Standing Tall

I still remember some parenting moves friends of mine made long before I popped out my own kids.

I never intended to file them away. Just noted them in passing, the way you might think, “Damn, this coffee’s hot,” and then go onto your next thought.

For years I worked with a designer named Todd. The kinda guy who, if he was a 12-year-old girl—and you were too—you’d be hard-pressed to think up mean things to write in your slam book about him. For instance, the first 17 things that come to mind about the guy are that he’s kind, genuine, sweet, thoughtful, patient…. Well, you get my point.

Todd’s a bit older than me and most of our old agency cronies. Back in the day, he had a daughter when the biggest responsibility the rest of us had was remembering to get regular oil changes for our cars. Whenever his daughter come to the office, he’d do this thing where he’d squat down on his haunches to talk to her. He’d just kinda hang out there at her level when she was around. It killed me.

Aside from the impressive hamstring burn he no doubt suffered in doing this, I was struck by how damn sweet it was. Here’s this shorty, plopped down in a labyrinthine office with tall strangers pokin’ at her and squawking about her cuteness. Making sense of a brood of sassy oddball grown-ups had to be challenging. (It was at times for me too.) But there was her dad, down alongside her, taking it all in at her level.

Who doesn’t want that father?

The past few days Paigey’s made dazzling progress in her long-delayed efforts towards walking. Mark’s mom arrived for a visit last week, and it’s like Paige’s determined to walk before her Grandma leaves.

First off, she started crawling this weekend when Mark was outside grilling. Crawling in that good old-fashioned normal way babies do in diaper ads. Mark called me downstairs all frantic-like to come see, and as we watched her move across the basement carpet we held our hands over our hearts, like we were watching her get her diploma from vet school or something.

This, I know, is hardly something parents of most nearly-nineteen-month-olds would celebrate. But Paigey’s been a dyed-in-the-wool butt scooter. An aberration that she’s grown so accustomed to and so fiercely good at, I’ve feared the longer she does it the harder it’ll be to get her moving any other way.

But then, like a switch went off, she starting pulling up to standing. Another thrilling—and exceptionally delayed—milestone. Pulling up to hand me a wooden mint chip ice cream cone as I sat at my desk. Pulling up to monitor what’s cooking on the burners of her toy kitchen stove. And at the library, hoisting herself to Grandma’s chair level to beg for more Puffin cereal. All this, just today!

And she’s doing it like it’s no big thing. But every time I want to hand her a framed certificate of merit. I get so proud I’m all blurry teary-eyed.

Atta girl, Paigey! I’d thump you on the back and give you a smotherish full body hug if I wasn’t afraid it’d knock you over, and I wouldn’t be able to enjoy a few extra seconds of your perfect verticality.

Somehow I manage to hold back and just admire you. Standing there putting a plastic corn cob in a toy tea cup and taking a sip. Like such a big big standing-up girl! What could be better than watching that? (That, by the way, is a rhetorical question.)

I am so very very proud of you, my sweet Paigey Woo. You’ve made it perfectly clear that you’re planning on walking soon. And if it still takes some time, well that’s okay too.

Whenever it happens, and whatever plane you preside over in the meantime, I plan to take every chance I can to crouch cheek-to-cheek by you, and take in the world from your brilliant two-foot level.

Chalk One Up for Me

People are constantly going on about how Paige is a mini-Mark. And some folks say Kate looks like me.

Frankly, I don’t see it at all. I mean, Paige looks like Paige. A small delicious dumpling with loopy blond curls, a button nose, and pudged-out cheeks. She’s still got those inverted knuckle dimples on her hands. You know the ones? I meant to take note of when Kate went from having those to getting normal convex knuckles, but I missed it. It must’ve happened overnight.

Anyway, Mark. If you ask me, he looks nothing like Paige. He’s a grown man for God’s sake. Lean—in case you haven’t met him—and all chiseled and angular. Not many pudgy parts to him.

I guess when I look at those two I just see Paige and Mark.

As for Kate, it’s even harder—or maybe just weirder—to see myself in her looks.

Which isn’t to say that Mark and I aren’t constantly labeling the things that the girls do as being either him-like or me-like.

Kate screaming a conversation from one room of the house to another? My genes. Her morning rat’s nest hair snarl? That’d be me. Kate’s love of sour cream, non-stop banter from the moment she wakes, and occasional “No one’s paying attention to me!” whining fits? Well, uh, that’d be me too. I’ll also lay claim to both girls’ ability to pack away the pasta, and Paige’s Herculean ability to sleeeeeeeeep.

