About Mallory Kasdan

http://www.mallorykasdan.com

Posts by Mallory Kasdan:

happy + sappy = saphappy

Last week something unexpected occurred. I woke up every morning in a perfectly calibrated emotional state: energized, calm, grateful, and content. The realization of which led to something I’d describe as elation.

WTF is that about?

It took me by surprise. My go-to mindset since having Miles 19 months ago has been one of desperate tiredness and constant overwhelmdoom. Of course I’ve had laughing jags and felt pride and joy and love for my family and friends during that time, but mostly I’ve been blindsided by the exponential difficulty of upping the family ante from one to two children. It took a good long while to feel like I wasn’t freaking out ALL the TIME, and I certainly haven’t felt “relaxed” or “content” in a while. We’re talking like 18.5 months.

Last week Evan kept saying, “I can’t believe how pleasant you’re being,” which of course made me feel awful about what a Crabby Crabstein I must have been for the last bit.

Mostly, I credit this new excellent mind state to a good few weeks of getting enough sleep. It’s so ridiculously simple how much this can help a parent’s sanity that it’s trite and boring just to write that sentence. I mean obviously, humans need to sleep without getting woken up every few fucking hours for months on end. I was starting to get pissy at everyone in my path as the sleeplessness folded into itself night after night – bleeding into day after day. Because how could I be angry at sweet little Miles for torturing me at night for this long? It was easier to be irritated with Evan for breathing, my daughter for stomping her feet in her all of her five year old-ness, my babysitter for being unclear, work for being slow, myself for not eating well, drinking more than one glass of wine at night and not going to sleep early.

Through the tiredness, I’d been working on the concepts of being grateful and present and feeling blessed for as long as I can remember – trying to calm myself and not stoking my own anxiety and ramping up the internal drama. I knew theoretically how lucky I was to have this family and this good life but somehow knowing wasn’t enough. I wasn’t feeling it, and trying to feel and believe it has been work for sure. Wrestling, trying, chewy, workity work. And then, something (nothing?) clicked into place last week and it was like all the therapy and the yoga and the analyzing were finally working. WORKING!

The same week, something else major was peaking. My friend David is enjoying massive career success right now, and last week the television show he made aired on MTV. The lead up to it has made me insanely proud and excited for him. I believe my people call it “kvelling.”

A few years ago, Dave decided to switch careers from advertising to writing. Not an easy thing to do, especially because he was already successful in advertising – he had made many hilarious commercials and was highly regarded as a writer and creative director. But he went for it – he sat down, wrote a funny book about finding yourself in your twenties, and then worked like crazy to have it optioned into a television show. I wouldn’t say he made it look easy exactly – there were lots of ups and downs throughout the process of the book being made into a TV show now on MTV (called “I Just Want My Pants Back”). But I never doubted that it would happen. He’s just that kind of person with that type of drive and talent. Smart, funny and lucky, with an amazingly supportive wife and people around him who wished him well, because he’s a good, menschy funny person who can find the absurdities of life and distill them down to good jokes in like two seconds. It’s just so cool that this is happening to him and his family. I am just seriously jacked up about this.

So on top of feeling good finally personally inside my brain and body, even its just about being well rested enough to appreciate it, and even if its temporary, having such a pure kind of happiness for my friend on top of it really feels fantastic.

Sometimes it’s easy to be happy. Hopefully, it won’t make me tedious.

Blogger, undirected ruminations

lice lice lady

There are certain things you don’t know about. Until you do. And then, if you’re like me, you’ll suddenly know way too much about said subject. You’ll seek out info, talk to everyone, see all the sides of the thing, and really just sink those teeth of yours into the meat of the issue. You’ll go there.

This week, that thing was lice. Totally, awesomely, sexy-ass lice.

Apparently, lice is the dirty (not so) secret of the school aged kid. And because young kids are mostly grubby little scumbags who never have any idea what’s happening to them, it’s clearly a much bigger deal and rite of passage for their parents.

