Category: Parenting

Children, Home, Parenting

Fall Awake

smirkpretty

The door squeaks open. The dog gets to her feet, panting out her good morning greeting. The swooshes of her tail propel her down the hall. My boy stands barefoot on the bamboo floor rubbing his eyes. He ducks away from his furred friend’s eager tongue.

Bug’s hair is a chrysanthemum explosion. He waits for me to come and wrap my arms around his middle. When I do, I bend to bury my kiss in the tangled light of his head. We drag together down the hallway into my room where I snap open the bunched-up sheet and let it flutter onto the bed.

Continue reading “Fall Awake” →

Mindfulness, Parenting

Bug Bites: Zen and the Angry Child

smirkpretty

You mustn’t suppose
I never mingle in the world
Of humankind —
It’s simply that I prefer
To enjoy myself alone.
 
– Ryokan

Into the morning blue he wakes as dark-eyed as when he greeted night. He hurls himself at me, his hair like snapdragon stalks unpruned along the fence of his fury.
 
“Idiot,” he grumbles. I am at a loss. First I tell him if he’s old enough to use that word, then he’s old enough to make his own breakfast. Then I change course. Thorns will not be the texture of our day. I slide from the bed and crawl across the carpet to my splayed and scowling son. Right up close, I say, “I love you, baby, and you love me. I always know it.” I wrap my arms around him and tickle his sides. As he wrenches himself away, he bites back the smile I catch peeking. “Even if you don’t feel it right this minute, I know you love me.”
 
“No I DON’T.” Cold simmer cuts up from under the blonde cloak shadowing his gaze.
 
When he was two, he declared himself a girl. Rainbows on his underwear. Sequins in his hair. His third and fourth birthdays were pink crowns and princess cake. In his fifth year, he shed the tutu and snapped on a fist. He has not unclenched it since, except in moments belly-flat on the floor or twined sticky into me. Moments when he forgets.
 
While the oatmeal simmers under its skin of sugared cinnamon, he arranges a dinosaur jungle on the floor. The T-Rex pounds at the lesser beasts. A barrage of high-impact explosions upends all the palm trees leaving half a dozen herbivores strewn across the killing field.
 
I watch him wander into the tangled garden of his imagination and take corners I can’t see. I tiptoe to the edge and consider joining him there. Does he need the company of others, of playmates, of me? My only child turns away and blazes a trail alone among his hedgerows. Is it labyrinth or maze? He is not reluctant to find his own way in. I wonder what, if anything, compels him to follow the thread back out again.
 
Bug's Drawing of a Flower and a Watering Can
 
Returning home at the end of day, we trip our way to bed after fighting over dishes, teeth, bath. It is time to surrender to routine. Both of us need to waltz our way back to a rocking gait that smooths the friction at the edges where we meet. Three books. Three songs. Every night for six years.
 
He has a fairy blanket on the bed. It is the last vestige. He keeps it close even in the August swelter. With Tinkerbell bunched at our feet, we read Zen Shorts for the 400th time.
 
“Mommy, why is this book called that?”
 
“Well, the three stories Stillwater tells all come from Zen. And they’re all short.”
 
“What’s Zen?”
 
Oh geez. 
 
“I guess it’s a way of living. It’s very old. Thousands of years, maybe? It has to do with making quiet places inside your mind and body.”
 
He twists away from me. Restless, ever moving. He is all proboscis and fire ant. A cement mixer. A quicksand man. I have had to learn to test my footing before every step. “You know how we talk about breathing when you’re wound up? Or when I heat up? Zen is about getting still. Like Stillwater in the book. Then you can accept things without needing them to be different.”
 
Zen Cliff’s Notes. Am I close? He’s humming and tapping his fingers in a pattern along the wall. I touch the edge of his leg just enough to make contact but not enough to capture his attention and raise his inevitable ire. “Even when there’s craziness all around you, even if a robber comes into your house or people say mean things, you stay peaceful inside yourself.”
 
“Yeah, yeah. Okay, okay.”
 
“It’s not just for kids,” I tell him. “Here.” I get up and go find the book of Zen poems a friend gave me back when time to play with meditation was there for the taking. Or rather, when we chose to see abundance in a clock face rather than just its pinching glare.
 
I open to Ryokan.
 

Here are the ruins of the cottage where I once hid myself.

 
“Okay, whatever. That’s enough,” he tells me. The gold ribbon marking the page hides down in the spine. He pulls it away and trails it down over the back. “Now you’ve lost your place,” he tells me.
 