As for Kate’s skinny butt, obsession with books, and tendency to hang back in new places? Mark, Mark, and Mark. Also Mark: Paige’s love of bikes and music.

At our nephew’s eighth birthday party this summer, Mark discovered something he never knew about me. It was at a pool party, at some fancy suburban community center. There were three pools, and they had one of those bright blue three-story water slides. The kind that have an enclosed tube that loops around like a big spiral staircase and spits you out at a high velocity at the bottom.

When Mark first laid eyes on it, he practically shoved the kids, bags, and towels in my hands and ran towards it, arms flailing overhead. He was giddy, grinning, and asking permission if I could watch the kids so he could do it, as if I was his mother. It was sweet.

Later, back at the kiddie pool, still all smiles from his water slide high, he asked if I’d gone on it yet. I looked over at the thing and said softly, “No.”

“Oh my God, GO!” he commanded. “You HAVE to go on it RIGHT NOW.”

So I went. Spurned by his excited insistence. Buoyed by a desire to be the mother of two who might not wear a bikini any more, but is still game for a good time. But really, scared shitless.

As I got closer, my spontaneous bravado faltered. I still wanted to go down the thing, to surprise myself with how much fun it’d end up being, but I needed back-up. So I enlisted the birthday boy who was waiting in line for some other treacherous thrill ride. I tried coming off like I was rallying him to join me for some big fun. Really I just thought it’d be nice to have some family around at the time of my demise.

En route we saw my niece. I got her to come along with us too.

At the slide, the teen monitoring the line indicated I’d have to go up the staircase alone. “One at a time,” she droned, staring blankly ahead. Here I was taking my life in my hands, and she’s just wishing she was texting her boyfriend.

I had a tight feeling in my gut, but dropping out of line at this point would be embarrassing. So I butched up and trudged onward alone.

At the top, another compassionless teen instructed me to “just lie down with my arms crossed over my chest.” How fitting, I thought. They make you assume a corpse pose.

Motivated only by my wish to get it over, plus pressure from the long line of young sadists behind me, I assumed the position and pushed off. My niece, who’d picked up on my anxiety (smart gal), cried out behind me, “When you see the light Aunt Kristen, hold your breath!”

It was every bit as horrifying as I’d feared. Claustrophobic, jarring, and with a slamming plunge into cold water to cap it off.

For 15 minutes afterward, I shook. I fretted. My stomach flip-flopped. I couldn’t believe I hadn’t trusted my instincts, and vowed over and over in my head, “NEVER AGAIN.”

Gathered round the picnic table, shivering and soothing myself with pizza, Mark was astounded. He had no idea I’d been so afraid, that I hate those fucking things, and that even after it was over the experience could continue to seize me with terror.

Rather than suffer the spectacle of my supreme wimpishness alone, I felt compelled to drag my sister (the birthday boy’s mom) down with me. “Well, SHE’D never do it either!” I said to her friends, pointing to the woman who bushwhacked her way through remotest Mexico, outwitted spies sent out to trail her, and shot films solo (and on the sly) in Asia’s Golden Triangle heroin hub. That gal’s sweet-talked her way out of tight spots and international dramas that’d leave James Bond stymied and whimpering.

They didn’t believe me. So I called over to her.

“Ellen?” I said, nodding my head in the direction of the slide.

“SHIT, no!” she said, knitted her brows together in horror. “You crazy?”

I turned back to her friends smugly, and reached for another slice of pizza.

A couple weeks later, I returned to the scene of my trauma. Or tried to. I wasn’t with a PTSD therapist, just a friend and our kids. But I screwed up the times, and it was closed. As a consolation prize to our disappointed wee ones, we went to some other suburban dream park, replete with a mushroom-shaped water sprinkler, paved wading creek, and a playground the size of Delaware. (I’m telling you, that playground was bigger than Rhode Island.)

The kids stripped down to their suits the second we arrived, and ran off willy-nilly, not sure where to head first.

Basking in the serene sense of suburban safety, my friend and I got to chatting and weren’t hawkishly watching the older kids. And mid-way through some “We have GOT to get sitters and all go there” kinda conversation, Kate runs up to us tear-drenched and screaming. I could barely understand her.

“It’s not like the one at school! It’s not like the one at school!” she shrieked, shaking and snotting and wailing loudly as I snugged her up in a towel.

