Obstacle Course

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I want to be writing a post right now, but a dark cloud has settled over both children and they are taking turns waking and crying. There was only a half an hour during which they were both quiet today. It involved one taking a really late nap and the other building heroes and monsters.

So I summon up patience reserves and ask softly what they need. I don’t want them to need right now. I want to write. I put off what I want all day to do what they need, and now I want to write a blog post.

…

I want to be writing a chapter right now, but the house is a mess and the lunches aren’t made. I did a darned fine job making three nice meals and two snacks today.

But there are no milestones. There is no “done.” Relentless. It’s not back-breaking or war-torn or subsistence-level. But it’s relentless.

Now I summon up the will to tidy, clean, and slather protein goop onto bread for lunches tomorrow. I don’t want to think about other people’s food right now. I want to write. I’ve been putting it off all day, mindful of what my two small creatures need, and now I want to write a chapter.

…

I want to be reading a book right now, but I’m unfocused and can’t give the words the time they deserve. I try twice and give up. I hear another crying child, see a pile of clothes for the laundry, and smell leftovers waiting to be tucked into the fridge.

Now I try to summon the maturity to give up for the night. I don’t want to call it a day. I want to write and read and create and marvel and think. I put all of those aside today, promising myself “later” while I enjoyed the play and resented the battles and joined in the lives of other people. I’ve been answering requests for 22 hours. And now I want to be me.

The day started at midnight when the littlest one woke crying for water. He chases away my REM cycles every hour or so after the night is enumerated in single digits. The older one woke before dawn and started whistling the joyful chorus of those without front teeth. They both pushed hard all day, trying to fill every moment with fun and beauty and learning. I tried to keep up. And be responsible and tidy and mindful and nice. I tried to feed them and teach them what they need to know to be decent humans. I did a fine job considering how little I sleep each night and how mad I get when Elvis Costello tauntingly reminds me that every day he writes the book. Every day. The book I’m neither writing nor reading.

So if I quit and go to bed, Elvis Costello wins. And I can’t have that.

Consider the post written and the lunches done. Next: draft a chapter. Then: read one sentence and fall asleep.

Win-win-win-win. Take that, Elvis.

‘Tis the season

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We picked and shucked and popped our own corn.
They wandered hay mazes at top speed.
Peanut picked out, designed, and carved his own pumpkin.
I carved all the shapes Butter drew on the one he picked out.

Happy middle of October, everyone! Come on over, because we’re totally ready. Like right now. As in please come by and distract my kids because they think (despite my repeated clarifications) that Halloween is tomorrow.

Old, older, oldest

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Despite the actual numbers, I’ve never felt old. I always think I’m just a few years past being a teenager. My parents? Old. Their whole generation? Ancient.

But that’s been my thinking since I was ten. At that point, thirty seemed near the end of life. Now I don’t consider someone much older until they hit seventy. And even then, most don’t seem old until eighty or so.

When did I become the person who thinks seventy is only “kind of” old?

Yesterday, in the dentist’s office, I laughed to hear a vaguely familiar song playing. It took a minute to locate the memory way, way, way back in the early ’70s.

I started thinking: wait a minute. There’s a chance this was playing the day of my first dental appointment. When I was four. This is just weird.

The next song was Sonny and Cher. The one after that was Earth, Wind, and Fire.

And I knew both without asking. That made me laugh. The hygienist looked puzzled and I said, “I think these songs were playing when I had my kindergarten dental cleaning.”

She considered that and said, “This? It’s the oldies station. They’ve stopped playing stuff from the ’50s and ’60s and moved to the ’70s and ’80s.”

They what, now? They’ve identified the people in midlife, labeled our childhood OLD and made money from that asshattery?

Then it dawned on me. The hygienist was younger than me. By about ten years. So, come to think of it, are most of the professionals I know. Heck, OutlawMama can’t get anyone to corroborate that Flo was not being criminally insubordinate when she told Mel to kiss her grits.

What good are you if you don’t remember Alice?

