Eight is Great

My darling, powerhouse of a first born daughter, Sophie, turned eight years old this month.  To quote her card, “Eight is great!”  It really is.  She is the epitome of girl power self confidence.  School is an amazing place and math is not intimidating but an exciting challenge.  She rides a bike with no hands, and when she grows up she wants to be a basketball player and go to graduate school.   I want to preserve this moment in time for her – before girls become catty and she thinks her butt is too big and she still thinks that I am cool and beautiful and I have the answers to her all of her questions.

Since her first birthday, I have always felt that it was a very important day for ME.  I gave birth.  I experienced a life changing and defining moment.  My soul and girl parts will never be the same again. Sophie was just there – she has no recollection of her birth-day, but I surely do.   

 Until this year.  Something shifted inside of me.   I was able to look at her, not as my daughter that I can lay claim to and think, “Look at what I did today!” But as Sophie - an energetic eight year old girl who is excited about her birthday, a special day just for her. 

It has taken me eight years to understand that Sophie’s birthday is about her.  It is not about what I experienced that day.  It is all about celebrating Sophie.

Writer's Block

I love the season of summer.  I love all things beachy, chloriney and sandy. I don’t mind being sweaty and hot and I dream about the summer in the dead of winter.   If I didn’t have to do the dishes and make three meals a day, I could write a book of sonnets professing my undying love for the fleeting season of summer.  Since June, I think we have consisted on a diet of hot dogs, ice cream and Fritos. 

But I have come to realize something – the summer wreaks havoc on my creative life.  When the girls were in school and I was working part time, I settled into the best writing groove I have had for years. I wasn’t a prolific writer by any stretch.   I wasn’t following the Artist’s Way and writing three pages upon waking and then settling into a thousand words a-day by noon rhythm,  But for the first time in years I could write a few times each week  – by myself.   I didn’t have to feel pointlessly guilty by plopping them in front of a show or feel drained by trying to write at 10 pm after a full day.  It was decadent to write at ten in the morning without a child in sight.   Sadly at the zenith of summer, I have come to realize that  I have barely written in the past five weeks.  My last post was in June.  My journal has cobwebs. 

I try with all my might to not complain about the stretch of summer vacation for the girls.  I don’t want to be that hag mother at the pool bitching about the heat and rolling her eyes when her kids ask for another snack, asking out loud to all the mommies at the pool, “How many more days until school starts?” 

 Although, how can any person not get a little nuts.  Sophie, Katie and I spend fourteen waking hours with each other, every single day.

I fear that I am becoming dangerously close to being that crazy lady.  I already had a moment last week in the frozen food isle of the supermarket, where the girls were pecking me endlessly with, “Mommy, mommy, mommy.  I want Coco Puffs.   Mommy, Mommy, mommy.  I want to push the cart.  Mommy, mommy, do you need any tampons?  Mommy, mommy…”  I stopped my full grocery cart next to the Hot Pockets.  I took a deep breath and closed my eyes, and said, out loud, “Dear, sweet baby Jesus and Mother Mary.  Please give me the strength with these children.  Give me guidance Mary.   Help me have patience with these creatures, so they understand that I am human, and not a machine and I will not get them Coco Puffs.  Help me get to the checkout line.  Help me not leave my children at the Market Basket.  Thank you Jesus.” 

I called the babysitter.  She is playing Uno with my girls right now. 

We're here! We're queer! Get used to it!

I discovered my kinship for gay men when I was at Emerson College.  Emerson was dedicated to the arts.  It was a place where performance ruled and people got to re-invent themselves and some magic happened.  From my point of view, it was a safe place where people could discover and explore being gay.  I befriended many of these guys and we danced the night away, watched and studied every move Liza Minnelli made in Cabaret.  We went to parties, trying to out do and out funny each other at every turn.  They sharpened my funny bone and helped make it what it is today. 

After my brief, but wondrous stint at Emerson I moved back to New York City, where, you guessed it, my love for all boys gay continued.  They were everywhere and I couldn't have been happier.  The guys I meet were creative, scathingly funny and loved to go out and have fun - traits that I admired and thrived on.  My jobs seemed to draw them to me.  I worked one summer as a bar-tender at private parties on Fire Island.    Another job I had was the office girl for a small PR firm owned and operated by gay men.  One Halloween my husband and I dressed up as Axl and Slash from Guns-n-Roses.  I was Axl, and I wore a flannel shirt, bandanna in my hair and a pair of white, skin tight bike shorts. To give the costume that final touch of authenticity,  I stuffed my shorts to re-create Axl's sweet and prominent bulge.  We went to a wild gay Halloween party that night -  I got felt up by gay boys all night long.