They found it in school last Friday, where people from a lice checking company are contracted to come and pick thru the kids’ heads four times a year. Z didn’t even get sent home, because it was “just an egg.” It’s a Department of Health/Department of Education rule that teachers don’t have to send kids home with the eggs – just the live lice. Seriously, that is a stupid fucked up rule. Those eggs hatch into lice! I know I was only a B – student in biology but come on now.

But here’s the fun news – in New York City you can just call someone on the phone like you’re calling the deli for OJ and tampons and within hours, someone will come to your house, apply shampoo and special conditioners and comb the lice out of your kid’s hair. I was laughing with a friend about how our contemporaries used to call people’s pagers (remember life before cel phones?) to get pot delivery people to come over, and now we’re calling lice ladies. Business idea I would have appreciated in this particular instance: “Hits and Nits.”

Turns out, most of the women who do this for a living are observant Jews, so getting lice on Shabbos eve was not a great situation. I was freaking. I had already thrown everything in the washing machine and began my ten hour laundry marathon for the night and was convinced we were all infested. But Brenda, this nice Jewish lady who owns the company and sounded like one of my mom’s friends, talked me down and told me she could have somewhere there in about an hour and a half. A lice lady pimp.

I had heard from other moms I know about this one famous woman named Abigail, an Orthodox woman in Boro Park Brooklyn who is such the maven of lice ladies that she had a New Yorker profile written about her. Honestly, you cannot make this stuff up.

http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2002/01/28/020128ta_talk_martin

I was sad to miss the opportunity to meet any person who had been profiled in the New Yorker, but I needed action that night, and as I mentioned, it was Shabbos.

So Brenda sent us the lovely Svetlana, a tired, middle-aged, Russian bleached blonde who made her way over around 8:30 PM with her rollie suitcase full of magnifier lamps, combs, shampoos, lotions and oils. She had been working since 8:30 AM that morning, when she helped diagnose the many cases at my daughter’s school. Since then she had been to three people’s homes and combed out several heads. That woman needed a glass of wine, which I gave her after she checked us all, treated and combed Z’s hair section by section, and told us how to proceed with treatment over the next week. She even gave Z a little present – a compact mirror with a winking lady on it.

None of us had gotten lice, or eggs, besides Z, which meant we caught it early and were pretty lucky. Svetlana was awesomely Russian and blase and I totally love her. I tipped her ass off. She drained her wine, told us she’d be back Sunday morning at 8 am, rollie suitcased out the door, and went home in a car service to get a well deserved good night’s sleep. Because the next day she had to go to work “in the salon.” That’s where she works when she’s not combing lice out of school children.

So one thing to take away here is that you never really know what people are doing on the side. And its probably best that way.

Blogger, undirected ruminations

The New “New”

The last 11 days have been nonstop family time. And while I’m totally exhausted from the non-stop-ed-ness of it, the planning and the packing and trying to keep them occupied in airports and restaurants, there’s something lovely and special about the self-contained capsule of vacation together time. I loved looking over on our flight the other day and there we all were, four of us clumped into three seats, all looking at some kind of screen, gobbling snacks. I love turning around from mission control (shotgun) in our car and seeing the two of them sleeping with abandon in their car seats, cozy with their blankets. The feeling of seeing all my lovies confined to ten square feet of space somehow warms me – like we’re as present as we can be in this adventure, barreling into space together.

So it’s pretty sweet. However. After the unnecessarily stressful and busy build up of the Hanukkah/Christmas/New Years season, 11 days without our beloved babysitter, and almost two weeks of the smaller kid waking up every night several times, its nice to be back to a moment where I can just sit quietly and collect my thoughts and write some things down and maybe take a walk without worrying that I have to get back to relieve my husband as he watches both kiddies.

I do like the special times but much prefer the regular days, routine, and doing what we always do. I like the normal.