A minute later Owen cruised up, smiling his sweet charmer’s smile. My friend turned to her son. “What happened to Kate, Owie?” Ready to accuse him of wrongdoing, as we often do with our own kids.

“Uh, she went down the slide,” he said, then took off to get in line for the swings.

The slide. Ah yes. Well that explains it.

That right there would be my genes.

Home is Where I Want to Be

When I was a kid we got a new refrigerator, and my mother said she’d never wear lipstick again.

It’s not like she was making a makeup-free vow based on some allegiance to the old fridge. The former Frigidaire had a shiny chrome strip down its side, and whenever Mom was running out the door, she’d pause there to peer at her reflection and put on her lipstick.

Weeks after getting the new fridge she’d still stop in that spot, lipstick in hand, then seeing that her mirror was gone she’d whisper, “Damn it!”

Funny thing is, she really did stop wearing lipstick around that time. She told me she tried to retrain herself to use the car’s rear view mirror. But I guess that never took.

Mom lived in that house—1220 Hope Street—for something like 39 years. It’s where I came back to from the hospital as a newborn, held court at countless birthday parties, had my first ever make-out sesh, and brought home college boyfriends.

Okay, so that’s not all true. I mean, I never had a boyfriend per se in college. But if I did have one, and if he was the visitin’ type, that’s where I’d'a taken him.

Anyway, Mom finally sold the house when I was in my thirties. Too old to ever bunk with her again, but attached enough emotionally to feel sorrow that Home as I knew it was going away. Being spruced and shined up for visiting herds of potential buyers. Strangers who’d eventually tear out carpets, paint walls, fill rooms with their own odd furniture, and carry on ignorant of the mundane and momentous events of the Bruno family that took place in those rooms.

Thankfully, Mom at least held onto the same phone number in her new smaller house.

A few weeks ago I was closing the curtains before Kate went to sleep, and I noticed the door jamb in her room. In pencil, in Mark’s small scrawl, it says, “35.5″, 27 months, 12/21/07″

We only made one entry there before I went out and bought a jungle-themed growth chart wall-hanging. The kind of thing made special for families like us. Which is to say, renters. Or rather, migrant urban-dwellers, who tend to move every few years. Never settled long enough for a door jamb to reflect more than a foot or so of kid growth. (Not to mention what the landlord would have to say about it.)

When, I wondered, will we live in a place where we can write on the walls? Where we can record Kate and Paige’s growth so some day when they bring their boyfriends home from college, they can have a laugh about how wee they were 13 years prior.

And if we don’t ever settle into a place long-term, am I doing a disservice to my kids? Robbing them of something far greater than a semi-permanent shrine to their height?

Maybe it’s egomaniacal to want to give my kids what I had. Or maybe it’s just a lack of imagination in my parenting—that I can only figure out how to raise my kids the way my parents did me (minus, God willing, the divorce).

But there are things that seem like signs—big flashing neon signs—telling me to gather up the family and move along. A purse-snatching on our block, a crummy school district, and houses that are both too small and too expensive to compel us to buy.

Oakland hasn’t made one of the Best Places to Live lists, but it has distinguished itself, as my oldest sister, a Boston-area suburbanite, recently called in a panic to point out. “Did you know,” she said, breathless in her hurry to spill the bad news, “that Oakland is the fourth most dangerous city in the U.S.? I just read it on the AOL home page.”

Okay so, let’s just ignore the AOL comment.

“I know!” I squawked. “Can you believe it? Next year we hope to at least make third.”

I joke, because, well, that’s how I roll. But also because there’s a kinda bravado I sometimes embrace about Oakland’s ugly underbelly. Even though our corner of the city, flush with Craftsman homes, gourmet bistros and bookstores, is hardly the hardcore ‘hood my sis—who’s never visited—likely envisions. To her I insist that in their Kevlar play clothes the girls are perfectly safe playing in the front yard.

But really? Well, really I fantasize about affordable grand Victorians, streets where trees form tunnels over the roads, and blocks bursting with sassy, wise-cracking moms who make lemonade for the kids and mojitos for each other. I long for free concerts in the park where we bump into other families we know, and where the kids play free range, without us having to keep our urban eagle-eye watch over them.

