When a kid is just a kid

It hasn’t been a very long time at all since I started relenting on my PG-rated only movies rule. My son complains bitterly that his friends get to watch movies like Saw V and why won’t I even let him watch The Dark Knight? I had been so careful for so long in screening films before I would let him see them, making my judgments based upon what I felt was at least an “acceptable loss.” My rigid stance on this issue had become so ingrained in him that he even called me on the weekends that he was at my ex’s to ask whether he could watch a certain movie or not. When our neighbors downstairs put on Fast and the Furious for their 5-year-old, my son trudged up the stairs and asked if I would come read the back of the DVD case so he could watch it, too.

It was about that time that I realized how humiliating this might be to him. While I am absolutely not ready to allow him to watch the Saw series, I do think that, at 9, he can probably handle some of the PG-13 films if they aren’t too violent and don’t reek of sex. I gave in to The Dark Knight and we both got hooked on Hellboy and its sequel. So far so good. Until tonight.

Tonight was our movie night. We have On Demand, so I was perusing the offerings on HBO and came across Will Smith’s I am Legend. Mind you, I have seen this movie before. Hey, it’s Will Smith, right? A guy, his dog, a bunch of human eating zomboids…how bad was it, anyway? Oh, right…pretty bad. We started out okay and then I realized that my big boy was becoming a smaller and smaller ball in the corner of the sofa as time went on. Pretty soon he had a pillow over his eyes and was begging me to fast forward through the CGI flesh-eating bits. Then we came to the part about the (spoiler alert!!!) dog and well, that was it. I stopped the movie and we switched over to an episode of Man vs. Food. The one from Boise, Idaho where he eats a habanero pizza and 6 lbs. of hamburger, pastrami, and chili cheese fries. I actually thought that was far more frightening.

“Mom?”

“Yes, honey?”

“Can I sleep in your bed tonight?”

“Yes, honey.”

I took him in and we went through our nightly ritual of turning on his Christmas CD (yes, he listens to the same CD at bedtime 365 days a year), performing Little Bunny Foo Foo (he tries so hard to keep me from tickling him until he is ready to puke from laughter), and taking turns naming 10 good things about the day. I started to leave when he asked me to leave the light on. Oh, and maybe that other one, too. Um…and mom? Can I have that other stuffed dog on the floor? Okay, maybe the one from my room, too. And where’s the one I gave you for Valentine’s Day last year? I pulled it out from behind the overstuffed armchair in the corner. Are you okay now? He nodded. I kissed him on the forehead and went off to get some more work done.

I went to bed around 10, planning to read a bit. I’m well into Frank McCourt’s ‘Tis, and I try to fit in at least a few chapters every night. I walked right into the stuffed animal scene from E.T., The Extraterrestrial. My sleeping boy’s face was just visible through a slew of stuffed creatures, including Sock Monkey, which I know was in his room when I left earlier. I smiled and lay down. He stirred as I climbed onto the bed and as I looked at him, he slowly opened his eyes. He focused on me eventually, his lips turned up in a small half-smile, and his eyelids dropped heavily back down.

So much for my big, brave boy. I imagine that our next movie night will be more Doogal than Doomsday.

We ARE the Wild Things

Lately, I’ve spent a lot of time trying to see me through my son’s eyes. The reflection mirrored there is ugly indeed. I can see myself rolling my terrible eyes and gnashing my terrible teeth and yet, I am unable to stop. I would like to be one of those mothers that thrives on being a mom…one that doesn’t, in the heat of the moment, feel as though she’ s made a horrible mistake in choosing to have a child. How can anyone admit to that? I love my son. But we don’t get along.

Today I took him to see Where the Wild Things Are. This was pretty much like seeing my favorite childhood book on crack. Seriously. This is no fuzzy Disney film. It’s dark and scary and sad and lonely and I cried because I thought my son was just like Max and his mom was just like me and it made me feel sick that we come to that end of so much passion and feeling that we physically hurt each other in trying to make ourselves heard by each other.

