Thursday, May 23, 2013

The Pillow



I’m sitting on the chaise longue, leaning against a pillow, scanning my phone for something wholly unimportant.

“Mama, I put something under your pillow!”
“Oh, yeah,” I nod absentmindedly. “Okay, baby.”
“You can look at it, okay?”
“Okay, baby. Mama’s looking for something on her phone right now.” Doing, clearly, something that I’ve since forgotten.
“It’s a surprise!”

Then she left it. I was clearly “busy” and for a six-year old, my daughter demonstrates an astonishing amount of patience. And discretion. In other words, she can keep her own council, which at the moment offers a welcome respite thought I’m certain I will regret that quality in the future.

I was tired. The previous day, we had had a party. I had cooked all day. Hong Kong-style soy sauce chao mian, a Vietnamese baked curry with quail eggs, some focaccia, a salmon mousse I piped onto toasts and topped with arugula pesto, mini banana bread with pecans and chocolate chips, a mango and strawberry salad, and panzanella. My daughter had had a performance at her school and I invited one of her teachers and her husband over to ask her about homeschooling for the year. Some other friends came over, too.

I was beat. Throughout Saturday, all I could think of was to lie down. My husband had taken my older daughter to a birthday party on Saturday to give me a little respite while the Bustle Butt napped. Of course, she woke the moment they left. So I didn’t get that respite.

When they returned, I made an executive decision. He could deal with them both for a bit.

“Honey, I’m going to go rest for a while upstairs, okay?”

I haven’t slept in my bed for a few days because I’ve been keeping the nightmares at bay for my daughter. By sleeping with her.

Ear plugs, or as my daughter used to call them, “ear clubs,” are essential for my sleep. Everyone snores and I’m really noise-sensitive. Sensitive to everything, come to that. So I keep a pair everywhere, including under my pillow.

As I reached under, I noticed that the pillow seemed a bit raised. I have a flat memory-foam pillow which helps with my occipital neuralgia, a result of the three whiplashes I had as a child. I lifted the pillow.

I saw what she meant. My pillow. Not the chaise pillow.

Underneath was a card that said “I love you, Mama” with a dollar bill in it, a piggy bank she had decorated that was filled with more money, two pieces of candy from her stash acquired at the birthday party piƱata-grab, and a sunflower. We had given her a bunch of sunflowers after her performance the previous day.

Where does this child come from? She must be an angel. To me, anyway. As should all children to their parents. But this one. She simply floors me.



Saturday, May 11, 2013

Blessed

This theme of emotional good fortune is really on my mind of late as our monetary fortunes decline. My husband's unemployment just ended and his field of architecture has laid him off for a total of three of four years. Honestly I have no idea how we will pay the rent this month.

From past experience, like the second time he was laid off after Miss Jiggle Butt was born, I know that my husband gets depressed. He functions but he becomes victimized by his old, now maladaptive behaviors he relied on when he was stressed as a boy. As most people do. They revert.

It's fatal for our relationship and for his relationship with now two daughters. He gets very irrational. Resorts to yelling a lot. Which results in crying. A lot. He doesn't notice things. A lot of things. Because the anxiety has made him check out.

So I know having been through this twice before that my previous interventions weren't successful.

This time I have a family pep talk. About love.

"Baby, mama and daddy are going to be a bit stressed this month ok? So here is what we're going to do to deal with it. We're going to love each other. So if you and daddy have a disagreement first you're not going to hit yourself right?"
"Right!" And then she smiles.
"Daddy is going to just take some time if he's really upset, okay? And I'll also help him and see if he's hungry or tired or of he just needs some time alone. Same with you, okay?"
"Yeah!" My daughter enthused, "and if mama is cranky I'll just ask you if you're tired or hungry or need some time alone." She gestures to me for emphasis, as if she is presenting me with a gift. Which it is.
"And do you know why? Because we love each other, that's why."
Here my daughter again made me marvel at her: "Yes!" She exclaimed, "because the whole world is full of love! And we love each other and everybody! Yea!" She twirled around on the floor to make her point and then proceeded to make the fatso giggle.

She was beaming the rest of the evening.

Goodness. I just don't know where this little one comes from. I just don't.

Tuesday, May 7, 2013

The Hummingbird



My six year old daughter has released many dormant sensations and feelings in me. Things that I have always felt, but honestly, it can be inappropriate in normal, adult conversation to say something like, “Bees are good!” Number one, there is no context, two, well, some people might vehemently disagree depending upon their own childhood experiences. In fact, my husband is one of them.

