“You know, it's quite a job starting to love somebody. You have to have energy, generosity, blindness." (Sartre)

There are many layers to Andrew, but he doles out parts of himself only in certain moments.  Darkness.  Quiet.  When there’s just him and another person.  The sound effects, the sword fighting, the running circles in the backyard all go away – and there’s this teeny-tiny, philosophical, deep-thinking soul in its place.  You see his kindness and his twinkling eyes during the day, sense there’s something below the surface, but there’s a different version of Andrew when I tuck him into bed.  Lying there with him, his ideas and wonderings seep out of him.  I turn off the lights, wrap his comforter around him, put my arm under his head – and just wait for him to emerge.

Sometimes I feel the guilt – should I have stopped him during the day, sat down with him to let him philosophically probe?  Or maybe this is his rhythm?  I’m still not sure.

I want to bottle up those dark and quiet moments forever.   I can’t begin to describe how much they mean to me.  That I’ve created this little human being with such wonderful questions, such marvelous insights.   

Last night:

Andrew (6): “Why do bad guys and good guys always look cute right before they die?” 

Me: “Cute?  What do you mean by that, sweetie?”

He showed me the panicky face, like he was scared he might die, and then said: “They never look like bad guys when they know they’re about to die."

My brain went cold when I realized the wisdom of what he was saying. “Andrew, I know exactly what you’re saying.  And ‘cute’ is a great word for it.  Adults might call it ‘vulnerable.’  When someone is really, really scared, they become their true self.  The deepest, truest part of themselves.”

“And that part isn’t bad-guy?  I always like them right before they die.  I don’t like that they’re going to die.  But everyone seems like a good person.”

I know (I know, I know) that I’m not supposed to fast-forward through any of this.  But even as I stroke the hair of this painfully adorable small boy, I am overwhelmed with wanting to see his grown-man version.  I want to introduce  him to the Great Philosophers.  People who’ve asked questions like he asks…agree or disagree…right or wrong…I think he will love it.  Hegel, Socrates, Kierkegaard, Freud, all of them.  Give him Sartre’s Nausea, and then take him out to coffee and hear his thoughts on it.  Hand him a fresh version of Emerson’s Self-Reliance, without all my notes and highlights… because I want to see what he finds in it. 

I have no interest in training his brain to believe what I believe.  I’ll tell him my thoughts – radical honesty is our most important family tenet – but I don’t want to direct his mind.  I want him to create his own intellect, form his own questions.  And for him to know that I’m always there to help him sort through them.

Some of that is an unconditional love for him.  I just love HIM, whatever that means, whatever he believes.  But some of that is a selfish love too, because this collaboration of differences is my favorite part of parenting.  Watching them find their own essence and their own independence of mind is enthralling to me.   Hearing his questions – seeing his mind – is so much better than anything I could dictate to him.

 

How my cubicle is like a Willy Wonka elevator

I love to travel because I love people.  Talking to them, learning about them, asking them too many questions, telling them embarrassing stories about myself.   And the people along my travels are like postcards in a big dusty photo album in my mind.  

Hulya, the Turkish jewelry maker, who invited me to eat dinner with her family in the back of the store.  We had met only minutes earlier, were mutually fascinated with each others' foreignness, and then I was sitting at her table spinning spaghetti on my fork and hearing Turkish conversation float around me.  

Clive, the Irish guy who came up to me at the train station in Vienna and pointed to my backpack:  "Want to be best friends and travel-mates for two days, and then never speak to each other again?" I laughed. I said 'yes.' We covered almost every square inch of Vienna.  And then never spoke to each other again. 

The couple from Mexico whom I met in Switzerland.  They taught me about the "McDonald Index" of a city.  How much does a Big Mac cost in each European city?  I offended her at first by calling myself an "American" ("Mexico is America too!")...but then she forgave me, and we talked all night over beers in the hostel kitchen, because we couldn't afford to eat out in Switzerland. 

Alexander, the Bosnian on the nightbus, who needs an entire post to explain what he meant to me. I can't believe it's been 13 years since he nervously kicked the gravel and said to me during the stop for gas: "If you need help translating, I'm pretty good at English."  And then patiently let me ask him a million questions about the war that just ended.  Does he remember that American girl sneaking into Sarajevo, wearing her turquoise Columbia coat in a bus filled with black-coated men?  Does he wonder what happened to me? 

There are three key ingredients of who I am: people and words and places.They're a Venn diagram in me, with more shared area than not.  I talk, I write, as a means of knowing people.  Sharing human experiences.  I read others' words to learn who I am.  Stir it in my mind and spill it back on the page.  I remember standing in the kitchen, rapid-fire questions to L, in my typical journalist-way, and saying: "I'm asking too many questions, aren't I?"  "No, I like it.  It's nice."  "Okay, good...because I don't really know how to stop."

