Hope and Earthquakes

I really dislike buying pregnancy tests.   I thought about it and it's not like I'm buying Depends or hemorrhoid cream or some other equally embarrassing hygienic item.   But I'm pretty sure part of it is because I don't just buy one box.  They're like Pringles- you can't just have one.  I usually pick up two or three boxes because I know I have a problem and I like peeing on sticks and holding my head at certain angles and taking pictures of them to text to my friends to ask, "do you see a line???" And when I don't see a line, or maybe a barely-there squinter that I can only see when I hold it up to the window and tilt it at a 45 degree angle, I'll blame the box of "faulty" tests because it's easier than blaming my body.  So, I figure I had better make sure I have a couple of boxes of tests, just in case one of those boxes is a dud and maybe they just forgot to put enough dye in them or something like that.


The thing is, I know my body isn't faulty at all.  Well, it didn't use to be.  I've done this before- twice.  And after I had Milo, I swore up and down that we were done.  After what amounted to almost three years of being either pregnant or breastfeeding and at the mercy of my ever-shifting hormones, I wasn't sure I wanted to jump on board the baby train ever again.  


But look what just pulled into the station.


And so there I stood, at the counter of CVS trying not to make eye contact with the young man who was ringing me up and I wondered why it couldn't have been a woman working that day.  She'd at least get it.  I mean, just about every woman has bought a pregnancy test at least once or twice in her life.   Why did I suddenly feel so embarrassed?   Maybe it was because he might have remembered seeing me in there the month before, buying the same tests.   As I took the box of sticks out of the basket, I might as well have been heaving the gigantic elephant in the room up onto the counter by myself.   Look everyone!  I'm trying to get pregnant!  I've actually been trying for a while now and I'm starting to feel really beat down because it's like my body doesn't work like it used to and even though my OB says it will happen, I'm just not sure I believe him anymore.


Yeah.  That elephant.


But, if I knew anything from past stick-purchasing experiences, he would be like everyone else and at least pretend he didn't notice them.  Neither of us would say a thing and I'd be on my way.


But then he did say something.   And I wasn't sure I heard him right the first time.


"I'm sorry, what?"  I stuttered.  Surely, he wasn't calling me out.  He couldn't have just asked about the tests.


"Are you hoping?" he said again, a little louder.  But there was a glimmer in his eyes.  He couldn't have been any older than 21 or 22.  I quickly did a mental checklist of what was in my bag: a package of Fig Newtons and some hair clips.  Nothing exciting about those.  I knew exactly what he was referring to.


He smiled at me- a good, genuine smile.  I laughed nervously.  "Oh."  I felt my cheeks burn a little.   "Yeah.  Yeah, I am."   


"Boy or girl?" he pressed.


"Well, I have one of each at home already, but it wouldn't matter to me in any case."  As I spoke, I felt my embarrassment start to fade, to be replaced by gratitude.


"I'm having my first," he blurted. "It's a girl.  She's due on December 20th."  And I looked at this kid (really, that's all he was) and he wasn't smiling anymore.  Now he was outright beaming.  So proud and so excited and so....real.  And I thought about all the things he could have asked me, as it pertained to the boxes of tests--  Are you trying?  Are you pregnant already?  (Are you crazy????)  

But he didn't ask that.  He just asked--


Are you hoping?


Suddenly, I wondered why I even thought it taboo for him to bring it up?  This kid is getting ready to be a father and I can see just by looking at him that he's totally eaten up with it.  He wants to talk about it.  He gets what all of the fuss is about and knows enough about life to know that buying pregnancy tests is, in fact, a big deal- no matter how you look at it.   It's not a pack of gum.  And instead of seeing a tired, frazzled woman try to pay for her stuff and run, he chose to speak a reality that I haven't wanted to claim for myself.


It's okay to be hopeful.


It's okay to get beat down and lose.  And lose some more.


It's okay to let people see you try and fail.  But keep trying.


It's okay to let them hold you up.


It's okay to think for yourself, to not do what everyone expects you to do.


It's okay to let go of preconceived notions and embrace new ideas.   Difficult- but okay.  Maybe even recommended.



And so I congratulated him.  I told him to get ready to say goodbye to his money and his will and that his world was about to be turned upside down in all the best ways possible.  For a minute, I wanted to go back in time and be having our first all over again- to not know what we didn't know and then feel the earthquake of that fiery love and hope and fear when they hand you that baby for the first time.


I've been blessed beyond belief for no other reason than that I've experienced that earthquake twice in my life.