“Good,” I say. “I was hoping for that. Now I can start at the next place.” I leave the ribbon free and close the cover. The cottage is far behind me. I am alone on my unmarked path but also tangled at the root with a boy whose opening is his own to burn or tend.
 
“Are you mad?” His grin crouches in the dry weeds. His eyes cut a path to me. He is ready to pounce.
 
“No, baby. I’m nowhere close to mad. I’m happy to be here with you, exactly like this.” I set the poems on the floor and open my voice for the first song.
 

Love, Parenting

Close Shave

smirkpretty

With Bug in the tub, it seemed a shame to let all that water go to waste. Off went the socks and up turned the jeans. My grandma would call it a “hot soaky.” I called it Yes.
 
Oblivious to my freeloading feet, Bug dipped into little meringues of shaving cream decorating the rim. He dotted his arms with it and donned fancy white hats and matching gloves before spreading it in whorls on the tile walls. I dug out the old Gillette Trac handle made obsolete by the march of progress and removed the last rusted blade. In Bug’s hand, the flat head became a squeegee, a paintbrush, a snow shovel.
 
Bug glanced at his toothless razor, the foam, my legs. The troika of temptations coalesced into their one true destiny. His eyes brightened with the dawn of revelation.
 
“Mommy, I have an idea!”
 
Spa day over in three… two…
 
“I can shave your legs!”
 
One.
 
Bug took the lather into his palm and smoothed it down my calf. With uncharacteristic focus and gripping the Trac handle with two hands, he opened wide, straight(ish) trails through the white. “Feel how soft,” he said, touching the damp skin beneath.
 
This was over a year ago. Our bathtime routine took a 180, and sea monster battles gave way to regular mock grooming sessions. In terms of life expectancy of kid innovation, a year is the outer limit. The next idea has been right there waiting to pop. So, why does it take me by such surprise? Tonight, I hand Bug the cruddy Trac handle, he gives the foam a halfhearted swipe, and the light clicks on. “You know,” he says, eyeing the razor and then me. “I could do it for real.”
 
“Oh.” Not a chance. “You know, I don’t think so. You don’t need to be using blades on me.”
 
“But I could! I know how.”
 
My naked boy sprawls now, taking up the tub. I can still feel the wriggling fish of him against my flesh. As an infant, he was startled by the water and loathe to inhabit that terrifying echo chamber alone. I ladled him into the bowl of my lap and kept him afloat in the warm eddy there, nursing him through the shock of immersion. He clung, mouth and claw, his eyes anchored on mine as his jaw worked in defiance of the disquiet.
 
Now, he rolls like a walrus, laying all the way back with his head under. He listens for the hollow tones. Then, he sits up and takes another crack at it. “I’ll be careful, I promise!”
 
My son, using a razor on me? This kid laughs when I stub a toe. When overexcited, he cries, “I’m gonna smack you in the face!” Or he pretends to throw a toy at me then giggles when I flinch. Bug is too enamored of his power fantasies. No, I don’t want him anywhere near me with a sharp object.
 
Suddenly, my hot soaky seems scant protection against a chilling insight. I don’t trust my son. Fancy that.
 
This seems a rather dangerous state of affairs, and it extends well beyond us. Boys become men. He has to learn how to handle his ever-increasing capacity for harm. Isn’t it my job to help my boy become trustworthy? To harness his hunger for power and focus its generative force?
 
What if I give him the chance to make the choice himself?
 
“Please, Mommy?”
 
Never let them see you hesitate. Into the half-beat, his desire surges. “I’m old enough! I’ll be really, really careful.”
 
Okay. Here goes. “You know, you work hard at lots of things and I see you getting better at them all the time.” I stand and back the 4-blade Cadillac out of its valet spot by the shower-head. “This is a big job, but maybe you can handle it.”
 
“I can!”
 
I hand him the pink razor and we look together at the tiny teeth. He touches them with a fingertip. Then he scoops up a handful of foam and lathers up both sides of my leg. I roll the jeans even higher to make way for his expanding canvas. With intense concentration, he places the razor against my skin and begins to slide it down, down. He takes such care, the blades barely touch my skin. I lay my hand on his and show him how much pressure he can apply. When I let go, he presses in, glancing up at me before continuing. I nod. He is a Zamboni, not missing a single stroke. He even rearranges me, having me place my foot up on the wall so he can slip underneath and shave my calf from below. I call him Michelangelo. He pats all around and says, “Okay, other leg.”
 
My son doesn’t draw a single drop of blood. When he puts the razor down and helps me rinse, he has me touch my legs again and again. “See how smooth?” He crows. “They’re so soft!”
 