I show love to people with words and food.  Sometimes the only way I know how to help is to write, and then it seems like this ridiculously empty thing after I hit "send."  But it's the best way I know how to sort through situations, connect with people. Written or spoken.  Sitting on a couch, letting words pour out to a friend.  It didn't really fix things, maybe, but it felt like it did. 

I think people want to be known and understood...want to understand...and questions and writing are how I interact with the world.  Were it not for Alex on the Bosnian bus, I would have become a war journalist.  When he told me what that meant...the voyeuristic, exploitative side of it...that part of me went away.  The formal side of it, anyway.  I wasn't going to jump out of a bulletproof van and take pictures of children's legs exploded by snipers on their way to school.  But I knew I wanted to keep exploring people.  Going places.  Asking questions. 

And then I took this job.  The English Lady for the Army. Before I learned about this position, I was 100% certain I didn't want a full-time job, and I remember wondering why the hell I was sending my resume for a job I wasn't sure I even wanted.  Then it all happened so quickly (interview and offer) that I listened to the impulse and said "yes."  We scrambled to re-configure our life's infrastructure, had several weeks of life I hope to NEVER experience again, and then the smoke cleared and I was left with this job that amazes me.  

It takes all the pieces of my life that I've gathered in my pack, and put them together in this magically contrived position.  Writing, reading, teaching -- everything I loved, but on steroids.  This week has been insane with work.  But because it's the right job for me, it just feels like more of what I love.  

That cubicle that I feared would atrophy my life?  It's actually a locus point for all these experiences coming to me. My life didn't get smaller, it got bigger.  My Allied Officers, who come from all over the world.  Bosnia! South Sudan!  Country after country, coming through my cubicle.  Reminding me of places I've been, people I met.  Places that imprinted in me throughout the years...that meant so much to me...and I shake my head in wonder that there's a Bosnian military officer sitting at my desk getting help with his paper. 

Tomorrow, I'm going to lunch with a Major in the Pakistani Army.  He was my student last term, and then he gave a presentation last week for the international students. I sat in a room filled with officers from 20 countries, crammed together in that room to hear Maj R. speak. I was squished between Ghana and Germany, staring at the back of Egypt's head. I have these dreams of working for United Nations, traveling the world to talk to people, and this job that I accepted with an impulse-yes brought everything to me.

During Maj R's presentation, I was scribbling notes as fast as I could write them.  My war journalist side was exploding out of me...out of my pen onto paper.  I had no idea why I needed what he was saying so much.  But I did.  I sent him an email afterward, telling him how much I appreciated his talk, and we went back and forth with questions.  He had them about America, I had so many about Pakistan.  

So tomorrow, we go to lunch.  Tonight, I texted a Nigerian man about his memo format...wrote back to my Turkish student about using citations...and reviewed a draft for a man from Ecuador.

Words and people and places.

I will never stop being grateful for this.

A day in the life of marriage, texting-style.

I have reams of printed emails and handwritten letters from my early years with Steve. We found a chest of handwritten letters between my grandparents during the war. Now, my children will have to scroll through my iPhone text archives to piece together their parents’ history. Really, I’m not sure how people did any part of life – friendship, parenthood, career, marriage – before unlimited text message plans.

Messages I sent to Steve during one 24-hour period, except 3 that weren’t appropriate to share ... ;)

Can you put their lunches in the fridge at school? The spaghetti has meat. Thank you!

I’m sorry about last night. I wasn’t fair. And your singing and dancing was cute, out of that context.

Do you have $30 cash on you? That’s what we owe them today. If not, I’ll get from the ATM. No problem.

You are so talented. I really appreciate you.

Foot-long meatball sub for $3.75, baby.

While I was in the bathroom, a female soldier came in, locked herself in the stall, and started loudly bawling. I wasn’t quite sure what to do.

Good luck on your haircut!

What time do you leave for your test?

So should I reserve the hotel in DC this weekend?

I posted a Simone story on Facebook.

I love you.

Had a conversation with the neighbor about the pit-bull. Ugh. We can discuss.

You are a profoundly awesome human being. I adore you.

Close-out sale on Honey Bunches of Oats, strawberry flavor. Be warned: I’m coming home with 8 boxes.

M’kay. Should I keep the kids awake until you’re home?

Labyrinth minds: and the people who love them

A few background points before I unpack my thoughts: 

- I just finished reading Anne Frank's diary, in anticipation of my visit to Amsterdam this summer, which is a book I haven't read since I was a teenager. I have so many thoughts about that book, I don't know where to begin.  But this post is only loosely related.

- Steve and I have been discussing whether you could marry or befriend anyone in the world and  eventually make it work, because the innermost core of most persons is usually lovable and good.  It's the layers around that essential core that are usually difficult and complicated.  Bad upbringing, prejudices, insecurities, coping mechanisms.  Beneath all that: The very raw core of us shares more than it differs on.

