Monthly Archives: January 2013

Come a little closer

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Dash is sick (which is entirely my fault for stupidly – stupidly! – bragging that my children were disgustingly healthy) and I have two posts half-written that have been running round my head for a while now but it turns out they’re not very good, or very interesting, or need photos I don’t have, or something else unsatisfying, and maybe it’s just that I’m unnerved by having my rudely healthy six-year-old completely flaked out on the couch all morning which is just so very uncharacteristic of him that it makes me twitchy.

I think I’ve mentioned before how becuase my children are rarely sick, I tend to get all melodramatic in my head when they are, and feel like they’ll never be well again. On the outside I’m a competent and non-panicky mother, all adequate fluids and keep you warm and no need to call the doctor but I am aware of peritonitis as a thing that exists (and nearly killed my father at the tender age of 5 all those years ago) and check for a rash and so on. But on the inside I’m looking tenderly at his sweet face, so innocent and non-combative in quiet repose, and feeling like Jo in Little Women watching Beth breathe her last. (Okay, not her last. Not just then.) Phrases like “The fever has finally broken” and “galloping consumption” and “youth stolen away” wander across my mind, even though he doesn’t have a fever or even a cough.

Mabel seems to have an ear infection too, though it’s not in the least bit debilitating except in the middle of the night. Last night after my bringing her a tissue and a waffle and a drink of water (and the boobs, of course, always the boobs) she was still throwing shapes all over the bed instead of falling back asleep, and having wide-eyed conversations with me about totally unrelated things. (Which would be adorable, if it hadn’t been 3am.) Eventually she said “Mummy, come closer to me.” I was already right there on her pillow, but I put my arms around her and she burrowed her head into my hair and pressed her lips right up against my ear – which tickles, you might know – and whispered “My ear hurts.”

Which was great, because then a quick dose of ibuprofen meant she was out for the count and I finally went back to my own bed for a blessed two hours or something of sleep before everyone woke up again for the day. I sent her to school, though, because she’s no more contagious with a slight runny nose than she was yesterday, and I dosed her again so her ear definitely won’t hurt.

So, sick kids for the win. Remind me to keep my big mouth shut next time, okay?

Room in my head

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I love trying to bring up a memory that’s hidden deep in my mind. I sometimes set out to find one, or to expand one further than I think I know. There’s a knack to it, and it doesn’t always work, but you have to hook onto a thread of something – from your childhood, probably, when your memory was an open plain to be filled – and tease it out, pulling, pulling, gently, looking around and delving inwards, until you produce a gem that you didn’t know was there.

Today I noticed that a particular room I remember has become a location in more than one book I’ve read. My brain is a theatre filled with dusty sets and props – every now and then a new production pulls out the old stuff again and it’s been so long that everyone’s forgotten they were used before.

This room was in the home of a friend of my parents. Only children tend to be taken where plural children are not; they are unlikely to create mischief alone in a room full of adults, and given a book or some paper and crayons, can probably entertain themselves for a while; failing that, they can be precocious and entertain the adults while their parents attend a grownup gathering, drink wine in the afternoon, gently flirt with people who are not their spouse while observing their spouse doing the same thing across the room, and pretend that their life hasn’t changed all that much.

So while I also visited this room on quiet afternoons with just my mother, what I remember most is tucking myself away in a corner while the adults mingled and jested and nodded and guffawed and tried out this newfangled wine-in-a-box. I remember the Russian dolls that lived in this house, dolls that I was always allowed to play with most carefully, and how the biggest one squeaked painfully every time her belly was wrenched open along its slice to disgorge her daughters and granddaughters and greatgreatgreats. I remember getting to the point where I would seek out my mother and pull her sleeve and ask, “Pleeeease can we go now?”

I think I remember, too, curling up on the spare bed in the front bedroom, with its soft black woollen coverlet of some sort of holey 70s knitting, and going to sleep there during an occasional evening party; at the end of which my parents would just hoist me up, toss me in the back seat of the car, and drive home. I do remember how the streetlights looked from my horizontal position, cosy in my sleeping bag, watching them flick past against the black; restful orange or bright white, hurting my eyes and sending out spears of light when I squinted.

And then we’d turn into the second-last road and then there’d be a sharp corner and I could always tell our hill by the gradient, as gravity pushed me against the join where the bottom of the seat met the back. Then a quick swing around (my father was quite the rally driver) and the same again as he backed down the steep driveway to the hidden carport at the back of the house.

And then I’d be picked up and I’d pretend to be asleep, and I’d be fireman-carried into the house and up the bumpy stairs and plopped into my own bed under the eaves, under the wooden ceiling, where I belonged.

Pretty cool

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Dash is still pushing the envelope with his sister, and she’s still yanking his chain:

- I love you a million. But I love mummy and daddy and friend-across-the-road giant .
- So do you love me giant?
- No.
- Tell me the truth.
- I love you seven. That’s the truth.
- But do you love me infinity? I love you infinity.