They are, as is his touch. My boy took an opportunity to hurt me and used it to care for me instead. He made a promise. For him to fulfill it, I placed a portion of my welfare in his hands. Apparently, this is how promise works.
 
What a tricky thing, love. We walk this roiling deck all the time. Hold off or venture? Guard or lay bare? When is it safe to unbutton the collar and open the throat to the whims of another?
 
It’s not never. It’s not always. It probably isn’t even when we think it is.
 
It might be when we catch ourselves tipping at the warm edge of a revelation. When we find our old tools cannot prize open the curtain separating this place from the next, and a sharper edge is required.
 
When we know there is peril in placing such power in untested hands. When fear beats a tattoo against the taut skin of old scars and yet underneath it, a whisper (has it been there all along?)
 
When we tune to its key and let the dangerous thing pass between us. When we choose.
 
Here, we say.
 
Here?
 
Yes. Like this.
 

Determination, Parenting

Object of the Game

smirkpretty

It isn’t the gray. It is not the shaft of air tunneling down the black or even the thin promise of light. It is not the howl of gears in need of oil and spit and breath, the places where teeth rub against brittle skin worn to rust and grit. It is not the blood even or the lost child or the empty wallet or the anticipation of want.
 
It is a recollection. Become a parent and everything changes. Down we go, compelled.
 
Once I played Mancala on the sofa of a shelter with a girl who had a child.
 
Her own mother stayed there, too. Three generations in one borrowed room. She told me her mother had taught her the game. In the smooth divots of that wooden palette, she doled out glass beads. Our turns shifted the place they needed to land. Each play altered the number of beads in our hand. The little marbles dropped, leading us around the board. We were Hansel and Gretel following gemstone breadcrumbs, trying to find a way home. Count, calculate, move, hold your breath. Nothing stays. Someone comes like a crow to pluck your shiny things. She told me she learned so well her mother refused to play her anymore. She needed someone who would be willing to lose. She had never lost.
 
We sat in front of the ceiling-high windows. The panes of glass looked out onto a street in her neighborhood. It was the place she had been born and raised, the place she could not find that just-enough combination of work + babysitting + bus fare to make rent. Who would have taught her how? Her mother was on the other futon in their room upstairs. She slid the gleaming bits of glass, 2-3-4. She said she decided she was going to master this game. She didn’t care if it made her mom feel bad to lose. She needed to win. This was her chance.
 
I was no help at all working there. I had no job leads, no contact at the ANFC. Nothing but the key to the locker where donated diapers and spaghetti-os lived. That, and keeping watch. In the heart of a city both cagey and caged, I could bar the doors and ensure an unmolested night.
 
There on the sofa, I was merely a convenient opponent. Company. This was more than nothing, though not by much. Do we not know this now? In a situation so dire, who can endure remembering without pause? The relentless press of need will cripple the very capacity required for filling it. Who can hold awareness of how much is required, how many miles the blistered feet must still cover, without curling into a ball? Without giving up entirely? I was a vehicle for distraction. For collecting glittering baubles. Anything but the Real for that precious pause.
 
You work and work and work just to keep getting up again to work some more. You are an accident of birth and the blind flailing towards some kind of coherent life. From the time you are little. You do your homework or you put it off, you start a lemonade stand or you peddle drugs. You aren’t getting closer to anything it all it seems until one day, there it is: A door. One of your company walks on through and the other is still trying to stumble down the corridor. Then it whispers shut. Then is gone and with it that first one, the one who was only just steps ahead. Behind a wall without a way through. That other self. That could-have-been.
 
That doppelganger.
 
Who sits across you from the couch, offering nothing but company. And a silencing of the noise of everything that still must be done to keep your child safe, to give her some chance of getting down that dark tunnel faster than you ever did before the door slips shut.
 
In the low light of those oversized windows, the girl with no place to live taught me her game of strategy and luck. She beat me every time until I learned. Then she didn’t stand a chance. I was young. She was younger but had more years under her belt by far. Ages. Epochs. I held all the advantage and forgot to let her win there in that one place where she could. We put the board away. She went up to the room to rouse her child from her hot nap. I went home.
 
Her baby would be 20 now. Older than the girl was then.
 
Did her little one make it? Did she arrive? Did she beat her mother at the game?
 
There are doors here. We find them. For our children. We push our way down that black tunnel. Push past the terror. Down past where we know others have gone. Some have tipped over the edge into pits we dread. Others slipped out into those places just beyond, those places we ache to be.
 
