Snow Day: Magic or Myth?

When my kids were little snow days began with a kind of magic. A Norman Rockwellian magic full of the promise of snowmen, sledding rosy cheeks and hot chocolate. Even shoveling the snow was a novelty thanks to whatever genius created the kid-size shovel.

Of course, like all magic, there is preparation involved. Layers of clothing must be forced over the head of wiggly children. Snow pants must be found and, with any hope, still fit from last year or be able to be passed down to the next child in the line of succession. Jackets need to be zipped, the farcical and pointless mitten ritual obeyed and hats must be put on and thrown off innumerable times. They are ready, and now must wait while you get ready, which you do in lightening speed before the whining reaches intolerable levels and their sweat bastes them into an inevitable frostbite threat. Time for the magic to begin.

They step out into the sparkling, powdery playland, which of course, must be documented with many photos, seemingly candid, but carefully reshot until the perfect Holiday card shot has been acquired. They fall into the snow, followed by a shared moment of joyous laughter from the snowy mischief, until the snow actually touches the skin between where their mittens end and their jacket begins. Complaints of cold and wet parade out of the rosy cheeks, pleas to go back into the house follow, one mitten and both hats have already been lost and only two minutes have passed.

But wait, children there is more magic.

“I’m cold”

Don’t you want to build a snowman?

“I want to watch Pokemon”

How about a snowball fight?

“(tears) Mommy why’d you hit me in the face with the snow?”

Mommy didn’t mean it, let’s go sledding! You’ll love sledding!

“I want to go inside.”

Sledding first. It’ll be fun. Let’s have some fun! Isn’t this fun!

Somehow you convince them to drag the sled six blocks to the nearest acceptable hill. They are frowning, but you know, you just know their lives will be transformed by the thrill and magic of sledding. A block and a half in, you find yourself carrying both sleds. A block later one of them is on your back. Snow from their boot is falling into your pants, which are not snow pants, because you are a grown up and it didn’t occur to you to buy snow pants. You get to the hill, which is full of other families determined to have fun and they have sledded that hill into a deathtrap of ice and “sled jumps” of exposed roots and rocks.

You go down once with both of them reviewing your life’s regrets and successes as you realize this ride down the hill may be the last thing you ever do as you dodge children, trees and your mounting fatigue. The walk back up the hill seems like a journey out of Lord of the Rings. Once at the top, you do what any responsible parent would, you let them go down by themselves. After the battle of who sits in front and the brief tutorial on steering, you push them off to euphoria or certain death. It goes well until a third of the way down when one falls off, creating another “sled jump” and the other heads directly for a tree. You run down the icy slope, slip several times, only worrying about your dignity for a fleeting moment, you scoop up one and overrun the other just in time to act as a barrier between said “death tree” and your first born. When the magic of that moment is over, you pick yourself up, grab the overpriced sled, carry one child, hold the other one by the jacket and make your way home swallowing the curses you have for the snow and all it’s magical bullshit.

Once inside, the disrobing, if filmed, could win an Oscar for comedy or tragedy depending on the angle and the editing. Once inside, you still can’t let go of the need for magic and memories, so you actually make hot chocolate. You don’t have the mini marshmallows, so you put a couple of big ones in there. Your children, who look at you with pity and disdain, eat the marshmallow, take one sip of the cocoa, complain about the temperature and go watch whatever mythological swill Nickolodeon offers at this time of day. Which, by the way, is only 10:15am.

And you put your head down on the kitchen table and lament the failed magic trick. One more thing you have ruined for your kids.

And then two weeks later it snows again. You take a deep breath of fortitude, determined not to force your own magic down their throats again. And then a little hand pokes you in the head and the little voice attached asks “Mommy, can we go sledding?” 

And the rabbit comes out of the hat again.

Fake it 'Til You Make it

So I want to be lighthearted and funny for you. I want to be edgy and insightful and simple and honest. I’d like to turn a phrase that is efficient and illuminating all in one. I want to be the blog post that you need right now. But I’m tired.

