And Sometimes There’ll Be Sorrow

I had one of those “bad parent” moments today when you slip up and say something terrible. I don’t even remember the exact words, but I expressed some general frustration with The Boy’s constant, heartbreaking disappointment in me. He’s like the robot kid in AI in his unconditional adoration, yearning for me by his side even at my ugliest. His love for me is so pure and relentless, so overwhelming, so largely undeserved.

And I don’t mean “undeserved” in a self-deprecating way. I know I’m worthy of being loved. But I am not worthy of this degree of . . . devotion. I see how much faith he has in my ability to move mountains and make his world right, and I know for a fact that I am continuously failing these expectations. Because how could anyone not?

Those images of Flight 1549 survivors awaiting rescue have been haunting me for weeks now. There were mothers on that plane with their children. I keep imagining how that must have felt as the plane was going down, not knowing what would happen once it hit, but knowing your child fully expected nothing less than your sheer Mommy Power to keep them safe against all odds, with so many opportunities to fail. This is why I can’t sleep sometimes.

Even before I was a parent, the most memorable scene in Titanic for me was that mother putting her children to bed, lulling them to sleep with a wonderful story even as she knows the ship is going down. (Yep, I'm tearing up just typing about it now.) Imagine being able to comfort someone so completely in the face of certain death. Would I have it in me if it came to that? I’m trying to imagine putting my kids to bed under those circumstances, and all I can see is the panic and desperation in my son’s face when some disappointment far less serious than a sinking ship has happened. It’s too awful to even consider.

Statistically it seems likely that we’ll be spared any such disasters, but the whole grisly scenario is such an apt metaphor for how I’ve been feeling about being his mother lately. He is looking to me for the pure reassurance and safety he probably felt as a baby, back when I really could meet his every last need. Oh, I loved the newborn phase. Never in a million years would I have expected to love it, but I did. What a dreamy little life we had together, drifting through a Seattle spring and summer in his Baby Bjorn, having our little adventures.

Things didn’t get complicated until he learned to walk. Because once he’d mastered walking, he moved efficiently on to pushing down any kid that got in his way. All toddlers go through this at some point. His sister is two and she pushes from time to time. But this was every. single. time. And he wouldn’t just push. He would go after the other kid like it was a bar brawl or something. And then if he saw that same kid again on the playground later, he’d go after them again with Kill Bill intensity.

And there I was: shy, nerdy, socially awkward me. I was always the kid on the playground who wouldn’t talk to anyone or play with anyone. Nice to see that my child wouldn’t have that particular problem. But how awful to be thrust into his spotlight like this, constantly swooping in to avert disaster and apologizing to the other parents. They were usually understanding, but sometimes not. Sometimes my most sincere apologies and concern wouldn’t stop the occasional mom from sniping at me in that sarcastic, impatient tone usually reserved for being unpleasant to their waitresses.

I love my lefty-loosey Seattle, and I’m as PC as the next Birkenstock Mom. But there’s an attitude in this community that can really leave you cold. They’re big on “empathy,” but you’ll see very little of it if you step outside the lines. For example, I once admitted to some moms at his toddler preschool that I was proud to see him assert himself at a community playgroup. (The same big kid kept trying to take his toy away, but he held his ground and the big kid eventually gave up.) The other moms were speechless, kind of eyeballing each other uncomfortably like I’d just admitted to a crack habit. Finally, one of them compared my story to the families at an inner-city school where she’d taught. “If a child got hit, the parents would encourage him to hit back,” she said, shaking her head while everyone “tsk’d” and I squirmed.

Another time, The Boy was in the middle of a five-alarm toddler meltdown when we were approached by a beardo dad and his daughter. In some misguided attempt at John Gottman’s “emotional intelligence,” he barged into our little circle of tantrum and said “Excuse me. My daughter was just wondering why this little boy is crying?”

I took a deep breath. “He was really hoping to ride on the black swing,” I explained gently to the wide-eyed moppet while my son wailed behind me. “He’s very disappointed to have the orange swing instead of the black swing.”

The moppet looked at her beaming dad and said to him “That’s silly.”

“It is silly, isn’t it?” the dad joyfully affirmed. “You don’t care which color swing you go on, do you?” Moppet shook her head proudly, and off they went.

I was too stunned to respond. How nice that our public struggle was co-opted into a walking “Caillou” episode for the precocious neighborhood children. Really, where’s the empathy in that?

Anyway. This is the social climate in which The Boy blossomed into full-blown wildness. Pushing turned into biting other kids. Attachment turned into intense separation anxiety. Energy turned into pinching my arms and wrenching my neck in an attempt to climb to some unclimbable part of my body. He’d get as close to me as he could get and then try to get closer still, constantly burrowing, never settling down. I used to joke that he was trying to get back into the womb. But I was only half-joking.

There was a lot of work to be done. Thankfully he had an excellent preschool teacher who rallied the class to support us, and the biting stopped within a few weeks. I immersed myself in parenting books, classes, workshops, and online communities. Parents like to gripe about this stuff, but I was fortunate enough to find a variety of resources that saved my sanity and helped me turn out real results. High-fives to writers like Mary Sheedy Kurcinka, Anne Lamott, Elizabeth Crary, and John Gottman; online communities like Hipmama and Offsprung; and my IRL parent-friends and preschool teachers. Without these folks, I’d be curled up in a ball in some corner with big clumps of hair falling out. (That reminds me, big high-fives to The Simpsons, too. And coffee. I’d also like to thank coffee.)

Earlier this month, I was so happy to realize that I’ve made it this far into the school year without crying in my car after a parent-teacher conference. He’s been getting along at preschool like any other kid, making real friends, playing well with others, resolving conflicts, self-soothing, using his extensive vocabulary. It’s been such hard work, but the methods I’ve learned have been working. He’s made such progress.