We feel blindly at the edges of damp concrete and steel, press our hands down into those cracks where the grime collects. Where the gears bite and groan. We know the danger. We also know there is a treasure there. A lever to pull. A place where things fall open. We seek the shape of the doors we only vaguely recognize. We have seen the shafts of light. Even if we missed our own chance, we remember the feel of the air blowing through. That noise, that thump and howl, it could just be the empty wind. Also, it could be a trumpet song trying to find its way to our ears. It could be music somewhere here. A stage door opening onto string and brass. The velvet curtain lifting. A trough of glass beads. All of what was lost and more, glittering there for our children to claim as their own.
 

Parenting, Reading

Asea

smirkpretty

One night, in a phosphorescent sea, he marveled at the sight of some whales spouting luminous water; and later, lying on the deck of his boat gazing at the immense, starry sky, the tiny mouse Amos, a little speck of a living thing in the vast living universe, felt akin to it all.

There is no walking away. Not this time, not ever. It astounds me that he still behaves as if I am truly leaving, his face opening up in fear, his body chasing after the warmth of mine.
 
“You can’t hit, buddy,” I say in a quiet voice. I hug him gently and walk with him back to the bed. I keep my hands off of his body, trying now to guide with word and deed. Trying to practice what I preach. It is not so easy to stay good. We slip-slide up this steep learning curve together. I understand that some of his intensity is just being Bug at six. Some of it, I’m ashamed to admit, is me.
 
I keep my voice gentle as the tears press against his. “You have to use words instead of hitting when you want something to be different.”
 
“It wasn’t really hitting,” he says, crawling back into the bed. “Hitting is like with a fist.”
 
“You’re right that it wasn’t hard hitting, but it was still hitting instead of talking about your feelings. You cannot hit.” I pull the covers up over him.
 
“Can’t you just read one more book?” He asks. His eyes are wide and frightened. I understand his worry. We never deviate from our bedtime routine. This choice rattles me, too.
 
“No. I’m sorry. You hit me, so no more stories.”
 
“Can’t you just turn on one more light?”
 
“It’s bedtime.”
 
His face is quivering. I crawl in next to him. “I’ll sing you one song,” I say. “First, can you tell me what you were feeling before you hit me?”

Overwhelmed by the beauty and mystery of everything, he rolled over and over and right off the deck of his boat and into the sea.

For a long moment, he is quiet. Then, “I didn’t like what you were doing.”
 
I knew the instant everything turned for him. We had reached the page where the little mouse is bobbing in the water, possibly about to drown. His boat is bowled away in the wind. Amos frets about what he should do and what big fish might be coming for him. I had asked Bug about Amos. “Does that face look worried? How would you feel?” When I stepped out of the story long enough to wonder at the fears of the waterlogged mouse, Bug turned on me. His face tightened, he scowled, he hit me. Twice.
 
That’s when I closed the book. I stood and turned out the lights. “No hitting. Time for bed.”
 
Now, I say, “Baby, if you don’t like something a person is doing, you have to say something. Say, ‘Please stop. I don’t like that.’ Maybe they’ll stop or maybe they won’t, but you can’t hit. You have to figure out other ways to deal with your feelings.”
 
Bug scrunches down under his Dora blanket.
 
“Can’t I just have one more book?”
 
This kills me. It is our one precious sliver of Us every night we are together, this ritual of reading. Three books, three songs. Today we only made it through one book and part of a second, and now we have to call it quits.
 
The kiddo has been struggling at school the past few weeks. Twisting a classmate’s arm, disrupting, ignoring the teachers. Notes have come home. Red days on the calendar. Something is amiss, and I ache to help him. I have no idea what I am doing. I hate that sometimes I have to sacrifice our sweetest gift so that he can learn to check this behavior. I hate it more that I have no idea if this is the right approach, and if I might be risking our very bond by holding this line.

Morning came, as it always does. He was getting terribly tired. He was a very small, very cold, very wet and worried mouse. There was still nothing in sight but the empty sea. Then, as if things weren’t bad enough, it began to rain.

“Just one more? Please?”
 
I stroke his hair. “No more books, sweetie. One song, though. We always need a song.” I begin to sing.
 
Baby beluga in the deep blue sea
 
As the tune drifts around use, I rub my boy’s belly and stroke his arm. After a moment, he shakes me off and turns away. His lip is pooked out. “Please stop touching me,” he says to the wall. I remove my hand and finish singing to his shoulders, his spine.

As he was asking himself these dreadful questions, a huge head burst through the surface of the water and loomed up over him. It was a whale. “What sort of fish are you?” the whale asked. “You must be one of a kind!”