- Marriage reminds me a lot of Pandora radio.  You tell about yourself, and then they act on what you tell them.  Some hits and some misses.  You keep communicating back and forth -- with effort, time, and trial and error -- until you end up with this cozy, perfectly-suited backdrop to your life.  All these contradictions about myself...Eminem, Matchbox 20, and Alabama?...and Pandora just calmly accepts it about me.  A lot like Steve.

Okay, there's more -- but those are the primary things. 

The last entry of Anne's diary, she talks about her contradictory self: the flippant and silly outer-layer, and the "purer, deeper, and finer" side within her -- the side no one ever sees.  

I remember vividly reading this as a teen, and knowing exactly what she meant.  I had my deeply private, analytical, highly-serious side that was smooshed inside of me through most of my teen years.  

It's not a side you can show to parents in those years.  Or maybe you can, but I tend to believe the teen years are about autonomy, and the need to keep sides of yourself private is part of the march to adulthood.   

I tell myself I want to be a parent that my children confide in and trust in their teens...and while I believe that's in part true, I also think the best autonomy process happens when some of you is shielded from adults.  When you get to expand into a space that no one created for you.  

I was very similar to my parents in some ways...many ways...but to become the independent adult I became, I needed to believe I was carving a path no one had ever experienced before. 

In hindsight, I wish that for my children too.  Do I want them to feel understood?  I do.  But I also think that feeling misunderstood is perhaps part of the process.  

Okay...I'm skimming through about 10 ideas that I could write an entire post about.  Whatever.  I'll move on.

Anne's core-self seemed so similar to me as to be uncanny.  I think she and I are likely more similar than not, as we're both the introverted, deep-thinking, writer-types.  But perhaps if you peer into anyone's mind, uncensored, you'll find so much shared humanity that the differences will seem insignificant?  

I write to process...I think and contemplate recreationally...so I tend to connect with other writer-minds, because they're the ones putting thoughts on paper.  Maybe it skews my sense of "normal" in the under-layers of other people.  The people who don't think/act like me aren't writing down their thoughts for me, so I can't compare notes.

Here's what I want to tell Anne...or my teenage-self, back when she read Anne for the first time...or my kids, down the road:

Being a teenager means sorting through the mess of who you are, what you love, and who you'll become.  And finding others to meld into that is complicated at best, because you're still figuring it out.  Even surrounded by friends...lovely, wonderful friends who shared my secrets...I felt a loneliness and an angst.  I couldn't find someone who connected with my deepest layers of self, because I hadn't yet figured out what those deepest layers looked like.  

As I settled more into myself, late teens and early 20s, I found friends who really shared my soul.  There are two things about those found-friendships I remember with seering gratitude:

- When I told a friend something about myself, they understood what I meant, and then added an insight I'd never considered.  To me, that's the greatest moment you can have as a human.

-  Realizing I'd found a safe place to say anything on my mind. Whether they agreed or disagreed with me, they'd still accept me and respect me.

I deeply believe that the best love and friendship happens when you find someone who helps you just be YOU.  It was a process for me to  learn how to peel off another layer, the thick outer-surface of who I was, and see that I was still accepted.

Once I saw that it was accepted by those few persons in my life, it seemed less relevant if others saw it.  I didn't need to be recognized and known by the masses, because there was this circle of persons where I could bring my authentic core -- and re-fuel for the rest of life.

I still feel this way. Last week, when mind-ramblings tumbled out of me to a dear friend, Danielle said to me: "I like knowing that about you and Steve, because if you can think like that, it means you won't judge anything about me."

My inner-self turned to goo. Deeply analytical people can be tricky to learn about, because their brain is like a labyrinth. And sometimes recreational-analysis can look like neuroses. :) It's hard to find someone who can see complicated thought processes as something other than worry or concern. That instead of trying to calm my brain, they help me unfold my ideas.

 When I find someone who will listen to the complications, understand the complications, and like me more for it -- I will adore that short-list of persons my entire life. 

The grand finale of those friendships was showing my authentic self to Steve, when we first started dating. We were young (18 and 19), bumbling, still-forming, and very new to what we were trying to do:  create an adult relationship when our brains were still growing-up. 

IT WAS THE HARDEST FREAKIN' THING I HAVE EVER DONE.  

Young love is much harder than parenthood.  We met before we wanted to meet -- neither of us were interested in meeting The One at that age -- but both sensed that this was the right person.  The ins-and-outs of those 4 years could fill an encyclopedic tome, but that's the nutshell of it.  It was the most awful, most awesomest thing ever.  And neither of us regrets any of it, although we offer deep sympathies to our younger-selves. 

A major part of what made it so awful/awesome was that process of becoming me in front of someone I really liked.  And it was important to me that he liked me back. Not just the outer-surface, but the hidden parts too. 

I handed him pieces of me -- stories I'd never told someone or things I wished away about myself -- and waited for when he'd look horrified, maybe, or just confused.  I didn't want someone confused or alarmed by my inner-self. 

