"It's okay Mama, it's just puberty"

My Apron.  It has shorter and shorter strings.  And damn it, I miss them.  For every time I have silently screamed "Give me one minute of peace and quiet!" (or sometimes maybe not so silently), I find myself struggling with the tiny steps away that Sister Big is asking for. 

Not long ago I was in a workshop when I heard something that frightened me.  The average onset of hormonal shift initiating puberty is around nine in girls.  Whiskey Tango Foxtrot, Excuse me?!?  I don't remember much of the next hour of presentation as I internally counted days until the next birthday, and took a few trips down "denial" river, trying to convince myself that our child would be a late entry into this race.  Surely we did not have to start talking and thinking about this yet.  Right?

And yet...

Recently we took our first tentative forays into pre-puberty conversation and I was both anxious and sad as we had the conversation.  First of all, it feels dreadfully important to get it right.  This is the foundation and framework by which she will determine what is normal (all of it), and what is okay to ask (any of it), and whether she is "okay" on her journey, (and you are my sweet girl.)  And this is the first of many times when she has to be able to ask me anything and I have to be ready.  All in all it went smoothly, but I was also amazed by her grace.  At one point, as I got temporarily stuck in determining how much information was enough for now, she interrupted me and said "It's okay mom.  It's just puberty.  It's normal.  Nothing to get upset or worried about."  When did she learn this gentle assurance?  And please, can I take credit for it?  Let her have gotten it from me.

We had our moments of hilarity as I tried to provide information on how babies arrive in a non-cesarean birth,(and for those of you who have yet to go down this conversational path, perhaps forgo comparing uterine contractions moving the baby along  to squeezing toothpaste from a tube.)  And for the love of all that is good and clinical, just skip trying to wade slowly into the water and start with the word vagina.  Or as Adele prefers, Minnie-Moo.  If not, your child may be left as mine, with the idea that non-cesarean births occur from "another area of the mother's body" and question with no small amount of panic, "You mean one day you open your mouth and a baby flies out?"

And leaving this territory, there is also the pulling away of hands in parking lots, and walking half an aisle away in the grocery store, and the sheer horror that crossed her face when I mentioned that I was invited to stay at the birthday party she was attending.  "Mom!  NO!  I want to do this like a big kid.  I don't want you to help."  What?  When did we get here?  I mean, I wasn't even going to be wearing a bathing suit and there was horror.  Can you imagine if I had shown up in my matronly, skirted, supportive one-piece?  Quarters in the therapy jar my people.

And finally, I cannot get a moment's privacy in this house, or anywhere else I might go.  Dressed, nude, bathing, sleeping...it doesn't matter.  Bring it on.  Mom's door is always open.  Even when it was shut.  But all of a sudden, this child cannot change her clothes on the same floor as any other member of the household.  All I hear throughout our waking hours is "I want privacy."  And the stunning double standard is that while she needs privacy, I am allowed none.  "Why are you wearing that?"  "Why do you do that?"  "Why was the door locked?"  "Why?"

So, much like childbirth itself, the first contractions are merely the opening act.    And like my first contractions, I remember thinking that this was so much easier than what I had been preparing for.   And if raising Sister Big is anything like her labor and delivery, I'm in for quite a ride.  To quote a new Mama friend who summed up childbirth as succinctly as I have heard it to date; "Labor.  Whoa!  No joke."  And that, my friends, is just the opening act.
 

XX XY

Just an observation.  There are no empirical, evidence based samples or charts with snazzy graphics  to back this up.  There is simply my in-the-trenches experience and anecdotes provided by others with whom I have shared my story.

Apparently, having two X chromosomes makes you impervious to barf.

Case in point, I was in a room of over one hundred children when one of them began to vomit.  The XY members of adulthood that occupied my space, stepped back, (one with hands literally in the air in the universal "Not Me" pose).  Another adult pushed the industrial, custodial-sized bin in front of the ill child and stated, "Um, she's throwing up."

Now I don't know this child, but I do know that a child barely topping 60 pounds and four-ish feet, cannot effectively make use of a receptacle that stands at nose height and outweighs her by ten or more pounds.  Nor is it fair to ask a child, already queasy, to stare into the maw of a trash bin filled with a building's worth of lunch leftovers.  This would not do.

I grabbed paper towels for the little one's face and began to move her to a better spot.  Other adults in the building, as we encountered them cleared the path for us, opened doors, etc.  And in my largely female dominant workplace, it makes sense that many of the assists were from women.  But it made me wonder, how would this have gone down if my double X was not in the room?

