undirected ruminations

The personal ruminations of Mallory Kasdan.

s.w.a.k.

My whole life I’ve been prone to emotional triggers brought on by songs, smells, textures, and tastes, so it’s no surprise I’ve folded these tendencies into my relationship with my kids and my own memories of childhood.

I’ve written some about the overwhelming nostalgia bath I’ve been taking since Zoe started kindergarden this fall. It’s been amazing. Today, when I was at her school for lunch duty, I took her and another little girl to the bathroom. They took me “the secret way,” from the basement level cafeteria to the girl’s room on the first floor. Through their chatter with each other, their expressions and in their excited two steps at a time climbing, I could viscerally recall my own elementary school and the journey from the lunchroom to the bathroom — the exact way the cafeteria smelled, the smooth concrete banisters against my hand as I ran up the linoleum stairs to the steamy heat of the girl’s (and the mystery glimpse of the unfathomable urinal through a door crack in the boy’s).

The lead up to Valentine’s Day today was epic, and Zoe has been vibrating with excitement. She was thrilled with her outfit of dark pink tights, light pink skirt with hearts, and white shirt with hot pink flowers. She spent the past five evenings under my tutelage, making valentines for every kid in the class – and really caring about how each kid would react to the size and sparkle of the stickers and the different colors of heart shaped balloons and flowers she was customizing for each one. I just loved it. Having recently discovered my inner scrapbooking soccer mom nerd (or, how fun it is to shop at Michael’s Craft store – a formerly suburban pleasure paradise now available to us New York City residents), we just sat there at her little table, cutting and coloring and sticking stickers, listening to Fiona Apple and discussing Eli’s favorite color versus Lina’s. Here was something I always loved doing when I was younger, something relaxing and creative and fulfilling we could finally do together. It totally rocked.

I used to feel a constant pull toward eras I never lived in, careers I’d never have, places I’d never live. I feel less that way now. Part of that must be finding my way, hopefully, or else realizing aspiration is never ending. Maybe that’s why memories are flooding in now – because I’ve accepted that now my real job to make things as sparkly and pink as I can for my kids, just as my own parents at roughly my age sacrificed a lot of their own middle years to make things exciting and textured and full of joy for me and my sisters.

Its funny to feel like now I’m the grownup comes up with the ideas and the adventures, and also the one who says the things like: “I’m turning that television/IPad off right this minute if you keep ignoring me when I ask you to bring your dish to the sink!” Some days it’s so much damn work to make all the descisions and keep the momentum going, but when I think about how much it means to Zoe to sit down and color with the set of 140 markers I picked up – and how much of a charge it gave me when my own mom bought me a similar set, I’m really feeling that sparkly Valentine’s love.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.