Please, please, please

“I hope it snows tonight.”
“I hope it snows enough to cancel school tomorrow.”
“Please, please, pretty please, I hope it snows tonight.”

We awoke this morning, and not even a "Good morning" came out of his lips before he inquired, "Did it snow?"

He hopped out of bed to look out the window, seeing only the finest dusting of snow and ice. He went to check the school closure website.

Elsewhere in the city, inches had fallen and roads were too icy to pass.

“Oh, yea!” he squealed with delight as he hopped back in to bed.

His prayers had been answered.
My husband doesn’t have to teach today.

Advice to a New Mother

I was at a baby shower for a new Mom who, that day, had reached 37 weeks. Such an accomplishment, those first 37 weeks. She’s already mothered her young one, already sacrificed for (his or her, the parents don’t know) sake, has curtailed her activities and her work, even to the point of bed-rest for the last two months. She already knows her child’s rhythms, feels the movement, can no longer be awake or asleep without being yoked to the needs of this new life. She, who is not that far out from her own childhood, having a baby at an age that seems so young these days, who is yearning for the safety and security of her own mother, has already crossed over into Motherhood, and I don’t think she knows that yet.

After the requisite sharing of birth stories (including one birth horror story with a detailed account of watching the doctor come with scissors to cut her sister’s episiotomy), it was time for lunch. Then gifts, which were shades of yellow and green, with one exception from an aunt who provided a blue pajama set and a pink pajama set and the receipt so the parents could return whichever one they wouldn’t need. Bottle warmers, blankets, diapers, a boppie, baby carriers, a plush giraffe, hand-knitted booties so small that it defies reasoning to imagine a foot so tiny it will fit snugly in it, pacifiers, hooded bath towels, more baby blankets, outfits, a musical play mat with an overhead mobile, and baby-sized wash cloths that looked like they would be used for a doll. Finally, there was a photo/sound book, with a page for the baby’s grandmother and each of the aunts, so that the baby could flip through the book and look at their pictures while hearing the sing-song, melodic cooings and greetings from women who already love this baby. A Playmobile precursor to Skype, I suppose.

Now there was only one thing left – it was time for chocolate fondue, and the talk turned to passing along information to help the new Mom. The advice ranged from the philosophical (“it goes by so quickly”) to the sanity-saving (“make sure you meet with other Moms”) to the practical (“just call me a day in advance and tell me you need me to come by”). Life lessons imparted between the reaching and crunching and oohing and aahing over yummy morsels dipped in warm, swirling chocolate. Of course, when it was my turn, my advice was a bit longer than a sentence or a sound bite. A teaching moment, probably. Will I ever just speak like regular people? Maybe, but it seemed important for me to tell her something that I don’t think mothers often hear.

Babies cry, I said, and your baby will cry. Many times you’ll be able to soothe your baby, and sometimes you won’t. Even at the times you can’t soothe your baby, stay with him or her, hold her, speak softly and remind him that you’re right there, even if you can’t fix whatever’s wrong. At the exact moment when you get frustrated that you’ve tried everything, that you are exhausted, too, and you can’t take it one more moment, and every fiber in your being wants to push that baby away, give it to someone else to handle for a bit, walk out of the room and let the baby deal with it on it’s own, that’s the moment to breathe deeply and remember all you have to do is be there with your baby and let your baby know you’re there.

Funny, that my advice would be to prevent those moments when mothers temporarily abandon their children, leave them alone to handle something they can’t. Force them to endure not only pain or discomfort but the isolation of experiencing pain by themselves. That I want to undo our entire cultural misconception about what mothering is supposed to do . . . but I’m at a baby shower, holding a strawberry in my hand, too impatient to put it on a skewer before its chocolate bath. Mothers should contain our children, accompany them as they grow and develop, get to know these people we bring in to the world, socialize them, of course, but there’s not much else to do but be present in a useful way. Instead, we have a whole slew of mothers interested in being present when their kids are happy, invested, in fact, in making them happy, but needing to flee when their children are upset. And worse, mothers who punish their kids for moments of discomfort, unease, fear or sadness. Mothers who shame their child for the “failure” of disrupting chronic happiness and gratitude, as they themselves were shamed for failing to take away their own parents’ pain.