**********

Somehow, a dichotomy has been established in our house between cool and pretty. Cool things are boy things and pretty things are girl things. Every time I hear some variation on this being trotted out, I tell them “cool can be pretty” and “pretty can be cool” and “nothing is just for boys or just for girls” and I hope some day it makes it through and out the other side by osmosis because at the moment they are rigid in their definitions.

**********

And I want to tell my daughter something:

Pretty is fine, but you don’t need to be pretty*.

I want you to be strong, I want you to be heard. I want you to stand up for yourself and for others. Polite is good, consideration is vital; but I want you to above all keep yourself safe and sane, which means demanding the respect that is due to you and no less, as a member of the human race and as a woman.

First, use common sense. You’re smart. Act smart.
Second, listen to your gut. Follow your spidey sense, never discredit a “feeling”.
Third, it’s never too late to make a change for the better.

Pretty is fine, and good is nice, but strong is beautiful. Be strong, my beautiful daughter, and you will rule the world.

*Inspired by this blog post I happened upon recently, which quotes (but doesn’t really attribute) a Diana Vreeland once said. And I have no idea who she was, but she seems cool.

Weekend edition

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I have a confession. I hate weekends.

At least, I’m really bad at them. I suppose it’s a leftover inclination from all those years when weekend meant something different, and less taxing, than Monday to Friday. But now all it means is that we have no particular schedule and are required to either have some of that holy grail – quality family time – or else feel guilty for failing.

I am also hampered by my extreme lack of ambition, outing-wise. The museums downtown are great, but we’ve seen the child-friendly ones quite a lot now, and they don’t change the dinosaurs all that often. I’d like to go to the art galleries, but the children don’t enjoy those much. A nice walk in the great outdoors would be excellent for our mental and physical health, but dragging our offspring to walk somewhere and look at scenic nature is doomed from the get-go. You can try to bribe them with hot chocolate afterwards, but they’d much rather have the drink right now and skip the nature, thank you.

Today we even considered pushing the boat out and going to see a film.

Us: Hey, guys, how about we … [thrill of anticipation]… go to see a movie this afternoon?
Them: Nooooooo.
Us, grasping at straws: There’d be popcorn.
Them: Nah.

They’d much rather sit at home watching tried and trusted episodes of Curious George on PBS than see something new and exciting and potentially scary on the big, noisy screen that you can’t get away from.

It almost makes me yearn for the old days, when they were little. Okay, so you had to pack the entire contents of your house and fridge before you could get out the door, and someone always had a huge up-the-back-of-the-onesie blowout just as you strapped them into the car, but the decision-making was up to you. If you said “Right, we’re going to have a lovely walk and see a waterfall!”, they’d be pretty much powerless against your bundling them into their coats and carseats and stroller and Ergo and just going there. Apart from the poop and the requisite tantrum, I suppose.

But nowadays, everyone’s buy-in is essential just to get people out of pyjamas, never mind wearing shoes and socks and coats and sitting voluntarily in the car.

Honestly, sometimes I almost want to have another, just so that I can get someone doing what I want instead of what they want. (Don’t worry. I know that’s just an illusion.)

So today, despite everyone being already dressed by 9am (thanks to the remaining snow, that needed to be played in before it dissipated entirely), despite our having a conversation about what we should do today quite early on, despite discussing museums and cinemas and walks in the park, we ended up getting into the car at 3pm and going to that most exotic of destinations, Target.

Not just our regular Target; a slightly more distant, newer one. We bought one thing we needed and a few things we decided we probably needed, weathered tantrums about Christmas presents never received as we perused the toy department for someone else’s birthday present (never a good move), spent $3 per child on a “small, inexpensive” treat, and finally sat down in Starbucks for our reward for getting out of the house: latte, latte, vanilla milk, smoothie, and one slice of lemon cake split four ways.

And now we have to figure out something to do tomorrow. I’d like to curl up with a good book, but that sort of weekend is both behind and, I hope, ahead of me yet.

A lucky escape

Magical optical

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Dash had a four-day weekend because of the teacher training day on Friday and then Martin Luther King Day and the presidential inauguration on Monday. On Saturday, I asked him where his glasses were. Like this:

- Dash, it’s time to do some reading. Where are your glasses? I remember you didn’t wear them reading last night.
- Where did you leave them, Mummy?
- Where did I leave them? I didn’t have them. Aren’t they in your backpack?
- No, you put them somewhere.
- No. No, I didn’t. Are they at school?
- No, I brought them home.
… etc.

Dash was sure they were in the house, and I was sure they weren’t. We’d brought them safely across an ocean and back, not to mention running the daily gauntlet of leaving them in the kitchen of a house containing three teenagers, but apparently now they’d disappeared. (They come with a great warranty. It says that if you break the frame or the lenses, you get the first new ones free and subsequent ones for just $25. But if you lose them entirely, you just have to go and buy new glasses.) I also realised we hadn’t put his name on them or even on the case.