Except . . . there have been some occasional slips. He freaks out at even the slightest disruption to the routine. Stories and lessons that are emotionally evocative upset him. He doesn’t hit or push so much, but his conflicts with other kids often leave him wildly frustrated and intensely inconsolable. And sometimes, there is fighting. These incidents were isolated at first, but they’ve added up. In fact, this week officially ended my no-crying-after-a-teacher-meeting streak. Progress or not, he’s still raising red flags for people.

And here we are. My sweet, smart, incredibly verbal little boy who prefers to hear 3rd-grade-level science books for his bedtime stories might not be fit for kindergarten in the fall. Well, that’s one theory, anyway. And it’s a theory that’s mainly held by other well-meaning parents. Redshirting is fairly common these days, and in many instances it’s a good choice. Maybe I’d consider it if he had a summer birthday, but he turns five this April. By the time the school year begins, he’ll be almost 5-1/2.

I know and admire parents who homeschool, but it is not for me. I love The Boy dearly but I would go batty from the stress of having him home all the time, and I know he would miss the social component of school. (As it is now, he can barely get through the weekend without asking when he’s going to see his preschool friends again.) And the kindergarten teachers I’ve spoken to have been very reassuring so far. “Bring it on,” they say. “That’s what kindergarten is for.” He’s going. More community, less Mommy. It takes a village, people.

But it won’t be easy. I can’t just throw him into a public kindergarten class like a Looney Tunes stick of dynamite, run away and hold my ears. There will have to be some evaluation on some level, if only to help me advocate for him more effectively in the public school system. People are so quick to label and pathologize the slightest unwanted behavior these days, but if there’s truly an issue there then I suppose it’s better we know about it sooner rather than later. I will have to carefully get him placed with the right teacher, and be ready to change course if it’s clearly a disaster. I’ll have to keep stuffing down my own social anxiety to go do what needs to be done to help him be successful in school. Because I really believe he’s capable of meeting the challenge. I’ve seen him do it before.

He won’t appreciate any of my efforts, and I don’t expect him to. He doesn’t appreciate how I stayed up all those nights with his little infant self, getting puked on and holding him for hours at a time until my wrists went numb. In his mind, that’s exactly as it should be. Which is why his heart breaks and his eyes fill up with tears when he can’t tear me away from my e-mail long enough to read him the Bionicles page in the Lego catalog. Again.

I know. Someday he’ll be 14 and won’t want anything to do with me. I keep trying to remind myself that and engage with him now as much as possible. And truly, he is more amazing than I can even allow myself to acknowledge. His vast imagination and earnest words. His pure enjoyment in the things he loves. His ability to tell stalactites from stalagmites. Our shared love of The B-52’s. And so much more, but how to possibly list it all without sounding like gushy? You get the idea.

But let’s get back to that plane crash metaphor. Because life is so wonderful, but so treacherous. As I get ready to send him out in the world, every fiber of my experience warns me that this plane is going down. Maybe not catastrophically. But it won’t be a “Barney” episode, either. There will be excellent teachers and administrators, and there will be awful ones. There will be great friends, and friends who ditch him once they decide he’s too weird. There will be all sorts of setbacks that I can’t even imagine right now. But I can’t shield him from it anymore than I can let him crawl back into the womb. He’ll have a strong foundation of love and support at home, and he will crash and tumble, learn and cry, and pick himself up a stronger person.

Just like his mother.


Me and The Boy in our early days.

Stand and Reconsider

“I really think I was born to teach.” – Homer Simpson

You’ve heard the old saying “Those who can’t do, teach. Those who can’t teach, teach gym.” But what about those who can sort of teach but didn’t find a full-time job after two years, gave up on it, and never looked back? I guess they become over-educated corporate worker bees before making a brief detour into SAHM territory, blogging the night away to keep their old spark from dying of malnourishment. Oh, by the way, I’m talking about myself.

That’s right. I was an aspiring high school English teacher. And I was reasonably good at it. Um, I think. I mean . . . I was no Jaime Escalante of Stand and Deliver. I wasn’t Michelle Pfeiffer in Dangerous Minds or even Jack Black in School of Rock. As a student teacher (and later a substitute teacher and tutor), there wasn’t much opportunity to develop my own curriculum. It was all about the textbooks, vocabulary words, and spelling tests. But I was still able to spin some creative lesson plans out of some lackluster material, helping the kids memorize what they were supposed to memorize. It was great fun.

And it was exhausting. The hardest I’ve ever worked in my life. The hours are relentless; up before dawn, grading papers late into the night, on your feet all day trying to keep teenagers interested in material that sometimes bores you to tears yourself. I am incredibly shy by nature, but I’ve worked hard to overcome it as an adult. The stage fright I’d have before each class was intense, peaking at shrill anxiety and nose-diving into deep worried sadness. I couldn’t eat, so I’d just drink cup after cup of weak tea in the faculty room.

But then the kids would show up to class and it would just work somehow. I’d ride that anxiety like a toboggan, keep my shoulders back, breathe, and use its power for good. It was about acting, really. You’re a personality. For the most part, the kids tolerated my quirkiness with begrudging, eye-rolling fondness. Some of them even adored me. Some of them suspected I was full of shit. (And they were probably right. But the amazing thing was how I was actually able to filter out the negativity and truly not care. I have never been able to do that in any other context.)

As the weeks went by and my confidence increased, I started to believe I loved teaching! And maybe I really did. Or maybe it was just the sleep deprivation talking. But despite all the exhausting work involved, I felt so lucky to be avoiding “the office,” so glad to be doing something hands-on and meaningful. I remember attending my aspiring yuppie friends’ wine tasting party, listening to them all talk about their office jobs and feeling so thankful that I got to spend my days with teenagers instead, flying by the seat of my hippie skirt.

