I have intermittent wifi on a ladies’ birthday weekend. So I don’t care that I missed a post day in this most honorable “post every day” NaBloPoWriMo. And I don’t care that I can’t upload an awesome photo for you today. I’ve tried.
I have clean air and homemade toffee. And I think I can say without qualification, that this is the meaning of life.
I don’t do well with rules, so National Blog Post Writing Month’s premise of posting every day for a month is irking me. But I signed up for the challenge voluntarily, it’s time to put on my Big Girl pants and get it done.
If a tree can artistically render another tree species in its leaf, I can write a blog post.
I just finished a two-month challenge with different parameters and different aims. But I bristled at those rules, too, mostly because I’m a grown-ass woman and I know what’s good for me and what’s not, and I’ll do the choosing, thank you very much.
I made it through the longer challenge, and I will make it through this daily blogging thing, too. Even if I want to rail against boundaries and melodramatically perceived imprisonment.
Now, I’m tired, so I’m only telling you one thing today: my eldest’s son shirt was in my drawer and I had my arms in it to put it on before I noticed the 8 on the tag. I’m not 8. He is.
It struck me as very sad that my son is almost big enough to share my clothes. Soon he will share my car keys. Then he will leave. And I’m so excited to find out what he will be and where he will go.
But for now I want him here and I want more time, not less.
I’m going to go pull his size 6s out of the garage, where they’re waiting for his brother. And I’m going to make my third grader wear size 6 until I’m darned good and ready to have him writing in cursive and multiplying and performing Greek plays.
I think, in base ten, that’s about 8 more years.
I flew through an entire audiobook today, and am settling well into the idea that this particular medium is ideal for histories and biographies.
As the book finished, I was changing sheets on the bunk bed, the little guy was in the bathtub, and the big guy was sorting laundry. It’s getting harder to tell his clothes from mine, and we now take longer to check tags to make sure he doesn’t wear my shirts to school.
I flopped onto the lower bunk to choose my next audiobook. Unfortunately, I told Peanut as he threw his brother’s laundry across the room, other library patrons are currently listening to all the good books. Darn the choice to live in a town where other readers have the same tastes.
As the guard changed and the little guy clambered out of the bath to let his brother in, I found a guided meditation book and clicked to hear the sample. Bells gently chimed, subtle music rumbled from my phone.
“I like that book,” said Butterbean.
“Oh, yeah? It’s about meditation.”
“Well, I like it,” he said.
“Why is there a booger in the tub?!” Peanut hollered from the other room.
“Remember when I told your brother to quit blowing his nose in the tub?” I hollered back and shot a look at the little guy, who giggled.
“Come get it! Please?” he bellowed. The meditation chimes kept bleating at me. I brought the tub-bound, lanky young man a tissue. Without complaining that he has to recycle tub water, he wiped. I tossed and washed.
“That’s gross,” he said. “Really, that’s gross!” he hollered.
“Mom!” hollered the little guy, still in the bedroom with the meditation sample, “he’s teasing me!”
“Am not!”
“Teasing, teasing, teasing! Stop it I don’t like it!”
I walked back into the bedroom. The meditation chimes had stopped and I knelt beside the bed to cancel the sample. Peanut called for me to fetch more fraternal flotsam.
At just that moment, an earthquake rumbled and I held the bunk bed, checking the intensity and assessing the position of both kids. I could move the preschooler into the doorway and…wait, it’s not an earthquake. It’s just the cats fighting on the top bunk.
I turned off my phone and told the little guy to choose his bedtime books.
There’s no way guided meditation on my phone is the sound I need in my evening, even if Butter likes it. I need teasing and whining and giggles and silly, growing children, and cat earthquakes.
chaos, an interpretive dance
I also need another good nonfiction listen tomorrow. Hook me up, Berkeley library patrons. Return your audiobooks. I could use a copy of Salt, NPH’s memoir, or Dataclysm.
I don’t think writing on my phone will ever feel as natural as typing. But tonight I’m trying the WordPress app for three reasons.