I gaze at hours of HGTV, flip through endless magazines, and get heady with visions of a peaceful enclave where the June Cleavers are aging hipsters with sleeve tattoos, the local schools rock, and no one ever eats at Applebee’s. Where small town beauty isn’t marred by Christian dogma being shoved down your throat. Where if you don’t lock you car at night, you won’t find a homeless person asleep in it in the morning.

The question is, does such a place exist? Is the fifth most dangerous city all I require to sleep better at night? And just how far do I have to go and how long do I have to look before I maybe realize that—gasp!—Oakland actually IS my Mayberry?

What’s funny is, for my mother, after decades of life in Bristol, Rhode Island, she still always acted like the townfolk didn’t accept her as a local. I think it was all dramatic hooey, frankly. Something she liked to kvetch about but that never kept her up at night. But who knows, maybe the place never did seem like home to her.

At this point, I’ll never know. But whatever issues she might’ve wrangled with never trickled down to us kids. Which, if I can parlay that forward a generation or two, means that wherever we raise Kate and Paige will likely feel like home to them.

That’s good to keep in mind as a kind of back-up, but it doesn’t stop me from daydreaming.

Welcome to the Team

I have a public service announcement.

The next time you find yourself about to tell someone, “I don’t know how you do it!” please hit your internal Pause button. And while the world is freeze-framed, ask yourself whether whatever it is that the person is doing that’s wowing you so much is even something they want to be doing. Or ever imagined they’d have to do.

Then, before hitting Play and returning to live-action life, decide whether or not to open your trap.

Like, right after my mom died. Amidst effusions of sympathy (that I truly did appreciate) people would say things like, “Personally? I just couldn’t deal with losing my mother.” Or, “You and your sisters caring for your mom like you did. I just don’t know how you did it.”

The thing is, it wasn’t like we signed up for a maternal cancer crisis like you do for the NFL football package on DirectTV.

How do you do it? I don’t know. You just do it because you suddenly find yourself in the shit-sucking situation of having to.

So Saturday. Footloose and giddy with a sitter home with the kids, Mark and I skipped up to Napa to celebrate Surh-Luchtel Cellars’ ten year anniversary. An occasion which, as you might imagine, requires one to drink excessively so as to not hurt the winemaker-hosts’ feelings.

At one point in the party, a point where I’d amply soaked in the fine Surh-Luchtel product, I met the First Lady of the winery’s local Mama friends. And all loose and boozy as I was—though God knows my social skids need no greasin’—I blathered and fawned over one woman’s great haircut.

It was super short and fabulous. One of those styles that the topography of my head and the girth of my schnoz would prevent me from wearing. A look few women go for, and fewer pull off well.

Me: “Blah blah blah known Shelley for 17 years, blah blah blah perfect day for this party [panting boozy wine breath], blah blah blah I just love your hair!”

Her: “Oh, thanks. My six-year-old’s getting chemo, so I decided to shave my head when she started going bald.”

You’ll be happy to know that, even in my wine-saturated state, I didn’t start weeping, throw my arms around her neck, and sob and snot on her dress. I mean, it was the last thing I was expecting to hear on that carefree (and did I mention wine-laden?) day. But I just loved the straight-shootin’ matter-of-fact way she told me.

And I immediately wanted to shave my head too.

Tousling her hair she said it’d been growing out, and was actually fairly long at that point. She told me it’s the third time she’s shaved it. The first time, she and her husband threw a party and pledged a donation to a leukemia charity for every person who shaved their head. And forty of their friends did.

At this point, I was casing the catering table for a plastic knife so I could start lopping off my own locks.

I wanted to be her best friend. I wanted to imagine that I could handle the unthinkable misery of a child with cancer with the same degree of spunk and love and strength. All that and her hand bag was really fabulous too.

Our conversation continued with me rambling on about life and cancer and dealing the hand you get and the infinite wellspring of a Mama’s love that brings you to places of being-able-to-deal that you couldn’t imagine you could ever get to, but hey look, there you are.

I wanted her to see me as someone who got it. One of the cool people. Not one of the folks who I’m assuming react to her story with fear and discomfort, stammering out awkward apologies and aw-that’s-awfuls.

But really, she probably just thought I was drunk.

Whatever the case, before I left we exchanged blog URLs. And I found out where she got her purse. (Though, damn it, they only have the tote left.)

I’m sober now and all I can say is, MY GOD, I have no idea how she does it. And I hope hope hope I never have to find out.