Regardless of the number, I’m beginning to feel old. Or at least grownup. My peers do not work at grocery stores or bars or in postdoc positions. My peers are managers and COOs and first authors.

When the hell did that happen?

Stop supporting slave labor

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There have been numerous articles on the use of slave labor, particularly forced child labor, in the production of chocolate. And I’m glad there are alternatives so we don’t have to choose between abstaining (NO!) or feeding our families the product of slave labor (HELL NO!)

When I buy food, I try to balance the important issues: maximizing nutrition while minimizing toxins, cost, and labor abuses.

Didn’t think you had to worry about slavery anymore? I wish that were true.

We buy locally grown organic tomatoes to avoid the pesticides and chemical fertilizers of conventional farms, and also to stay as far away from supporting the obscene work practices of some tomato farmers. I refuse to buy or eat products that are the product of slavery or of child labor. In the case of tomatoes, though, I had no idea I was supporting both until I read Tomatoland, the tomato’s version of Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle.

We also buy fair trade coffee to vote for a world where local cooperatives grow and harvest coffee in conditions safe for the workers and the planet, where workers are paid a fair price for their products, and where crops are not grown in harmony with, rather than at the expense of rain forest.

As we prepare for Halloween, I was thrilled to find Kristen Howerton’s guide to an ethical Halloween because I think Americans spend a lot of time and money ensuring their own kids’ safety, and should learn how the holiday is harmful to other people’s children. Major chocolate companies often get their chocolate from farms that use child labor, child slavery, unsafe working conditions, and grotesque chemicals.

Go read more about the truth behind fun sized chocolate. Then check out one of the alternatives: fair trade chocolate (yum) or treats without any chocolate (also yum). Heck, give out toothbrushes or pencils like I always threaten to do.

Just make sure all children have a chance to be as safe as yours will be on Halloween.

Time Out

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We’ve had a week of big emotions. A lot of anger and tantrums from the pint-sized population.

And I’m trying out something new.

Every time one of the kids freaks out, I’m calm. I offer words and solutions. That’s old hat. But when one or both refuses to listen to gentle reminders that “we don’t hit mommy,” or “use your words, please, so I know what you want,” I lock myself in the bathroom.

It’s not an ideal technique, I’ll grant you. I’m sure it’s not a Dr.-Sears-endorsed way of coping. But I’ve totally regressed in this week of absolute chaos. And I have such a raging temper that, if I stay and try to reason with the inherently unreasonable, I eventually lose it.

I’ve always liked locking doors. As a kid, we had one room that locked: the bathroom. My brother and I would fight, and when it got nasty I’d run straight for the bathroom. Lock. Space, relief, and relative safety.

Even in corporate life, when my stress levels rose, I’d head for the bathroom. Big mirrors, granite counters, brass rails, and locking doors all spell deep breaths and rapid recovery. Personal space brought to you courtesy of American shyness about excretion.

So I’m trying the retreat-to-the-loo technique here. To keep the peace. To show the boys that I will not tolerate being abused. To offer a game changer and a reset button. To cue a new round of, “it sounds as though you’re angry. Would you like a cuddle?”

Yesterday Butter and I came home for lunch. He said he didn’t want to eat. I told him okay, but that I wanted leftover stirfry. So I scooped and reheated. And he screamed and raged and tried to knock the bowl out of my hand. I explained it was just for Mommy. He freaked. I offered some, in case he though I was keeping it from him. He took a swing at me. I offered him his own bowl; I offered yogurt; I offered to go outside with him; I offered to let him choose.

He screamed and hit me.

So I said, “I can’t stay here if you hit.” And I walked downstairs and locked myself in the bathroom. Childish and ridiculous. But I got to shovel a few bites my broccoli into my empty body all by myself. Without being hit. An unusually productive meal, actually.

When I came out one minute later, I offered to cuddle him. He took me up on it. Calm, cuddly, and full belly?

Bathroom for the win.

