention to his signals.
I feel bad about those days and see them as failures really. What I’ve been doing instead isn’t as relevant as that I haven’t tuned in. It sucks. I hope they’re sort of adjustment failures and eventually it gets easier not to have them, but I suspect they come in some form forever - physical sickness, life stress, whatever. And that’s part of an imperfect life.
But oh I hate that anyway. I know I can’t give my kid the “right thing” all the time ’cause who knows what that is. But you’d think I could at least give myself. But some days - no, it’s been a little more mechanical and a little less me.
But - overall, I think we work it out okay, all of us.
What my week does not include right now is a lot of TV time, although some of those high needs days I do end up watching DVDs (and I am very glad for them). I don’t care about that. It doesn’t include any volunteering. I do care about that. And I am on true maternity leave, for which I am very grateful. I read about so many mums heading back to their jobs at 3 or 4 months, in the US, and I am awed at how they balance things because I would be finding it extremely stressful.
I figure the hardest period will be coming up around 9 months, because he’ll be obsessing on me, mobile, wanting to walk/do complicated stuff, but needing major adult involvement, and all those things, but not old enough for a few hours in playschool and that kind of break. Also he’ll notice more if I’m typing here and there. However, I also think he’ll eventually have more of a nap routine when I can say “I’m likely to be around at this time.” And I bet we can work out some other stuff.
I also still hold out hopes (expectations, even) that Carl’s job will settle down. Because Noah needs the dad time and Carl needs the Noah time. And that will free up a bit of my time in the evenings.
However.
What I have learned is that it doesn’t really matter what plans I make.
Carl’s job may be so nuts that I end up parenting 6 am - midnight every day and so I make compromises like I have. He could lose his job. I could not have a job to go back to. Either one of us could have to start a new job. Idaho might go back to school, making her time totally different, or start a new job with different hours. At one point in Emily’s short life, after all the plans for how to share parenting, we were staring down a life of making sure she didn’t choke on her own spit 24/7. I didn’t ever do that so it’s all a little bullshitty but emotionally I felt the capacity to do that.
Noah could need extra attention and time for whatever reason - and hey it’s not like I’ve done this before so I really know what to expect. I thought I’d be dragging him all over the GTA by now! Instead I’m lying on the same rug every day handing him his squeaky chicken toy and making up silly songs and it’s - surprisingly okay.
But I do know that if I’m tuned in, and we’re tuned in, our family - extended in traditional and non-traditional ways - can support him and each other, even if it also means instilling a few habits like “4-6 are quieter times for no good reason except that they are.”
And that is cool with me.
Okay. That’s it! Those were very good jumping off points. And I love the comments. But right now I am going to bed ’cause it looks like Noah did not wake up after 9. Which means he may be up in three hours aiiiieee. :)