And now, onto the new. New year. New goals. New anxieties. So how to calm the constant adrenaline and the need I have to be always be moving and doing? How to balance wanting MORE, being better, thinking big with being content and feeling lucky? I’d say my biggest challenge is how to find the joy and not see the stress. So I’ll be working on that. If you have ideas about how I can chill the f$#k out, do let me know.

Blogger, undirected ruminations

Our Babysitter Got Tuberculosis

Who even gets tuberculosis any more, besides characters in Emily Bronte novels?

Apparently, babysitters who spend the majority of their day breathing all over my kid. That’s who.

It was January of 2009 and Tenzin was sick with that flu everyone seemed to have. She had missed a few days of work, and had a startling cough of the lingering variety.  It was the icy morning of Obama’s inauguration and I had a 10 a.m. job. I sat at the kitchen table in my coat with my 2-year-old daughter Z, drumming my fingers and waiting for Tenzin to walk in the door. The phone rang at 9:20 a.m. Her voice was thin and she sounded like she had been crying. She had collapsed on the subway and couldn’t move her legs.

I knew she had been putting off dealing with how sick she was, hoping it would just go away because she didn’t have health insurance. But hearing her voice at that moment, I must have known something was really wrong and that it was no longer acceptable to rely on her to take care of herself. I called an ambulance and headed over to the subway station near our house in Brooklyn. I found her on a bench inside the turnstiles, sitting with a cop. I remember I deliberately tried to avoid having her breathe on me.

We spoke later that day. She had spent it in the ER waiting for doctors to tend to her. She was given a head x-ray, some blood work for who knows what, and several other tests.  They found nothing, disregarding that death rattle-cough, and gave her a piece of paper that encouraged her to rest and to follow up with a doctor in several weeks. We decided together that she should take the rest of the week off.

Back at work, Tenzin still wasn’t feeling better. She had lost weight on an already tiny frame, and seemed exhausted and worried. So on a Monday, two weeks after she collapsed, she went to the hospital as instructed to follow up on her care. We were taking a few days of vacation and I texted her to see how it was going. They had admitted her to the hospital, she said, which I thought was strange. Hospital beds are not easy to come by in a country where women are kicked to the curb days after giving birth. They certainly don’t give them to the uninsured – unless it’s serious. Or contagious.

Unless.

The following day we got another text. In her broken English she texted: “The doctor thinks is 85 person (sic) tuberculosis.”

I went immediately to Google, and found this:

Tuberculosis is a bacterial infection that is spread through the air when people who have the disease cough, sneeze, or spit.  People who breathe TB bacteria into their lungs can become infected; close contact for a long period of time is usually necessary for TB to be spread. Most of these cases will not develop the full-blown disease; asymptomatic, latent infection is most common. But, about one in ten of these latent infections will eventually progress to active disease, which, if left untreated, kills more than half of its victims.

The hours between when we found out Tenzin’s status and then our own were the most fraught, stressful moments I can recall since Z was born. Who could be more intimate, more of a “close contact,” than a fulltime babysitter to a baby? I couldn’t stop picturing Z on a respirator.

After a frightening flight home from our vacation, during which we were unsure whether we could be infecting others, I went straight to the hospital to see Tenzin and get some answers about what we should do. It was challenging to get information about her status as a patient, mostly because she was not a blood relative, but also because her case had become a public health situation to be managed by a New York City Department of Health caseworker.  There were privacy issues involved, I was told by several emotionless nurses, as my frustration mounted.

Eventually I located a compassionate intern who seemed to understand my daughter’s intimate relationship to Tenzin and that it was important to understand the severity of her diagnosis in a timely manner. The awkward, red-headed, young doctor took me to her room, which was under extreme isolation for airborne diseases. I put on a mask and went in.  I’ve never seen anyone look more ill.  She was shockingly thin and her skin was an unbelievable shade of yellow.  Her cheeks were bony to the point of skeletal.  With a strange, inappropriate half laugh, the doctor said, “Go ahead Tenzin, tell her what you have.” In a tiny voice, she gulped “I have active TB.”