I decided to assume that the glasses were in school, hopefully sitting on his desk or somewhere else in his classroom, even though he assured me that they’d come home with him on Thursday evening and I had put them somewhere mysterious.

Yesterday when he came out of school the first thing I asked him was if he’d found his glasses.

- Yes! Somehow – poof! – they were in my desk, even though they’d been at home and I didn’t bring them back into school with me.

As if by magic! Wonderful. I particularly liked the poof! part.

We have the follow-up at the optician’s tomorrow. His father and I are not convinced that the glasses make a whit of difference, other than perhaps as a rather expensive placebo that enticed Dash to do his homework more eagerly for the first week of having them. Maybe the eye doctor will be able to magically tell something when he peers into Dash’s eyes and whirr-clicks the lenses into the machine and asks him to read the lines of letters.

Or maybe his reading is just improving slowly the old-fashioned way, with practice.

Chill

Curiosity

Point of origin

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I forgot to mention it here because I said it elsewhere, but I’ve been in the US for ten years this month. I think my anniversary was last Sunday, actually. I emigrated without even feeling like that was what I was doing – I was just moving in with my boyfriend. The fact that I had to painstakingly win the visa lottery, go through the green-card process, and move across an ocean to do it was just details, once it was all under the bridge.

For my writing course this morning I had to describe fifteen important minutes of my life. Tricky. I mean, I suppose they had to be minutes in my life, not just minutes that affected my life, because otherwise I’d have been duty-bound to envision my own conception, which is really not something anyone wants to have to put any amount of imaginative thought into. And they had to be minutes that were important to my life, not someone else’s – because who knows if something I said offhandedly in a supermarket queue or at a playdate or online had a deep and lasting effect on someone else’s life? I mean, it’s unlikely, but not impossible.

So I had to come up with a fifteen-minute episode that made a difference to my life. There are the birth stories, of course, but I’ve already written those. And the thing is, once the baby’s in there it has to come out one way or another, so while the births were great and life-affirming, they didn’t really change things. Finally, although it’s the epitome of cheese and terribly obvious, I found I had to go back to that house party in 1993 when I calculatedly but nonchalantly wandered into the kitchen after the boy who’d gone looking for a corkscrew, because I thought he was cute.

I won’t give you the blow-by-blow account here, but it was probably a pivotal moment. It’s possible that the same moment could have come later, or earlier, since we had a mutual good friend and would probably have encountered each other again if we hadn’t that day – if I hadn’t gone to the party, or he’d chatted up the Australian girl for a few more minutes, or he’d been wearing the sweater with the duck, for instance – but that’s how it happened.

There were probably lots of other important moments or sets of moments: when we broke up (numerous times), when we got back together (numerous times +1), when I filled in the visa application form, when some random-number-generator or bikini-clad lady pulled my application number out of the hundreds of others, when we dated other people and found them not measuring up to previously set high standards. But the fact stands that if things had gone differently that evening in Rathmines, I very easily might not be sitting here, emigrant, immigrant, runner’s wife, mother of these two particular amazing/appalling children. I might be writing somewhere, wherever, but that’s about the only thing that would be the same.

I don’t think I have to mention, do I, that I’m pretty happy with the way it has turned out so far?

Present disculpatory

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Apparently I was a little distracted when putting Mabel to bed last night. She wrapped herself up in my big brown blanket and I totally forgot that we hadn’t put a nighttime pullup on her. So at eleven thirty she woke up all wet and it took a long time to get her back to sleep.

My big brown blanket is now in the wash.

I’m busy. Which is good. I like to be busy when it’s just the right amount – not overwhelming, not stressful, just busy enough to give me a sense of purpose and a good excuse when the children come wanting me to be a mommy cheetah. (I said “Miaow,” but apparently cheetahs don’t miaow. They don’t roar either. They make a high-pitched chirping noise. I find this hard to believe. I am suspicious of my children’s television-acquired knowledge.)

I’m busy getting us back to normal, whatever that is, but also trying to start exercising again – running and yoga, I’ve decided, this year/semester/term/week – and doing a small freelance job, as well as the writing course I’m taking from Alice Bradley (the wonderful, hilarious Finslippy , and I only partly said that because she might be reading). [ Alice Bradley is reading my blog. Hyperventilate, hyperventilate, spend an hour browsing past posts to try to read them with a stranger's eye; fail.]

And then I had to restock our supplies of peanut-butter and tinned tomatoes and boxes upon boxes of Cheerios (they were on special offer), as well as trying to keep the house from falling into a state of absolute squalor (some squalor is fine, just not absolute), and have a cup of tea every now and then and eat a muffin (somebody’s gotta do it) and also see above re laundry, and so that, what I’m trying to say, is why I didn’t update the blog yesterday.

Awfully Chipper

Optimists think they have more fun