I’m not talking about physically tired (again), that’s a given. I am bone-crushingly psychologically and emotionally tired. It’s not just the one step forward two steps back marathon of getting somewhere as if you are walking up the down escalator. That does crush the will to stay on the path of parental fortitude as prescribed by therapists, books and common sense, but there is something that makes that journey even more exhausting.

Pretending everything is okay.

And

Pretending everything is going to be okay.

Yes in the grand scheme of disaster and tyranny, everything is okay and will be. But in the microcosm of my self-importance, in the galaxy of my tiny existence everything is not okay. It is what it is, and I‘m tired of spinning that as extraordinary and unique and quirky and modern. I’m ready for the hard work to pay off and I’m not entirely sure that phrase is based in any kind of truth beyond farming.

So putting all spin aside, here’s what’s left: I’m not sure I have what it takes to be a parent. I know it’s kind of late in the game for that epiphany, and it’s certainly not helpful on any level, but I can’t pretend it’s not true. Some things I do work, many things I try don’t and the only barometer I have is the kids in front of me. And I am terrified of failing them. They don’t deserve that.

Fake it ‘til you make it. There’s another aphorism that has gotten me through more than one potential catastrophe. So I will pretend to be strong when I want to crumble. I will be okay with being hated when it serves a greater purpose. I will smile at work as if my life is an Emmy winning sitcom. I will tell my terror to take a seat in the waiting room until it is dulled into a coma by back-dated People magazines.

And I will whisper to you on occasion that I have no idea what I’m doing because they say the truth will set you free. And some day I would like to talk to whomever “they” is to see the data that supports their claims.

Alpha Spouse & The Martyr

So spouses, partners, significant others…there’s a can of worms for you. They are the one person in the world that can make you believe in your heart of hearts that you are not alone. And they are the one person in the world who can make you feel in your heart of hearts that you are completely alone.

And I have a good one. A really good one. He’s truly a good man. A prosecutor with the DA in one of the most horrifying units, not a big drinker, not a philanderer, very funny, not an asshole, he’s a good man. I know he’s got my back, and I have his. I love him, and yet…sometimes he’s just wrong. When there’s something to be wrong about, it’s him who is wrong. Which means, that from his perspective I am just wrong. And of course he’s wrong about that too.

So how do you parent with someone when you disagree? When, really, he’s just wrong.

Seriously, I’m asking the question.

So let’s figure this out. There’s this whole united front theory. You have to present a united front when parenting. Otherwise your clever clever children will quickly divide and conquer. (Why my children can’t employ their velociraptor cleverness to actually do the thing for which we are desperately trying to present a united front for is another post.) This means, that when you disagree with your co-parent someone has to compromise. And let’s face it the alpha spouse wins that rock paper scissors nine times out of ten.

Yes, the alpha spouse. Even the most evolved marriages have them. Most marriages are in fact made up of an Alpha Spouse and a Martyr. Sometimes you switch roles, but that’s usually when the alpha spouse really just wants to win again and beat you at martyring.

I am not the alpha spouse. And, as mentioned before, my husband is a good man. He is also a lawyer. He is paid to persuade. And win. On the other hand, I am an actress. I study human nature and their objectives and tactics. So, I (sometimes) get paid to play a part. So when I have to be part of a united front in which I do not fully believe, I play the part of a believer. And, sometimes, when we are deciding on our united front, I play the part of the alpha spouse.

It ain’t a perfect system. It’s not always like this though, often we agree. And when that happens, it is a miraculous blending of two into one and I am not alone. And when it doesn’t happen…well it sucks to feel so alone in a crowded room.