I have heard numerous stories from new parents about nascent fathers who say "But you're a girl!  You know how to do these things...(diapers, spit-up, etc.)"  And our own Mr. Unscripted who has gone into burning buildings and served as an EMT; who has seen traumatic injuries that I beg him not to retell anywhere near the dinner hour or table, can be quoted as saying prior to the birth of Sister Big, "Alright, I'll change the diaper, but if she spits up on me, I'm gonna lose it."  (And to give him his due, when the inevitable "spit happens" moment arrived, he did pull his parenting breeches all the way up and handle it with minimal gagging.  And I'll be honest, when the dogs have had an accident in the house, I'm always grateful when he is here to handle it as I am a hot mess of heaving, retching, gore if left to my own devices. 

So perhaps, XY can handle things outside the body that shouldn't be when there is a genetic link?   I just don't know. 

In thinking about the two adults in the opening of this post, if we were under threat of violence, I know that they would likely be the first to take on a traditionally male protective role.    So it isn't that they are weak or passive.  While I don't pretend to understand how a man who can face down a potentially armed intruder can be undone by vomit, I will go on record as saying that given the two, you take the bullets and I'll get the barf every time.

While this may seem a sketchy topic for Valentine's Day, I promise there is a connection.  Be grateful for the people with whom you have surrounded yourself, romantically or otherwise.   For each time you shake your head over the fact that you are, (possibly again), handling the bilious things life has thrown at you, remember that on any given day, these people might be the ones who would take a bullet for you, or in some cases, provide your bail money.  Be grateful for your own superpower and know that the person nearest you just may not have had the opportunity to show theirs yet. 

Annual Reminder That I Am Not Reasonable

Of all my favorite holidays, Valentines isn't.  It is a holiday that cannot live up to the hype and expectation. And every year, (really, EVERY year), I fall for it and end up filled with angst, and frustrated anger.

When I was an elementary school student, the biggest excitement was in eating scads of chalky hearts and giggling over the silly messages which we knew meant something, and even more importantly, something about boys and girls and dating and K-I-S-S-I-N-G, but there wasn't a layer of "Show me you love me in a big and meaningful way."  There were no Kisses beginning with Kay, or queries about whether or not he had been to Jared.  You made the big gesture if you gave the flashiest, most heavily be-stickered fold-in-half card to someone other than your BFF.

And then suddenly the boy-girl thing happened.  Suddenly those conversation hearts were a little more meaningful.  And just a little later, in junior high, there were carnation sales and rose sales as fundraisers.  Those days were killers.

Every class period that morning was disrupted by enterprising upperclassmen entering with an armful of flowers.   There was expectation and anticipation and disappointment in rejection all wrapped up in those single stems.  Would you be the girl who got the yellow carnation of friendship, or the red rose of love, or the pink of I don't-even-remember-what?  Would you be the boy that every girl bought a flower for in a shade of daring "date-me"?  Would you be the shy kid in the back whose anxiety made you both wish for just one flower and fear that someone would actually send one. (Every time, times six years.) I'm pretty sure one year the teachers took up a collection to send me  flowers just to keep me from crying.

In college, Valentine's Day was both another opportunity to party, and the night that you didn't want to be the leper washing your hair in the communal bathroom or schlepping to the rec room in bunny slippers while everyone else in the free world with a pulse and a pair of heels was making a mass exodus for amazing dinner and jewelry and wine.  (Not me this time.  My slippers were bears.)

Then the Valentine's that was certain to end in engagement, only it really ended with "I think we should see other people before we get serious."  (Suddenly the card with one chocolate heart in it  made more sense, it was not the decoy gift, it was the kiss-of-death.)

Then married Valentine's, part One.  If you marry a man who is not into big gestures, who buys his gifts at the grocery store on the way home from work, or buys you a gift that's really a boomerang gift for himself, Valentine's is going to eat your soul.  When your friend calls to say that she just opened an amazing piece of jewelry smuggled into her dinner entree and sprinkled with pixie dust and unicorn sparkles, you might want to stick a fork in your eye.  Or hers.

 It might make your hand-drawn on a post-it note in Sharpie Valentine a little less...well, just less.  You might wonder how you have failed, again, at celebrating Valentine's in a way that will leave you with a memory for your golden years.  You might try to plan elective surgery to avoid the lunch table conversation around "What did you guys do for Valentine's?"  You might briefly contemplate homicide, but you live in a cold New England region where burial will have to wait at least six to eight more weeks, and nobody has that much quick lime.