When I finish the song, I lay with him for a moment. I tell him about our morning, about how we will need to leave extra early so I can go to the dentist to have him put on a crown. When I had the root canal in November, Bug came with me and watched. Now, he turns back towards me, suddenly fascinated with the topic. We talk about enamel, roots, and how teeth draw nourishment from below the surface the way trees do. How the crown is like armor to keep the tooth from breaking.
 
“Is it metal? Or liquid?” He asks. “Will he, like, pour it on?” He gestures the fluid cascade. My mouth, the waterfall. The meteor shower.
 
“I’ll let you know when I get home tomorrow. For now, though, you should get some rest. We have an early morning ahead of us.” He pulls the blanket up over himself. I keep my hands behind me, stilling the urge to tuck and fuss. It is hard, this lesson in boundaries. He is forever my flesh, it seems. I can still feel his feet seeking purchase against the walls of me.

Amos said he’d had enough adventure to last him a while. He wanted only to get back home and hoped the whale wouldn’t mind going out of his way to take him there.

“You know what, Bug?” I say. “I am so pleased that you asked me with your words not to touch you a few minutes ago. It really worked. I think that choice deserves another song.”
 
Bug ooches around and smiles. I open up my voice.
 
The wind is in from Africa. Last night, I couldn’t sleep.
 
My boy presses sideways against me. “Can I cuddle?” I whisper. He nods and turns a little more into my body. I put my arm around him and he folds himself to me. I sing the song and he breathes quietly, his gaze softening, his eyelids drooping. He lets me drop a kiss on his cheek.

What a relief to be so safe, so secure again! Amos lay down in the sun, and being worn to a frazzle, he was soon asleep.

—

Excerpts from Amos & Boris, by William Steig. Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, New York: 1971.

 

Music, Parenting

Last Night, I Couldn’t Sleep

smirkpretty

We are a little late getting to bed. Bug has just returned from a long New Year’s winter family camp weekend at the Frost Valley YMCA in the Catskills. His dad reported that Bug actually sang a Justin Bieber song at Karaoke in the dining hall in front of everyone. This, in addition to rocket-making and going down the tubing hill 13 or so times.
 
When my kid returns from these camp weekends, he has adopted funny new mannerisms. Tonight, he makes a little tchk with his cheek and cocks his head while he chatters at me. While he builds legos, he sings, “We are never, ever, ever, getting back together” under his breath. Also, his face is smeared with blue, his hands are purple, and he smells. Hygiene is not a top priority at camp.
 
After bath and jammies, we settle into his bed together. I finish the last book and set it on the floor. Bug is deep into his drawing of some complex set of ladders and pulleys again. I rub his back and start to sing. I don’t get one line into “Baby Beluga” before Bug stops me.
 
“Don’t sing, please.”
 
I stop rubbing. This is new. “Do you want a different one?”
 
“No.” He is coloring hard with dark blue marker. The work of our bath is quickly being reversed. “No songs. Just cuddles.”
 
I stoke his back again with a little more care. He colors in silence.
 
Is that it? Did it just happen? Did my little boy cross over? Someone once said that you will never know when read your child Goodnight Moon for the last time. We step blindly over milestones as if they are just cracks in the sidewalk.
 
I think back to our Christmas week together in Texas. On the first evening there, we sang from our caroling songbook. The second night, Bug asked me not to sing. I thought this was some combination of the laryngitis making me sound like a geriatric goose and the general overstimulation of our lodgings. The final three nights of our visit, he asked me not to sing. This was fine with me because even speaking had become a burden.
 
Are we finished with bedtime songs? Was it over the night before Christmas? Surely, it can’t happen like this. Boom, a kid enters a new stage and there is no looking back? Doesn’t he understand how momentous and heartbreaking this is?
 
“No songs at all?” I venture. “Not even ‘Big Rock Candy Mountain’?”
 
“No, thanks,” he says.
 
I watch him add an extra ladder. Adapt or die, as they say.
 
“What are you drawing?”
 
“Guess,” he says.
 
If I can’t sing, I can at least have a conversation with him. In the split second it takes him to enter adolescence, he may well become more irritated by my existence than indulgent of it. I suppose I better get with the program. I look at his drawing more closely. He inks a line from the ladder to a platform where a smiling person stands.
 
“A zipline?”
 
“Yep,” he says. “It’s a high ropes course.”
 
We talk about this for a few moments. He points out what is what. Our exchange is pretty spotty because he is still focused on his composition. The side of his hand and the wristband of his new digger-truck jammies are smeared gray-blue.
 
“Alright, Bud. I’m going to get everything ready for school tomorrow. Finish up the picture and lights out in just a minute, okay?”
 