And yes, we talk about it. I express what I feel in brave moments, he tells me how he’s feeling in sensitive guy moments. And sometimes we both do it in delightfully passive aggressive ways. But yes, we communicate. We try to hear and adapt and hope that we are inching ever closer to a consistent balance. Yes, balance, not equality, because I’m not sure total equality is possible. At least not in marriage. Because when the scales are tipped one way, as can happen when one of you gets a promotion, or is fired, or has a shitty day, or the best day of your life, there needs to be counter balance or else the see-saw slams to the ground and someone’s butt gets bruised.

But often things are left unsaid. Not because we are cowards, or not reflecting on our marriage, but because we’re tired and Teenager #2 has wrestling practice and Teenager #1 has a chemistry exam, and there’s nothing for dinner, and we can’t afford another pizza, and someone’s toothbrush fell in the toilet and we don’t have time to be united and sensitive and balanced. We don’t even have time to be married.

And suddenly love looks entirely different than before kids. Love looks like a dishwasher full of clean dishes, or a gas tank re-filled, or a bed made, or underwear actually making it to the hamper. And you realize, they really do listen sometimes, and you remember you are not alone.

Showing our Parental Cellulite

With the Olympics coming up, it feels right to talk about the oft overlooked, yet perhaps most competitive of sports...Parenting.

It happens from the moment we give birth and compare our choices to that of the parent in the bed next to us. From the unspoken understanding that our child is in fact cuter than any of the others in the nursery to every single benchmark in our children’s’ lives we measure our success based on the degree of success or perceived failure of our fellow parents. We breathe a sigh of relief that our child spoke their first word and stepped their first step before the “So and So’s” across the street. And we lament and fret sleeplessly over the fact that “Mr. & Mrs. Perfect’s” son is reading chapter books at age 3 ½ while our child is playing with an empty box.

We do it. We do it consciously, we do it unconsciously, it soothes us and tortures us and drives us to say and think ridiculous things. It justifies our actions and paralyzes our instincts and it has nothing to do with our children and everything to do with the reality that we feel desperately unequipped to parent.

I would like to say that I have found a solution to such practices; that my obvious wisdom as gleaned through the arrogance of having a blog on parenting has shed light on this unspoken yet rampant plague of parental competition. I would love to say that if I wasn’t so relieved that someone else’s child got a worse grade than mine on that last English assignment.

And I truly believe with my whole heart that the entire issue can be summed up, as in all things, with how we communicate on Facebook. You’ve seen it, you’ve done it, You’ve posted that picture or video that shows your child’s excellence and superiority to the average bear. They got into college, they burped their first burp, they scored the game winning shot, they said something disarmingly precocious and advanced for their young years, they told you they loved you in a better than Hallmark way. They achieved, they succeeded, you obviously did something right while graciously claiming none of the credit except in your own soul which writhes and twists every day with the fear of screwing your kid up.

And those victories are great, and they should be celebrated and liked and shared. They absolutely should. But what would the world look like if we shared our failures as well? Not for sympathy, not for bucking up, not for fishing for compliments. What if we shared our failures or struggles simply to erase the shame of them.  The other day, one of my Facebook friends posted that her child had a massive tantrum over something the rest of the world would surely consider trivial, and I was so happy. Not at her child’s suffering, but at the bravery to say, “Hey this is not all unicorns and the Brady Bunch. Sometimes the rainbow gets graffiti-ed.”

“But Mary, if we erase the shame, aren’t we just justifying bad choices and behavior and issuing a guilt free get out of jail free card.” Sure, that could happen, if we weren’t moral humans who torture ourselves at every misstep. Just as our children know that getting a D isn’t great and they feel horrible about it, we know when we’ve blown it as a parent and whatever torture we deal ourselves is a hundred times worse than what others may think or say. Just as sharing our victories gives us and them hope, sharing our screw-ups may bring an end to all the suffering in silence. Surely I can’t admit that I gave my child no vegetables with dinner last night and that, in fact we ate a sodium filled frozen dinner, for then it would be known that I am an imperfect parent.