I brought my kid into a world that I had hoped to populate with a brother or a sister. I brought my son into a world where he had two parents (however dysfunctional we were, both separately and together). I brought my son into a world that I thought would be a much different place than it is now when I struggle with keeping my apartment and worrying about my next job and I am lonely and sad that the man I love left me and left yet another hole in the already torn fabric of our life together.

My kid turned 9 recently. He’s a bona fide boy. Prepubescent, hormonal, smelly, fresh. He had a party for his birthday and I heard one of his friends drop the “F” bomb. Casually. I was thrown into that age again. The age when you start to think you know everything and your parents know nothing and you are invincible. And then, at night when the lights go out you still want to know where your mommy is so you aren’t afraid to fall asleep. Max was like that. He went away. He escaped the clutches of his evil mother with her evil date and her evil frozen corn (because we single mothers have a hard time mustering up the energy to really do much more than fish sticks and tater tots these days). He thought he was invincible and when he found out his new friends were monsters he wished he had his mommy so he wouldn’t be afraid to go to sleep at night.

At one point during the movie, I reached over and held my son’s hand. He looked at me, confused. I just held it tight and watched the movie. I held it with all of the love I had in my heart. I held it with the silent knowledge that even though I am mean and horrible and scary and sometimes I hurt him without meaning to…I’m really just as scared and alone and injured as he is.

After the movie he asked if we could look at the book again when we got home. I said yes. He seemed happy to have spent the afternoon together. We turned the corner of the long hallway that brought us into the lobby and through the floor-to-ceiling glass we saw huge fat flakes of snow pouring out of the gray, gray skies. We looked up in wonder and laughed and as we walked to the car we tried to catch them on our tongues but they stuck in our hair and on our clothes and eyelashes. A moment of magic. A single moment of magic.

Would that we could string them together into many, many moments of magic and our whole lives would be beautiful…like a boat sailing home on still, calm waters.

Love, Lust, and Life after 40

I’ve been watching Nights in Rodanthe. To be honest, I was so moved by a particular love scene between Diane Lane and Richard Gere that I had to pause the movie and come into my office to write. They may still be dressed at this point, I’m not sure. What spoke to me about this scene, and about the movie in general, is the infinite wisdom that we have to hope age brings us. That wisdom is imparted to us by many, many years of mistakes. Often repeating them time and again. What I hope, what I dream, is that I finally have the wisdom to stop repeating the same mistakes and  to be able to love and be loved  like never before.

I am going to be 45 years old in December. And I am not looking for a May/December romance. What I am looking for is someone who has weathered the hurricanes and come out the next morning, into the sunshine, picking their way through the debris left behind, and finding something new and alive and full of hope and promise. I feel that life now. I feel that hope. In my 20’s and early 30’s I had many lovers. I was thin, I didn’t have gray hair to cover, and there were no slight laugh lines or that tiny furrow that has etched itself between my brows. I thought then that I had it all. In retrospect, I was miserably unhappy. I endured a string of relationships based on obligation. Based on need. Based on a complete lack of self-respect and a warped and unrealistic idea that I was somehow damaged so badly that I deserved nothing more. I settled.

I am not saying that there weren’t wonderful qualities in (some) of these partners. One was a great, young love that started a groundswell of passion that will now serve me well. One made me laugh until I cried. One gave me hope for a family and a future that wasn’t meant to be.

I will be 45 in December. I am heavier than I would like but I feel sexier than I ever have in my life. My hair is loaded with gray and I keep it jet black and severely short and I pierced my nose on my 39th birthday and got my first tattoo at 40. Although I am told that I look younger than my years, I know that every line and every scar tells the history of my life. When those lines deepen, I want them to be crinkles in the corners of my eyes rather than a deeper furrow between my brows. I want my laugh lines to show that I have lived well and happy.