Peanut came home from school later the same day in a foul, foul mood. As the minutes clicked away, he yelled at me, he called me names, he pushed me. I explained each time that I absolutely would not stand for that behavior and that feeling grouchy is fine but spewing anger on other people is not. I offered him some options, including the game of taking his own grouchy face off, crumpling it up, and putting it in his pocket so the sweet Peanut inside could cuddle and read books. He screamed at me. So I went downstairs and locked myself in the bathroom.

You may remember that, when the now 6-year-old Peanut was small, I made the mistake of staying in the room as tempers escalated. My belief that I couldn’t leave him when he was troubled, no matter how violent he got, was not good for my blood pressure. Or emotional well being. Or our relationship.

So this week I leave. I explain briefly that I will not stay for screaming and hitting, and I go. They hate it. They cry and beg me to come out. And that goes against every bit of my “follow your instincts and do what is kind” parenting.

But I totally love the door between us. Admitting my relief at abandoning my tantruming children might get my attachment parenting card taken away, but I don’t care anymore. Locking myself in the bathroom means my temper stays in check and I can reset my energy back to where it needs to be when dealing with insane raging lunatics.

Hiding behind a locked door means not teaching them that people will stay when they’re being terrible. I have always wanted them to believe that I’m a safe person with whom to lose it, but, increasingly, I reject that idea. You may *start* to lose it with me until you lose it *at* me. You may rage and writhe. But you may not hit me. I can help you find words and solutions. I can let you know you’re loved while and when you’re done being angry.

But I will not stand still and be an inflatable Bozo for your punching needs.

So excuse me. I have to go stash some magazines in the bathroom. I think I’m going to be in there a lot.

Nobody Listens to Turtle

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Criticism is a wonderful gift. If articulate and well timed, it can give us the bridge we need to make our lives better.

I really need to learn to hear criticism.

I listen to it. I do. And I acknowledge its inherent usefulness, even if mean-spirited or misguided. But genuinely constructive criticism is an opportunity I apparently miss. In trying not to wince in pain at the idea of needing improvement, I found out today, I effectively block out the actual useful bits of criticism.

I thought I was rather self-aware. But today I realized I need more often to listen to turtle*.

Back story: I’ve been working on a novel for a while. I wrote it as a screenplay more than a decade ago. Once it was done I put it away and forgot it until Peanut was cooking and I finished teaching. I needed a project, and thought the script would be a good book.

So I transformed it. And edited and polished and sent it to agents.

And some sent feedback. My memory of that feedback is “It’s fine, I like the characters. It’s just not the right project for me. By the way, the language at times is too showy, so watch that. And nothing good happens until page 300, so move the action up if you want to sell it.” My memory has served me for three years.

I got the feedback while pregnant with Butterbean. I spent nine months rearranging the scenes and cutting the showy language. Then the little guy was born and all work ceased.

Fast forward. Peanut is in school. Butter is in a home-based day care three mornings a week.

Work is proceeding apace. But I’m not sure how much of the action to move, nor how to juggle the characters. Five main characters. Hard to time the introduction so many since I don’t want to focus too long on anyone, nor jump around like a narrative ping pong game. I’ve been rearranging scenes on index cards and a corkboard for years. I need a new perspective.

So I map the book. But then realize: most of what happens…really happens…is in flashbacks. Nothing much actually happens. Lots of feelings, minimal plot.

[Bear with me. The graphics below were penned without intention of making them public, but there’s no way in h-e-double-hockey-sticks I’m redrawing this exercise just to look good for you lovely people.]

The emotional maps, overlaid, look like this.

Exciting, no?

But the actual character arcs, overlaid, look like this.

Cue sad panda music, ‘cuz that’s one pathetic book right there.

So I ask a dear, brilliant writer friend two questions:
1. does stuff that happens in the past just color how a reader sees a character, or does it actually count as action?
2. how do I introduce all these characters without lingering too long on any of them? Should I force them together more?

While I wait for a reply, I stumble upon the agents’ emails, which I haven’t opened since 2009.

More than half mentioned that
1.not enough happens
and
2.there are too many characters and we need to see them all together doing something.

D’oh!

The good news: I’m asking the right questions.
The bad news: I had the answer three years ago.
The good news: I now, finally, have time to do this work.
The great news: I still want to.