But really – and this is a hard thing to admit, but here we go – I think I just loved the second chance at high school. I was 24, which isn’t that much older than a high schooler when you think about it. I was young enough to share their pop culture, but old enough to be just slightly more impressive than a peer. I had a little fan club of cool kids in my 11th grade classes. They’d give me their short stories to read. They’d tell me when a show was coming up that I might want to see. I maintained professional boundaries, but I have to admit I was way more excited to be accepted by their little group than I should have been. Ugh. How embarrassing.

When my student teaching assignment ended at that school, I went on to subbing. Nobody’s going to tell you that they loved being a substitute high school teacher, and I won’t either. But still, there was something exhilarating about the job. The pure challenge of it. Facing a room full of hostile boredom or hormone-fueled chaos, and somehow turning it around. Actually getting the little darlings engaged in their vocabulary lesson with some creative spontaneity. Out-smart-assing the smart-asses. I truly hated all the ramped-up performance anxiety I’d feel beforehand, but I could always beat it once class began. And beating it was such an incredible high.

Tutoring was even better. I spent the summer working with kids who needed to retake their English classes, providing a one-on-one summer school of sorts. One family even paid me extra to drive out to their son’s summer camp and tutor him there. That fall, I tutored for Philadelphia Futures, helping kids get inspired to write well about subjects they cared about. That’s where I had my proudest professional moment, defending one of my students against a bitter teacher who gave her a D simply for writing about racism she experienced on a family vacation. (“This doesn’t follow the assignment! It was supposed to be a narrative essay!” Um, yes. It is a narrative essay about her experience with racism! *smacks forehead*). So, I went through the assignment line-by-line and proved to the teacher how the paper did, in fact, follow the instructions. She changed the grade and didn’t give us any trouble after that.

Meanwhile, I was patching together an income with temping and teaching an occasional writing class at a local junior college, still looking for a full-time teaching job. I filled out dozens of applications a week, went to job fairs, clumsily tried to network my way into something. But it just wasn’t happening for me. The job market was saturated with high school English teachers at the time (which became frighteningly clear at the job fairs). It seemed the way to get a job was to pick one school and just sub there faithfully until somebody died. No thank you.

I’ve always wondered, too, if maybe I was just too wacky for anyone to seriously consider hiring me. I was so offbeat-looking in those days, growing out my dyed-black hair, trying to tame my quirky-postmodern-librarian look into a conservative little suit. I could never quite pull it off. And, of course, there was my ever-present social anxiety. I’d been able to work off its energy in the classroom, but you can’t really parlay anxiety into delightful wackiness when there’s a row of school administrators frowning across a table at you. And without an outlet, that anxiety just sort of sizzles around your neck and shakes your voice a little. They can smell it on you. Combine that with no full-time classroom experience, and it doesn’t add up to success. At least, it didn’t for me.

It was a sad relief to finally decide not to pursue a teaching career after all. No more stage fright. No more working around the clock to the point of exhaustion. No more surfing a classroom’s volatile energy or watching students get so bored they start drawing on themselves. Time to find a plain old office job where I could hang up some “Life in Hell” cartoons, sit at a desk and work in peace, come home and watch TV at the end of the day. Nothing wrong with that. Right?

During this time, I had a recurring dream in which I’d been selected to be an astronaut. But at the last minute, the space expedition gets cancelled. In the dream I’m always relieved to have avoided going up in space after all, glad to be among the safe and familiar. But at the same time, in the dream I find myself wondering what it would have been like, knowing I could have met the challenge, feeling a little ashamed not to have that chance to prove myself.

Janniversary

Mr. Black and I were married on a perfect October day, and that month holds a sweet little place in my heart. But really, our relationship is all about January. Grey, rainy, mud-puddled, miserable January. That’s the month we first met. And, one year later, January was the month I moved from Philadelphia to Seattle to be with him.

Moving to Seattle in the middle of winter – in a La Niña year no less – isn’t exactly enviable. But for me it was one of the most romantic things I’ve ever done in my life. It was my own personal chick-flick moment, a real-life version of running through a crowded airport to catch the guy for a roll-the-credits kiss while some love song swells in the background (let’s just say “Renaissance Affair” by Hooverphonic, since I was listening to that pretty much constantly as I packed up my apartment).

Every tedious detail of the move was thrilling. I remember feeling dreamy just pulling into Staples’ parking lot to buy more bubble wrap. There was a packing frenzy, multiple trips to UPS to ship my boxes, a lively series of going-away parties with various groups of friends. I left my beloved apartment, all carpet and windows and walls, still echoing with all the fun times I’d had there. I got on a plane with my cat and some suitcases, flew through the night to the other side of the country, and dropped from the rain-soaked sky to make Seattle my new home. Seeing my guy every day after six months of long-distance relationship felt so incredibly luxurious, I barely knew what to do with myself.

This wasn’t my only long-distance relationship, by any means. I’d spent the better part of my twenties falling for guys who were about to move far away. Austin. Santa Cruz. San Francisco. And less exciting places like Pittsburgh or Cincinnati. I don’t know why.

A co-worker used to tease me that I was driving them away (I know, hilarious!). Self-deprecating as I am, though, I really don’t think that was it. Maybe I just wasn’t ready to be close to anyone. Or maybe I was hoping one of those guys would turn out to be some sort of Jack-Kerouac soulmate-type to spirit me away to a more exciting destination. (I’d always aspired to move somewhere new and exciting, but hadn’t managed to get much further from home than Philadelphia on my own. I love my solitude and I love a good adventure, but I couldn’t bring myself to be, you know, alone alone.) Or it could simply be that it’s easier to strike up a meaningful conversation with someone who’s about to leave the state and has nothing to lose anyway. A sort of carpe diem mentality takes over and makes for some delicious weeks before you lose each other in the shuffle.