And maybe, I'll get to feel it just once more.



I'm hopeful.




 

Forget Me Not

Yesterday, I reached my breaking point around 9:40 in the morning- at least a solid three hours before I usually reach it.  The kids were touching me and I didn't want them touching me.  They were touching each other and provoking each other and I decided that the only way to keep anyone from touching anyone else was to pile them in the car- even though it was a good hour and twenty minutes before Ella's gymnastics class.  I needed them to be restrained, I needed myself to be restrained, and I needed to drown out their whines with some Mumford & Sons.   Period.



So we drove around.  And I decided that time goes incredibly slowly when you don't have anywhere you have to be.  I refused to go into Target because killing an hour there would mean killing our disposable income for the rest of the month.  I thought about going to McDonalds for a bacon egg-n-cheese biscuit, but hadn't I already done that this week?  I considered the park that was up the road, but just didn't have it in me to run around after the kids.  So we just drove.  Up and down the interstate.  In and out of parking lots.  About every two minutes, Ella asked if we were at gymnastics yet and why were we driving so much and could she please get out of the car now and a couple of other random questions, and I think after the first dozen questions, I just started saying "yes."  I'm not positive, but I think I might have told her she could have a pony.



Finally, I decided we would just pull into the parking lot of the gym and I would let her play with my phone and Milo had a V-tech laptop and hopefully that would keep them occupied until her class started at 11.  It was 10:30, but maybe if we made it to 10:50, I would just take her in early and her teachers would let her run around before her class started.  I was actually kind of proud of myself for being early, for once.   We would be there on time- ahead of time, actually.   She'd have time to get her shoes off, find her cubby, stretch and warm up, and I wouldn't be the lame mom who was once again busting in the door ten minutes late to class.



The minutes ticked by.  Finally, it was 10:51 and I decided we could go on in.  We walked through the door, I put her hair in a pony tail, took her shoes off, and her teacher whisked her into the gym.  Wow. A lot of other kids got there early, too.  In fact, I didn't see any other parents.  That was kind of odd.  Everyone usually gets dropped off around the same time and the lobby is usually hopping.  Hmm.  I grabbed Milo by the hand and we turned to walk out the door to run some errands.


And that's when her teacher called out, "see you at 11:30!"



11:30?  Her class is only a half hour today??  And then it hit me.



Oh.


Ohh.


Her class didn't start at 11.  It started at 10:30.  Just like the other six times we had been there.



I'm not exactly sure why, but all of the sudden, I remembered the time my dad was filling up the family car on one of our many long car trips between Lousiana (where we were currently living) and Virginia.   It was late and we had been on the road for a good seven hours by then.  He walked inside to pay the cashier, hopped back in the car, and we took off.   With the nozzle still in the gas tank.  Ripped it clear off of the hose.


I tried to hold it in, but soon, both my mom and I were overcome in fits of laughter as we watched my poor dad first turn around in shock, then hang his head in defeat, and finally get out of the car, walk over to pick up the nozzle and take it inside to the cashier.   For years after that, I wondered how someone could forget something like that.  It must really suck to get old, I thought.


And now I know I was right.  It does suck.


Like when I pulled up to the bank earlier this week to return the tube that I had forgotten to put back in the machine and that I found only after I'd gotten home.  Or when I put the milk in the pantry and the cheerios in the refrigerator.  Or the times- way too many to count- when I've left wet towels in the washer for a couple of days.  Or when I made my kid show up a half hour late to a class she's been attending for weeks, when I was sitting in the parking lot for that entire half hour watching the minutes tick by.



I take small comfort in knowing that one day, parts of her brain will go dormant too.   It makes me smile just a little bit, actually.



And I will tell her that it's funny, the things she'll remember.  And sometimes, it's even funnier what she won't.

Full Circle

So it appears, my immune system has an uncanny ability to sense when I'm on vacation.  Maybe it was the salty air, or the crisp citrusy white wine.   Or, it could have been the fact that at some point in the week leading up to our vacation, I simply said, "I'm so excited to go away!" and by doing so, invited all of the surrounding germs to pack themselves away in my toiletry bag.


I'm betting that it might simply be that I have a three year old and an almost 20 month old.



Whatever the case, all I know is that for the past four years- as it pertains to vacations, all I have to do is show up, and my immune system shuts down.