I want now to experience the kind of love that I know I am worthy of. I want to feel the intense passion shared by two women who have weathered their own storms and are ready to rebuild again. Something sweet and tender and  fast and furious and delicate and solid and cool, smooth, hot as the hellfire that I feel I’ve emerged from. I want a life, damn it. I want to know what it is like to look your lover in the eye and see that love reflected back at you with such a fire that it takes your breath away and stops your heart for a fleeting instant before she puts her hand over it and sets it to beating again.

I’d like to think that I am wise now. Or at least wiser. That I am done making mistakes. Done settling. Done defending my choices of relationships when everyone around me condemned them as wrong for me and I couldn’t see it. Wouldn’t see it. I am worthy of more. And someone out there, perhaps someone I already know, is worthy of me.

Ripples

I’m hiding under my comforter hoping the day will slip by unnoticed. It’s a new comforter. Down-filled with a striped duvet and matching shams that ties all of the colors of my sanctuary together. Another attempt to repossess this apartment. To make it mine and only mine. Like the newly organized office and the bookshelves added to display my beloved vases and photos, formerly relegated to lower shelves or crowded cabinets. Or my favorite Klimt piece, Judith II, that now has a place of honor in the hallway, framed by two wrought-iron sconces. He always hated Klimt.

I’m feeling schizophrenic these days. I wake up with panic attacks that choke and gag me until I retch over the toilet. Straightening up, I put on my game face. Stoically brave the day. Taking it minute by minute, hour by hour…time stretching out before me in a seemingly endless succession of ticks and tocks.

I am making a valiant attempt to move on. I am reaching out to others. Friends, casual dates, chance encounters. I have no want of another relationship. My wounds are raw and I can’t lick them clean. My flesh is tender. I can’t talk about him without tears welling in my eyes, my words catching in my throat. I look away. Breathe. Will myself to speak of what has passed.

It is finally, and perhaps blessedly over. I know there will be no turning back now. I know that no matter how much time goes by, things will never change. We will always be the same two people with the same issues. Sparring, clashing, colliding into each other. I take solace in the fact that there is someone out there for me. Eventually. But I tiptoe into the realm of online dating services. The social mixer of the Now Generation. I have barely touched my finger to the water and the fish seem to be leaping into my boat. That boat that rocks and sways and threatens to spill me into another relationship unless I hold steadfast to the splintered wood and maneuver my way through the rapids unscathed. Dry. Safe.

There have been words that reeked of vitriol. So much anger at the fact that I have given up the fight. I couldn’t hold on to a dream that was slipping from my grasp. I had to let it go. That dream was not meant to be. For now my nights are blessedly empty, silent, dark. But today, I pull the comforter over my head and pretend that I’m not here. When I awake, it will be to a new minute, a new hour, a new day.

The Dance of Anger

I stand on the porch smoking a cigarette. Huddled next to the wall, thinly veiled shelter from the cold drizzle of an early June rain. It’s 8:30 p.m. and I haven’t eaten dinner. I miss a lot of meals these days. Eat when I absolutely have to. I try to touch base with my stomach, gaging my hunger level. Nada. I’m tired. Worn down. Worn out.

We’re on our own again. My son and I. For two and a half years we were part of a family again. The man he calls “dad” started moving his things out of our home and into his own place yesterday. In the  meantime my kid plays me like a delicate keyboard. He knows exactly which buttons to push. I envision a long summer stretched out before us. Me: trying to keep my head in my work. Him: calling me constantly from across the apartment. “Mommy!” “Mommy!” I trudge back and forth from my desk to his room to repeatedly ask him to come to me if he needs something. Trivial nothings that require no more attention than…my attention.