And then Married Valentine's, part Two.  Years pass and you find yourself divorced, single, and remarried over the span of several of those damn V-holidays.  And you think that this time, yes this time, you will be the girl of a thousand flowers, with golden debris in her entree, and an amazing story at lunch on Monday.  However, silly you.  You have married a pragmatist.  Handy for when your burning desire is to have the brakes replaced on your car, not so applicable in holidays of the gift-giving nature.  Handy when you need someone to build a device to lift a mattress into a third story window of a two hundred year old house because the stairwell is too narrow, but not when just once before your dotage, you want to be the star of your own Romcom scene.

And so, my Valentine's loving friends, I wish you all the best with your holiday plans, but this is one celebration that I no longer take part in.  I've heard the refrain "I don't want something on one day, I want to be shown that I'm loved every day"  and I get it, but honestly, my brain and heart have a disconnect on this holiday.  I want to be loved every day, and a little extra on Valentine's Day.

I tell myself that not all good things begin with Kay, but honestly, very few good Valentine's begin with kettlecorn.  And if your holiday fare goes well with ketchup, we probably have vastly different expectations. 

Oh Elll Dee

So I sit there, with my feet dangling over the edge of the exam table, clutching my paper of current conditions and medications, wearing the little transparent "dress" that hospitals apparently feel preserves your modesty.    I skimmed the sheet again and thought "This can't be right!"  At the bottom of the page, as a footer, were my stats.  "Age; 41"  It really caught me once again how big that number looks and feels and how little it corresponds with my brain.  I no longer know what age I think I am, but even on a rough day, 41 doesn't feel like it belongs to me.  It's my parents, or my parent's friends, but not me.

When I look at photos of my parents in their forties, they are accompanied by nearly adult children.  When I look at pictures of my husband and I, we have a kindergartner and a toddler.  In the photo, they are so close to having an adult life again, and me?  Not so much.  And when Sister Little says "Mama, you my best fwend." it all feels like the right and true thing, but there are days, long and painful days when I want to lie down and cry with the "18 more years of this, really?" of it all.

And now a new doctor to meet.  Break in. Break down in front of.  Become vulnerable to.  I swear that all of them are starting to look like they should be babysitting my children and that makes me feel capital-Oh Ell Dee.  Please, please, please, let this doctor be gentle with my fragile and wobbly ego.

And you know what?  I love my new doctor.  She's real.  She's funny and and just the right amount of sarcastic.  She tells the truth.  She puts me in the driver's seat of decisions about my body.  She laughed at her own advice to up my planned exercise to five sessions weekly, eat more vegetables and drink less coffee, and to get more rest.  She gets it.  She heard me say, "I last slept through the night in 2001".  She looked at my enormous tonsils and busted a totally inappropriate joke, which still makes me chuckle.  And she's only a little older than I am.

This "forties" thing is a roller coaster for me.  On one hand, I'm a whole lot freer than I've ever been.  I know who I am with more clarity and I know what I'm willing to spend my time on and what just isn't worth it anymore.     But I'm also in that place of wanting to make a difference and I feel that I don't even have time to make a dent.  My own developmental needs are not matching up to my external reality.    I want time to lay on the floor with my babies and play games, and I also want my house to myself to lay in quiet and do nothing.  I want to make a difference, and I want to be liked, but I don't want to play the games anymore.

But I think I am in the throes of midlife crisis.   I miss my college self, and the times I missed  doing the ridiculous things because I was too serious, or too shy.  I miss my twenty something self that felt like time was passing me by and my real adult life needed to start "Right Now!"  (I kind of want to go back and kick her in the pants, and shake some sense into her.  You don't know how good you had it sister.)  And I want to remind that girl at twenty, and thirty and even thirty-five not to rush.  Decisions are big and their reach is far.  A paycheck is necessary, but not guaranteed happiness.  A relationship is comforting, but not necessarily security.   Friends are important, but not always life-long.  And to a lesser degree, dessert is divine, but for the love of romaine, salad is important too.

When one of my parents turned forty, a sibling reported that his forties were the decade when everything began to fall apart.  Let me assemble the evidence:  I now make the same groaning noise I ridiculed my parents for when I get up in the morning.  Something in my back or neck is not happy.  I can't drink coffee in the evening if I want to sleep this week.  Goodbye espresso for dessert circa 1994.   I now hold medicine bottles at an angle and distance that are appropriate when playing trombone, but somewhat humbling in the pharmacy.  And laser surgery for my eyes is now out.  I'm at "the age" where, while they could correct my distance vision, my eyes are changing rapidly enough, that my close vision is going to keep me in lenses.  And when I fall now, it hurts.