*Bonus points if you get the reference. Actually, genetic test if you get the reference because I think you and I might be family.

Hoardy? Me?

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(No, the title is not a reference to The Bearded Iris‘s twittery use of “whorety” for forty, though I love that. Can’t wait to turn whorety next month. But this is about being hoardy. Read on.)

A post at Big Little Wolf’s Daily Plate of Crazy had me thinking. She asked how we draw the line between collecting and hoarding. The clinical definition specifies that to be a hoarder you have to collect so much and be so unwilling to shed anything that you can’t maneuver in your house.

No problem. I have lots of space.

I used to be a collector. I treasured bits and pieces of my personal history, my family’s mementos, and objects that held special importance.

But after the fire, I changed. I still like to collect and to cling. But after a few months or years, I call treasures “clutter” and shove them all into the donation bag. I put into the garage sale pile things that should be important to me.

But they’re just things.

I learned what it means to keen for lost belongings and to forget them relatively quickly. I have found small bits of what I thought I lost and mourned as deeply as I thought possible for what I would never get back.

Because what you really lose in catastrophe is a sense of safety. Of permanence. Like nothing else, a home-demolishing fire teaches you nothing is forever. Especially stuff.

And I can tell you: what I cling to now—what I cannot live without—is memories. Even if they’re not permanent, and even if they change before I can document them and certainly each time I replay them, memories serve as a lasting link from who we were to who we are.

I don’t need stuff to remind me. I treasure words, I love photographs. But I need neither to remember who I am and who I’ve been.

I joked at Daily Plate of Crazy that maybe I’m so willing to toss what I collect even while longing to hear the stories behind friends’ collections because the adventures my tchotkes represent aren’t adventuresome enough.

Maybe if I lived large and loud I’ve have bigger memories and a better collection.

But it’s not true. No matter how I live it feels large. And I preserve the memories the best I can.

And I just don’t need to keep the dust-collectors to hang on to what I want to remember.

Okay.

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Language acquisition fascinates me. The ways in which small people hear, process, and develop language twinkles with neuroscience and social acclimation. It’s different from the process by which adults learn multiple languages, and by nature of the subject’s biological needs, simply adorable.

Since he crested his first year, Butter has used the word “dato” for “that.” Peanut was a “dat” kind of guy, and I couldn’t quite figure out why the younger guy added an “oh” to the end of his word. But he has done it for other words, too, so I just chalked it up to a lingual quirk.

But last week after he asked me for “dato” and I gave it to him, he said, “Dato kay, Mommy.” I figured out that, because of an infant and toddler’s basic “uh-oh” relationship with objects, physics, and social expectations, more often than he’s heard “that,” Butter has heard “that’s okay.”

So his concept of “that” is framed by how it exists in this moment. Dato just is. Dato kay is fine.

Made me smile a little Foucaultian smile about the parameters Butter uses to bound his reality. In an The Order of Things kind of way, I’m rather impressed that our family has taught this little person to see those two categories: thing, thing that is okay.

Hope we retains that as he ages. Heck, I hope I do, too.

Adrenaline

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In the darkness,
A helpless scream.
It is loud; it jolts
jumbled and dangerous.
I stifle panic to help.

In the dawn,
A cheerful yelp.
It is loud; it pierces
frenetic and portentous.
I stifle panic to engage.

In the morn,
A vengeful yell.
It is loud; it seeks
maligned and lost.
I stifle panic to redirect.

As we warm,
A resentful resistance.
It is loud; it sprouts
truculent and bristly.
I stifle panic to push.

Come on.

As we leave,
A rueful screech.
We are loud; we fly
dynamic and unkempt.
I stifle panic to herd.

Come on, please.

As we arrive,
A mournful whine.
It is loud; it asks
uncertain and small.
I stifle panic to guide.

As we carry on,
A joyful cry.
It is loud; it leaps
wild and safe.
I relish smiles and luxuriate.

As we encounter,
A ferocious NO!
It is loud, it refuses
unfettered and rabid.
I stifle panic to offer.