That’s how it was with Mr. Black at first. We were an instant mutual sensation, spinning in a field like Lisa, Thelonious, and Linguo. I knew he was planning to move back to the west coast, but that only made it feel downright necessary to spend weekend after weekend in each other’s arms unapologetically. Because we both knew there was an end in sight.

Except neither of us actually wanted it to end. And before I knew it, I was running errands in the warm rainy winter with an actual boyfriend. We bought a TV together. And plastic hangers. We drove a rented car all over Southcenter’s cheap furniture district in search of the perfect sofa (and didn’t find it).

But there was something magical about all this rainy minutiae. I remember waiting with him to cross a busy street in the University District. It was so wet, so relentlessly wet, the rain seemed to be falling in all directions from every surface. Then I happened to glance toward downtown and was positively mesmerized by the way the clouds obscured the skyline into something hazy, purple, and ethereal. Like a Monet.



I couldn’t stop looking at it, couldn’t stop being amazed that I could be here at all, simply here in this painting with this man who made me so endlessly happy. That’s how it was in those early January weeks.

Sometimes. I have to admit, it was a little like that last scene in The Graduate, too. Joy! Together at last! But everything else was kind of empty. No job, no friends. Just romantic love and static. My new apartment’s buzzer was broken, so I spent those early afternoons waiting by the window in my empty living room for the UPS truck to arrive with my boxes. Looking up at that milky sky, I felt like I’d just been dropped here out of nowhere.

When I was planning to move, people loved to warn me about the rain in Seattle. I’d scoffed. Who’s afraid of a little rain? But seriously. Rain. Every. Day. My glasses were in a constant state of mistiness. I learned to tuck my hair up into a hat before heading outside. I’d brought an umbrella with me, but it wiped out in a swift gust of wind during its first hour of use in a Safeway parking lot. Mr. Black still teases me about that. Apparently no one uses umbrellas here.

But sometimes, unexpectedly, the clouds would rip open and volumes of sunshine would pour through, boundlessly generous, as if making up for lost time. “Sunbreaks,” they call them. Walking home from the grocery store one day, I gasped to see a row of huge snow-capped mountains startlingly close on the horizon. Where did they come from? I’d been walking down that street every day for three weeks and hadn’t seen them before. “The mountains are out!” a woman shouted to her friends, and did a joyful dance down the sidewalk. And when summer came, the mountains were out all the time, gleaming over the brilliant indigo lakes and Puget Sound like a postcard. I was in love. Not just with my guy, but with this place.

That was ten years ago. I still can’t quite believe it’s been that long, even with all the changes that have happened. Ten years.

I still feel incredibly romantic for my guy and my city. I still have moments of pure amazement that I get to live this happy life in this beautiful place with people I love so much. This is better than anything I could have hoped for when I was taking my first tentative steps into adulthood. And whenever I come back to Seattle after an east coast visit, the city feels alive to me somehow. So many corners saturated with so many memories. Those taller-than-tall evergreens. The eerie green glow of the Space Needle at night. That the rich, misty air.

And yet, sitting down to write this “Ten Years in Seattle” post feels a little disconnected somehow. Even as I’m brimming with dreamy nostalgia, it feels a little disingenuous to impose a happy ending on it all.

Because the story isn’t really over. Happy though it may be, it’s not “ever after.” This life is a constant process, and 2009 is shaping up to be a somewhat challenging year. Trying to go back to work in the midst of an historically sucktacular economy. Sending The Boy off to kindergarten in the fall, hoping like crazy that somehow this volatile world will be kind to him. And each year that goes by makes me feel a little more uneasy about living this far away from my parents.

This is also the year I turn 40. Sometimes I really feel like I’ve made my peace with that. Other times I can’t even fathom it. I mean, come on, 40! That’s older than the characters on “thirtysomething,” and remember how grown-up they all seemed when we were watching the show back in the 80’s? How can I be turning 40 when I still speak in Simpsons quotes and dress like a college student who’s slept through her 10:00 a.m. class?

Oh well. I’ve got a few more months to get used to the idea. And while the future is a little uncertain right now, I have high hopes for the best. We’ve made it this far, after all. Happy ten-year anniversary, Seattle.

"Leggy Blonde, Goodbye"

Watching my married friends flirt with each other can feel a little icky sometimes. I don’t know why. Maybe it’s my inner adolescent response. Or maybe I’m embarrassed for them. But I think there’s a fair amount of envy there, too. As I’ve said before, I’m not above the occasional crush myself, though I try as hard as I can to never reveal it (so I never see much reciprocation).

It’s funny how those instincts I learned to mistrust years ago still make themselves heard sometimes. By the time I was in my mid-twenties I’d learned how to smell a relationship disaster a mile away and not go near it. But oh, honey, how the heart still yearns for a little disaster sometimes.

The summer before I met Mr. Black, for example. I was chatting with some gorgeous long-haired hipster in a bar. I asked him about his tattoo and he grabbed me by the shoulders, looked me right in the face with his ice-cold blue eyes and said “No. You’re too hot to talk to,” and walked away. But not for long. He was at my side all night long, equal parts scaring me and driving me wild. I slipped out of the bar when he wasn’t looking and hurried back to my apartment, catching a glimpse of him peeking out the door and looking up and down the street for me as I fled. I got away safely. But part of me still wished I was back there reenacting the honeymoon scene from Secretary with him in some alley. (Okay, so the movie hadn’t been made at the time. But you get the idea.)

Then there was the guy I met in another bar, out on the town for the first time since his divorce and obviously a shattered mess. Overweight, endearingly nerdy. His buddy who’d dragged him out was busy hitting on my friend, so we talked. He was enamored, mistaking my wing-woman friendliness for flirtation. That old metaphor about dancing eyes? This guy’s eyes had the Fred Astaire top hat and cane. He was visiting from DC and kept begging me to visit him there sometime, all but getting out a calendar to schedule the date. Pathetic. But intoxicating. I resisted, but the temptation was huge. This guy adored me just for showing up and talking to him. And who doesn’t love to be adored?