Many people (maybe most?) define marriage as fidelity or loyalty or commitment.  The certificate or the vows.  But my definition has nothing to do with the legal documents or convenant..  It's about this place in my life where I've been ripped open, parts spilling everywhere, and being able to think every single thought out loud.  Radical honesty.  Being, doing, and saying nothing that he can't know about...and doesn't know about.  Maybe those things would freak someone else out, but they don't freak him out. The rest just falls into place, it seems.  Or has so far, 16 years into him. 

So my marriage advice is: 

"Marry someone who isn't freaked out by your authentic self."

Could you just drop any spouse into my life and make it work?  If the core of ourselves can connect, if you just search someone deeply enough to know their Essential Being?  Sixteen years into this relationship we've made, based on radical honesty and split-open innards of Self, it's hard to imagine finding someone else who so unblinkingly accepts me.  And thinking back to myself in the "Anne Frank" stage of my life...that wandering soul looking for definition and clarity...I am deeply, deeply grateful that people came into my life.  Steve, yes, but also...that short-list of persons who peered into my deepest layers and stayed my friend. 

Why sometimes, I don't mind being the worst mother in the world.

My children are currently obsessed with two topics: civil rights and the Jewish holocaust.   Really and truly, I understand if you judge that my 8, 6, and 4 year olds know about these.  You can unsubscribe from my blog or de-friend me.  But hear me out on a few key details:

(1) They are not scared by these topics.

(2) I only answer questions they ask, and only read them books about it because they want them.

(3) All 3 of the kids see these topics as “what can we do?” instead of feeling like they are bad things that we can’t control. 

I know I trend more towards honesty with my kids than some persons are comfortable having, and I don’t mean to imply that NOT telling your 4-year-old about the holocaust is dishonest.  I just mean, I tend to give transparent answers to questions that others might think are age-inappropriate. 

Feel free to judge this, too:

I took them to the Holocaust Museum on Friday.  I’ve been a docent there, so I knew the exhibit. I was only going to show them parts of it, maybe because I was too sheepish to plan on the entire thing.  The ticket-man and the bookstore-woman were both deeply concerned that I brought my kids.  I understood.  But I’d spent weeks of them asking for so many details about it that I knew it would be okay.

And it was.  It was more than okay.

In the end, they saw every exhibit there.  The Richmond Holocaust Museum is different than some, as you walk through the experience.  The ghetto, the train car, all of it.  Even the crematorium.   It’s not just pictures of emaciated persons; it’s the re-enactment of the experience.   It’s as “child-friendly” as a museum about the holocaust could hope to be, although it *certainly* depends on the child. 

All three children were reverent and sincere.  I never once had to ask them to not run, to talk quietly, anything.  They asked a million-and-three questions.  They were mesmerized by the knowing and learning. 

Somehow, this is part of their Essential Core.  I can feel that from them. They wanted to see and know everything.  

I ended up going back to parts I’d skipped, because they were hungry for all of it.  At the end, they were all disappointed that “it was already over” – and each of them asked, independently from each other, if we could come back the next day.

In the bookstore after we’d seen the exhibit, the same woman who’d initially given me judging looks for bringing my kids came over to me.   Apparently, she’d heard our conversation, when the kids talked about how the Nazis needed to use the Golden Rule and judge people by the content of their character (thank you, MLK Jr.).   I think she sensed I hadn’t just ruined their lives by bringing them to the museum. She suggested a few books, tousled their hair, and told them she hoped to see them again soon.

Here’s the thing: If it was scaring them, I wouldn’t do these things. But the more they learn, the more empowered they seem to become.  That fascinates me about my children.  Maybe it’s all Tiny Humans, but these are the 3 I know best.

On the car ride home, Simone (4) said: “If I were President, I would change the laws for Jewish people.  So Naomi could eat shrimp.”

Jack (8): “But Simone, that’s a law they WANT to have. They choose that one.”

Simone: “WHAT?  I thought the Nazis told them that?"

Jack: “Hmm. Well. There aren’t really Nazis in America these days.  We have to change the world in different ways. ”

Between you and me: I had to pull the car over to cry.  That moment is why I took my young children to the Holocaust Museum.

Art museums, wearing socks to bed, and other parenting mysteries

There are two categories of parenting that can equally shock: When your child is like you in ways that are inexplicably specific, and times when they are completely disconnected from anything you could have imagined.  Genes pour together into a vat, get stirred up a few times, and come out all kinds of unpredictable chaos.

Similarities:

Simone (4) said in the National Gallery last weekend, with wide-eyed awe: “How are these paintings even possible?”  This is nearly identical to something I said to a friend at the National Gallery last fall: That I loved the Dutch Realist painters, where you can’t even fathom that it’s possible to paint it.  I have never said that sentence to Simone, but her emotional computer created the same feeling and articulated it in nearly the same way.