Ahhhh, those were my gay salad days.  I miss those days so very much.

I don't know what happened.  I moved out of the city stopped working in restaurants, had a couple of kids and here I am now, without a single gay friend in my town. 

I'd like to think for a married woman with two kids, I have a happening and solid social life.  But, I am missing my gays.  There is nothing in the world like a gay friend - and I need one -one that lives in the same town as me.  I have been on the search lately - I feel as though I am looking to pick some gay men up for fun and friendship.  But either my gaydar is sorely out of practice or there just aren't many rotating in my circle.  I have come across a few gays, but either they live too far away or the timing wasn't right.

Then at the supermarket last week, I spotted a gay couple - with a kid!  I tried to pace our food shopping together, but that didn't work because I didn't want to look like a stalker.  I kept trying to find a reason to talk to them, "Oh, I love the peaches they have in store right now, so tender!"  But everything seemed forced.  I even considered walking up to them and just laying my cards out on the table, "Hi!  I'm Stephanie!  I love Elizabeth Taylor and Rufus Wainwright and I really would love to be your friend."  I wasn't feeling it.  By checkout time, our paths never crossed and I wistfully watched my chance at gay love drive away.

 These guys could be militant right-wing Republicans for all I know but I haven't stopped thinking about how I am going to talk to them next time I see them.  It is not that big of a town.  Everyone has to eat, they will be at the supermarket again.

The big "O"

  Our neighbor's daughter was selling magazines as a fundraiser and she never comes to hit us up for anything, so I felt compelled to buy.   I broke down and I bought "O" the Oprah magazine.  The magazine choices were slim and I despise any sort of parenting magazine for many reasons. I am convinced that their purpose is to make you a paranoid freak about your child's health and give you an inferiority complex that you are never a good enough mother.   My primary distaste for parenting magazines comes from the abundance of recipes that make food into an object.  It isn't enough to just feed your children healthy and daily.  These magazines pressure mothers into thinking we are supposed to entertain our children with each meal.  My hackles are raised at the sight of  'pine cone treats' which is some cracker, cheese, almond concoction to represent a pine cone, "spooky fingers", with red nails made from fruit leather or any sandwich made into animals or smiley faces.

 It depresses me to know that there are writers (ahem!) who have been trying to get their work published in a national magazine, so they can get paid, and the editorial board at Conde Nast is deciding, "Hmmm.... we could run this funny and poignant piece about women being supportive of each other at the playground or we can do a story about Halloween and make grapes into eyeballs!  Eyeball grapes it is!"

 I open the latest "O" and one of the feature stories is about the women behind the scenes at the Oprah show.  I start looking at their makeover outfits and doing the traditional scoffing at the price of the dresses (because really, who pays $620 dollars for a dress?! Not even my wedding dress cost that much). 

Then I start reading their job titles and ages of the women featured in the article.  Senior Supervising Producer - 43, Production Designer - 45, Senior Booking -39.  As I read on I started on the dangerous and unproductive downgrade of questioning and comparing myself to these women.   Before I knew it I had begun the traditional questioning of,  "what the heck am I doing with my life?" and ending with "why don't I have a Very Important Job like them -  and we are the same age!?"

I don't know why I make that wrong turn into the valley of comparing my life's journey against another.  It is one thing to be inspired by accomplishments and set goals for myself.  That sounds healthy and productive.  It is not productive to keep going over in my head stewing that I am not a senior producer for the Oprah show, and how come I am not going to a television studio everyday working on some seemingly glamorous job.  The thing is, it's not like I ever had dreams pursuing a career as a television producer - so I am not sure where this jealousy is coming from. 