He’s been sick. Two nights ago I rode with him in the back of an ambulance. He: glazed over, delirious with fever, excessively dehydrated from a day of vomiting and the inability to keep anything down. I sit anxiously with him as he bravely waits out the insertion of an IV. Lie down next to him in the cold, dark of the emergency room. Constantly texting my ex, his “mama” and my ex(?) his “dad.” Calling my parents with status reports. At 1:00 we take a long cab ride home. Two, three towns away. He sleeps most of the next day away as his temperature rises and falls with the tide of Motrin and Tylenol.

Today. No fever. I am vastly relieved. My relief turns to frustration as he becomes needy for a playmate. I have to make money. I have to work. My work has suffered badly in the last few weeks. I was told by my only client that this was the result of “working during an emotional crisis.” Now I have to rework the entire job. My time. My dime. Fix it, make it better, renew their faith in my abilities. My abilities, my job, it’s all we have to keep us going. I refuse to land in that hard, empty place of relying on others to lift me out of my troubles. Financial. Emotional. Mental. I made the decision to stand on my own two feet and keep it together.

I blow out a long puff of smoke, only to have it blow back in my face with a gust of wind. My eyes squint shut. I tap the ashes over the railing and let the cat out with the knowledge that he’ll probably find a dry basement somewhere to spend the night. I can’t blame him. I can’t blame my ex(?) either. It’s hard to live with an energetic 8-year-old who wants constant attention and a mother who can’t always keep her temper in check during the haranguing for a game, a movie together, an hour or so of legos. It seems such a simple request, but I’m tired. Really tired.

I had banished him to his room after he kept badgering me to change the channel on the TV. I wanted to watch House. He wanted anything but. He has his own television, I reminded him. After a few minutes I call into the next room to remind him to brush his teeth before bed and get no answer. My voice gets louder, more insistent. I get nothing back. I give up. Eventually I go to his room to cajole him into his nightly ablutions. He is fast asleep. I turn out the light and grab my cigarettes. Find myself on the porch. Huddled next to the wall, thinly veiled shelter from the cold drizzle of an early June rain.

I stub out the embers in a tiny pool of water that has beaded on the railing. Drop my butt into a bucket filled with sand and glass from the broken front door. My steps are heavy as I make my way back up to our apartment. I quietly close and lock the door. Glance into his room. He is still asleep. His temp was back up a little. Not much. Hopefully, he’ll be back at school tomorrow while I make amends and promises I hope I can keep. I have to work. I have to make this work. I have no other choices.

I search for balance between all that I have on my plate and all that my son needs from me emotionally. I am drained and ready for bed. I hope that the new day brings renewed energy and a release from my frustration as a single mother, trying to cope, alone, again.

I Know This Much is True…a book review…of sorts

This very lengthy (almost 900 page) tome has been sitting on my bookshelf for nearly 10 years. I loved Wally Lamb’s first novel, She’s Come Undone, but somehow, I never got around to cracking the daunting width of that formidable spine until I had some time on my hands as the holidays approached. Once I started, I could not put it down. The book lay in its place of honor at the kitchen table and when I couldn’t grab a few hours to sit down and eagerly devour the pages, at least I could sneak in a chapter or two while I ate breakfast or lunch.

I Know This Much is True follows Dominick Birdsey’s journey as he takes on the seemingly insurmountable burden caring for an identical twin brother who is plagued by paranoid schizophrenia. The book opens with Thomas Birdsey’s self-amputation of his own hand in an attempt to divert the attention of the world leaders from the impending “Desert Storm.” Thomas is convinced that he is the Lord’s “right hand man,” so to speak, and has been given a mission to bring world peace. His actions land him in a maximum-security forensic psychiatric facility called Hatch and his twin pushes everything in his life aside to try to get him released.

Lamb deftly steers the reader through the twists and turns of generations of the past. The story entwines the present setting of the 80s and 90s with the lives of the young Birdsey brothers: their timid, harelipped mother; their overbearing and abusive stepfather; the beginnings of Thomas’ illness; and Dominick’s trials and tribulations as he grows up being the “normal twin.” The third layer reveals itself in the memoirs of the Italian immigrant grandfather they had never met as Dominick uses a fine-toothed comb to seek out the answers that he has been searching for all his life. Who was his birth father? Why was he healthy when Thomas was ill? Why did he have to shoulder such heavy weight all of his life?