There was a buzzing brain-sizzle as I stared down at this tiny, blonde, Shrunken-Down Version of Me, standing in the museum corridor. She collects words like me, drags books around the house and begs me to teach her how to read them, starves for sentences and ideas, and authentically loves art museums.  Not to make me happy, but to make herself happy.  If I apply zero pressure to steer her path, I will still have created a word-loving literary child.

Or the littlest things: Like when Jack told me he likes to wear socks to bed, because the best feeling is waiting a little bit and then taking them off,  so you can feel the cold sheets on your feet.  I do the same thing.  For the same reason. 

It’s oversimplified, I know.  There are 100 ways they’re different from me. With Andrew, there are 1000s. More on that later.

But still.

So to go back the Gene Vat analogy: You reach into the vat and scoop out a soul, with its pre-wirings and interests and proclivities.  And then you create an environment around it. 

In some ways, Jack seems like the Me I wish I’d been.  Or rather, a version that I’d be if I could take multiple paths at once.  Life is like a Choose-Your-Own-Adventure book, and you have to make choices along the way.  Not like the current me: I ask him what he did in school today, and he asks if I want it in French or English.  And he is not joking around.  That’s not Me because it can’t be me.  But I understand that side of him, because he got it from me. But…born into a different era, different situation, different parenting strategies. 

You always have to choose, as a parent, which experiences to give your children.  It’s like reading.  When I think of all the books out there, it can shred my heart that I will never read them all.  You just can’t. It’s not humanly possible.  I can live to be Very Old, and I will still die with countries unseen, movies not watched, museums not explored, books not read.  It pains me on some level, but it’s also a comfort.  You choose.  You do your best.  And you fill life the best you can in the time you have.

When my children pack their bags for college, there will be so many things I haven’t done with them.  We’ve made travel a focal point of their childhood, and my 4-year-old has been to 30 states.  But in doing that focal point, there are other things that haven’t happened for her.  She never once went to a Mommy-and-Me class. J Or: I can send them to French immersion school and Russian camp for Jack, and that still means hundreds of languages not learned. 

But it’s only partly what I pour into their lives, too. There is a library at work, a floor down from my office, so I come home with books for the kids most days. They love biographies.  We read about Helen Keller, Ben Franklin, whomever. They aren’t picky.  I got one about Vivaldi the other day, and was reading it to Jack before bed.  Apparently, Jack already knew Vivaldi.  Heard his music at school.  Knew he was called the Red Priest. And that he taught orphan girls music.

These tiny moments leave me breathless.  I’ve created this person who is of me and like me, but with his completely independent path through life.  He’s already learned and will learn things that never came my way. 

There are echoes of me in Jack and Simone, in ways that are eery, disturbingly exciting, and profoundly fascinating.  Andrew is a near carbon-copy of Steve, so Steve has baffled wonder moments more often with him.  We swapped out Steve’s cautious analysis with my fearless impulsivity, so those parts of Andrew resonate with me.  Most times, though, I filter through Andrew dilemmas through the Steve-filter.

I thought motherhood would be just about loving these little persons, and ohmygod, I do. But the exploration of another human being…that’s this completely unexpected element.  Learning about them, guiding them, watching them unfold.  I can’t choose what interests I pass down to them – whether through genes or dragging them on my outings – because you can’t predict or steer whatyour child becomes. 

I can set good examples and give them values and teach them how to treat people, and all the Parenting 101 basics.  But at the end of the day, the individual they become is their own masterpiece. I hand them the brushes, buy the paints, make suggestions, tell them I like how they made that tree over there.  The painting is all theirs, though, and I just get to observe the scene unfold in front of me.

***

Basically unrelated, although still under Musings About My Children… and things I want to remember for them:

Andrew (6): “What if all this is a dream?  Our whole lives?  What if I’m just in the dream?”
Me: “Andrew, did you know some of the greatest minds ever have asked that same question?”

***

Me: “So guys, what was your favorite thing about our trip to DC?”
Simone: “Learning that even if I’m as cold as an ice cube, I can STILL DO IT.”

I.love.this.so.much.

 

Turns out, I DID come home un-crabby.

I have so many things I want to say about my children right now.  And not a single sentence I can write could describe this feeling in the pit of me -- the gratitude, love, joy, excitement -- that these little persons are mine.

I left on Sunday morning to take the kids for 2 days in Washington DC, solo due to Steve's work schedule.  As we were leaving, Steve said to me: "Thank you for doing this for our children."

"Ah. Maybe thank me when I get home.  Make sure I'm not crabby on the other end of this."

Steve, with complete calm: "Oh. I have NO expectations that you'll come back un-crabby."

The way he said it, with absolute acceptance, twisted me in a lovely way.  I felt like he was giving me permission to react authentically to what could have been a very complicated weekend. I really appreciated it.  And in a strange way, it poured a confidence into me -- like no matter what happened, it would be okay.  I would make sure it was a great weekend. 