These potential hook-ups would have been instantly regrettable, and I’m glad to have avoided them. In real life, I’ve managed to pick a guy who’s just the right balance of exciting and sane, a guy who still tingles my toes after 11 years. I’ve avoided the angry ones. I’ve avoided the ones who need to be rescued. But in crushland, I still have the worst taste in men. Something in me still craves a bad relationship.

And a crush is a relationship of sorts. A very one-sided imaginary one, but a relationship nonetheless. You see the person now and then, have these little innocuous interactions, then go off to derive a subtext of yearning and closeness that may or may not actually be there. The romantic part takes place in your mind, but it doesn’t work without actual feedback; actual interaction with the person.

As I mentioned in my other “crush” post, I try to avoid flirtation (and sometimes friendly conversation or even eye contact) with my crush objects because I’m so paranoid of the little cartoon hearts and singing birds that surely must be flying around my head. How dreadfully embarrassing. Also, I don’t want anything to actually happen. It’s just a mild diversion rooted firmly in the imagination. A sort of “chick lit” role playing game.

So why even bother with it in the first place? It’s just fun to imagine being desired, I think. Not desired in a “honey I love you” way, but in a thrillingly dysfunctional “oh I need you desperately” way. All I want is to skirt around the danger zone for a quick thrill, but I don’t actually want the real drama, the real lows, the real business of another person’s neuroses and unfamiliar perspective muddying things up. I know. It doesn’t make much sense to me either. But there it is.

It’s like being a recovering addict trying to recapture the best, most transcendent drug-love moments in your life without actually putting the poison in your body. Impossible. Luckily, a sexy, super-smart, aging hipster geek of a husband is my anti-drug, as is my busy life among these tiger-cub children of ours. I barely need the hit anymore. But I need it a little bit, so I seek it in safe places where there’s no chance of it actually touching me.

My most recent crush was on the periphery of a circle of acquaintances. We’ve only spoken to each other a few times; I rarely even see him. But somewhere along the line, he captured me with his vague sense of loneliness and sad sense of humor. And those occasional TMI references to his missing sex life…kind of lame in itself, but so intriguing to see him clumsily seek an acceptable way to express some version of desire. I wanted to befriend him, but the opportunity never arose. Then one day he showed up and I just about died, suddenly plowed down by the speeding crush truck.

It’s been a lovely occasional distraction. But it’s over now. Even in crushtown, there has to be enough substance there to sustain the fantasy. There has to be a real possibility that this person might actually like you; that this could actually happen if only you let your willpower slip. And if you start to gather too much evidence that there’s no basis in reality for this crush, that it actually is 100% your imagination…well, that’s when the imaginary break-up has to happen.

My crush, it turns out, has a crush on someone else. He’s obviously wild about her. He looks at her with the tap-dancing eyes, the swirling cartoon hearts. The pitch in his voice goes up when he speaks to her and the lame jokes come at a rapid pace. I’d be deadly embarrassed for him if I wasn’t so crushed. Of course, she is just as oblivious to him as he is to me. It’s a regular freakin’ “Twelfth Night” around here. And it’s time for me to move on.

If you’ve been floating along on the dream that some guy likes you, and then you find out it was all your own fabrication – even if you never actually wanted to consummate the crush, even if you never actually liked the guy that much in the first place – it still feels like the rug’s been pulled out from under you and you’re hitting the floor with an ugly thud, shocked by the stark realization that you are not the one he wants. And no, it’s not that I really wanted the guy in a real life sense anyway. I really want the one I already have.

What hurts about this is something I can’t quite pinpoint. Even in imaginary crush world, it sucks to be passed over, I guess. And I will miss this one. It was so easy, so in-air-quotes, so dependably and conveniently in the background, so easy to imagine meeting him on the astral plane. Sigh.

But there’s no point anymore. And really, I ought to be getting over this whole “crush” business by now and just read some nice Twilight books or something. My husband kicks all these losers’ asses, anyway. That’s why he gets to have me in real life.

Take us out, Murray.

A Very ACLU Christmas

There was a so-called “war on Christmas” long before Bill O'Reilly and friends went mainstream with it a few years ago. I should know. I worked in the ACLU’s Philadelphia office in the mid-1990’s, and it was my job to open the hate mail. Most of it arrived during the month of December in the form of Christmas cards. Nice picture of Mary and the Baby Jesus on the cover. Scrawled scathing message encouraging us to burn in hell or die painfully on the inside. Joy to the world, indeed.

It was all because of that pesky “separation of church and state” which, at least in those days, typically meant your courthouse couldn’t have a crèche on its front lawn. (Unless you went this route.) Our lawyers were much busier with other pursuits -- helping the woman who'd been evicted over her boyfriend's race or the man with Down syndrome who wasn't allowed to ride a merry-go-round at a local amusement park. Crèche-busting typically required a few phone calls in the middle of a hectic afternoon, then they’d move on. But that’s what gained us the most notoriety.

Our lawyers didn’t mind the hate mail. Some of them thrived on it, in fact. These were people who loved a good fight; being told to burn in hell just meant they were doing their job. I didn’t take it personally either. But it did make me think. I’d just be sitting there at my cluttered desk in my little hippie skirt making my little $20K a year and listening to my little mix tape, wondering what sort of Christian would think I deserved endless pain just for showing up and doing my little support staff job that day.