It is that last question that becomes the crux of the novel. Dominick Birdsey sees himself as a martyr. Someone who has either shelved or lost all that he holds dear. His life crumbles around him. His anger is palpable. In speaking with his therapist, he demonstrates his intense dislike of what he knows of his Grandfather through reading his memoirs. Describing him as “grandiose,” Dr. Patel asks him if perhaps the word, in any way, describes him. It is this pivotal moment when Dominick’s hard shell of bitterness begins to crack, “…earlier, you described yourself as fate’s test case. Likened your trials and tribulations to those of Job, who, of course, is legendary because of the way God tested his faith. So, I was just wondering….More tea?”

It seems I always find something of myself in every book that I read. In this case…well, let’s just say the truth hurts, doesn’t it? No one likes to realize that the burden they feel they have shouldered was actually one they set upon themselves. That they see themselves making huge sacrifices at the expense of their own lives for all of those around them. There seems to be no end to the giving and no beginning in the receiving. It is only with great reflection and much hard work that we realize, in the end, that we have actually been given great gifts along the way and have simply chosen to ignore them. Wally Lamb strikes that chord at the very center of your being and yanks you right into reality along with Dominick Birdsey. In confronting the pain of his past, he unlocks deep secrets within himself. Not just the answers he has long sought out, but answers to questions he never even knew he’d asked for.

Ten years was a long time to wait to read this book. Now I hear he has a new novel out and I won’t leave it sitting, dusty, upon my bookshelf…a treasure waiting to be revealed.

Not Your Average Christian

Growing up in my family meant being involved in church. Actually, that’s an understatement. Our lives revolved around the church. My paternal Grandfather was a Presbyterian Minister and both my paternal Grandmother, who passed away in her mid-50s, and my “GrandMary” whom he married when I was about 10, were devoted to whatever parish he happened to be ministering to at the time. On the flip side of that, my mother’s side of the family were all (emphasis on “all”) born-again, evangelical, fundamentalist Christians. My own parents “defected,” as it were, to Quakerism when I was still a toddler. My father taught at Quaker colleges, my mother was not only the music director for our meeting for worship, but ended up becoming an ordained minister at the age of 60.

I, myself, never fit in. I went to church every Sunday. Even then I was a loner. There were cliques at church as well as at school and I was a rebel and an outsider. Summer vacations would find me attending Bible School with my cousin in Pittsburgh. She was only six months older than me and I looked up to her as someone who had a sense of belonging. Both sides of my family were so tight. Their respective families were unified and the siblings were all very close. In the meantime, I took out my aggression on my only sister and my parents felt distant…removed. I wanted that close bond but I came to resent the harsh, judgmental attitude that rained down on me from those that felt they had the ultimate knowledge of a higher power.

As time went on and I got older, it became clear that I was not only the black sheep, but an absolute pariah. My path in life veered in a completely opposite direction. While my cousins went off to Christian colleges, I set off for art school. I lived a rather Bohemian lifestyle. I lived in the moment. Impetuous. Unrestricted. Loud. My cousins got married and had babies. I left my fiancé and entered into the lesbian community with abandon and acceptance. My cousins went off to faraway lands to convert the unholy to Christianity and I moved around to NYC and Boston, a liberal set free in my own territory.

Through the years, though, I always felt something missing. I felt a hole in my heart that was left when I walked away from the centering that had come so naturally to me during the golden silences of my Quaker meetings for worship. I wanted my God. Not someone’s idea of God, but my own personal relationship. I would never be able to attend a church where someone else told me what to think, what to feel. I often felt lost, but didn’t know how to connect to my God.