Well, you are. We all are. And we want to be better. So we read books and blogs and go to seminars and compare ourselves to others because we are responsible for this human being whom we love more than, well, every other thing ever, and in order to wake up tomorrow and try again we have to feel we’ve done something right. So we post a post that proves that “I got this.” And we need to keep doing that and…we need to sometimes let the world know “I don’t got this.” Because parenting is so hard, brutally unforeseeably hard and perpetuating the myth of unicorns and the Brady Bunch creates an unrealistic ideal that distracts us from our real job: seeing our kid for who they truly are and helping them learn how to stand on their own two wobbly flawed and fabulous feet.

So keep posting the good stuff, by all means. But let’s occasionally show our parental cellulite as well. I’ll start.

I can’t get my kids to brush their teeth and I’ve stopped trying.

The Present of Presence

It’s Christmas morning about 6:45. I’ve been up for about an hour, not because my kids woke up, just because, as mentioned in previous posts, I am a terrible sleeper. The Toll House pie is in the oven. The tree lights are on and the dog is in my lap (creating a challenging typing set-up to be sure). The house is so quiet.

It’s not a creepy quiet either. Usually I find ways to fill the quiet: radio, TV, having children. But this is a welcome quiet, a Christmas quiet. This is what I look forward to the most. The gifts, the laughter, the eating the parties the traditional viewing of Elf and Black Adder’s Christmas Carol, the frenzy of family are all wonderful. Truly wonderful and I look forward to all of them. But right now, in this living room that is clean enough, in this quiet that is syncopated only by my dog’s snoring, there is peace. And that peace is one of the markers of Christmas for me.

Over the years Christmas has evolved for me. As a child, it was all about cookies and presents and my brothers and sisters coming home for Christmas Eve. As a young adult, it was all about the parties I wasn’t invited to and the kicky outfits I always force-fed on the slightest of occasions. As a young mother it was all about making magic, at any cost, for my children, and keeping everyone as happy as possible which often resulted in achieving the ultimate goal of getting my kids to bed so I could enjoy Christmas. Now it has become moments of presence.

Yesterday I found Christmas in the Acme parking lot as I walked back to my car with replenished supplies to give that new dessert a second less disastrous try when a young Acme cart retriever smiled so genuinely it melted the cynicism of my just forming flip and snarky quips about last minute grocery shoppers. And she wished me a Merry Christmas that felt truer than any I’d ever heard.

I found Christmas as Husband and I took the very grateful dog for an extra long walk and, as we made our way home, witnessed flurries in the air. Not a white Christmas in the blanket of snow sense, but it snowed on Christmas Eve. We were in a 1930’s movie with soft filtered lighting and all the promise of promise before us.

I found Christmas at the caroling party two days ago when an eleventh grade boy (not my own) sat down to play the piano because none of the adults could and sang when none of the adults would.

I found Christmas in the late night request from Teenager #1 for some warmed up Chinese food. He may not have stayed at the table when we ate it earlier because, on a practical level, he was not hungry. He may have played way too much Team Fortress II yesterday. He may not have wrapped a single present. But as I left his room after bringing him his food, he said thank you without being asked, and when I said I love you, he smiled as if he really felt it was true.

The Grinch is a visionary, the movies are true, the gloriously corny books get it right every time. Christmas isn’t in a box, it’s not marked by the perfectly prepared meal, it is not the authentic overjoyed reaction when they open that gift you know they’ll love. It is the art of appreciating all of this, of enjoying the moment whatever the moment is (and sometimes the moment is messy). It is the present of presence.

Merry Christmas!

Why Star Trek is like Real Life

For most of my life I have believed that logic is a universal constant, which means that, once again, for most of my life I have been wrong. According to Merriam Webster logic is “a proper or reasonable way of thinking about or understanding something.” Since the essence of proper, reason, thinking and understanding are far from universal or constant, it stands to reason (or does it?) that logic is subjective and mercurial.

My proof? My family.