1. It’s National Blog Post Writing Month, and I’ve committed to writing every day all November.
2. I’m already upstairs curled up next to cats.
3. I’ve been in front of the computer all day, catching up on deadlines, and for now is like to use my left thumb and right index finger only. Or nobly, as autocorrect wanted me to say. I think it’s rather pretentious to find me noble for phone blogging, Phone, but I will take that compliment. At least you love me more than the kid who fake cried for 5 minutes because I wouldn’t let him hold the obscenely bright book light as he fell asleep, and who paused the fake cry long enough to tell me he hates me.
Hated by a four-year-old yet noble to a phone.
Anyone wanna guess why parents are glued to handheld devices at the playground?
Butterbean, at the ripe old age of Four, has dozens of nightmares a week. And like his mother, he talks in his sleep, so I hear the dialogue for a lot of his worst dreams.
It would seem, from circumstantial evidence around midnight, that his older brother and his preschool friends torment him, a lot, in his dreams. It would seem, from what he bellows at the imaginary aggressors in his dreams, that nobody gives him a turn.
And that he had it first.
And that people should just…NO!…just stop and…NO!…people should..NOOOOOOO!…just knock it off. Times infinity.
He had a lot of nightmares the other night. I stopped working to walk upstairs and comfort him at least a dozen times. I smoothed his hair. I adjusted his covers. I woke him to use the bathroom.
And he kept yelling at all the people wronging him and taking his toys and making him wait too long. Including me.
“Mommy! Mooooommmm? Stop it!” Out like a light and yelling at me for maligning him.
So I turned off the computer and put him in my bed. I brushed my teeth in the dark and climbed in. And the first few times he kicked and bellowed, I smoothed his hair and Shhhhhh’d him.
And within 20 minutes, he was laughing out loud in his sleep.
He giggled and curled in a ball and snuggled next to me.
And laughed some more.
I didn’t sleep much that night.
But I did for just one night what I won’t be able to do during the days: I stopped whatever he perceived as injustice. And I got him comfortable enough to laugh.
Would that it were that easy, through his life, to stop all the injustice, to get him everything he wants, and make him comfortable enough to laugh. I wouldn’t it I could, of course, but I really want to. That’s not my job. Life will be unfair, he will be left wanting, and many days he won’t have the space to giggle. But if I fix everything he’ll never be a fully functioning adult.
For now, though, I get some space, in the dark of the small numbers, to make everything better.
That is my superpower.
Today was the Berkeley Half Marathon, but this is not a running post, I swear. This is a post about what happens when love and elation and pure physical joy combine on a bright and clear Fall day in the Bay Area.
I’ve thought often about leaving Berkeley. I did leave, actually, after college. For Boston. And after passing through four Boston suburbs in three years, I came back. I left again a few years later. For Southern California. Good gawd, don’t ever do that. I came back.
And lately I’ve been talking about leaving again. Cost of living here is astronomical. Self righteousness is, too. I’m used to being the weirdest in a place, not one of the most conservative. And I’d like to raise my boys without working 80 hours a week, which is what it would take at these prices. Note that housing costs five times the national average here. It’s crowded and expensive and the pace is relentless. That leaves me feeling agitated quite often.
But it’s sunny and warm almost all year. The population is highly educated, the air and water are clean, the food is phenomenal, we’ve built a large and wonderful community of friends here, and the number of museums within a 20 mile radius is staggering.
So we live here and raise our boys here. And I run here.
The half marathon today covered all my regular runs, offering magical moments of “hey, I haven’t been here since I was pregnant with Butterbean” and “this is where our soccer team plays” and “I lived there in college” and “there’s my favorite fire fighter!” The course was peopled, end to end, with wonderful neighbors and friends, all cheering for the 9,000+ runners who busted their butts today.
I don’t know that many people who watch races have any earthly idea how important each cheer, each clap, each cowbell is for runners. I felt like I was flying today because of all the community love. The best homemade signs: “This seems like a lot of work for a free banana!” and “Puppies at the finish line!”
You want to make someone’s day? Say “woo!” every once in a while as a race goes by your house. You want to feel adored? Run the Boston marathon. The whole town comes out to yell for strangers making one of the toughest 4-hour efforts of their lives. It’s beautiful thing to witness.
Speaking of beautiful, that’s my friend Anna! She’s AMAZING. She won the race and set a course record. Photo credit: Camila Bernal for San Francisco Examiner
Even better? Today a dream came true for me. I’ve always wanted to be doing something challenging and to have my boys holler “way to go, Mommy!”