Happiness, I wanted to tell this woman, is nice, and it will come, but don’t get so hooked on it. Don’t over-value it. Happiness is part of your new life, but so are confusion and fatigue and fear and worry and sadness and loss and excitement and joy and boredom and awe and anger and surprise and contentment. Embrace all of these, I’d have added, if my mouth wasn’t full of the chocolate cake square I’d just coated with warm chocolate. Hold your child when he or she’s in pain – it’s way more important than videotaping your child’s first step. Soothe your child and teach him or her that pain always recedes, that it’s just a matter of time. I’d have gone on to a complete, “This, I Believe” essay, if I hadn’t been pulled to dip a piece of pineapple next, on the way that children will attach most strongly to the adults who are there for their moments of sorrow and disappointment and fear, and help them understand that they will survive these moments with the parent’s love intact. That if you want to be a Mother who has a life-long relationship with your child, one that your child actually wants to participate in, the focus should be on leaning in to those moments we can’t fix, joining in the temporary suffering in a way that deepens the bond rather than frays it.

My final advice, had I not returned to the tiniest square of chocolate cake and one, just one, pretzel, would have been this: Happiness, yours or your child’s, comes through living a full and rich life. You can’t and won’t make your child happy (and your child won’t and can’t make you happy) but you can absolutely be there to participate in the happiness when those moments come. Show up for happiness, sure, but stay through the rest.

Image adapted from backofthebox.com

On Being a (Grown Up) Daughter

I write a lot about mother – son relationships (for obvious reasons) but I recently read a book that got me thinking about the other end of my spectrum, being an adult child to one’s parents. The book, Mitch Albom’s For One More Day (Hyperion, 2006), is based on the premise of exploring an ex-baseball player’s relationship with his mother; the unique spin is that much of the story chronicles his relationship with her after her death. This got me thinking of me as a grown-up daughter with parents who are getting closer to the end of their lives than I usually care to think about.

Albom’s (anti)hero spends much of his life taking his mother for granted, and sometimes doesn’t see or talk to her for long stretches. Maybe longer than you think can usually happen in a good relationship, but not so long as to make you think he’s a terrible, terrible person. Those thoughts are reserved for the way he walks out of his daughter’s life. But his turnstile approach to his own mother doesn’t seem that unusual. It’s not so unlike how I take certain cultural institutions – the interstate, the grocery store, Amazon.com - for granted. Doesn’t matter if I don’t use one for days, months, or longer; if I really need the thing that only it provides, I’ll turn to it, and it will be there, because it has been there all along, regardless of what I think about it.

Later, he realizes some important things about being alive after the death of his parents, and this one stopped me short:

"But she wasn’t around, and that’s the thing when your parents die, you feel like instead of going in to every fight with backup, you are going into every fight alone.”

How many times my parents have provided this kind of backup. Even at times when I feel excruciatingly alone, or miserable, or stuck in an unbearably intolerable situation, I have held the knowledge that my parents will be there for me safely in my back pocket, where other people have been known to hold their Aces.

My folks might not know this, given how many times I have asked for help, but there are actually times I thought I needed their help, and didn’t ask for it – just the knowing they’d be in my corner was enough to help me make some kind of forward movement out of the difficult dilemma I’d been in.

Before my parents moved out of the family home I was raised in, the one they lived in for 43 years, I was protected from the unrealistic yet female fear of becoming homeless. I knew I could always return to my old bedroom, with my childhood single bed, blue and white stitched bedspread and even a few of my old stuffed animals still right there. But this option is now forever closed – I will never step foot again in my childhood home, and I will never watch my son sleep in my old bed, as I have when we’ve gone back to visit.

But I still am protected against being homeless, because if I needed to, I could live on my parents’ couch in their two-bedroom senior citizen apartment. I will never be homeless as long as they are alive. That’s something, in these times. A guarantee that a good professional career no longer offers, nor does marriage, raising kids who are kind to their parents, or even having really good friends to take you in. My folks are my guarantee. I will always have a home. It might make me crazy if I ever had to take the universe up on this kind of cosmic upending of everything I know to be true and the structures I have in place in my life, but crazy-because-your-parents-drive-you-crazy is one thing; homeless with no place to go and having no one in your corner is another.

There’s a second passage in the book that brought me up short. It’s taken from a scene where the main character thinks he’s encountered his mother, or her ghost, as she is no longer alive.

"Mom?" I whispered.
I hadn't said it in so long. When death takes your mother, it steals that word forever.