As we collect,
A tired shout.
It is loud; it smears
certain and threatening.
I stifle exhaustion to resist.

As we circle,
A questioning cry.
It is loud; it rings
true and dangerous.
I stifle panic to answer.

As we meet,
A tired whimper.
It is denuded; it breathes
honest and sad.
I stifle nothing and give.

As we roam,
Angry shrieks.
They are loud; they battle
fierce and cruel.
I stifle panic and manage.

As we retreat,
Frustrated cries.
They are loud; they shrug
worn and empty
Among loud people cars businesses trucks people people people.
I stifle panic and do.

As we settle,
Many unmet needs SCREAM.
They are loud; they reach
jumbled frenetic maligned bristly dynamic uncertain wild rabid portentous dangerous sad fierce worn true.
I stifle panic and hold on.

As we ablute,
Nerves grate.
They are loud; they fray
raw and needy.
I stifle everything.

As we center,
Resistance eases.
They are softer.
They fade.
I release.

We all sleep.

A Day of Rest

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A problem, how I made it a bigger problem, and the eventual solution:

This week was exhausting. Devastatingly, heart-disease-causing, soul-wrenchingly exhausting.

Something is shaking Butter awake at night, at least once an hour, and making him scream as though his head were being severed from his body with a rusty grapefruit spoon. Ear infection? Teething? Intense training by the CIA to see how I react to Guantanamo-levels of sleep deprivation? I don’t know. He’s often asleep as he starts yelling but wide awake and responsive when I talk to or touch him. I ask if he hurts, he says no. Blood-curdling scream. Do you want a cuddle? No. Wall-shaking scream. Do you need to pee? No. Neighbor-ending scream. I pat his back or cuddle him or get him up for a drink of water. He screams then cries then grabs my hair and pulls it, then kicks me until I explain the mechanics of loving mamas and their limits, then eventually gets so tired he falls asleep. For about half an hour.

It was so bad one night (perhaps Thursday?), so terrible and painful and awful because I couldn’t understand and couldn’t stop him and couldn’t get more than 15 minutes of sleep in a row without being blasted with the air raid siren in his adorable throat that at 4 a.m. I took him out of the bed (he comes into our bed around 1 a.m. most nights, but by 10 p.m. this week), put him on the floor, held him by the hand as we walked to the hallway, then shut the door behind him and let him scream in the hall while I stumbled back to bed.

Nice? No. Terrible? Yes. Feel more than free to judge if you have slept fewer than three hours a night, in short bursts punctuated by emergency-caliber adrenaline rushes. For a week. More sleep than that and you may unleash your judgement for my many other failings but shut yer piehole about the late night choices I made.

[Also? Pushing a screaming toddler out of my room because I was going to kill him otherwise? Totally woke older child and made him grouchy the next day. Just FYI when you’re considering horrible and heartless ways to nighttime parent a small, confused, helpless creature. I let it go on for about 15 seconds, but that was too long for everyone.]

I also tried sleeping on the couch at 2 a.m. one morning, but Butterbean cried so piteously about my departure, for so long while Spouse tried in vain to cuddle him, that I couldn’t sleep and returned to the lion’s den.

I’m 87% dead. How do I know it’s not 100%? I can still make coffee. How do I know it’s more than 75%? I can’t be bothered to work on my book.

So what? you ask. Big deal. Raising kids is exhausting and hard and mysterious and punctuated by phases of awful. We all know that. Those who don’t will find out. The diaper ads reveal only the copious amounts of cute brought to a household by a baby, moments of which are absolutely true, but the montage of which is doubtless gleaned from hours of regular baby stuff, which is one part cute, one part gross, one part infuriating, and one part heartbreaking.

So you know genuinely soul-sucking nights are normal. Me, too. Why blog it?

Because I learned something about myself this week.

I’m a raging asshole when tired.

Now, those who know me understand that the baseline of my unsavory personality characteristics is pretty low. To be a raging asshole is actually my default. And so, since becoming a mother, is being tired. I have two naturally wakeful kids and have not slept through the night in more than seven years. When Peanut started sleeping through the night at age 3.25, I was in heaven, skipping gloriously through my days, and got pregnant that week. Butter has still not slept through the night.

