Another Mother of a Day

Close Your Eyes and Let Him Go

2008-04-17T12:30:00.000-07:00

The last big snow of the season dawned early one weekday morning, and a school day became a snow day.

My first-grader played happily on the living room floor setting up a miniature airport, until he got bored and turned to watching videos, until boredom overtook him yet again and he return to his planes, passengers and runways. All the while, I tried to tempt him outdoors with the prospect of building something (or someone) out of the steadily falling snow, but he balked repeatedly at the prospect of exposing himself to the elements.

I don’t blame him. As I shoveled off and on all day, I experienced the snow first-hand--heavy, wet and nonstop, the kind of snow that sticks to the ground but finds its way down the back of your neck or creeps into your shoes, making your socks as soggy as if you’d just taken them out of the washer. The sky was an ugly, uncompromising gray. When the precipitation turned to tiny but stinging pellets of ice, alternating with rain, I knew he was a no-show on the front lawn. It was a snow day, but not a good snow day.

But 48 hours later, after the grey skies gave way to blue and fresh flurries white-washed the dirty curbside slush, the conditions were perfect—for sledding. This was not a winter sport we’d done much of, I admit, in part because I’m still at heart a Texan and don’t know what to make of snow (even after 25 years of living with it), and in part because my husband and I are “older” parents who live in fear of blowing out a knee while playing Frisbee tag with our child. But the fact is, we can’t and don’t deny a boy the pleasures of bike-riding and baseball, so we get out there and play with him regularly—but…sledding? What if I threw out my back pulling the sled back up the hill? What if I sledded with him and steered us into a tree trunk? What if I ran over a toddler and got sued? Risks be damned, the slopes were beckoning, and my inner Bode Miller was clamoring for release.

Our town’s local sledding spot was jam-packed with stir-crazy kids and their cabin-feverish parents, all jostling for position at the top of an increasingly slushy hill. We approached from the bottom and began our slippery upward trek to the top.

“I don’t know about this mommy,” said my son, who I’d finally pried off the living room floor and pushed into his winter outdoor gear. “It’s really steep. And look, there are a lot of middle-schoolers.”

Ahhh, middle-schoolers, the bogey-men of my child’s dreams. For some reason, he has decided that middle schoolers are the ones to blame whenever he espies a piece of litter on the ground, a bit of graffiti on a park bench, or a stray shopping cart blocks from the market. “Middle-schoolers did this!” he gasps.

Now, here we were with hordes of littering, graffiti-writing, shopping cart-thieving middle-schoolers, hurtling toward us. We hiked through the mass of prepubescent vandals and found a spot from which to sally forth. I helped my son on to his “saucer” (a $15 over-sized plastic garbage can lid) and asked him if he was ready.

“Yes, I think so, mommy!”

And it was then, just as I gave him a big, happy, fearless motherly shove out of the nest and watched him slide away, a bright green jacket sitting atop a circle of red plastic, that I looked down. Way down. Way down to the bottom of a treacherously icy, hideously, neck-breakingly steep, steep hill. What the hell had I just done?

I watched his little body catapulting to the bottom of the incline as he hunkered down on his saucer, clutching the handles on either side and doing now doing a series of 360s. I heard screaming—all I heard was screaming all around me—“Mommy! Mom! Mommy!”

And then I couldn’t see him.

Desperately I squinted and searched and simply could not see him. No sign of green! No sign of red! He was lost among the masses of children at the bottom of the hill and couldn’t find his way back to me. He’d sledded into the brush and trees on the edge of the run and was out cold. He’d broken something unspeakable and the ambulance was on the way. He’d been lured away by a bad person in a plain white sled with out-of-state plates. I was frozen to my spot on the slushy hill, trying to figure out how to get to the bottom as fast as possible without breaking my own unspeakable. I considered commandeering the saucer of the nearest middle-schooler until I heard the screaming again.

“Mommy! MOM!!!”

And there he was, standing right next to me, grinning like a devil.

“Mommy, didn’t you see me? I was calling you! That was cool! I’m going down again—give me a big push again!”

My heart resumed normal activity and I gave him a huge hug, pretending to congratulate him. In reality, I was flooded with relief, joy and pride.

“Come on, mom! Push me, I want to go again!”

And so it went.

I gave him a push and he flew away, over and over and over again. And each time, he came back to me. And each time, I was so happy to see him.

Someday, perhaps he won’t come back quite so quickly. He’ll want to stay out on the hill and chart some new territory, veer off to the sides, see what happens if he slides into the bushes, zig-zag toward the bottom, take the long way back.

But I’m hoping that won’t happen for a while—at least until middle school.