And what a job it was. Our office of ten people served all of Pennsylvania. There were two or three lawyers in Philly, another one in Pittsburgh. Phones rang all day long. Mail poured in. I did everything from photocopying to event planning to producing a newsletter. There were some exciting days, being in the midst of important cases and press conferences. There were downright degrading days, dealing with big egos and unkind words from our superstar freedom fighters. But there were plenty of slow, peaceful days, too.

That’s how it was right before Christmas Eve that year. My major projects were finished for the time being. No fires to put out. My mom was coming that night to take me out to dinner and give me a lift home for the holidays. I was clearing up some of the months-old clutter on my desk when I heard some bustling in the foyer area.

I saw Frank, our long-time senior citizen volunteer receptionist, sitting at his desk and speaking earnestly with a young man wrapped in a coat while two small children, a boy and a girl, squirmed in our uncomfortable waiting-room chairs. Each child was holding a gorgeous oversized mesh plastic “stocking” stuffed with toys, clearly yearning to open them but showing remarkable restraint.

Except for the children, it was a familiar scene. All sorts of folks dropped in on our office from time to time, seeking help. Frank would listen patiently to every word of their stories before he would purposefully explain, in his Jim-Ignatowski-meets-Grandpa-Simpson manner, that the ACLU does not handle such cases and refer them to an agency that did. Sometimes they’d get angry, but Frank took the verbal abuse stoically, patiently listening again before restating his position. And listening. And restating. Eventually they’d move on.

But this family was different. From what I was overhearing, this was clearly not a situation the ACLU could help with in an official capacity. But Frank didn’t give him the speech. He kept listening. He kept asking questions. The children got antsier and louder as the conversation continued. Some of us came into the waiting area and tried to keep them entertained with whatever random toys we had on our desks. Stress balls. A Marge Simpson doll. Finally, their dad gave them the go-ahead to open the stockings, and merry chaos broke out.

In the midst of all that, our Legal Director and chief crèche-buster came blustering out of his office on some unrelated matter. He asked Frank what was going on, and Frank discreetly explained. This family had nowhere to sleep tonight. They’d been staying with a friend of the dad, but they couldn’t go back there now. The friend molested the little girl. The lawyer’s tone shifted in a way I’d never heard before, from busy and important to sincere kindness and concern. He invited the young dad into his office.

Which left the babysitting to the rest of us. But no one seemed to mind. Children rarely made an appearance in our office, and they lightened the mood considerably. They pulled crayons and containers of Play Doh from their stockings, and we all got creative together. We made up games and let them run up and down the long hallway.

The meeting went on for most of an hour. Our Legal Director was on and off the phone, networking with his colleagues in social services, tracking down a place for this family to stay. Finally, he was able to line something up. We helped the children gather up their stockings, got them into their coats, and off they went into the Philadelphia winter dusk. I tried to swallow the lump in my throat as I picked the squished Play Doh bits from our waiting-room carpet. Sweet little girl. Who knew what was going to happen to her? It broke my heart just to think about it. But at least she had somewhere safe to go on Christmas Eve.

The “Very Special Christmas Episode” message here is probably pretty obvious, but it bears repeating: The ACLU may have caused the relocation of a few plaster Mary-and-Josephs that year. But an ACLU lawyer also found this real-life unfortunate family some room at the Inn. And with all due respect to Mr. Schulz, I’d like to suggest that that’s what Christmas is all about, Charlie Brown.

Dedicated to the memories of Stefan Presser, Larry Frankel, and Frank Kent.

What Child Is This?

Little Girl turns two today. Though that’s hardly an occasion for a rousing chorus of “Cats In The Cradle,” it is a beginning of an end of sorts. She has boundless energy and opinions of her own. She can do jigsaw puzzles and recognizes any letter or number that’s been featured in a They Might Be Giants video. Even at her tantrumy worst, she’s brilliant. She is our youngest child; my last baby. And soon there won’t be any babies in this house at all.

That started to dawn on me about a month ago when I noticed my favorite crunchy-granola baby store had opened a new shop near our house. I used to drive across town to their old store for slings and cute non-matronly nursing bras. So I happily breezed right in, only to realize…I no longer need slings or nursing bras. Even the baby clothes were too small for my girl.

That same week, I was running an errand up in suburbia and reflexively stopped by Babies R Us while I was in the neighborhood. And there it was. The first time in five years that I actually didn’t need anything at Babies R Us. But I walked up and down the aisles anyway, for old time’s sake, smiling at the bouncy chairs and cribs, watching all the expectant moms and couples with their hopeful faces. (And, even more endearing, the folks with confused “WTF-even-is-this-stuff-and-why-do-we-need-it?!” faces. Ah, memories.)

Of course, I’m happy that the buying-baby-stuff phase is coming to an end. But for me, there was more to this shopping than mere consumerism. There was even more to it than nesting.

My path to motherhood was one big absurd obstacle course. Nearly two years of trying. Early miscarriages, one after the other, dragged our marriage and my sanity through the trenches. Month after month of inconsolable sadness, bouts of wildly looking around for an exit, feeling saturated with pain and disappointment that never seemed to get familiar or easier no matter how many times we’d been through it before.

And then, just like that, I got pregnant and stayed pregnant. Months passed before I truly believed a real baby would actually show up. Not knowing how long the pregnancy would last, I savored every wave of nausea, every spiral of exhaustion. I spent my sleepless nights trying to visualize the cloudy little being inside me that might or might not grow into my child. This was no pink-cloud pregnancy. It was some dark, primordial fog, always uncertain.

But during this time, I was also checking out pregnancy magazines and taking my first tentative steps into the baby-gear stores. Talk about yin and yang. It was as if, right in the middle of the Lord of the Rings trilogy, the Muppets pop out for a musical number. It was “We Three Kings” played back-to-back with “Feliz Navidad.”