So it’s not exactly fodder for small conversation. However, when you have a growing toddler, these dormant appreciations can be brought to the fore without fear of judgment of any kind.

Bees, like spiders, are creatures I appreciate. I have long since overcome my fear, despite having been stung and bitten, respectively. Unless one has been attacked by a swarm, as my husband had when he was living in Annisquam as a little toddler himself, I think these fears of said creatures are inexplicable and disproportionate. They are, after all, struggling to survive as well and I cannot imagine what it must be like to be faced with such a large being as ourselves when one is a small being such as they are.

So bees I like because they pollinate flowers. And therefore propagate plants and flowers. And incidentally, I also happen to like honey so I’m grateful for that, as well. They make our lives infinitely more beautiful and, dare I say it, gracious.

As a toddler, my daughter showed an inordinate curiosity about them. I kept telling her that they were actually quite delicate and sensitive, but my daughter could not help herself. Sometimes she would simply play with those that lost their way in our backyard and end up killing them.

A related lesson of composting, pollination, and creatures was that hummingbirds also perform that service. Despite the presence of our two kitties, hummingbirds still visit our backyard, primarily because of all the things that grow in our rich soil, including strawberries, lilies, hydrangea, jasmine, tomatoes, cucumbers, and peppers.

One day, a hummingbird decided to offer us a more personal visit. The French doors leading from the backyard were open. The sun was inviting the little hummingbird in. So, it came in.

It promptly became stressed and began frantically attempting to exit. Which of course meant that it was flying frantically all around the living room and then kitchen whilst the kitties were looking ever more fascinatingly at it.

“Mama, mama! The hummingbird is trying to get out!” exclaimed my daughter helpfully. “Oh, no, look, Pinky keeps staring at it!”

“Yes, I know. It’ll be alright.”

After contemplating the dilemma for a moment, I realized I needed some sort of net because it was becoming increasingly distressed. It was not going to fly out of its own accord. We had no net.

Or so I thought. Turns out we did. In the form of our laundry “basket,” a mesh affair that would work just perfectly.

It did. I caught it and then released it out the front door, since that was closest.

“You did it, Mama, you did it!” Honestly, how can one not feel triumphant with those kinds of accolades?

Well, that was a year and a half ago. Every day since then, the hummingbird comes to visit us. I know it’s the same one because it looks in the kitchen window, the very one it looked out of when it was trying to escape. If we are outside, it hovers near us, a greeting. And we smile back.

I now keep more plants that flower. For it. And the bees.

Wednesday, May 1, 2013

Lucky

My husband and I sometimes have a different outlook on the hardships we've experienced over the years. And I will admit that it wasn't my parents who started dying the minute we got married. So there is that.

But there is also just this strange blessing I experience. I honestly don't know where it comes from because when I was hospitalized for anorexia I got "confronted" by the entire adolescent ward for being too negative.

So I honestly do not know where it comes from-most likely my children. My oldest daughter constantly makes me feel grateful. I keep her company in her bed these days though I have scaled back on actually sleeping with her. But I do stay with her until she falls asleep.

She likes to hug my arm as she falls asleep. So here I am. Lying next to her. With my arm across her chest and my hand on her cheek. As she hugs my arm.

Sigh. She does make me feel lucky.

Fat Wash



It’s important to teach a baby language skills. And they say, I don’t know specifically who “they” is here but give me the benefit of the doubt, that singing is an excellent linguistic delivery system. 

So, one day, I was trying to nap. With the baby. No, not co-sleeping, she decided right around the time she weaned herself—6 months, just like her older sister—that mama was lame when it came to a) producing enough breast milk, and b) co-sleeping. I don’t know. I’m somehow not cuddly enough? I try. Perhaps I’m too cuddly, spontaneously squeezing her fat in the middle of the night when she  accidentally sticks her fat-loaf--what? Not my fault if it looks like a loaf of
fat bread--foot in my mouth. Okay so maybe that was the problem. Whatever, man. 

At any rate, her crib is in our room so we can keep her quiet and not bother her sister. Also, so we can be sure that we never, ever use our room now since it is now hers. 

But this afternoon, I was bone-tired. Determined to sleep in my own bed, not the sofa downstairs or in my daughter’s bed. I do that enough at night when she insists I sleep with her. 

Uh, no. After a half an hour of her babbling and cooing, I decided once again that the only way to get her to nap was to make her cry. Which I did, by leaving the room. Ten long minutes later of listening to her cry while ensconced in my daughter’s bed and finally. It ended.

“Ahh,” I said to myself, “the silence of the Fat.”