Take this week, I came home from work to find our aging dog had not been able to make the day indoors without accident.  This is new for us.  And while I found evidence sample one and two, I did not see exhibit three.  Fortunately I had shoes.  Unfortunately, they were clogs.  I shot across the floor in a near standing position before my speed dropped and so did I, falling in nine directions simultaneously.  My new reality is apparently such that I had to evaluate if the snapping sound I heard was my ankle or something now lying under me in my new, prone, besmirched, and aching vantage point.  Fortunately it was a crayon and not a skeletal unit, but when did my brain make this switch?  Who gave the sign?

So, I'm not really complaining, because being 41 certainly beats the alternative of not being 41, but I have this amnesia-quality recollection of how I got here so quickly.  And regret that I can't go back and do some things over.  I think I would be smarter and more observant if given the chance.  I certainly would have turned on a light before going into the family room last Friday night ;)

In My Hands

 "The final forming of a person's character lies in their own hands."- Anne Frank

Hands tell a story.  My family comes from farming roots.  My great grandmother had worn her fingerprints away by the time she she was an adult and could not be fingerprinted for entry into the country.  My grandmother's hands were  marked with the signs of gardening, canning, and a lifetime of hard work.  My mother's hands were one step removed, still hardworking, but less likely to show the toil of subsistence farming, and more likely to be marked, at various times in her life, with ink from grading papers, paper-cuts from filing documents, stains from prepping produce for market, and nicks and scratches from working with scissors and pins.

My story starts here.  I was in third grade when my mother began to have me help her in the kitchen.  Usually tasks like peeling carrots and dicing celery.  I vividly recall laying my head on my desk during homework later and realizing that my hands still smelled like chopped vegetables.  More importantly, they smelled like my mother and my grandmother.  I had taken my place among the women of my family.   A rite of passage  sounds grandiose, but for me,  it was the first time I could put words around the comforting smell that I knew from my grandmother and my mother's presence when I was sick and needed soothing, or troubled and needed calming, or just needed to be grounded with being here.  The perfume of my family is in carrots and celery and onions.  Years later, watching cooking shows, I would hear that this trio had a culinary name; mirepoix.  All I knew was that it smelled like home, and love, and safe.

What story do my hands tell?  Certainly a more comfortable life than that of my family before me. Don't get me wrong, I have had my share of hard work, but more in the form of summer employment, or brief, in-transition, jobs.  There was the summer when my hands reflected a three-month stint gardening for an exacting home-owner whom liked her grass edges trimmed by hand, with scissors.  All eighteen garden beds.  Weekly.  (Which was about the time it took for garden one to be in need of a trim by the time I had worked my way through bed eighteen.)

There is the year that I worked in a video rental department within a grocery store.  One that held a movie-theater style popcorn machine.   A machine that required the repeated melting of a waxen block of solid fats and chemicals masquerading as buttery topping.  I could not load that pan without inadvertently hitting my hand on the lid, raging hot and grease-covered.  Which frequently led to cursing that I hoped was masked by the now rotating metal blade and  popping of the  and oil-covered dry kernels.

There are the years where my hands were covered with ink, and paper-cuts, and fingernails bitten to the quick.  Hands chapped and dry from frigid winds blowing across lakes in between unyielding brick buildings.  Fingernails caked in clay, and play-dough, crayons, and oobleck as I finished my degree, working and training in a lab school setting.

My hands will tell you very little about my life these days.  My career leaves more imprints on my heart than my hands. And yet, if you come close, and let me hold your hand, you might find that my signature scent is more mirepoix than Chanel.  Some things are simply deeply written in familial code and while I am no longer reliant on my ability to sow, grow and hoe my sustenance, I still find comfort in using my hands to feed my family; their body, senses, and soul.

Now it is time for me to prepare another page in the chapter that is my "right now".  Carrots are to be peeled by Sister Middle, and Sister Big has knife skills that are on the cusp of being independent.  And perhaps tonight, as they drift to sleep, they will also notice the connection that holds their hands with those of their family across time.

Calling All Book-Lovers

When I was little, some of my favorite memories are of sitting tucked between the wood stove and the adjacent cabinetry wall, back against the brick facing reading page after page of a good book.  Failing that, I would make a air-capturing, furnace-defeating tent over the air grate using an afghan knit by my mother, reading page after page of a good book.  I read in the car, on the couch, on the school bus, anywhere I could.  I have burned out more flashlights and booklights than you can number over the years.  All in the pursuit of a next really good book.  A transport to another time, place, feeling.