But as the months went by and my pregnancy stayed healthy, it became clear that the baby really would be born. I really would be a mother. I was shopping for my baby just like any other expectant mom, and it felt like a small miracle. That first time I chose a single pair of baby pajamas and actually carried it to the front of the store, paid for it, and took it home…it felt downright revolutionary to me. Yes. I get to have a baby too. I get to participate in this crazy retail ritual too.

My pregnancy with Little Girl was a little easier, but still uncertain. I’d had two more miscarriages after my son was born. I figured she was okay in there, but I was still anxious for her safe arrival. I’d planned and prepared diligently for a VBAC and knew that the key to a successful one was “Don’t Go to the Hospital Too Early.” But when my water broke and contractions never started, it was all I could do not to strap on the fetal monitor myself. All the prenatal yoga in the world couldn’t calm me. I needed to know she was still safe in there. I needed to hear the beeps and know she was breathing.

Birth stories are a funny thing. So much is happening at once. There are moments that are glorious, degrading, painful, and strong, all within seconds of each other. I remember dozens of details about both of my births, but they fall together differently each time I tell the stories. Like a kaleidoscope. Little Girl’s birth looks something like this:

I resist the planned C-section and get my labor started naturally, walking around with Mr. Black past all the neighbors’ Christmas lights as the sun sets and people are arriving home from work. In the hospital, I wear my hair in little pigtails, a black tank top instead of a hospital gown, and dark nail polish on my toes. There are hours of tiger-woman natural labor and hours of dreamboat-epidural labor. Hours of pushing. A flurry of busy scrub-suited arms and a foggy explanation of why a C-section will be necessary after all. There is a freaked-out husband, a gentle doula, and a friendly-but-jaded nurse.

There is me on my back, the jolt of OR doors opening. Bright lights, busy voices. A wet, red baby with a thin film of fuzz for hair. They hold her up for me to see. Her arms and legs flail. Her eyes are squeezed shut. They hand her to Mr. Black and I’m shaking and shaking. Teeth chattering uncontrollably. He brings her over to see me. I try to kiss her and red liquid pours out of her mouth. Suction, suction. Her eyes are still shut.

The doula whispers to me that the doctor is doing one of the most careful, gentle stitching jobs she’s ever seen. With The Boy, they just stapled me shut, wham bam. So, I take a moment to appreciate that. But the baby’s hungry, chomping on her daddy’s fingers. Please, can I breastfeed her now? No. Out of the question. Shiver. Shake.

Back in the room, I still can’t stop shaking. They still haven’t given me the baby. I had a high fever during labor, which means antibiotics for her. The nurse skillfully works a needle into that tiny infant hand and tells me we’re lucky; the hospital just recently changed its policy about this. Otherwise they’d have taken her to NICU.

As it is, her blood sugar is low. They’re recommending formula. Please can I try to breastfeed her first? But my arms still shake and shake. So the doula brings the baby into bed with me and gets her latched on. She and Mr. Black take turns holding her at my breasts while my girl feeds and feeds like a neonatal Homer Simpson. Test her blood sugar again. The nurse is amazed. She’s fine! No need for formula after all.

And then. They move us into a recovery room. Mr. Black goes home to be with our son. It’s just you and me, baby. It feels like we’ve been washed ashore on some island. Battered. But safe. I bring her into bed with me and sing to her as best I can. The only song I can remember is the Dead Milkmen’s “Punk Rock Girl.” My voice is so weak.

As the days go by, we get stronger. I heal. She thrives. It is Christmastime and family members are coming to visit and help out. Parents from The Boy’s preschool bring casserole after casserole. During the day, Mr. Black and my dad take The Boy on outings, and I sit in the rocking chair with my sweet new baby, listening to her sleep, watching movies, eating the fancy treats my dad brought me from Pike Place Market. Our days are merry and bright.

There’s a wonderful dreaminess with newborns. It’s the light side that goes along with the dark sleep deprivation, constant stream of bodily fluids, and infant-wails that viscerally break your heart as well as your eardrums. But that dreamy side... Those quiet moments when you feel as connected to that baby as you did when she was growing in your body. Except now you can see her, hold her, hear her breathing and know she’s safe. You can remember how much you wanted her, how hard you fought for her, the pain and suffering you went through to bring her here. You can slip your finger into her tiny uncurled hand and let her clench it.

And now. It’s been two years and my feet are back on the ground. Running. Chasing. Getting them dressed and fed and shuttled from here to there. Playing and laughing. Outings and adventures. Letting them watch too much TV. Saying things I thought I’d never say. Lacking patience. Watching them take their first steps toward independent social lives. For The Boy, that means playing Bionicles/Vampires/Pirates with his preschool pack. For Little Girl, that means smacking other kids in the face before I can swoop in to stop her. Here comes Two.

I’m going to miss the baby years so much. But I look at these kids of mine, these individuals; these smart, funny, wild, exhausting little bed-jumping monkeys. The baby years are over. But we’re only just getting started. And I’m really looking forward to seeing what’s next for them.

Happy Birthday, Little Girl.

2006

“And now you’re mine.
Rest with your dream in my dream.”
- Pablo Neruda

2008:

“My house if full of sevens!
Lots and lots of sevens!”
- They Might Be Giants

There’s Something About Milt

Sarah doesn’t swoon. She is a whip-smart, dry-humored, big-firm lawyer. And when this story takes place, she was the jaded 30something to my puppyish 20something. So I was rather intrigued when she called and asked in a voice that fluttered with high-school dreaminess if I’d met Milt at her neighborhood yard sale last weekend.

Well, no. I hadn’t met anyone at that yard sale last weekend. It had been just another disappointing Saturday, spacing out in a lawn chair, bathed in Philadelphia humidity, waiting for someone to take an interest in my grandmother’s friend’s old dresses. But no one even looked at them and I’d lugged the whole batch back to my apartment, my arms sweating under their sticky dry cleaner bag.