She's Leaving Home

2007-09-05T19:00:00.000-07:00

Tonight is the last night that my own mother, who is 87 and 3/4, sleeps in her own house, in her own room, in her own bed--though that bed is now a narrow, railed hospital bed that allows her to get up a little more easily, should she want to...which happens less and less these days. Tomorrow, she will be put into a car by my brother, who will probably sidestep an explanation of where they are going as she will have no memory of it five minutes later. She'll be driven three hours south, to live with a generous and loving child, her oldest daughter, my oldest sister, who has offered to "take mom." Her mind is diminished by Alzheimer's, her body is weakened by age and ailment. She could live a few months, even a few years, though these days I expect a call at any time. "Mom's gone." She's been gone for a long, long time, and everyone knows it. Sometimes I think she knows it, too.

Mom never worked--well, she actually worked harder than the devil himself, raising six of us while my father (he lasted till 88, mind intact) served in the military, leaving her alone for long stretches in her private fun house for at least two decades. To clarify, mom never worked "outside the home," unless you count the unpaid hours of labor spent dishing out food at our catholic school cafeteria, leading a Girl Scout meeting, attempting to lead a Cub Scout meeting, driving kids to softball practice, piano lessons, so-and-so's house, airports, emergency rooms and the Bank of America to open our first checking accounts before she drove us to college (technically Dad was at the wheel for that one, as she was terrified of the freeway). The unpaid hours of labor spent in labor.

She was probably relieved when menopause hit, because it meant she wouldn't spend the rest of her adult life pregnant, though "with child" for her had a literal meaning: with a child--at least one at home with her from the time she was in her early 20s until my dear little slacker brother moved out when she was nearing her 70s (and even throughout that decade and into her next, a certain older brother would occasionally descend with laundry, a broken heart, a broken car, or an overdrawn checking account.) I have but one kid, and if my darling darkens our door when we're in our 70s it better be to pick us up on a regular basis in his Mercedes and take us out to dinner at that place in Soho with the really deep wine list.

My siblings and I are spread out in age from 40 to 65, so when we were kids, she always had the full range of childhood stages. She could have been a bestselling parenting author as she had her own controlled study group right there--a baby or toddler on one end, and a teenage rebel or drifting college student bookending the other. She got pregnant for the last time (that we know of, anyway) at the age of 45 so her own hormones were riding the Tilt-a-Whirl while she was coping with a first grader and a graduate student. I lament the fact that her memory has all but vanished, but who can blame her? She deserves a break.

You may think my dad had the worst timing. But I just think they had the worst birth control. One hot and boring summer, I unearthed a college biology text that belonged to my father, who got his degree on the GI bill when I was in second grade. It was the section on human reproduction, it was 1973, I was bored with Watergate on TV, so I read the notes he made in the margins near the section on pregnancy prevention and the so-called Rhythm Method (he went to a catholic-run university). "This method doesn't work," he'd noted, "and I have the three accidents to prove it. But I don't regret it." Good ol' dad. He didn't regret the second three (we're the ones with the really gaping age differences)--but poor ol' mom. Ol' before her time.

Anyway, this is it. Tomorrow she finally leaves home, which I think she always wanted to do--at least under the right circumstances. I suspect she wanted to visit Spain, or China, or just about anywhere that didn't have a kitchen for her to cook in, or a bed she had to make, or laundry that needed to be folded. She was (is) a bit of a martyr, a child of the Depression, a child of immigrants--maddeningly resisting the replacement of worn-out rag-like towels or stained housecoats, wearing our old sweaters from high school, keeping 10-year-old pencils till they were as useless as twigs, eating with my dad's GI-issued silverware and drinking from chipped coffee mugs instead of breaking out the "good stuff."

We got increasingly angry at her poor-person ways, which blossomed once old age set in. Her obsessive hoarding of cheap food, her compulsive buys at garage sales and the dollar stores--we nagged, we gave her new housecoats and dishes and sweaters and towels for Christmas, but she just dug in and found even older clothing to wear, things we'd stuck in a give away pile during the Carter Administration. She carefully put our new gifts away, in their original boxes, and they were forgotten. It was probably the biggest problem any of us ever had with her, this pointless combination of ratpacking and pennypinching, this rejection of the new and improved. I guess we are lucky that that is the extent of our mother issues.

Ironically, now, in the end she goes off to live in luxury. My sister's well-kept house is comfortable and handsomely appointed, with closets the size of mom's old bedroom, and towels so thick mom will think they're blankets. But really, who knows what mom will think. And in a way, that's the real irony. She's finally getting what she deserves--R&R, 24/7--and she doesn't even know it.

Learning to Say Bye-Bye

2006-01-31T11:48:00.000-08:00

It’s like I’ve grown Velcro on the palms of my hands. I just can’t let go of this little boy and all his little boyness. Today I tried to cull his wardrobe, pulling out the baby t-shirts and too-small socks and pants, the 2Ts that somehow get shoved to the bottom of the drawer, the pajama bottoms that would barely fit one of his stuffed animals, much less him. And virtually every time I put something in the “out” pile, I had a twinge of something like sadness, but I wasn’t sad. I was—am—happy, happy that I can be around now to see this child grow more and more each day, thankful that he is healthy and sound and solid and stable. I pass his preschool, where he is in his last year before he moves on to “the bighouse” as one mother calls kindergarten, and get the same twinge. It’s a feeling that makes me long for that stirring inside, that kicking, that life.