As a child and later, a teen, I remember hearing my mother say she loved to read, but could never find the time; by the time she dropped into bed she had barely read one page before the book rudely fell against her face, startling her awake.  At the time I pitied her, but couldn't comprehend.  Now, I get it.  I really want those days back when I could lounge somewhere, anywhere, reading as long as I wanted uninterrupted.  Guilt-free.  It's not that I can't carve time to read, it is just that it comes at a cost somewhere else, and the price is high.  I can read, but that means my kids are in front of the tv.  I can read, but I'm not spending time with my husband.  I can read, but the house is not getting any cleaner.  And so, dedicated reading time has become the bastion of sick days and middle of the night.  Somewhere in my brain, reading has been categorized as a luxury, or somehow illicit.  And like any addict, I don't function without it.

Last year, Mr. Unscripted recognized this and gave me an e-reader.  At first, I was excited but cautiously so.  You see, I love the sensorial aspects of turning a real, paper and ink book.  I love the whisper of pages turning, the musty smell that is only the domain of aging books, and even the varying look and feel of pages of a closed book, smooth or staggered-cut; rough toothed or satin smooth pages. I am the girl who reads what type the book is set in and the history that goes with it.   I like the heft of a book in my hand and the visual demarcation of progress as the pages remaining join their earlier compatriots on the left side of my vision.

I did not expect to fall for the technology of the reader.  But soon I knew that I loved being able to see the percentage of the book left as a tangible number.  I fell in love with the ability to tap a word and get the definition immediately without rising from my comfy spot, thereby alerting the children that Mama was having some grown-up time unsupervised.  (And I love words.  I love collecting them, using them, knowing them.  This was a previously unknown luxury.  Words on demand, my people.)

And I loved the ability to highlight a beautiful turn of phrase and save it indefinitely.  I always had a journal of phrases and descriptions copied down in the past, and while I loved it, this is so much easier and immediately gratifying.  And it's all in one, slim, go-anywhere package.  And for the speed with which I was able to pull this up and share it with a fellow book-lover, anywhere.  And this is where I really fell hook, line, and sinker.  For as much as I love books, I have a horrible ability to summarize them for someone wanting to know what to read next.  I never have to struggle for the title, author or summary.  I can just open and scroll through.  My entire book history, (almost), at my fingertips.  And yours too, for the asking.

Recently, Sister Big has started to resist reading.  This has been the equivalent of the eldest son refusing to take on the family business.  And initially, I did all the wrong things.  I insisted, I withheld privileges, and I (shamefully) tried guilting her into reading more.   And then a wise local librarian verbally grabbed me by my collar and shook some sense into me.  Show your love of reading, she urged me.  Carve out time and read, chuckle out loud, gasp audibly, let them know that you can't put the book down because it is just that good.  In essence, stop treating reading as something to sneak in between other things, and return it to a place of honor and priority.  And, stop sugarcoating the reading material.  Let her read something that is just a little bit scary or bold.  Let her feel the feels.

And you know what, she is "sneaking" that book to bed with a flashlight now,  trying to finish it before I can.  No longer waiting for me to read it to her, or with her, she is finding her own reading nest, and carving out that sense of illicit reading wonder.  And I for one, pretend not to see the bobbing flashlight as she tries to read one more page without falling asleep.  As for me, my house is never "House Beautiful" quality, and lately it is even less so, but life is short and I for one have over five hundred books on my to-read list.  The floors can wait.

Forever-There

I was blessed to grow up in a small town, with a tight-knit community.  Our parents were both ours alone, and part of the collective town-parent.  How many town meetings, school plays, birthday parties, graduations, did we share?  Beyond any accurate count, it is just part of the fabric of my childhood.  When I think of my hometown, my school, my growing-up, there are a solid handful of faces that stand with my own parents.  Tonight was a goodbye to one of those forever-there faces.

Tonight I stood beside a friend I have known for all but the first five years of my life and we cried together.   I stood there because I needed to say words that could not take away her pain, and to let her know that I see her sadness. I hugged her twice because once didn't say it all and marveled at her grace under such trying circumstances.  Her beautiful daughter stood beside her, taking loving care of her, straddling the divide between child and young adult from moment to moment. It was beautiful and emotional and so very, very real.

 It struck me with full force that we have stopped being the children and become the parents, the ones who begin to say goodbyes we are not ready for; To our own parents that we still think of as invincible. "Wait! We are the children!" our brains cry out, but time has silently moved on, leaving us with roles we haven't asked for.  

This father leaves a legacy of strong, hard-working, caring children.  Women I was proud to grow up with.  Women I am still proud to know.  Women I wish I had hugged just one more time tonight to let them know how much I wish them peace.