But apparently, Milt had noticed me sweating there in my faded old black tank top. Apparently Milt liked what he saw. And I tried to recognize my typically underwhelmed friend as she chattered excitedly about Milt. Milt! He’s so handsome. He’s such a great guy! Milt is very single and very particular about women, and he noticed you at the yard sale and wants to meet you! When should we get together?

Well…soon! Of course! We made loose plans and I hung up the phone with an extra little spring in my step. The guy who could make my cynical friend swoon wanted to meet little-old-faded-tank-topped me. Not too shabby.

Sarah had also mentioned that Milt was in his 40’s. But that wasn’t much of a concern. I’d dated older men before. They were sweet and, well, let’s just say…housebroken. They’d make actual dates instead of just meeting up at Dirty Frank’s. They weren’t allergic to returning phone calls. If you were carrying something heavy, they’d offer to help you with it, or at least hold a door open for you.

Also, there was a certain hetero-zeitgeist thing that made us more intriguing to each other. What was it like being in college in the 1970’s? When did you first see Patti Smith perform live? What is this thing you kids call “grunge”?

But there was another element, too. Something a little more base.

Men find young women desirable for all the obvious sexist reasons. I’ll admit, I found it downright intoxicating to be the recipient of that desire. Guys your age can take or leave you. There are dozens more just like you in any bar on any given night. But being with an older guy changes the playing field dramatically. Suddenly, you’re fascinating just for showing up. Suddenly you’re the closest thing to Winona Ryder this guy’s got a real shot at. Yes, you’re the object of some dude’s sexist drooling gaze. But if the guy is attractive and smart and fun…if he’s savvy enough to parlay the drool into charm and skillful seduction… well, it can be delicious under the right circumstances. That’s all.

So anyway, I tucked Milt hopefully away in the back of my mind and went about my day. After some phone tag and consulting our calendars, Sarah and I finally found a date that would work for all of us. It also happened to be Milt’s birthday. He and a few friends would be celebrating in a kitschy-turned-trendy diner. Perfect! We could meet in a social setting, with Sarah there and no awkward blind-date vibe.

I was so excited about my upcoming date that I let it slip to Annie, a recently-engaged friend who’d been hoping to pair me up with someone with a little more marriage potential. We had our first and only fight that night. A guy in his 40’s? Why is he still single? Where is this going? Don’t you want kids?

Don’t I want kids? I was in my late twenties at the time, so I suppose it was a fair question. The true answer that night (which I didn’t say out loud) was “Probably. Hypothetically.” But my nebulous hope for eventual progeny couldn’t have been less relevant to my hope for a new luxurious fling with an older, attractive, adoring man. Did one necessarily preclude the other? According to Annie, yes it did.

But maybe she was wrong. Maybe Milt had more potential than I’d given him credit for. Sarah had made it clear that he was a bit of a player. But she also made it clear that he was a wonderful person, and I really valued her opinion. Maybe old Milt might be getting a little weary of playing the field. Maybe our passionate fling might give way to sweet domesticity. Stranger things have happened.

Our big night finally came. I put on my too-short dress and a fuzzy black sweater and took a hopeful cab ride up to the diner. I nearly tripped up the stairs on my own giddy anticipation. I saw a few people sitting in a booth. There was Sarah and her boyfriend. And there was…Milt.

Or was it the hippie dad from “Dharma and Greg”?

I smiled to cover my initial disappointment and sat down across from him, studying his face to see what Sarah had found so attractive. Bald, except for a fringe of salty-peppery hair that fell just a little too long. Sweet cow eyes under a dark pair of eyebrows. A long, kind face. I never got what people find so attractive about cheek bones, but the guy did have a decent set of cheek bones. Maybe that was it. Or maybe she simply remembered an earlier version of Milt. They’d known each other for years, after all.

I chatted and nodded and looked at him this way and that, catching his glimmers of attractiveness, trying to match the person in front of me with the fantasy I’d been nursing. He was funny and interesting enough. There could still be something here.

And then, more guests arrived: A pack of girls about my age. Maybe younger. And definitely more gorgeous. They were like Shirley-Manson-of-Garbage’s sorority: dyed red bobs and dark lipstick, wildly stylish and bubbling with the energy of girlfriends who’ve just shared a cab ride.

Milt! Milt! They poured into the booth behind him and lavished him with hugs and flirtatious greetings. They had a present for him: a Spam snow globe! (Milt apparently loved snow globes, a detail that made me belatedly and unrequitedly attracted to him. He loved kitschy irony too! Oh Milt. We could have had such a damned good time together.)

As we settled into the new, more raucous vibe in the diner, I settled into benign but certain disappointment. Milt and I made a few more attempts at small talk, but before long we mutually, wordlessly agreed to go our separate ways for the evening. Sarah and I caught up on gossip from our old workplace. Milt cavorted with his harem. I stayed for a polite amount of time and caught a ride back to my apartment. Que sera.

I was too embarrassed to ask Sarah what the deal was with the hot chicks, and she was probably too embarrassed to mention it. But I’ve wondered about it many times since then. If plain-old-me wasn’t attracted to Milt, what did these alternababes see in him?

When I told Mr. Black this story years later, his first guess was that Milt must be rich. But that wasn’t it. Milt's job wasn’t much more impressive than mine at the time. His next guess was that Milt must have been their drug dealer. Possibly. But I doubt it.

No, I suspect their attraction to Milt was no different than my interest in older guys in general. Drooling or not, sexist or not, that adoring gaze from the right guy can be one of the most affirming mirrors you could ever have (particularly if you’re Shirley-Manson-hot, I’d imagine). And in a single-girl life full of absurdity and rejection…well…sometimes a jolt of male-gaze-fueled self-esteem is all you need to make it to the next adventure. Sometimes.