During this confusing time of information gathering, our own physicians and pediatrician were of little help, mostly because it’s extremely unusual for anyone in our community to contract TB. The disease can usually be traced in origin to other countries, where people develop the latent disease and years later bring it into a active “cluster,” like the one in Tenzin’s community in Queens. There were only 895 reported cases of TB in New York City in 2008 and seven of those were children. While medication is an effective option for some people, many of these cases have become resistant to the drugs they use to treat the disease, complicating the danger of spreading.

By a strange stroke of luck, a dear friend of mine happened to work at the time for the Department of Health TB Division, where they had expertise dealing with this situation, but not so much with little people patients. But she and her colleagues were able to guide us, and we were tested that same afternoon after finding out Tenzin was positive.  We got the results a few days later, and all turned out to be negative for the latent disease.  However, there is a two-month incubation period for TB, so we couldn’t be sure whether we had been infected until the second test eight weeks later. And because of the weakness of a child’s immune system, Z would have to take the medication prescribed for TB preventively. That meant chasing her around with spiked apple juice for the next two months.

All the people who Tenzin had been in close contact with had to be notified, tested and in some cases medicated, including the children, parents, and babysitters in Z’s classes and  playgroups. I was forced to navigate a tricky path, intersecting the NYC Department of Health, the “worried well” parents in my Brooklyn neighborhood, the private and passive personality of the Tibetan culture, plus my own conflicted relationship with Tenzin. Calling up those preschool directors and telling parents and babysitters that they may have been infected was not an easy thing to do.  Most people were supportive and grateful for the way I handled the situation – at this point I had almost become a de facto Department of Health caseworker myself.  Several parents were angry and panicked, but ultimately, no one was infected.

Tenzin spent five weeks in the hospital in isolation, and an additional five weeks confined to her home. For the next seven months, she took drugs every day, and each week was visited by a caseworker to have her lungs examined. She was unable to work for that entire nine months, as she continued to be contagious until she completed the treatment. We talked at the time, every few weeks, mostly by text message, but it was hard to know what to say. I would tell her about what Z had been doing, how she was talking about pirate treasure, how she had a haircut, was wearing new pink Converse sneakers. I did not tell her that Z had not asked where she was, or if she was coming back to us.

In early April we got the results of our second test and found we were TB free. In May, we hired a new babysitter.  It felt terrible not to wait for Tenzin to recover, but I needed stability for my daughter and to get back to work with confidence in her care. I was discouraged by the communication breakdown that had led to such a dramatic situation.  Tenzin’s judgment in dealing with her own health – tragic because her choices were so limited – made me question her fitness as a caregiver.

Today Tenzin is healthy and working for another family. We have recently gotten back in touch and it relieved me greatly to hear she is well. Z has a little brother now, and as I watch them together, spinning in circles and vamping to “The Fresh Beat Band,” I am filled with love, pride and fear that around the corner lurks another danger I can barely fathom.

We try and protect our children from the dangerous world. We buy organic peanut butter and expensive car seats. But we are thwarted in an instant by an errant germ, borne by a hard-working woman who has come to this country and been undone been by an impenetrable health care system. As parents, our illusions of control – our attempts to master a messy and terrifying world with money and gadgets and Purell – are just that.

Blogger, via Mommyish

MILKS (Moms I’d Like to Know)

Last night I heard Jennifer Egan read from her novel “A Visit from the Goon Squad.” I’ve long admired her gorgeous fiction, as well as her compassionate journalism for the NY Times Magazine. In person, she is a warm, thoughtful, and self-deprecating woman. I’m trying desperately to figure out how we can be friends.

Goon Squad came out right after I had my second kid and I devoured it like a pint of artisanal salty caramel ice cream. We were in the country that summer, in a house we had rented with my family, and I was sleep starved and overwhelmed, but somehow managed to finish the book in a day and a half. I was so captivated by the magic of Egan’s prose and the vulnerability of her characters that I was moved to tears many times while reading it. I was convinced at the time that Egan’s experience as a mother must deeply inform her work. Now, reading the book for a second time and hearing her talk about crafting it, I’m convinced of the parallels.