"Mom?"

It's just a sound really, a hum interrupted by open lips. But there are a zillion words on this planet, and not one of them comes out of your mouth the way that one does.

"Mom?”

I can still vocalize that single “Mom” sound, can utter it at will, have probably been uttering it longer than any other word or sound. And there’s just one man who is my “Pop” – another singular sound, childish in its simplicity, an onomatopoetic word that perfectly conveys that all that is my father starts and stops with one sound.

But these sounds, these effortless primal communications, will be taken from me. One day, Albom warns, I will be orphaned, like his ex-ball-player. I will enter every situation without the backup of my real-life parents and the knowledge that they would (and have) stood by me no matter what. I will be alone in a way I have never been alone. I will have no one on the other end of a phone to whom I can say, “Mom,” with as many syllables to draw it out or shorten it, as the emotion of the call requires.

That it doesn’t really even matter how much or how little struggle a child has with a parent, it’s that the child has been wrapped in the consistency of always having been the child. There is someone who will answer to “Mom” or “Pop” and someplace to go home to, regardless of how crazy it makes you. That even though I’m now “Mom” to someone else, and I don’t need to be wrapped like a child in anything, I can hold the bravado of that position only because I still am somebody’s beloved daughter.

Tulip Buds: 23 and Counting

As of today, there are 23 tulip buds poking their way up through the dirt under my three front windows.

I have been counting daily.

My son, too, has been hunting for evidence of sprouts. Each new one that emerges meets with a shout of “I found another one!” He also has a favorite – it’s the tall one in this picture. So far it’s been the tallest all along, and now it’s about 4 inches high.

For a while, the count remained in the single digits, and it seemed as if there was nothing that was sprouting under the master bedroom window, the site of our first bed, created with our haphazard, “just toss the bulbs in any old way” strategy. I figured perhaps we’d be down to 2 tulip beds, but even that would have heralded success.

But wouldn’t you know it – the tiniest yellow-green tip pointed its way upward (and, yes, I knelt on the ground and brushed the top layer of soil off because I couldn’t stand not knowing any longer if our efforts would fail us). So there you have it.

I was in the midst of my “woo-hoo’s” and victory dance just when the neighbors were getting into their car.

“We’re gonna have tulips!” I preened.

My neighbors are master gardeners with leveled landscaping throughout their back yard. Bless them, they smiled at me and let me keep my delight.

So, it seems we are going to have tulips this spring.

If 23 are above ground now, I can hardly imagine what will actually bloom in whatever season is the right one for them to flower. Watch for my complete victory dance when the first one opens.

Outside the Bakery

Picture this:
A French Patisserie with floor-to-ceiling windows on both sides of its distressed wooden front door, with a view to gleaming cases of sun-touched, butter-kissed breads, croissants, pastries, some with jam, some with sugary/buttery/vanilla-enhanced cream cheese that manages to be smooth and creamy and not-too-sweet, tarts with fruit slices or berries atop lemony custard, baguettes in straw bins, a rack against the far wall with loaves light and dark, soft and hard crusts, some flour-dusted, others buffed to a shine with egg wash, baskets of rolls and bread knots, a large black cappuccino maker against the back wall, white ceramic mugs sturdy enough to hold a latte or hot dark cocoa and plates not quite big enough for whatever delectable, doughy, bready, buttery, flaky, just-right treat that fills your deepest hunger. You crave not only the flavor of the bakery items, but the way just being in the shop fills all your senses, fills the places in your soul that you sometimes forget are unfilled, and your whole being seems to recalibrate. You are right there, up at the counter, beginning your choice - which aroma, which vision, which color/flavor/texture plays more seductively with your senses, and the moment of choice, marking the beginning of a delicate waiting period – how much longer it may be before the mouth-watering morsel is in your possession – and how you will savor this moment. You’ll breathe it in, observe the line and color as if you were appreciating a fine painting, feel the weight and airiness of the treat in your hand, pull at one end slowly to remove the first bite. This foreplay is essential, as foreplay always is, to your pleasure, and you will not rush this treat. You will succumb to the whole-body pleasure release that an indulgence such as this offers. And you will delight in knowing that you can return, sample another treat, pull apart another doughy handful, inhale again the yeasty pleasure of this inner sanctum.