“Mmm-hmm.” He starts on the higher element at the top of the page. The Flying Squirrel? The Postman’s Walk? He doesn’t give. I kiss his head and go downstairs to finish the dishes. I have almost finished loading the dishwasher when I hear the plaintive cry from the landing. “Mommy? Mo-o-o-mmy?”
 
“Yes, baby?”
 
“You forgot to put the cool water by my bed.”
 
I grin and come upstairs. “We are out of practice after a few days away, huh? I filled it up when you were brushing your teeth but we both forgot to take it to your room. Here.” I help him find the cup. He has not stayed in this house for eleven nights. I have to remember that these transitions take some adjustment. He gulps deeply and crawls back into bed, picking up an orange marker on the way. I stroke his head. “You need to finish up so you can get some sleep for tomorrow.”
 
“Okay.”
 
I lumber back downstairs to finish packing snack and putting away laundry.
 
“Mommy? Mo-o-o-mmy?”
 
I walk to the landing with a sigh. “Yes, buddy?”
 
“I need to go potty.”
 
“So, go potty.” He smiles big, wrapping his arm around my shoulder as I climb the stairs. “Let me guess. You took a nap in the car on the way home from camp today, didn’t you?”
 
He bounces into the bathroom. “What do you think I’m going to say?”
 
“I think you’re going to say, ‘yes’.”
 
He makes a silly face then nods. We goof with our faces going from stern to giggles. “Do you want to come in and see what I drew after I go potty?”
 
“Sure, baby. Then it’s bedtime.”
 
He digs out a pile of sketches that he has produced in the few minutes I was downstairs. This one shows an elaborate series of ladders and several emergency vehicles including two medi-vac helicopters. “It’s an underground hospital,” he tells me. “That’s blood. All full of blood. And that’s the thing with the wheels they take the people out of the helicopter on.”
 
“A stretcher?”
 
“Yep. And this is an ambulance. And here is the X-Ray machine.”
 
“Baby, it is so far past your bedtime, it’s not even funny.”
 
“Okay.”
 
I go downstairs to make copies of his paperwork to start the new before-school program.
 
“Mommy? Mo-o-o-mmy?”
 
I take a deep breath, round the foyer, and mount the stairs. “Bedtime,” I say quietly. “No more coloring.”
 
“But why aren’t you in bed?”
 
“Because I can’t finish my chores with someone calling me upstairs every seventeen seconds. Here. Hop into bed. We’re done.” I take away the clipboard and set it on the floor and put the sack of markers in the drawer. He pulls the blanket up.
 
Gently, gently, I make the offer. “How about a song to help you get to sleep?”
 
He nods and wiggles down under the blanket. “Okay. Will you lay down with me?”
 
“You bet.”
 
“And maybe do all three songs?”
 
“Sure thing, buddy.”
 
He smiles his dozy, droop-eyed smile and presses up against me. As the tune leaves my lips, I hear every word of every verse much more clearly than I have in years.
 
Tonight is probably not the last page of this chapter, but how could I know if it were? We just never know how close we are to the end. There is no way to flip ahead to see. I sing him the whole of each song well past his bedtime and deep into slumber. I add a free fourth tune for good measure just to make up for all the ones I will never hum into his drowsy neck again once he says goodbye to the lullaby for good.
 

Let’s not talk about fare-the-wells now
The night is a starry dome.

As long as this moment lasts, I sing my boy to sleep.
 

—

From Joni Mitchell’s “Carey” off the forever twilight album, Blue.

Creativity, Happy Days, Parenting

Happy 100 Days: 21

smirkpretty

My son is standing at the kitchen counter with a handful of permanent markers and  a stack of recycled paper. The brush in my hands works its way through his golden hair. The tangle in the back tightens like the fist of Christmas lights we threw into the corner after 30 minutes of trying. The smell of spruce clings to the morning.
 
Bug continues on a picture of a golf ball factory he began last night. His running commentary distracts us both from the small knots yanking at his scalp. “This bin is for one color, and this one for blue. They get sorted into the right boxes, and here is where they go if the wrong color is in the box. Ow!”
 
“I’m sorry, baby. I’ll go slow.”
 
He fills the page with tiny circles, long funnels, and snaking tubes. He writes the words “picker” and “golf ball tools.”
 
When we were decorating, I managed to pick apart one fist of lights and unfurl a string to adorn the tree. When I finished, I hooted and cheered. “Perseverance pays off!” I hoped this would make us all forget about me tossing the other strand aside and declaring it hopeless.
 
Bug leans close to make a thin line on the edge of the page. My hands follow his arc. I separate the twisted locks at the base of his skull one snarl at a time.  The brush barely moves yet its work is relentless.
 