In 1997, my partner and I decided it was time to bring a child into our lives. I wanted so very much to have a biological child and we embarked on a three year process to get pregnant through alternative insemination. I finally conceived and happily settled into my growing belly, our plans for the nursery, and our hopes for our child to be. Sometime during the summer months when my stomach was ripe and round and my heart skipped a beat with every kick, I received a note in the mail from my eldest cousin on my mother’s side. It said a lot, but the words that stuck with me were “Since you have chosen to abandon the familial path set forth in the Bible, you are no longer under the protection of God’s umbrella.” I was dumbstruck. Here was the proof that I was not worthy of God’s love. Because of the way I had lived my life and the choice I’d made to have a child in a lesbian household, I was being told that great misfortune would be my lot. Perhaps not immediately, but at some point, I would pay.

From then on I blamed myself every time something went wrong. My pregnancy became an endless series of complications. No protection from God. My son was born two months prematurely. No protection from God. My relationship fell into unrecoverable disrepair. No protection from God. I lost my job and wound up seeking welfare. No protection from God.

My mother finally convinced me that my cousin’s words could no longer hold any power over me. She asked me to build a fire and burn the note. Cleanse my soul of the hole she had worn in it with her words. Her words had become a self-fulfilling prophecy and I had to admit to myself that God didn’t make these things happen. My God wouldn’t punish me. My God loved me anyway. My God brought me through it all, was there all along, and I came out stronger for it on the other side.

Over the years, I have begun to rebuild my relationship with my Lord. I still live an unconventional life. Others may shun my ways and call me heathen, but I know that Jesus lives in my heart because I talk with him on a daily basis. A constant basis. I have found my own call to ministry through music. I may not have the voice of an angel, but when I sing in praise to the Lord, my heart soars beyond that which I ever dreamed possible. I’m never going to be part of the right-wing moral majority. I am left of left and my minority is a tightly knit community of love and caring for each other. It is a family of friends who love unconditionally and that, to me, wraps up God’s love in a nutshell.

I am not your average Christian. I’m a Christian who just happens to be average. But then again, maybe I’m a phenomenal person who happened to finally realize that I am so worthy. So very worthy.

Liver Spots

While channel surfing the other night, I happened upon my new guilty pleasure: Bridezilla. After Don proposed in June, I immediately bought up every possible bridal magazine, started scouring the net for venues, made our honeymoon reservations (actually, I did that first since we’d already set our minds on the Boston to Bermuda cruise), and started a huge file of dresses, flowers, and cake ideas. At any rate, Don wound up playing Scrabble on his laptop while I laid into these horrible women who were demanding such things as $18,000 first class tickets to Bora Bora (and that was just for the flight!). We actually watched a woman gather her bridesmaids the night before the wedding and give them instructions on the exact shade and type of nail polish (pink on pink french manicures), how they should wear their hair, and (can you get over this?) which ones should stuff their bras to match her silicone prow-of-a-ship bustline.

I spent the evening punctuating the Bridezilla marathon with a lot of “honey, I promise I won’t do’s….” At some point the subject of makeup came up. It had to do with the aforementioned reigning queen of bridal bitches who looked as though she used a trowel every morning to layer her foundation. Well, guess what? Evidently, I come across the same way! Don suggested, as I could feel even the hair on the back of my neck bristle (yes, I’ll take care of that, too), that I have a professional do my makeup on the morning of our wedding.

“Why? What’s wrong with the way I do my makeup? I’ve been doing it myself since I was 16!”

“Yes, but maybe it’s time to do it differently.”

“Why? What’s wrong with it? Is it because you like a lighter shade?”

“I like it lighter.”

“The color?” I persisted, feeling extraordinarily defensive about my carefully applied face.

“No. Ummm…just lighter. Okay, sometimes I can see it caked here,” as he points to the area around his nose, “and sometimes it looks orange.”