But it’s not baby fever. I see friends or acquaintances struggling with newborn babes, with toddlers, with hard-headed two- and three-year-olds who’ve sentenced their parents to death by dawdling. Even if the baby or child is absolutely scrumptious, I instantly recall that feeling of pushing a stroller to nowhere, as I eye their cute offspring while I remember my own. I fleetingly considered a second child, but creating a new life is not akin to deciding to get a dog. And for many reasons—not to mention that I’m nearly fresh out of eggs and we don’t feel like running to the store for more--this “older mom” has hung up her ovaries. So, I don’t want another baby. I just want this one back.

As each day passes, as my son reaches a new milestone—writing his name, getting himself dressed, cutting out perfect shapes with the sharp and once-forbidden scissors--I myself feel more independent, knowing that I can take more “me time” (what an obnoxious expression, though it serves its purpose for mothers) as well as time for our micro-family of three, from ramping up my freelance business to making something nice for dinner to finally dejunking the junk drawer. I should be satisfied that life is so good, and yet I feel like I’m losing something. I’m losing the chunky, fuzzy-headed baby who wanted to be held all the time, that baby with the starfish hands and the fat, pink feet I couldn’t stop squeezing. Instead, I have a thriving, rambunctious boy whose limbs are growing longer and stronger, whose feet keep needing new shoes with alarming frequency, who puts his hands on his hips as he stands in the kitchen and asks what’s for dinner, as if he’s just come home from working 9 to 5. He’s no baby anymore.

I realize this attempt to let go, to acknowledge his maturity, is just the beginning of saying goodbye, that it comes with the territory (and rightly so, or else we’d all be in therapy) and that it’s a natural life stage that probably began right around the time my period was late. My neighbor took her “baby”—her only child, like me—back to college after the Christmas break, this weekend, and openly admits to having a hard time letting go. Leaving my son alone with his nanny for the first time and hugging him goodbye on the first day of preschool was a tearjerker, so I guess I’m looking at a lifetime of knot-in-throat syndrome. Another woman I know is pregnant with number three—not as uncommon as you may think—and I wonder if she was motivated, in part, by wanting to prolong the starfish hands stage. Even the true “older mothers” among us—women with grown children who have children of their own—still think of their adult sons and daughters as theirs. “You’ll always be my baby,” they’re prone to saying.

I try to tell myself that I should take joy in this growing boy, and that each 3T undershirt simply gets replaced with a size 4-5, which in turn gets replaced by a 6X, and so it goes until we’ll be arguing over a pair of jeans in the mall. (Maybe I’m sad because the clothes are getting more expensive.) And the fact is that we have years to go before he comes to us and announces that he wants to go to college in South America, or that he’s getting an apartment with some friends, or that his wedding is going to be in California, because that’s where his fiancé is from, and by the way they are moving out there for good.

These little beings aren’t “ours” to keep forever, anymore than each of us is owned by our parents. Logically, of course, we all know this. But that doesn’t make cleaning out your kid’s sock drawer any easier. For now, we hold them close—even closer when they act as if they don’t need us (for that’s when they need us the most). And then, if all goes well in the years to come, one day we take a very deep breath, we steal another kiss on the top of the head that now towers over our own, and we let them go, as we should and as they should. Even though they’ll always be our babies.

Milk and Cookies

2004-12-01T10:58:00.000-08:00

Now that I'm home for most of the day with my preschooler, I've gotten into a bad habit, a very, very bad habit which could result in some very, very large jeans if I don't cut it out soon. Forget the lone afternoon cup of coffee I used to get at the office from the Flavia machine. Oh no, baby, I've discovered the lost, simple pleasures of milk and cookies. My son gets a small chocolate cookie most afternoons with a glass of milk. And hey, if it's good enough for the duckling, it's good enough for the mother duck. So, without any hesitation, I've been joining him for this most precious of afternoon snacks, though I usually have a jolt of caffeine with my cookie. If we're out of cookies, we go for graham crackers. There was a dark period there where we were into daily doses of Halloween candy, and I stole most of his. Someday I'll have to confess that I ate the KitKat bars, his favorite (I was just trying to spare his young, pure system from hydrogenated fats, which of course I am immune to.) Once in a while, we shake things up and make popcorn and drink apple juice, but that's sooooo healthy, and it's back to milk and cookies we go. With the holidays hard upon us, perhaps it's time to switch to hot cider or cocoa. Either way, there's something quite pleasurable about sitting down with my child, my mug, and my cookie. I have to squeeze my butt into one of the kid-size chairs at his little table, but it's worth the effort, not to mention the calories.