“I am going to be an engineer,” he tells me. “Not the train kind. The building kind.”
 
“Yes, you will, baby. You can build anything you see inside your mind.”
 
“I know, Mom,” he says.
 
Good. I lean in and kiss him on the damp head. He barely registers me. He is too focused on crafting his vision one perfect circle at a time. Let’s keep it that way.
 

Adventure, Friends, Happy Days, Parenting

Happy 100 Days: 24

smirkpretty

Train platform, new friends (hello! hello!), young boys not much older than my son approach me to shake my hand and say, “Nice to meet you.” I am so stunned I almost forget how to respond. Metro cards, turnstiles, find a car. Kids spin around the metal poles, “Sit down! Sit still!” It does not work, they are all maps and windows and new new new. The littlest ones cry, both wanting the window seat and the seat next to daddy. Once we are zipping along, tears dry and the traffic, tracks, sky, tunnel mesmerize.
 
Then, up onto city streets. Dusk. Lights, crosswalks, thousands of cars. “Stay close! Stop at the curb! Don’t run ahead!” The boys slam into each other, their bodies pin-balls pinging between Pennsylvania Avenue office buildings. The caravan growths thin as it stretches down a city block. Two boys race ahead and we lose sight of them between the looming wall of strangers. The dad carries his young son far back, his daughter in the bubble-gum pink coat bringing up the rear.
 
Then, it is giant tree. White House in a golden glow. Crowds, bustle, tiny trains, throwing coins into open freight cars. We lose one another, gain an additional mother and daughter, lose her, re-group. The little ones and the big ones all press into the fence, sharing snacks, all learning and then forgetting names. The girls ask their mother for pennies. Another round of coins until we all stop digging into our wallets. The kids throw clumps of grass. The state trees arc behind us and we find the ones we know. Rhode Island, where one went to culinary school. Texas, where one will spend Christmas. Then we see Virginia and we all crowd around for a moment, squeezing our way in.
 
We break free of the crowd’s tight grip and weave our way down the streets again. Up the stairs and onto Freedom Plaza’s deep breath of open space. Up past the marquee lights of National Theater. No one remembers what is here anymore, no one spends time in the city. Where will we eat? All around us, hotels, glimmering brass. The Willard. The Washington Marriott. Lights, doormen, black hired cars. We gamble on distant memory and hoof up 14th street. The Shops at National Place offer up a bakery with a kids’ menu. Sandwiches, fruit cups, chocolate milk. Slump, hydrate, chat, color, wait wait wait and then eat.
 
Back out into the night. The metro again, the front car now, kids take turns peering through the dark glass at the curving tunnel ahead. We peek our heads out at the station stops and wave at the conductor who grins and winks. Girls pour their tiny toy animals onto the vinyl seats. Boys wrestle. “Stop that! Gentle hands!” The parents talk more. Who is in school, who lived where, whose kids like which sports, instruments, books. Have you decorated yet? Where will they be for the holidays? With dad? With you? Half weeks, split Christmas, alternating years.
 
At the final stop, we all wait at the turnstile. No one in this crowd is left behind. We only just met, and already we are each other’s fierce protectors. For one sparkling night, we barely-friends are one tribe.
 

Children, Love, Parenting

Happy 100 Days: 26

smirkpretty

In the two and a half years since my husband and I split, sleep has eluded me. A night or two of peace might pop by for a brief visit before fractured restlessness moves in for an extended stay. It is relentless. Anyone who suffers from insomnia knows the agony of half-functioning (if even half) for days on end. Usually the affliction doesn’t strike someone whose life is straightforward, so the difficulty of everyday tasks is compounded by the strained cognitive and physical function of sleep deprivation.
 
In the past year, I can remember one deep, delicious night where slumber was down in the lowest cave, safe and silent, exactly as it should be. I still remember the stunned feeling of waking the next morning, fogged and groggy and perfectly thrilled that the sun was halfway up in the sky. A single June night over six months ago. It was that good.
 
The night came to me as a surprise gift on a Pennsylvania hillside after a long day on the road. Bug, Giovanni and I had packed up the Jeep and headed out in the direction of Lake Erie. We tried to make our way into Baltimore to see the ships and found ourselves foiled by crowds. To quiet Bug’s disappointed sobs, we stopped at a McDonalds instead. He was still young enough that two Happy Meals were a fair trade for tall ships.
 
We found a state park with a lake and a playground and a gazillion kids. It was summer. We swam and warmed in the sun, Giovanni and I taking turns keeping an eye on Bug in the brown water teeming with humans with no lifeguard on duty. It was like vacationing on the Ganges. Bug loved every second of it. We drove on, following the map to another state park with the small triangular icon. We called ahead, found out sites were available, and pulled in a little before dark.
 