So, in a state of something close to deja vu, I drove to the local Doctor's Care facility just up the road from our condo.  The same one I've visited every other time we've been here.   I pulled up in the parking lot, feeling more than a little bitter that I knew exactly where it was.  It's the one right across from the Treasure Island Putt-Putt, with its dusty blue chairs, oatmeal-and-mauve colored walls, array of retirement magazines, and 11x14 prints of random medical pictures-- cross-sections of things like the urinary tract and an esophagus and god knows what else.


I walked in to find approximately four empty chairs and decided that the only thing worse than feeling bad is having to sit somewhere and feel bad in close proximity to other people who feel bad too.   I twice scared the poor old lady to the right of me when I coughed, so I sat very still and wheezed and checked facebook and wondered if I looked as bad as I felt.  I scanned the room and took a mental inventory:  a young-ish couple- the husband had obviously done something very painful to his lower back and was twisted in a very awkward way on the edge of his chair.  The old woman next to me was apparently with her daughter.  Her hands shook as she rummaged around in her purse for something (I imagined it was probably hand sanitizer or lysol spray, after the way she had re-coiled from my boisterous coughing).  Then, a young boy- Nintendo DS in hand- sat quietly with his dad.  He  had a bucket beside him. (The four empty chairs were all located around that poor kid).   A 20-something blond and uber tan girl hobbled through the door with a cane, her right foot bruised, swollen, and jutting from her ankle in a grotesque manner.   We were a homely bunch.  Tired, worn-down, sick.   Impatient.  We exchanged sympathetic nods if our gazes met, but no one was up for small talk, understandably.  Which worked for me, because I'm no good at small talk.  I'd rather people-watch and be a busy-body.



After about an hour, a man walked up to the front desk and signed in.  Then, he went back outside and returned with a tiny woman.  She was 1/3 his size, hunched over, with a head of silvery white hair.  She clung to his elbow, walking gingerly, and her hands were splotched with sun spots and bruises.  Her face was worn, and her eyes were kind but possessed something of a confused look.  As they walked by, I heard him say, "I'm right here, Mom.  I gotcha."  They settled themselves a few chairs down from me, and I glanced out of the corner of my eye to watch as he helped her sit down.  I noticed the way he took her purse and placed it gently on the floor beside her and the way his hand found hers again in a loving, reassuring gesture.  As the minutes passed, I found myself stealing glances at them more so than the others in the room.  It's not that I had never seen a son looking after his elderly mother.  It was just something about the way he spoke to her, the way he interacted with her- like it wasn't an inconvenience for him to be there, not like it probably was for the rest of us to be whiling away the hours in a crowded doctor's office.



I thought of Milo.   I thought about how big he seemed to me last night when I went in to look at him before I went to bed- the way he was stretched out and somewhat contorted in the bottom right corner of the pack-n-play we brought here to the beach.  I remembered how I had caught a glance of myself in the mirror while I was holding him and noticed for the first time that his feet could now wrap all the way around the back of my waist and how I felt my heart break a little bit again upon noticing it.  I thought about how these last few nights when I've been rocking him to sleep that it really felt more like he was the one holding me- how his arms wrapped around my neck, stroking the back of my head with his hand, and how he sometimes caressed the side of my arm while humming something in his tiny sing-song voice.



"You'll love having a boy," all of my boy-mama friends had said after we had found out we were going to have a Milo.  "There's just something about a boy and his mama."



I couldn't have known how true that would be.   For all of the sweet moments I've shared with Ella, it seems that for the time being, we've hit a patch of butting heads and vying for "queen of the household."  And that's okay.  I want her to be strong and to go her own way and I know her spunkiness will serve her well as she gets older.  But there's something so pure about my connection with Milo- the way his face beams when I walk into his room, the way he runs up to me with his mouth gaping open and drool flinging about, the slobbery open-mouthed kisses, the way he burrows himself into my chest and belly to watch TV.  I tell people all the time that my kids are everything to me.  Because it's true.  But as I held Milo last night, I was struck by the realization that, for a time that's quickly diminishing, I am his everything, too.   And I am reveling in that while it lasts.  Because I'm not everything to Ella anymore.  Oh, I'm still a lot to her, I think.  She still needs me.  She still wants me around, and hopefully she will for many more years.  But she's becoming more and more self-sufficient.  She pours her own cereal, turns on the TV, gets her own sippy out of the fridge, runs to the bathroom when she needs to go, dresses herself (god help me).