To me logic is:

            Putting dirty clothes in the hamper

           

Eating at regularly scheduled times

Knowing that when the gas gauge is on empty, it really means there’s a quarter of a tank left

Meeting deadlines

Getting work done first so play time can be emotionally unfettered

Eating dinner to get to dessert

To my husband logic is:

Categorizing dirty clothes into “still wearable and therefore draped over whatever is convenient” and “full on dirty and therefore on the floor right next to the hamper”

Eating only after he has saved the world, usually around 4:00pm.

Driving to Jersey to fill the gas tank

Creating work to do so he can deserve play

Leaving cereal residue un-rinsed in a bowl, one can only assume as a service to science

To Teenager 1 logic is

Putting dirty clothes wherever he happens to take them off, which, tonight, included the living room and the kitchen.

Eating constantly or not at all, and blaming me regardless

Providing the world with natural gas on a regular basis in the car with the windows rolled up.

Seeing deadlines as an option

Playing first and working as little as possible

Eating Chinese mustard with a hint of eggroll

To Teenager 2 logic is

Putting dirty clothes in clean clothes’ basket that he never bothered to put in his drawers thus keeping Maytag in business indefinitely

Eating cereal, pizza and Entenmanns' cinnamon rolls with a full on expectation that he will live past 17

Doing an impersonation of Sheldon Cooper of Big Bang Theory to remind me that the gas gauge is on empty.

Hating deadlines and losing sleep over meeting them

Playing & working in possibly the most balanced manner of the whole family

Being able to pick any Hobbit dwarf, his beard and his weapon out of a line-up

Logic, common sense, reason; these are all coping mechanisms we employ to make it through the day. Life is chaos, and, as order-seeking beings, we strive to make order out of chaos. And since we all have our own chaos depending on which side of the bed we woke up on and how many pairs of underwear we tripped over on the way to the bathroom where the top is off the toothpaste tube, the seat is up and a History paper is drying on the towel rack, our logic adapts to our surroundings in all its Darwinian glory.

So what’s logical to Spock is not always logical to Kirk, which is why they’re such good friends…and why they drive each other crazy. And that is why Star Trek is just like real life.

And that last statement came from a Star Wars fan. Find the logic in that.

I'm Thankful for Nathan Fillion

It seems like I should write about what I’m thankful for. Of course there’s the obvious, and true ones, my family, good health, democracy; but those are just the PC, cute little stocking stuffer book answers you find at the checkout line in Barnes & Noble. What am I truly thankful for? I don’t know.

I‘m mostly thankful for little things.

I’m thankful for Castle on Monday nights and in TNT reruns, because, you know, Nathan Fillion.

I’m thankful for knitting, even though my son tells me it makes me look old.

I’m thankful for the Gap Outlet, because sometimes buying a cheap cardigan in a frivolous color actually does make the day better.

I’m thankful for almost any chocolate chip cookie.

I’m thankful for Rhys Bowen’s “Her Royal Spyness” mystery series, because it’s silly and fun counts as reading.

I’m thankful for a movie matinee on a weekday because it feels like I’m getting away with something.

This is only part of my Maria Von Trapp list. And yet it feels like it’s not enough. Like I am missing the bigger picture, or, more likely, avoiding it. I know I am blessed, and the moments when that becomes apparent are often little too, and always unexpected. And I am thankful for those moments beyond expression. They don’t always coincide with a prescribed day of thanksgiving; they often happen on the most ordinary of days, and their sustenance is more filling than mashed potatoes and is rarely accompanied by caloric guilt or the desire to take a nap.

And then those moments pass and I get hungry again, and life’s table sometimes serves cream chipped beef on toast. So yes, I am thankful for my Castle, and my cookies and my cardigans because they are sometimes the turkey and stuffing that get me through the other days; not necessarily bad or good, just those days of undefined significance.

So thank you Nathan Fillion for being my pumpkin pie on those every-day days.