Egan spoke about her intuitive writing process, how she writes first drafts long hand on yellow legal pads so the good stuff from her unconscious can just tumble out, and so her flow isn’t constricted by the constant editing a computer encourages. I love this image and liken it to letting parenting also be intuitive. I certainly aspire to trust my instincts and allow my children to reveal themselves to me just as I imagine Egan wants her characters to come to life. It’s the being present in the process that appeals to me both about writing and about parenting – both when things are working and not!

Egan seems to love and nurture her characters as if she birthed them – flawed and all, and with the honesty and the compromise it takes to raise them. She infuses the children in Goon Squad with such tenderness and little people wisdom – this is likely what I responded to with my tears and fears about bringing yet another baby into this fucked up world that summer when I read voraciously in the middle of the night.

The early chapter when music producer Lou takes his kids on safari to Africa and the flashing forward technique Egan uses to capture where his daughter Charlie, son Rolph, and an African warrior’s spear will be in 20 years is absolutely breathtaking, as is the chapter where the middle aged punk kids Rhea and Jocelyn go to visit a bed-ridden older Lou to say goodbye. Implications of motherhood (and the lack of fatherhood) abound in this chapter particularly. Jocelyn rails internally against Lou for stealing her childhood, leaving her unable to cope with living an adult life, and marvels that her best friend and former nobody Rhea has 3 children of her own. Egan even gives Rhea the opportunity to admonish Jocelyn using her sharp “Mom Voice,” and imagines what it must be like for Jocelyn’s mother to take care of her adult daughter as she struggles with sobriety and starting over after repeated failures.

“Tonight, when my mother comes home from work and sees me, she’ll …. fix up virgin Bloody Marys with little umbrellas. With Dave Brubeck on the stereo, we’ll play dominoes or gin rummy. When I look up at my mother she gives me a smile, each time. But exhaustion has carved up her face.”

The smearing of boundaries between adults and children here and throughout this novel is painfully beautiful.

In an interview I found online, a journalist asked Egan:

“Are you a disciplined writer?”

And she answered, which is SO momlike:

“I have a ferocious determination, which I really am grateful for, but having children was a gigantic recalibration of my workaholic nature. They exert such a strong gravitational pull, and so does the work. Ever since the children were born it’s been a challenge trying to give myself fully to all of them, without compromising any of them. On a large scale I’ve managed to do that, but day to day I usually feel I’m shirking something or someone.”

I also found this short piece that Egan wrote, which captures more of the dark and mischevious side of being a parent, and less of the sentimentally poignant stuff.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/jul/22/jennifer-egan-short-story

Using a to-do list to express a secret murderous mania is a black way of looking at the multi-tasking aspect of being a mom. But that doesn’t mean it ain’t true.

Jenny Egan – call me?

Blogger, moms i'd like to know

Marewidge

I’ve been struggling with why I care about the whole Kim Kardashian wedding/divorce situation. I’ve never seen her show, and have desperately tried to avoid knowing about this glittery lady and her glossy lips. Some facts have seeped in, of course. I know she made a porn tape, has a gaggle of sisters, and a super fantastic publicist. But when I read unavoidably about the money spent on her recent wedding and the family’s endorsements being timed to hit right when her E! Spectacular was airing, and then her announcement to divorce three weeks later, I felt all self righteous, ranting about Republicans and all my gay friends who have been unable to marry, and the hypocrisy of celebrities marrying and divorcing with less care than they put into their photo ops coming out of Starbucks. Its not like I’m unaware of PR and what celebrities are willing to do for it, and the hollowness of this culture that gives these idiots a platform. So why did this particular incident push me over the edge into cranky Andy Rooney (RIP) territory?