Or maybe I do know where it is coming from.  I have gotten into the bad habit of comparing myself to others and telling myself the untruth that 'they' are better than I am.  That she is more successful and better.  Maybe it started when I became a mother and all of the bravado and cocky self confidence I had in my 20's was crushed.   I was so unsure of myself as a new mother.  My brain was filled with a constant internal voice of self doubt.  I was convinced that every other woman out there was giving birth with less tearing, breast feeding better, skinnier than me, their houses were cleaner and generally happier and more joyful about mothering than I was.  I resented any mommy blogger or writer out there who said she wrote with their baby perched happily on her lap or grabbed what ever time they could write while their baby napped.  My first child napped in about the time it took for me to take a crap and when she was on my lap, I couldn't write if you held a gun to my head.

 I don't think I wrote a sentence for two years or said a kind word to myself either.

Years later, that droning self-doubt in my parenting abilities has slowly evaporated.  I am feeling that confidence again - it is like a muscle that I have to work at every day - and boy was it flabby!  I kick-ass and I remind myself of this fact on a daily basis.   I laugh and do that old Saturday Night Live sketch with Stewart Smalley, where I say, "I'm good enough.  I'm smart enough.  And gosh darnnit, people like me!"  But I do have to work on that demon of comparing myself to others.

Mundane Monday

When Sophie was an itty bitty and Katie was a twinkle in my eye, we all took a trip to visit friends who had two children.  Their kids were potty trained, going to school kinda kids.

 I love staying at a friend's home, because you spend some good meaty time together.  You are like roommates on good behavior for a few days, negotiating eating, cooking and bathrooms.  I enjoy being a guest (and having them in my home) because I snag a rare glimpse into the inner workings of a family. I can see what they have in their fridge, how they discipline (or don't) and a new aspect that I discovered on that visit - how laundry was handled.

At some point I had to put some clothes in the drier that got wet from the pool.  Simple enough.  I entered the laundry area, and I was floored by the huge, overflowing piles of clothes that spilled everywhere, from the tops of the washing machines, to the floor and out of various hampers.  Surveying the area it wasn't clear what was clean, dirty or a sedimentary layer from the Paleozoic area.  I tossed my damp clothes into the drier and stole one more look at the mayhem. I stood in the hallway viewing the carnage, mentally wagging the finger of  judgement at my friend's laundry room.

I talked about this wreck of a laundry room for weeks after the visit.  I made sweeping pronouncements to my husband that we would never, ever let our laundry situation get that far our of hand.  "I mean, we have a washer and dryer right in the house!  It couldn't be more accessible than that!  Walk three feet, toss some soap and clothes in - boom - we're done!" 

It is easy to be judgemental.   I did it more when the girls were little and I was unsure of my own strength.  I hadn't built up the self-confident parenting muscles that I have today.  I still judge though - it is a bad habit and I am cutting down.   Really.

But back then,  I was so clueless.  I had no idea the shit storm of dirty clothes that would follow with two kids.  At the time of laundry judgement Sophie was a baby.  There were barely three of us in the house. We hardly made a mess.

Cut to -  my day today and the large slice of humble pie I ate and the hulking giant of laundry that needed to be slayed.   I spent three hours this afternoon sorting, folding and washing clothes.   A small dent was made before I had to stop and pick up the girls at school.  I just came back from round two.  One more hour and I have destroyed the laundry beast.  At least this time I had a glass of wine to drink to ease the pain of the calluses that formed on my fingers from all of the folding.

 Now we have the problem that since every single piece of clothing in the house is clean - we don't have enough drawer space to fit it all.

So to my friends whose laundry room I judged - I am sorry. If you guess it is your home that I am writing about - I owe you a few rounds of drinks - and the free reign make fun of me the entire time.

As the days go by

A good friend called me this morning.  We have known each other since we were single and untethered  and luckily we embarked on this parenting journey at the same time.  We live a parallel existence, miles apart.   We talk often - we are a life raft for one another in this often overwhelming storm of mothering. 
"Give me some inspiration Stephanie!" she said.    I laughed.  I snorted.  I picked up the 409 and got to cleaning the crumbs and smears of peanut butter on my kitchen counters.  I usually clean while we talk, because I hate the drudgery of cleaning.  I talk on the phone while I clean so I can be distracted by the soul-suck of daily housework .

"Give me inspiration - Wow!"  I said, "Right now, I don't think I have any.  I am knee deep in just regular living.  We have yard work to do.  Laundry to fold.  Kid birthday parties to attend.  Everything is so...regular.  Normal.   I am not inspiring.  Not right now." 