For the first time in nine years, I heard “Yay, Mommy!” And I heard some version of it four times. Their dad came over early in the morning so the whole family could drive me to the start line. And then he drove our sons to four different places on the course so they could holler for me. And high-five me. And let me choke back sobs of joy while I silently insisted to myself that I channel that energy rather than wasting it on electrolyte-depleting tears.
Oooh, how I wanted to sob. I was doing my best and my kids got to see it and congratulate me loudly? Shut the front door. That’s heaven right there.
Today I ran along the water, basking in the stately presence of the Golden Gate Bridge, who was peeking out above Karl the Fog to wink at us. “It’s always warmer over there, amirite?” the bridge crowed. Today I beamed as members of Peanut’s soccer team and Butter’s preschool yelled for me and chased me as far as they could. Today I offered to help runners who had obviously been held back by injuries on the course. because love trumps all else in a community race. Today I ran without music or mental chatter because I was surrounded by a thick stream of runners and supporters, all of whom made me see the streets in a new way: communal, engaged, human.
Today felt like being wrapped in a warm blanket of sunshine with a fresh bowl of freshly picked strawberries and blueberries that I got to share with family and friends. It was a brilliant party. And I loved every minute of it. Many of my moments of joy are cut short: by reality, by the pain of others, by life. Today I had two full hours of uninterrupted joy. and the kids didn’t start fighting for at least 10 minutes after I finished, so let’s call it 130 minutes.
Thank you Berkeley, co-parent, and friends. You’re the best.
[This isn’t a post about running, but I must say for my running peeps that I finished between my goal time and my secret no-way goal time. Icing!]
Parents grossly exaggerate how little attention the second child gets.
This weekend my eldest wanted to play chess. No problem. My preschooler is < sarcasm > totally self sufficient and willing to play by himself while I give his older brother fifteen minutes of attention. < /sarcasm > Not because I ignore him, but because he knows what he wants in life and isn’t afraid to just go out and get it.
Image credit: Ken Teegardin via Creative Commons share alike
Peanut and I set up the pieces. And four-year-old Butterbean grabbed his stickers and started an art project.
On my shirt.
I, of course, supported his artistic drive. Mostly because it allowed about five minutes of play.
But at one point he pushed a stick hard on my back, and it hurt.
“Ow,” I said. “Please stop.”
“Why?”
“Because that hurt.”
“What part?”
“The part where you just pushed on my back.”
“Let me see.”
He lifted the back of my shirt and went looking, until he found what he said was a “red hurt spot.”
I made interested sounds. Not because I was ignoring. Because I couldn’t finagle my bishop into position.
Butter went to his room for his doctor kit, which he wielded expertly on my medical emergency. The red spot got fake injected, fake temperature checked, fake examined, and fake reflex checked.
And it got redder, he noted.
Science.
Ad Peanut and I got into the middle of the game, Butter went upstairs to get his geology tools: hammer, pick, tweezers, brush. All plastic, thankfully.
And declared he was a paleontologist. And started to dig into my back.
“Ow. Please stop it. That hurts.”
“Mommy, it’s okay. I’m a paleontologist.”
“Paleontologists look for fossils. In dirt. Not blood in their Moms.”
“Mom, it’s okay.”
“Yeah, well, still hurts.”
“Mom. Really. Okay. It’s O. Kay.”
He ditched the rockhound tools and picked up the queen my knight had just taken.
He used the queen to back methodically on the red spot on my back.
“Still red.”
Again with science.
“Yes. That’s the blood trying to help the skin get better from a hurt.”
“What hurts?”
“Banging queens on my back.”
“Mommy, I’m not banging queens on your back. I’m using one queen to find clues. Remember? I’m a paleontologist.”
I chased down Peanut’s King and ended the game just before the little one drew blood.
You see? Having two is totally easy. You should have several. Not much harder than having one. Or none. Or a puppy. Or a sandwich.
The broader point is that second children aren’t ignored. They don’t suffer from lack of attention. They have a better sense of what they want from life and seek without hanging back, without waiting for permission.
We could all learn from my youngest. If you want something, don’t let anything stand in your way. Not reality, or physics, or the medical needs of your mother.
NaptimeWriting 