I got married seven years ago in October. I imagine it was something like producing a Broadway show, complete with drama from the Producers (my parents), strong opinions from the talent (mostly me), and all the various folks that take part in a production of that magnitude (hair and makeup, dresses, tuxes, catering, Pilates instructors, media coverage). My husband and I laugh that we will never look or feel more like B or C level celebrities starring in our own reality show.

Seven years and two kids later, daily life is a long way from lighting design and calligraphy, and more like a life insurance ad set in our cluttered home on a weekday morning at 7:30 am. It strikes me as odd, and almost embarrassing that we made such a spectacle of our wedding day. Because now I realize how little the wedding experience mirrors the actuality of being married! It’s every day after the wedding that your union really needs the love and the high fives for making it through each day, each year.

The day of your wedding, you have no idea how much your partner might annoy you when he natters on about his iPhone, or how much you’ll annoy him by wanting to gossip about the parents at the school fundraiser. After the wedding, when your best friends (and random people you had to invite) are flying home, the champagne bottles piled in the recycling bin and “Play That Funky Music White Boy” echoing in your head, its down to dealing with your spouse’s habits, the possibility of growing away from each other, and the myriad of situations a marriage can, or can’t endure.

I’m thinking about this a lot as I watch so many couples around me split up. Its too complicated to try and create a trend out of people’s pain and the reasons why marriages don’t work out, but I do think that the emphasis our culture places on “your special day” to feel like a princess (or Prince) is somehow misplaced. Maybe the intensity and support from your community that happens during the planning of the wedding weekend can be dispersed somehow, so couples can get some love a couple of years in — when they really need it. Like periodic mini weddings: hugs, pep talks, advice, and real models of what it means to make difficult moments work. And gifts. I’ll take a new blender seven years in for sure. After a harrowing discussion of whether we can afford private school, whether our son ate a battery while we weren’t looking, or planning a time to fool around when someone isn’t sleeping on an air mattress on our floor, I could definitely use a blender for the distraction.

Its great that your college roommate gave a killer toast at your wedding about how awesome of a friend you are, and that your husband’s brother was able to articulate something he’s never been able to say since. But wouldn’t it be great if he could come over and read his remarks when you’re fighting with your husband of three years because of something ridiculous like he forgets that Sunday night is bill paying night? Or something less ridiculous, like you think you might be attracted to your best friend’s husband. Or your best friend’s wife.

I love being married. My husband is my partner, and he puts up with my flaws and my craziness and I think we truly fit. I have pride in the fact that we are constantly communicating and doing what we can to keep ourselves happy and committed. But being married is hard as hell, and married people can use all the help we can get. Not people desecrating marriage – cheapening, and turning it into a stupid, fakey-icky, cheesy brand you can buy at K-mart. And so that’s why I’m so annoyed by Kim Kardashian, I realize. Because I’m actually protective of this fakkaktah institution. I care about it. I believe in it. I’m actually not as cynical as I thought I was – I’m a softie and I believe in love and I believe in marriage. I even believe in weddings. That’s why I cry at every single one.

Blogger, undirected ruminations

An Audible Sigh

You leave your toddler for one minute to answer an email in the bedroom, and the next thing you know you’re sitting in the pediatric emergency room discussing the length and width of a AAA battery and if said toddler could get it down his tiny little esophagus without choking.

Dude. That is so not relaxing and not at all how I wanted to spend my Saturday.

And that’s the crux of it. That from one minute to the next, with these little buzz kills running rampant through your lives, things have the potential to get majorly hectic up in here. You can’t just give the kid an old remote control to distract him so he stops eating the remote control you need to actually control the television remotely and is a lifeline to your relaxing 22 minutes at 9 PM where you laugh or cry or feel sexed up (HBO and Showtime). No! You must remain vigilant at all times, assuming that he will take the top off the remote and that there will be one battery in there when you get back to him. SO WHERE THE FUCK IS THE OTHER BATTERY? (Not metaphorically, but really. Where is it? Because they did an X-ray and it wasn’t in his body).