So I’m running on empty and I’m not nice.

But this week pushed me over a precipitous edge to a dark place. I yelled at my kids for every single thing they did. Fighting? Let me yell at you for that. Not listening? How about I yell at you. Asking for a lollypop? I have this riot act I will herewith read you at the top of my angry voice.

I was a cartoon of grouchy, impatient nastiness by Thursday. I took out on these delicious young people all my dissatisfaction with the week’s lowest moments.

So today I took today off. I’m getting a cold, borne I’m sure, of a week in which I slept twelve hours total. We had a full day of family activities planned…all delightful and full of people we enjoy.

But I knew it was today or never. Other times that I have been really sick, Spouse is often out of town. Or has the sort of work obligations he absolutely can’t back out of. Today was full of optional, awesome, fun not-obligations. So I told Spouse last night to prepare for a day of solo parenting. I told the kids this morning I would not be getting out of bed.

I’m sick. More honestly I’m sick and tired.

And for the first time in my life, I refuse to push through. I finished a triathlon with a stress fracture. I finished a client deadline and wound up with carpal tunnel syndrome. I finished both my degrees in minimal time with highest honors.

But I’m not going to a birthday party today.

Spouse made me soup. It was perfect. Peanut read to me. He was perfect. Butter sat on me and rolled all over me and tickled me and threw the cat at me. He’s two. Everything and nothing they do is perfect except when they grab you in big, sloppy, off-balance hugs.

I did not parent them. I loved them and enjoyed them and shooed them out of the room when I’d had enough and wanted a nap. But I did not parent them.

And I don’t plan to. Not at all today. Eat nothing but cookies if that’s what your father proposes. I’m sick and tired and I don’t care about anything but your joy. Brush teeth or not. I’m sick and tired and I don’t care about anything but your overall well-being. If When you fight you find solutions or let your father help you. I’m sick. I’m tired. There’s no benefit to any of us if I engage in that nonsense.

I will not tell you how or what to do. Because until I recharge my dangerously depleted batteries, nothing I say is of much use to you.

I learned this week that I have nothing to offer when I’m depleted. And this was a hard-won and stark reminder that I must refill the tanks or I must shut my mouth and let them run around like wild hooligans. Because there is nothing to be gained by hanging on by my fingernails and then bringing them down with me.

So. Who wants to eat ice cream in bed with their totally abdicating mother?

[Note: I vowed not to get out of bed, but the second they left the house I cleaned out my closet, reorganized the garage sale pile, cooked dinner, read a chapter of a nonfiction book, paid the bills, did the dishes, watered the plants, and organized the photo files so I can make this year’s photo albums online. All with a horrible headache and a sore throat. I’m really bad at this relaxing thing. But I’m proud that I at least said I would. Baby steps.]

Tillie Olsen

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I’ve been thinking about Tillie Olsen this week. So many of her stories move me, make me ache with truth and motherhood and disparity. When she died in 2007 Peanut was just over a year old and while I admired Olsen’s work, I didn’t really feel her as I do now.

Today I flipped through Tell Me A Riddle looking for a quote I vaguely remember, that I absolutely don’t deserve to use as a chapter epigraph, but that I wanted to revisit.

And I remembered I Stand Here Ironing.

Do you know it?

Read it. Tell me if it sears your very being.

Can I come visit you?

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Butter was fighting bedtime. We sat on the rocking chair in the dark near to a sleeping Peanut. It wasn’t that late, and though I was tired, he was being adorable as only a post-darkness, non-tantruming two-year-old can be.