Now picture this:
You are standing outside the bakery, watching what is happening inside. People enter, make their selections; some eat there, others take their treats home in pink boxes and to-go cups. You want to go in, you believe you belong there. But others are inside, and you’re not. Some seem at ease, with the sense that there is no other place to be. Others are there so casually it’s as if it doesn’t even matter to them that they are there. Someone has taken your chocolate-drizzled croissant, and is engulfed in the rapture that should be yours. Someone else is devouring a marzipan puff pastry, but is eating it all wrong – big, fast bites, followed by guzzled gulps of plain coffee. The pastry is gone in three enormous bites. You feel outrage that this perfect taste sensation was wasted on someone who wolfed it down like a dog inhaling kibble. There was no chance of any part of it lingering on, let alone activating, the taste buds. You are suddenly weary. All the joy that is squandered in that shop – oh, how you would appreciate it if only you were allowed in. But somehow you know that you will never be let in. This is a shop that others will enjoy, many getting it just right, others buzzing through so quickly they will miss out completely on what is possible, but at least they had a chance. You don’t.

When I went through the melancholy of my misunderstood and lonely youth, I felt like an outsider, and imagined myself, nose pressed against the window of a bakery shop, prohibited from entry. I was convinced I was never going to gain access to the life that others seemed to take for granted, the one of happiness and joy and abundant sensual pleasure. Even as a youngster, I consoled myself with language and metaphor.

Over the years, and with the kind of relentlessness that can turn out in your favor if directed correctly, I have somehow created a life that feels as rich as my fantasy Patisserie. My bakery/life is filled with my own favorite treats, and nary a concoction that doesn’t appeal to me - there isn’t a pizza bagel, quiche Lorraine, or olive bread in sight. So it was a surprise to feel myself recently whooshed out the door, feet planted back in front of the windows. I had somehow recreated this early feeling, and was bumbling through my present-day routine as if it were happening again.

In hindsight, I think there is something in the present life bakery that I don’t like. But it’s not a pastry; it’s an occasional customer who takes over a table, stays for too long and stacks the table with a laptop and newspapers and a blackberry, wears a hands-free device and takes too many calls in such a small place, generates an energy that makes others want to be more than a few tables away, but the place just isn’t that big. I can’t ask this person to leave, as there is technically no law or rule being broken. Others sit at tables with laptops or iPads or are plugged in to MP4 players, some talk or laugh too loudly, some loiter over a day-old pastry and drip coffee that together won’t make a dent in this baker’s overhead, but none cast a feel like this occasional customer. I have come to dread the sight and sound of this person, who seems to take over the bakery for no reason at all, especially as he doesn’t seem to enjoy anything he’s ever ordered.

But a passing unpleasantry and the presence of one person who temporarily disrupts my equilibrium should not be enough to expel me from my bakery. This time, it was me who was keeping me out – it probably was that way, too, as a child, but kids don’t understand that their way of adapting to what they don’t like insures that it keeps happening. In younger years, I could catalog the injustice of - oh, here you can fill in the blanks – my family, my schoolmates, my town, my part of the country, ever-larger concentric circles of influence, right up to and including God. There was something at work here, keeping me out.

Thankfully, at some point during this gloomy redux, I remembered that I have been here before, in my old, youthful place on the other side of the window, looking in. There is no injustice, just the reality that sometimes someone comes in to my shop and makes it unpleasant for me. The injustice, perhaps, is that I presumed I’d be immune from unwanted experiences, that once I was granted entry into that fragrant Eden there would be nothing unpleasant. My mistake here, not to anticipate that part of the bakery experience all along was to encounter a crabby customer, or a late delivery, or burst pipes, or a burnt or unrisen batch that would have to be thrown out. I seem to have expected only bliss upon entry to the joyous life I longed for; I didn’t count on how a full and rich life requires joy and sorrow, loved ones and less-than-loved ones, and it is this mix that helps us appreciate the exquisiteness of surrounding ourselves with the people we enjoy most. With very little exception, my time in this little shop is exactly what I hoped was possible in this life. I remember all the savory moments I’ve had, the delectable, unrushed sensual joys and the occasional quick, ravenous, shovel-full bites.

I am not sentenced to live outside of the life I want, peering in. All I have to do is open the door and walk right back in. Head right up to the counter, with gratitude for the baker who has designed my favorite treats, and partake of one right here, right now.