We went up there because I wanted to take the kids to the National Gallery.  As I posted on Facebook: "My art-loving younger self never predicted researching the National Gallery website for paintings whose artists share a name with Ninja Turtles. But when Andrew said after the Michelangelo exhibit, “Can we go see Leonardo ones next?” -- all I could hear was his excitement about art, and I didn’t care about the source. Honestly, I’m kinda in love with the way family members meld their interests to make something bigger and better than any individual. Yes, we’re going on the Ninja Turtle themed tour of the National Gallery this weekend – but we’ll still see some amazing art. And my superhero-loving little boy is excited about it. That means a lot to my art-loving current self."

We drove up early that morning and had brunch with Prilla and Curt, left our car at their place to take the Metro, spent a few hours at the National Gallery, then walked to Ford's Theater, then to the White House, then to the Metro station again to come home.

That's the simplified version. The more accurate, unedited vision involves blasting cold wind, hurting feet, no open restaurants for long stretches of time, not being able to find taxis when we needed them (hence all the walking), the Metro station being closed when we finally arrived, and one child wetting pants because no building with a bathroom was unlocked.

But you know what else it doesn't include? 

That NOT ONE of my children whined at me.  We all talked about how effing cold it was (Simone: "I have never been so cold, but I am TRYING REALLY HARD not to freak out right now!").  But everyone talked about it like it was an unalterable entity...a necessary evil to do what we were wanting to do...and with no whining or irritability. 

I felt like we were all in this together.  Bonding through the misery of cold, hurting-footed hunger.  One of us with wet pants.

Every few freezing blocks, I'd crouch down at their level, tell them they were travel warriors, and we'd all do a group hug.  Partly for moral support, partly for shared body heat.  You'd think we were climbing Mount Everest together, not walking urban DC.  But for tiny persons, quite honestly, it might be about the same level of triumph. 

When we finally found a Marriott (after blocks upon blocks of closed office buildings), we ducked in, dried off wet pants, bought a round of hot ciders, and then I said: "Do we still want to walk to the White House?"  I assumed it'd be a unanimous NO, but three sets of eyes lit up and shrieked YES.

I fought back tears, pushed forward by some yet-to-be-named emotion that is a large percentage pride...but also just wondrous awe at these persons.

I LOVE THEM SO MUCH.

It was an amazing two days.  They loved the art museum.  Andrew loved that he planned our Sunday (Ninja Turtle artists...where Abe Lincoln was shot...and the White House -- all his itinerary for us).  I think he grew a foot taller yesterday.

On Sunday night we stayed at a hotel, as we went to Mount Vernon on Monday for Washington's birthday events and to see his personal copy of the Constitution.  I woke up this morning to see the bathroom light on, and Andrew playing in there.  "I didn't want to turn on the lights and wake you all," he said.  And then a few beats later: "You know what, Mommy? You're an awesome mommy." 

Sometimes, motherhood is complete un-fun.  If you are a parent, I don't need to explain this.  Sometimes, in fact, it can be pretty damn miserable.  And then other times, you're standing in your pajamas in a hotel room in Alexandria, wiping away tears about this sweet little boy standing in his underwear in the bathroom, holding a Spider-Man, handing you one of the more beautiful moments you've ever had. 


 

On being a siblingless-sibling.

I don't really know what it feels like to have a sibling relationship, despite having two brothers, which might not make sense if you didn't have mentally handicapped brothers. It's not like being estranged from a blood sibling, or not getting along, or having different personalities.  It's a completely unique recipe of caretaker-mentality, similar biological age, but a huge gap of mental age that mimics decades of chronological age.  Mimics, but not the same.  As even with a decade or two of chronological age difference, at some point you can catch up and have some peer element.

I'm not saying one is harder or easier or anything qualitative.  It just is.  This is my experience, the only one I know.  

Peer-dynamic is the part missing about my sibling relationships. I think the mix of only-childness, but components of siblinghood, is what makes being a "special-needs sibling" such a complex definition.  

I wouldn't change it. I don't wish it away. There's no internal whining or wistfulness when I think about it.  I don't have a longing or an ache for a sibling relationship, but I do have a curiosity. 

I watch my children play together, talk together at the dinner table, and wonder...deeply and passionately...what that feels like to have someone who shares your blood, your mental abilities, your age, your home.

What does that feel like?  I want to put it in double-italics, underlined and bolded, maybe flashed in neon.  Because in my mind, it tumbles out like a hungry, ravenous begging. 

I want to interview my children along the way.  When they call each other... from college...or as adults cities apart...what will they say to each other?  What do you tell a sibling?  My brothers are barely intelligible on the phone.  I have no concept of calling up a sibling to talk...as a peer...whether to pass on information or anything else.

Being their sister shaped me in incredible, indelible ways.  It gave me a confidence, this feeling like I could do anything...along with a sense of responsibility, like I should do everything I can do.  But it stripped me of any ability to be arrogant about it all, because my mind doesn't belong to me.  I have nothing to do with my ability to construct thoughts and ideas.  My DNA gave it to me, and it could have just as easily taken it away from me.