With even these small advances in her independence, things have gotten easier in our household in the recent weeks.  But because parenthood presents so many dichotomies, it's gotten easier... but it's also gotten sadder too, in a way.  Because it stings when we recognize we're not needed as much, even if it's the natural order of things.  We strive to raise our kids to become self-sufficent, to think their own thoughts, go their own ways, and prime their wings in preparation to "fly the coop."   But that doesn't mean we don't break out the box of tissues or hope they decide they're maybe not quite ready to let go of us yet.



Everyone has probably read "I'll Love You Forever."  I'll be honest-- I've always found it a tad creepy that a grown woman is still sneaking into her son's house (and vice versa) in the middle of the night, but I get the point, and of course, I still blubbered like an idiot when I read it for the first time.  As parents, it's so easy to get stuck in the here and now.  It's easy to focus on how long the days seem, how sleepless the nights are, to worry endlessly if we're doing it "right."



And then there's an older man and his frail, aging mother in a doctor's office- holding her and loving her in a way she probably never imagined he would so many years ago when she held him.   A reminder that this parenthood stuff isn't just about what happens today or tonight, or next week, or even next year.   It's a twisting path that we walk, putting one foot in front of the other, because that's all we can do.



And it's one that, if we're truly lucky, will eventually come back full circle one day.  

Arguing With a Three Year Old: 101

Confession:  I get into arguments with my three year old.  I wish I could say I was kidding.   Some days, I find the inner strength to take the higher road, keep my voice calm and steady.  "Love, I understand you're upset, but you really need to take a nap."  Or, as I stealthily dodge a half-eaten turkey sandwich, "Wow, that must make you really angry." 

Then, there are times when I've reached my breaking point, and it's only 1:05 p.m. and I say, "To HELL with the higher road.  Love and Logic, my ass."  

"ELLA.  CLAIRE.  You WILL go upstairs and take a nap!"

"No!"

"Yes ma'am."

"NO!  I want five more minutes."

"NO, we're going up now.  RIGHT NOW!"

"NOOO!   I'm gonna hit you, mommy.  You're ugly!"  (Her new favorite phrase- isn't it charming??) 

. . .and before I know it, I get overly excited and then I over-deliver punishment:

You do, and you'll NEVER be able to drive a car, EVER!  (Wait....mental note:  Next time, it might be more effective to just take away her TV privileges).

And then, silence.  But it's not over.  Not even close.  Now, we've entered the "death-ray stare" phase.

I snarl her name slowly, through gritted teeth, stretching it's normal two syllables into six.   I lock my pupils into firing position and we stare each other down, jaws set, chins jutted out.  I also try to make my nostrils flare because I'm sure that would add to the overall effect, but I've never mastered it, to be honest.  (I'm working on it).   We stare, without blinking, and now my eyes are stinging and watering, but I won't give in.  Then, she makes some sort of guttural noise in her throat that I swear I've only heard on National Geographic.   Pretty impressive.  And still, I think:

She will. not. win. this.  

I'M the mommy.  I'M the boss.   I'M mean, damnit.   I can dish it out just as good as she can and I've got way more experience.

And so I pick her up as she's kicking, screaming, clawing.  I carry her upstairs and gently place her on her bed, tuck her in and kiss her forehead.    Okay, no.  I don't always do that.   Usually, I drop her on her bed and haphazardly throw her blanket on her.  Then, I say something menacing like, "I don't care if you stay up here and cry the rest of the afternoon because you're acting like a big baby."   And then, because I know I'm already WELL past the point of no return, I storm out of her room and slam the door, just for good measure.

I stand outside her room for a moment and wait.  I keep waiting to feel accomplished.  To feel just a little bit victorious.

But I don't.  Not one bit.

Instead, I feel defeated.  Deflated.   Exhausted.  Maybe even a little pathetic.

Then, something deep inside me starts to hurt.   And in about 90 seconds, I've gone from hell-bent to  heartbroken.  It's not the first time, and I'm positive it won't be the last.  And oh God, here comes the guilt.   Oh God, have I broken her?  How big of a check should I be prepared to write for her future therapy sessions?  Will she grow up to hate me?  Walk on egg-shells around me?  The inner dialogue is incessant.  It's utter torture.  

And so I walk back into her room, sit down on the bed with her, and even though I don't deserve it, she fumbles her way into my lap and curls up.  And I cry, too.  Oh, I wish I was always so quick to forgive people the way she forgives me.  Being a three year old is rough.  And being a mommy to a three year old might be even rougher.   

And in the end, I'm sure I've learned the bigger lesson.   Funny how that works.