GASP! I had visions of old ladies with powdery makeup that laid like a mask against their faces and ended in a significant line pf demarcation along their sagging jaws. All I could think was “get thee to an Estee Lauder counter and fast!” It’s pending, trust me.

The next morning I was in the middle of my daily ablutions when I suddenly stopped and really took a look at my face. Fuck, I’m going to be 44 years old in a scant few weeks. And I look it. For the first time in my life, I look my age. I’m a middle-aged mother with a tramp stamp on her lower back and a nose ring. I got up closer to the mirror. I’d always prided myself on my lack of wrinkles but actually attribute that to the fact that I come with my own built-in fat pads and don’t need my ass fat injected into my face. But there they were, a tiny network of lines criss-crossing the perpetual fluid filled pockets under my heavily charcoaled eyelids. And my laugh lines didn’t disappear when I stopped laughing. Crows feet. My gaze landed on a darker spot on my left cheekbone. Is that? Nooooo…it couldn’t be. Oh. My. God. It’s an age spot. And there’s another one near on my chest! Which really offsets those lovely skin tags on my neck.

So I run naked to the full-length mirror. Not a great idea. I stood there and looked at this stranger looking back at me. 160 lbs. of flubber. Whale blubber. Dubble dubber. My always perky breast were definitely riding a little lower this year. A C-section and hysterectomy had graced me with a pouch that I could raise a Joey in. My ass bore a Cabot logo. Whole curd. My thighs make a swishy sound when they rub together. In warm weather, they actually chafe.

I am very self-critical. I always have been. For the first 2/3 of my life I weighed about 103 lbs. and ate everything in sight and never exercised. Then my metabolism decided to ditch me. Just took off and left me with the luggage to carry around. I could wax on this subject forever but it gets boring and narcissistic to everyone but me. So, here’s the thing. I’m a middle-aged mother. I’m not going to turn back the clock and I don’t have the money to just stop by the plastic surgeon and say “could you just tighten up these jowls, inject a little botox into my perpetually frowning forehead, and slice and dice the folds of my eyes so that I can see a bit better? And perhaps a breast lift. A little liposuction here and there and there and over there and oh yeah, right here. How about a butt lift?” Really, why not just turn myself into a barbie doll?

Because. I am a middle-aged mother. I’m still reasonably attractive and my FHTB (future-husband-to-be) loves me regardless of my lumps and bumps, my wide load, and my orange makeup. So, I’ve got about nine months to get to the gym regularly and at least tighten up some.

In the meantime, I’ll be heading to the Estee Lauder counter. And the dermatologist. It’s the least I can do.

Plan B…further thoughts

[January, '07]

I think Anne Lamott and I were separated at birth. At least she seems to come from a much closer gene pool than my own sister. Truly. About halfway through her book she’s got an essay on being a single parent called “Heat”. Man, did this resonate with me. I know that I’ve come a long way from the days (which seem so long ago now, but were actually just months ago) when I was panic stricken that I couldn’t take care of this six year old child by myself. Not to mention, myself and a full time job and an apartment, etc. I had to learn to mow a lawn, take out the garbage, shovel snow, fix things when they broke, and keep going even if I felt sick or out of sorts. That may make me sound like a total princess but I always did all the domestic housewifey things.

At any rate, I learned that I could take care of my son all by myself. I could get him up and dressed for school, get decent meals into him, pack his lunch, get him into the bathtub, provide him with the best education possible, kiss his boo-boos, and just love him as much as I could. But lately, I’ve found that I get annoyed with him so easily. Because it is just the two of us we circle each other like pent-up cats in a cage. He wants to play, I want to lie down and lick my wounds. He wants to pounce and I want to nap. He wants to play ball and I just want to stare dreamily out the window and think about my next weekend blissfully and peacefully alone. I’ve become this total shrew. I lose my temper and I yell and I say irrational things. I get frustrated with having to repeat myself twelve times and end up trying to enforce consequences only to be faced with all out war on Mom. I hate myself this way and I want to love him unconditionally and be ready to play with him all the time but I feel like my whole world has been eaten up by my child and there’s nothing left of me until he falls asleep (the little angel then that I love to watch) at which point I’m so exhausted from being such a bitch that I can’t even keep my eyes open any more.