Me: Butterbean, when you are grown up are you going to live somewhere else or are you going to stay with Mommy?
B: (exasperated) I don’t know.
M: …
B: I know. I live snow blower guy.
M: With the snow blower guy?
B: Yeah. Snow blower guy. Lot o ladies. Lot o mans.
M: Oh.
B: Yeah. Mommy come back o lot. Daddy come back o lot.
M: We can come back to visit?
B: Yeah. Mommy come back o lot. Daddy come back o lot. Cat come back…cat make ice cream?
M: Can the cat make ice cream?
B: Yeah. Cat make o lot ice cream. Snow blower guy o lot ice cream. Mommy o lot ice cream. Daddy o lot ice cream. Peanut o lot ice cream. Butter o lot o lot of ice cream.
M: That’s nice of the cat to make so much ice cream.
B: Yeah. Snow blower guy like cat.

Well, sure. I can see why.

Worse and worser

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Most moments of my day make me cringe, replay, wish for a do-over, and overthink.

I am consumed with doing things exactly right. And doing my best is painfully short of that expectation.

I realize it’s silly to live in a black-and-white world in which perfection is somehow possible and always out of reach. I’ve read the books. I’ve heard the aphorisms. I know I should strive for shades of grey.

(Not that kind. That’s why I used the British spelling.)

Wanting precision is part of why I edit for a living. (Though not this blog, I’m always horrified to find. The typos in my writing, if collected, would actually kill any living grammarian.) It’s also why I have such high levels of self-imposed stress. Life is messy and imperfect and very grey. And that raises my blood pressure.

Raising my children, of all my jobs, has astronomically high stakes. Actions, both singly and cumulatively, affect who my children will be and how they see the world. Yes, personality is partially innate. There is nothing I can do to make a cautious and thoughtful guy silly and outgoing. Nor would I want to. There is not much I can do to make the impetuous and social guy reserved. Nor would I want to.

But I feel it’s my job to keep them safe and to teach them to do the same for themselves as they age. I don’t feel I have to protect my children from the forces fighting against them in the world. I feel I need to introduce those forces, explain them, and teach a few coping mechanisms. Gravity is there. It confounds climbing and wheeled motion. But you can work with gravity by learning and keeping your balance, listening to your body and to the structure on which you’re climbing. And if you can do that, you will skate (and climb) through life with minimal bruising and maximal enjoyment. The tree will tell you what’s safe. You just have to hear it telling you when to stop or change course.

There are real dangers in the world. Other than gravity. Machines and people can and will hurt you if you expose yourself to them at the wrong moment.

But my sense of danger is probably outsized, and my sincere desire to protect is probably overzealous.

And by “probably” I mean “way astronomically beyond acceptable.”

This morning, getting them into the car, I noticed that the first-grader’s seat belt was weird. One strap tightened securely but the other stayed loose. (Yes, for those of you keeping score, I keep him in a five-point harness. Still. And will until he reaches the height or weight maximum of his convertible booster. The two-and-a-half year old is still rear-facing, and will be until he reaches the height or weight limit for rear-facing. Some will mock, and some will nod their head in agreement. I don’t care. They’re my kids and as long as we have access to the safety equipment, I will use it.) Peanut usually does his own belt, but he fell yesterday climbing a bike rack that I told him was not an ideal place to climb. His thumb still hurts and I helped him buckle up.

I did not handle the wonky seat belt well. We were late. I *hate* being late. It makes me absolutely pulse with adrenaline. It makes me go into full “there’s a tiger chasing us, let’s GO” mode. I freaked out, reprimanding the big guy for not telling me before that it was loose, for probably fiddling with the adjustments too much, for not taking seat belts seriously enough…and then I cycled back through the admonitions. About a hundred times. “If the belt is loose you have to say something. If you loosen it for a jacket or other reason, you have to tighten it back down. Did I mention it’s a big deal? Did I mention you should notice it’s tighter on one side? Did I mention you can’t just adjust it willy nilly? Did I mention we’re late and I can’t fix it right now and I might just flip myself onto the ceiling from the stress right now?”

The entire eight minute drive to toddler school, I talked incessantly about how I wanted them safe and how hard it is to fit something unusual (like a wonky seatbelt that we should be able to count on but that has completely thwarted us with its inherently flawed nature) into our schedule and how important seat belts are and how being aware is most of safety and how oh my gawd the world is an unsafe and unpredictable place in which to live.