So there's this crazy concoction of awe and appreciation and profound humility, about something inside of me that doesn't belong to me.  I escaped my genetic coding with a normally-functioning, non-handicapped mind... that gets to read Hemingway and write down thoughts and psychologically probe Mein Kampf with William. All these things I've shoved into my neurons over the years -- they have nothing to do with me.  I was just given a bigger cup to hold it all than my brothers.  I wasn't holding more water because I practiced pouring.

We wonder about raising siblings, Steve and I, because we don't understand it.  He had two much older half-brothers...and while the dynamics are different (they are now peers), we share an understanding of having Official Brothers but feeling like an only child in many ways. We don't always know what to do in our children's sibling-moments, and so we fumble around and hope for the best.  

We gave our children siblings in a tight-cluster of age, and nature gave them closely aligned intellect.  We've moved them from place to place, so they've become bonded as one of the few constants in each others' lives.  

When we were in the Grand Tetons, we took a tour of a tiny one-room cabin where a pair of brothers lived in a harsh Wyoming winter.  The tour guide said, "Who here would want to live in this TINY room with their sibling ALL winter?"  My three children were the only ones among 20 people, adults and children, who raised their hands.  I laugh even now, remembering it.  I remember looking down at their tiny heads and raised-hands, and loving that they had each other.

Yes, I know...I had and have brothers.  I'm not saying I didn't.  I have snapshot-memories of being in head-locks, raiding cabinets of junk food while our parents slept in on Saturdays, and long bike rides with Craig.  In the beginning, too, the differences weren't so vast.  But I kept growing up.  And like Peter Pan, they stayed the same age.  I read Separate Peace while Craig, 2 years younger, kept reading Berenstein Bears.  He still does, for that matter.

I became a peer to my parents instead.  Told them secrets you might normally tell a sibling, came to them for advice.  But then as my mom's mind splintered and dissolved in her last decade of life, from the same dystrophy that splintered my brothers' minds from birth, I became a siblingless-sibling and a motherless-daughter.  

I had brothers, but no peers in my family.  And I had a mom who adored me, but couldn't keep her cognition straight to be an authority figure and guide.  Sentences were jumbled, logic made no sense.  I had to help put on her shoes, because her physical shell was dissolving too.

I'm not really getting to a point. I guess there really isn't one. I have some blended up thoughts about trailblazing elements of parenting -- the attempts to do a good job when there's something you don't really understand.  But mostly, this is just what's on my mind tonight.  

When "happily ever after" involves a burrito and sitting in the parking lot of a movie theater

Steve is in the thick of his "busy season" at work.  It's an official period that spans a couple months, and I pretty much plan on not seeing him hardly at all.  7 days a week of work.  Home around 1AM some nights.  I'm excited if he texts and says he might be home by 10pm.

I have nothing to whine about for all of this.  Really and truly, it's okay.  We knew what to expect going into a Big 4 accounting job, there's an end in sight, he gets 5 weeks off during spring and summer, etc etc.

I also see it as the time to do things that are trickier with him around, like bury my nose in a book for hours at night.  Or watch chick-flicks that I save for nights he works late.  As Netflix calls my movies: "cerebral romantic dramas." Steve is willing to watch them, but doesn't love them.

But when an unexpected weekend off came for him this weekend (some project stage was complete), the kids and I were FREAKING OUT with joy.  We've missed him.  I planned a date night last night, and we were going to do something crazy-fun.  We had no idea what that really meant -- and even as I was curling my hair, we were still discussing what would be crazy-fun.  We didn't want to see friends; we just wanted to be together.

Here, people, is what we finally ended up doing on our time together:

- Went to the gas station to get fuel and buy Kleenex.
- Went to Target to buy a space-heater for Victoria's room.
- Stopped at DSW, to see if they had shoes I needed.
- Burlington Coat Factory, to show him the oddly-trashy-and-extensive lingerie section I found there. Burlington COAT Factory?  Selling French-maid teddies for $9?  He had to see it to believe it.
- Drove around a bit, deciding if we should go into the city and get cocktails and dessert somewhere fancy.
-Stopped at a Redbox to get "Frankenweenie" for the kids to watch this morning, hoping we'd get to sleep a few extra hours.
- Debated looking up movies on Fandango, and catching a late movie.  Les Mis?

END RESULT:

- We bought burritos at Chipotle, just as they were closing at 10.  Drove to the movie theater parking lot. And sat there eating burritos and talking for several hours.

Had my 18-24 year old self read this, I would have cringed to think that some day, I'd be So Married that we wouldn't be able to think of something crazy-fun to do with each other.  Sitting in the front seat of my Sienna with my partner of 16 years, eating burritos in my fancy "date night" shirt and tight jeans...well, isn't that in some ways the ultimate defeat of romanticism?