Bug was tired and testy, I was ready to stretch, and Giovanni was focused with laser precision on putting the tent up before dark. We all tripped and sniped over each other. Bug and I fussed and eventually made our way to the bath house as much to give Giovanni room to finish as for us to clean up. When we stumbled back, the tent was up, the fire was blazing, and the camp chairs were warming in the amber glow. Giovanni’s fingers were already striking the steel strings. Wagon Wheel lifted up to the topmost branches.
 
Somewhere in that deepening dusk, I hear the first whipporwill of my life. We all stopped together and listened to the call, another, back again. Whip-POOR-will. The cry was as unique as my son’s sigh.
 
Bug and I crawled into the tent first. We read and sang by lantern light and he fell asleep pushed up against me. Giovanni came in soon after and tucked himself around me from the back. We three, a row of spoons cast on a rocky Pennsylvania hilltop, died out long before the embers from the fire.
 
Even though the clearing was on a slight incline covered in sharp stones, even though Giovanni and Bug both let their jaws fall open and their snores rattle the tent flaps, even though the whipporwill called well into the wee hours, sleep came and ferried me away. Nothing remained to be fixed. Nothing needed my attention. Finally, my weary mind could surrender to night.
 
Wrapped up between my two boys, I was home.
 
Tonight, I lay down next to my boy and sing him under as I do every night he is here. He is charging me for kisses, droopy-eyed and giggly. “Kiss me again, Mommy,” he says, pressing his soft cheek to my lips. I do as directed. “Now you own me $300,” he grins. Then he turns his lips to me and presses them on my temple, my head, wherever they land.
 
“How much do I get?” I ask as he breathes and snorts into my skin, drawing out the long moment.
 
“Nothing! It’s free! Now kiss me again!”
 
I plant one on his ear.
 
“Hah! Now you owe me $600!” And by 300s, we make it up to a debt of $1200 before he takes a last breath and drifts off. His mouth falls open against my neck as I sing the final verses of Big Rock Candy Mountain. His snores tickle the song as it rises from my throat.
 
I’m bound to stay where you sleep all day
 
I let myself drift off next to him for a few delicious moments. Oh, sweet surrender. What freedom it is to believe there is nothing left to do!  In this place right here, maybe it’s possible that everything is as it should be.
 
Now, it’s just Bug and me. My boy. No one slipping his arms around me from behind. The cocoon into which I can tuck my love and my wishes was just a husk, after all. As such things do, it fell away when it was time to hatch. Still. I remember that night. I remember when I slept because everything was in its place. My man, my boy, me.
 
Now, I get to learn to create that quiet place just for the two of us. On my own, I will tackle what is perhaps the third of my twelve labors. I kiss my sleeping boy (he can’t charge me for this one) and decide to believe I am capable of small miracles. I can make us a home. I can give us our sweet rest.
 

Growing Up, Parenting

Happy 100 Days: 34

smirkpretty

I climb in and wrap
my arms around the boy I know
is forever mine
and forever
my only.
I use these secret lies
to balm the places
that will be pruned
without  my consent
and without fair
warning.

—

He is still fidgeting, clicking his tongue’s metronome against the verses of the song.
 
“Shh, baby. Take a deep breath.”
 
“Why?”
 
“Because we are helping the little whale get ready for bedtime.” I speak in a whisper. Bug turns, his pajama top riding up over his belly. I tug it back down, stroking my fingers against his back and side as he rolls yet again. He is a porpoise, rifling through the sheets and leaving a storm of tangled linen in his wake. He shivers. “Shhh.” I take in a deep breath and let my chest rise before easing the air out. I watch him do the same. “That baby whale is gliding in the dark water under the starry sky, slowly, slowly, until it’s just the waves bobbing him to sleep.”
 
Bug presses backwards into me and sighs. His lungs flutter like fins before finding the rhythm of the lullaby. He is half awake and then not and then he has slipped down below the surface where I cannot reach. I finish out the final verses. The song is a treasure chest I have to close so nothing precious escapes.
 
With the morning sun
Another day’s begun
you’ll soon be waking. . .
 
I breathe the tune down low, voice vibrating out through my ribs and into his.
 
In the face of these legacies his daddy and I leave him to bear (the poor eyesight, the tempest heart) at least the lyrics I have stashed away in those underground caves will be there if he chooses to seek comfort there. With song, even the deepest places will retain one small portion of light. He will learn, should we not fail him completely, that this will be more than enough to find his way.