Ridiculous. Counter productive. Psychologically damaging. Asinine. Easily fixed. Harmful. Insane.

I could keep my mouth shut. I could detach the seat, disassemble all the belts and loops and buckles and start over. I could re-string the loops and buckles and belts, re-attach the seat, and make sure it’s perfect in less than ten minutes. (Seven, actually, which is how long it took after we kissed Butter goodbye and went outside to tackle the errant belt and show it who’s boss of this damned fragile planet.) I could let us be late and actually make them safe instead of lecturing about safety.

I know all that. But I’m a spazz. I’m naturally high strung. As in: strings breaking if you look at them, let alone try to make music from them.

And I live every minute with the reality that my basic nature makes me a shitty parent.

No child benefits from ten minutes of stress about safety because their mother is a spazz. No child needs all those neuroses spewed all over them. No child needs to think their mother is driving them in an unsafe seat because she can’t bear to be late and can’t take one deep breath and figure out how to fix things. No child needs a lecture on a loop for something they didn’t do, and had no reason to expect.

So. I taught my kids I’m dangerous in emergencies. I taught them to overreact about little dangers. I taught them to privilege being on time over safety. I taught them to lecture and reiterate instead of doing.

Basically, I taught them everything they don’t need to internalize.

I broke them, and they will be neurotic, maladjusted grownups. Because I’m a freak.

I didn’t yell. I didn’t hit. I didn’t call names. I used a quiet voice. And I did reassure the big guy even during the initial lecture that he probably didn’t do it and that I need to do a better job of checking the belt regularly.

But I damaged my kids just by being me. By trying so hard to do my best and by making the stakes so high, I hurt their perception of the world, themselves, and my ability to care for them.

I apologized during and after. I fixed the seat. I got them both to school on time. I never raised my voice or called names. I made it clear I was stressed about the situation not about them. But there was, in my hindsight, nothing good about how I handled it.

And I have spent my morning stewing and planning how to do better the next time. I want to apologize again and tell them again why I’m terrible and wrong and should have done better. But I blog so I can tell you, instead. Because what they least need is more mountain-of-molehilling. What they least need is neurotic “fixing” of already misanthropic behavior. What they least need is that version of me.

And the pain of that keeps me up at night.

This version of me, the one they should be spared, is inherently me. I can fight it and I can learn to cope and keep my mouth shut and breathe and find perspective. Even though I can’t change who they are and shouldn’t, I can try really hard and change who I am, right?

And can I do that before I pick them up today? Because I’d like them to only get the good sides of me. All the time. And only in just the right quantities so that they can be their best possible selves without me getting in the way.

That’s a reasonable, several-shades-of-grey kind of expectation, right?

To do or not to do. That is the…what was the question?

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Things Not to Do This Week

Don’t let intense doubt about the mess you’ve made out of your life show. Especially in social situations.

Don’t let face get in way of angry toddler who has, for half his life, expressed anger by hair pulling and biting.

Don’t bother with balanced meals anymore. (Their “don’t eat” list seems lately to include eating anything I make that isn’t cracker or ice cream based.) Just give up and let them forage in the cabinet.

Don’t get angry at toddler for teething himself awake eight or nine times a night. Even though he’s totally doing it on purpose.

Don’t fall asleep while editing academic book. Editing intelligent prose in blocks of three or four minutes is counterproductive.

Don’t read through your peers’ and colleagues’ LinkedIn profiles. Such madness will only end in binge eating.

Don’t correct toddler for pulling your hair in his sleep. Removing his hand from your hair will make him shriek and wake fully, the results of which are more painful than having your hair pulled from the time he comes into bed with you at 1am until you give up at 6am.

Don’t…

Don’t go breaking my heart.
Don’t stop thinking about tomorrow.
Don’t try to use song lyrics in blog posts just because you can’t think clearly.
Don’t write lame “Not To Do” lists just because you think you’ve written too many “To Do” Lists.
Don’t capitalize To in title phrases like To Do and Not To Do.

Don’t hit publish. I know you’re sleepy, but remember this: Don’t hit