These were some really pertinent passages I read today while waiting for my long overdue grease and oil and all of the sudden I didn’t feel like the world’s worst mother at all. Just probably pretty normal….

“I’m pretty sure I only threatened not to intercede. But there have been other nights when I’ve made worse threats, thrown toys off the deck into the street, and slammed the door to his room so hard that things fell off his bookshelf. I have screamed at him with such rage for ignoring me that you wuold have thought he’d tried to set my bed on fire.”

“…at other people’s homes, my child does not suck the energy and air out of the room…But at our house—comment se dit?—he fucks with me. He can provoke me into a state similar to road rage.”

“…This is a closely guarded secret; the myth of maternal bliss is evidently so sacrosanct that we can’t even admit these feelings to ourselves. But when you mention the feelings to other mothers, they all say “Yes, yes!” You ask, “Are you ever mean to your children?” “Yes!” “do you ever yell so meanly that it scares you?” “Yes, yes!” “Do you ever want to throw yourself downt he stairs because you’re so bored with your hcild that you can hardly see straight?” “Yes, Lord, yes…”

I love my son. I love him with all of my heart and soul. I would die for my child. But he makes me crazy. He makes me a crazy person. I don’t WANT to sound like a shrew but I do want to be able to take a crap without his sitting on the edge of the tub. I do want to have a half an hour to watch the evening news. I do want to lie down with a migraine for an hour without having him come in every ten minutes asking if it has been an hour yet. I DO want a social life more than every other weekend! I want adult interaction and I want other parents to admit that they honestly feel that they could choke the life out of their kid although they know they won’t because they’ve been spared that part within others that permits them to cross a line that should never, ever be crossed.

Parenting is the hardest job in the world. Single parenting is a nightmare. But I do it and he and I are new at this and we’ll find a way to bob and weave and get through each match unscathed. Relatively. And every morning, no matter how hard it was to get him out of the house and into the car because we’re running late and I’m shrieking like a banshee about catching trains he still kisses me goodbye and tells me he loves me when I leave him off at school. I hope I provide enough love and good times that he forgives the old crone in me that I’m afraid will scar him for life.

Just Supersize Me

[early May, '07]

Salad and I just don’t get along. This morning I’m all chipper and Holly Golightly as I hit the Milton Fruit Center at 8 a.m. in my little orange denim skirt and my white sleeveless tee and sandals (very Miltonish). The scale said I’d lost 5 of those pesky pounds this week – chalk it up to water weight or to eschewing the carbs again – but it’s 80° out and I’m a happy fucking camper. So I pick up a few necessary items – protein and veggies and hit the salad bar for a huge lunch of romaine, balsamic marinated tofu, mushrooms, chick peas, a little feta cheese, some eggplant…eh, you get the picture. I’m psyched. Top it all of with Tahini dressing and lunch is mmmm mmmmm good.

Until I get the hershey squirts. What IS it with me and salad? Honestly, this doesn’t happen with a double quarter pounder at McDonalds and it doesn’t happen with my beloved cheesy tots at Burger King! Try to eat healthy and you wind up hanging out in the loo all afternoon. Good thing I picked up this week’s Star magazine to keep me company. God knows I can’t live without another update on Brangelina. Especially when my ass is on fire!

Maybe it’s the Tahini. What the hell is in that anyway? Lord, give me some meat and potatoes. I don’t want to leave the house and now it’s time to go pick up my son and play Mommy. I’m sure the first thing he’ll point out is the emanating stench from the bathroom. He’s always so tactful. Huh, maybe I better grab the Febreeze first. Or some heavy duty Lysol.

Thanks for joining in. That was refreshing.