It got me thinking about that great Talking Heads song, Once in a lifetime, that I have found myself often singing since I became a mother.  When the girls were barely two and a newborn, and I was in the endless custodial world of diapers and onsies and healing from birth I would find myself bleary eyed staggering through the house singing , "This is not my beautiful house!  This is not my beautiful wife?!"  The song got me through some low times.  I find myself turning to it again, but a new line keeps playing on repeat in my head, "You may ask yourself, well, how did I get here?"

When did this normal existence happen?  How did I get here?

 As much as I fool myself into thinking that I am still this subversive, city dwelling twenty something, I am most certainly not.   I am a married woman with two children.  My husband and I have been together for 15 years.  We have a mortgage.  I drive a Subaru station wagon.  I belong to the frickin' PTA!  I cannot get more regular and normal than that.

 It is a mind-trick, this normal adult existence.  I carry around with the me the dorky, awkward eighth grader that I was and other times I am the girl in her 20's who rents an apartment and waitresses and I have all the time in the world to figure out who I want to be when I grow up.  Maybe I am starting to experience that time quickening phenomenon.  The cliche is true -  life speeds up.   And since forty is a reality, I know that sooner than I realize, fifty will be here.  And that is a whole other world of adulthood - there is no denying your age at that point.   I still have a threadbare safety net of youth left.  My kids are in elementary school, I can pass for thirty-nine.  But not for much longer. 

My questioning should not be confused with being unappreciative.  I am deeply grateful for our health and home and the butterflies and the financial fact that we can afford to buy organic foods and shoes when we need.  I love that the girls and I ride our bikes in the morning to school.  I love the ritual of afterschool snacks and dinners together.  And even though I could do without the housework, I love our home that Cliff and I and the girls are creating together. I have no desire to pack us all up and live off the grid in Canada.  I am happy with where I am. 

 I am simply dumbstruck with the feeling that this normal life seems to have snuck up on me.

Yes!

Last week the girls and I took our annual tri-state area spring break road trip. For the past three years, I pack up the car and visit my parents in Connecticut and then fan out to various friends in the New York tri-state area.  I have close, generous friends who open up their homes to the three ring circus of the Lazenby girls. I try to be a good house guest, bringing food and wine and my own bedding. I love this trip and I want to be asked back by my friends.

 Part of my purpose of the trip - besides trying to fill a week off from school - is to expose my girls to my homeland and the people that I come from.   This corner of the Northeast is not multi-cultural  - it is very white.   I feel that it is important for the girls to get into a city and hear some noise, see people in different colors and hear forgein languages being spoken. It is a good lesson for myself too, in how to handle questions on the subway asked in a loud kid voice of - "Mommy, everyone in here has darker skin than us - do you see?" I see.  And it is true. 

 I started this trip years ago because I needed to prove to myself that I could still get a glimmer of that person I was before I had children.  I did it to prove to myself that I could be independent. Even though I was with them every moment of the day, taking a trip like this was the great duality - I was in a place where I remembered the free, childless person I was, yet, I was very responsible for these little people that were my children. 

It takes balls and planning and patience to road trip for a week with young children. Most day I have two out of the three.  We don't have video screens in the car, so we do it without movies or downloaded television shows.  The girls pack books and pencils and notebooks and with the advent of Pandora we can sing Katy Perry and Madonna for miles and miles.  I may love my dirty rock & roll, but having this girls has allowed me to indulge in my love of sugar pop music. 

This trip is important because it gives me a break from being a daily task master.  A barking sargent, hoisting them (and myself) out of bed and getting ready for school.  I feel as though I say "No" too much as a mother.  No to junky snacks, no to play dates because it is a school night, no to television.  As a mother, I am constantly monitoring, the girls and myself.  I am monitoring their manners, how much organic fruit they eat, how much sleep they get.   On these trips it is good reminder to myself that saying "YES!"  is fun for the girls - and myself.  

 Sophie shared with me her journal that she kept for our road trip.  Do you know the moments that stuck out to her for our week away?  The fact that at the aquarium she and Katie got Doritos and popcorn from the vending machine!  She thought staying up late with me and our friends to watch American Idol was "so cool!"  That although he was "wicked bummed" that she had hiccups at the Museum of Natural History it was "way awesome" that they got ice cream with sprinkles from a street vendor and they could sit on a bench and watch the people go by. 

"Yes" is a great word.  This trip really was a great reminder to use it more often in my daily life as a mother.