Are you loudly exhaling or oy veying right now? Because you can bet your ass I am sighing and oy veying almost all of the time. There’s this sonic icloud in my ipod of a brain, a chorus of bellowing, worrying, ululating mothers and fathers everywhere, who audibly sigh and oy vey their stress about random accidents or the very possibilities of random accidents. Just turn up the volume, its definitely playing.

Parents of small children are broken people and bloody exhausted, yes yes, yes. We know this. But for me, its not the physical lack of sleep and the energy burned to run after them and schedule their lives and meals and the cleaning oh Jesus the cleaning that is the real problem, though sure, those parts can suck. I’m referring to something more psychic here. At the heart of my anxiety in general is how quickly something could shift from moment to moment and change your life forever. This is why I’m terrified of car accidents, and planes crashing. My terror lies in thinking about the seconds just before the crashes when everything is normal, regular, routine. Kids watching a DVD. This American Life on the radio. Carguments between you can the GPS lady.

Thinking about the dangers and trying to brace for them fully is debilitating and probably why I never properly baby proofed my home. Because you drop one dime out of your pocket and then what was the point of all that stupid, ugly plastic shit and double stick tape you bought at Buy Buy Baby? You can’t just sit back and relax when you have kids, seemingly ever. You’re up out of that chair sister, because if its not one danger stage, its another. They stop putting things in their mouths? They can still choke! They don’t run into traffic? An out of control cab can still hit them. You keep them on a leash? Cancer.

And that is why, when you look at pictures of yourself 10 years ago, everything looks so much better. The lines are smoother. Your smile is easier. You are physically younger, and maybe you had more time to get your hair colored and put on some concealer, and more money to groom your brows. But really, it’s about the look in your eyes now when you’re photographed. You’re smiling with pride, or with joy, but there’s an inability in those eyes to think only of your own needs and desires. And there’s that flicker of fear, always present, that changes you beyond description. Most days I am so happy I have this family in my life to love. But the worry about something happening to them is what ages my face and my eyes, and my heart.

And so, we left the ER on Saturday relieved that there was no news, feeling likely there had only been one battery in that old remote control. Yes, we had probably taken the other out to put in one of our daughter’s 8 princess flashlights that also take AAA batteries. Right. We shook our heads at the wasted day, swore to be more careful, more vigilant, and wondered about the little boy in front of us at the X-ray line who we overheard had eaten staples. Oy vey, we said, and we sighed. Audibly.

Blogger, undirected ruminations

Big Kid

The second week of September this year was a big one for our family. Lots of “firsts.” First full day of Kindergarten (my daughter). First PTA meeting (me). First lice scare (daughter, son, me and my husband. No one had it). These are situations I would file under: Having a Big Kid.

I went from knowing every move Z made last year at her small, nurturing pre-school with three teachers for 15 kids, to her being one of 22 kids with one teacher in K. I used to get a report about what she did or didn’t eat at lunch and if she went to the bathroom during the day (!) Now, the kids are eating lunch in the cafeteria on their own. They pee with a partner, and no one is making sure they go.

Becoming more independent. Learning to operate as part of group. Following directions and learning consequences. All good things! It’s just … an adjustment … for me.

That first week realizing I had a big kid was a bit jarring. There were lots of afterschool meetings bunched together, with big kid school-ese and information about fundraising and peanut allergies in the noisy auditorium, where the sounds of the principal on a microphone, plus the murmuring of parents, plus siblings of our newly minted elementary students were all echoing off of the walls. Lots of questions from parents of even bigger kids, about middle school and money for school band and lots of politics I couldn’t begin to understand yet. I felt like I had no idea what was going on.