But the laughing!  Sitting there, eating my burrito with Steve, honestly ranks as one of the greatest nights I have ever had.  We talked about memories, shook our heads in wonder at these three little people we made together, talked about getting old, and pretty much everything in between.  There were about 97 different ways we talked about HOW GRATEFUL we are that we found each other. How absolutely lovely these years have been together, and how efficient to bundle our best friend into our spouse.

On one level, we can definitely do better on our date-night planning.  A real restaurant or something.  But then again, maybe not.  Maybe we should just embrace that the mere presence of each other really can be enough?

Last night, I talked about how "happily ever after" was such a misunderstood phrase.  Picture Cinderella and Prince Charming in 10 years, and no one would swoon if they saw them sitting in their Sienna's front seat eating $6 burritos on date night.  But if they knew the deeper layers of it, the warmth and contentedness and security behind those moments, then maybe it would seem like the fairy-tale moment.

It did to me.

Happy 6th Birthday, Andrew

Andrew, sweet boy.  You are now six years old.

I used to mourn the loss of the littleness, a bit every birthday.  And I can still feel that catch of nostalgia sometimes, when I look back on pictures of the tiniest versions of you.  As your dad says: “Can you believe that little baby Andrew is gone forever?”  But here’s the thing I didn’t fully understand before:  It keeps getting so much better.  YOU keep getting so much better. 

When I mourn the loss of miniature noses and tiny hands, I also know I’d have to give away this grander version of you to get those moments back.  The wise, kind, little boy who is struggling so hard to become a grown-man.  The lovely conversations, the soulful questions.  Or the time you asked my dad a series of questions about God’s existence and the afterlife, and then followed-up in the same cadence: “What’s your favorite kind of cupcake?”  As though philosophy and food were cut from the same cloth.  And maybe they are, now that I think about it.

It isn’t easy being you, Andrew.  I wish I could fully articulate to you how much I understand that.  In some ways, it might be a lifelong struggle to pair up who you are meant to be – the full-color, passionate version of yourself – with the framework that usually exists in the world. Those electrical impulses that course through you, Andrew?  I know what they feel like.  I know what it’s like to look around the world and see too much quiet – too much calm—and have a primal need to shake confetti over everything and blare some music.

I spend long periods of time thinking about how to be the best mother to you.  How to cherish and adore the complex wonder of you, and guide you down a path to adulthood.  Dad and I lie awake at night, talking about how to be the parents you deserve.  It is music lessons you need? More sports?  Move to a farm?  

The balance between harnessing and nurturing passion run so counter to each other sometimes, it makes my heart ache.  It leads me to buy books like “Your Six Year Old” and dive into it, hoping for some insight about how to be better at this thing.  When I tell you it’s a book about how to best be a mom to a 6-year-old, you say with Occam’s Razor: “Give lots of hugs.”

In our tough moments, when my Mothering-side and my Human-side are in disconnect, and I’ve lost my patience with you for the fourth (or tenth) time that day…even then, I still get it.  A few minutes will pass, and I’ll scoop up your tiny-man-self into my arms and tell you stories about times when I was little and my parents were frustrated with me.  I lost things. Broke things.  Or maybe I had Big Emotions at an inconvenient time to have them. 

Here is what I want you to know about yourself, Andrew:  Those big emotions that you have?  They are there for a reason.  You are supposed to have them.  They will take you to some of the most beautiful life summits, with the most beautiful views, in ways that a calmer soul might skip over.   You will lift up rocks that others pass by.  Peer behind curtains that maybe you’re not technically supposed to look behind…but god, it was worth it to see something magical on the other side.  You will ask questions and see answers that no other human might have considered. 

I am deeply grateful for that part of you.  The Bigness in your heart. You love human beings in a way I’ve never seen anyone love before – with absolutely purity and depth and rawness. It emanates through your hugs, the way you melt into my lap and say, “I love you so much, Mommy.”  And in those moments, I have NO IDEA how we can ever disconnect from each other. 

I want to teach you how to live big and feel big and BE big and how to tear down walls to make your life-space exactly what it needs. 

I am on your team, kid.  We are going to do this.  We are going to carry your million-watt spirit down the winding road to being a grown-man, together. I will screw up so many times.  Lose my patience…my sense of the bigger picture…I will get annoyed at the little things…I will misunderstand your intentions.  And I will apologize SO MANY TIMES, you can’t even imagine.  But at the end of the day, I am committed to this.  To raising you, to nurturing your spirit, in a way that honors this gift that was handed to me. 

Maybe it is true that we choose our family.  Maybe you looked down and decided that this chaotic-souled mama would have some travel notes to share with you.  And indeed, I do.  We’ll figure this out together, okay?  I'll tell you some of my secrets, and you'll make some of your own.

To my awe-inspiring and wonderful and oh-so-loving son, on his 6^th birthday.  Thanks for being my boy.