And so the C word keeps cropping up. Control. And by that I mean feeling like I have none. Principals and nurses and teachers and lunch ladies and all kinds of interactions that happen to my child without my sanctioning during the day. I’m getting what I feel is very little information from or about my kid. But is this actually happening, or is it part of a larger realization that the world is moving forward and my big kid is being plummeted in? I’ve been feeling acutely that sadness and pain are now imminent for her. She’ll need to fight her own battles and deal with the challenges of big kid-dom beyond the safe cocoon of preschool. I guess I’m having trouble thinking about all the amazing things in store for her at the same time because I think I’m seeing it from her eyes, and it all seems so, well, BIG.

When we leave her every morning in class, the panic in her eyes seems to lessen each day. Maybe its more of an awareness than a panic — she seems to know that she’s in a new and somewhat uncomfortable situation where people are expecting her to be more self sufficient. We get very little out of her when she comes back in the afternoon after a full day, save for some worksheets practicing letters and notices about a library card and ordering Highlights magazine. I know she’s processing, and can see that she’s proud of her new status as a big kid. Every time another parent asks how its going, I’m forced to say its “going well,” and yet I feel a bit vague on the whole thing. That must be the realization once again, that Control is an illusion.

Blogger, Uncategorized, undirected ruminations

Feeling Confident? Don’t Get Excited, It Won’t Last

Life with kids can be like the opening credits to Sex and the City. You’re walking along, feeling sassy because you finally overcame some hurdle and made it through a difficult parenting life lesson, when all of a sudden you get splashed by sludge from a bus.

Oddly, that image of Carrie Bradshaw getting hosed always resonates whenever I’m feeling sure of my parenting skills. It’s like some higher power – the Goddess of Hubris – sees you get the hang of nursing, figure out a nap schedule or stand up to a school administrator in a way that feels authentic, then all of suddenly she strikes you down as if to say, “Suck it lady, you think you know something? You don’t know crap.”

I had this experience recently when I made it through my son’s first birthday and he was starting to sort of sleep through the night with my older daughter in the same room. I was finally feeling good, like maybe I was beginning to figure out this two-kid thing. I was no longer nervous to take both of them to the playground and didn’t feel dead tired and insane and out of control like I do 95 percent of the time (more like 80 percent – an improvement!)

Then we took a family trip and when we returned home everyone got sick and small people were feverish, lethargic and yelling in the middle of the night for a straight week. It sucked. During those middle-of-the-night fests of woe, holding one or the other while they cried, I cursed myself for feeling cocky the week before.

Ebbs and flows. Ups and downs. We know this about parenting. It was in the brochures. It will be this way for the rest of our lives. Having young kids is the easy part. And all the other things your mom or mother-in-law says when you complain about how hard it is having kids. But I’m convinced it’s the confidence that will kill you every time, especially if you say out loud that you feel like you’ve got it going on.

It’s the keinena hora syndrome. If you’re Jewish you might recognize this Yiddish phrase as something older people, or actors in Woody Allen movies might say, sometimes while spitting to both sides. The idea of keinena hora, which translates to “no evil eye,” it is to protect yourself and your loved ones from, well, evil. And to remind you not be boastful, because the evil eye loves to screw over those boastful people! My grandma Jeanie used to say it whenever she bragged about my sisters and meet: “L. got into Brown (keinena hora), A. just won a medal in gymnastics (keinena hora), M. has such beeyootiful hair (keinena hora).”

I don’t think I’m the kind of parent who brags about my kids explicitly. Too old-school. Obviously they are gorgeous and creative and gifted (keinena hora). But the mechanics of parenting, of taking two kids on the subway, of getting my daughter to say please and thank you, or having the rare weekend day where my husband and I both get to exercise, grocery shop as a family, and the kids are happy at bedtime, I certainly have allowed myself to feel triumphant about those types of days on occasion.

And you know what? I’m never victorious for long because the minute I say to my husband, while snuggling into bed after staying up too late watching television for the first time in months, “Last night was great. I bet M. will sleep through again,” or even, “Z. has been amazing about getting out of the house in the morning ….” Splash. Puddle on the tutu. Keinena hora, baby.

Blogger, via Mommyish

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