It’s comforting knowing a good knee surgeon, a defense attorney, a locksmith—even though you hope you’ll never have to use their services. And now, without even looking, I found myself a model for amazing maternal behavior in the face of heartbreak. Someone who I’d be thrilled to be even one-third as impressive as, given the same situation. A most excellent addition to my team of experts.

Rock on, sister. My heart—and maybe even my hair someday—goes out to you.

Lost Love

Kate does not like lost things. I don’t even mean losing her own stuff, but when anyone loses anything.

A couple months ago on one of our late afternoon Tibetan-monk-like circumnavigations of the block, I made the mistake of reading a sign to Kate.

“Missing Bunny!” it said. And there was a grainy photocopied picture of little Snowflake or Fluffy or whatever its name was, and contact information for the lost thing’s human family.

Just seconds into reading the sign, I realized I shouldn’t have. But by then it was too late. We stood by the sign, Kate stretching to peer up at the picture, then demanding I read and reread it several times. Including the phone number.

“We have to find that bunny, Mama” she said matter-of-factly, then pushed off on her bike, her bulbous helmet bobbing up and down as she peered under bushes and behind parked cars calling out, “Snowflake? SNOWflake! Where aaaaaare you?”

Then, adding another dose of poor parental judgment, I joined in on the game. I mean, her enthusiasm and optimism were so sweet, how couldn’t I?

But by the time we rounded the fourth corner, our house in sight and the late-day wind picking up, we had (unsurprisingly) not found Snowflake. And that (unsurprisingly) was not okay with Kate.

“We CAN’T go inside!” she bellowed, leaning forward from her hips and dangling her arms straight down in her Pose of Utter Dismay. “WE. HAVE. NOT. FOUND. SNOWFLAKE!”

Oh dear. How do you explain the snowball’s-chance-in-hell-we’ll-find-Snowflake concept to a determined animal-loving kid? I mean, I might as well stomp on her good will with golf shoes. And all my previous bad decisions around this issue aside, I knew I had to manage the situation carefully. One wrong move at this point had the potential to turn Kate into a rabid lifelong PETA activist, following Pam Anderson Dead-tour style, and spending years in therapy exorcising the childhood trauma her heartless bunny-hating mother subjected her to.

Somehow I coaxed her inside. Likely through a series of short-sighted lies along the lines of, “Tomorrow’s a brand new day where we can wake up early and spearhead a large Snowflake search party! But right now it’s important that we go inside, eat a good dinner, and fortify ourselves for the work at hand.”

And then, somehow, the next day Little Miss Steel Trap Mind forgot about Snowflake.

But just a couple days ago we were heading out the door to swim class and saw that someone put a stuffed monkey on the wall by our front steps. Assuming, I guess, that it was ours.

“Oh noooooooooo!” Kate squealed. “Look, Mommy! Someone’s lovey! Someone lost their lovey.”

It was quite sad there. One of those monkeys that’s really a kinda long soft monkey-headed blankie. Exactly the kind of possession that could prevent a child from sleeping, weathering an injury, thumbsucking. (Trying to think what the adult equivalent of this is for me. Uh, a glass of wine? Mark? My mom’s old long johns that I wear to watch TV when I’m cold or grumpy?)

But of course, we were late. And so I upped the emotional ante for Kate by scooching her away from the wayward monkey, propping its head up and saying, “If we just put it like this, someone will walk back and find it.”

5:30PM. Home from swim class. Monkey-blankie still there.

Kate? Fully immersed in the missing monkey drama.

“We need to make a sign, Mama! LOST LOVEY. Then someone will see it and find it.”

I loved the idea. I wanted to indulge Kate’s sweet community spirit. But I also needed to make dinner. And I didn’t manage to eke out the few minutes it’d take to get the art supplies down, plus a big piece of paper, and write out the words.

The next day, distracted by unfolding a stroller and trying to prevent Paige from sweeping all the DVDs off the shelf onto the floor, and wondering how it was that the kids ate breakfast but I somehow didn’t, Kate walked onto the front porch.

“The monkey!” she cried out. And I thought, here we go. I’ll be on the local news tonight holding it up and making a plea. We’ll be contacting the milk carton people and Kate’ll build a website and put up play money for any information related to finding the the monkey-blankie’s rightful owner.

But no.

“I want it!” she yelped. “I want to take it inside! Can I have it, Mama?”

And I thought about that poor kid, well, that poor mother really, trying to coax some second-runner-up stuffy onto a bereaved child. But really, at that point, weren’t the odds of a happy reunion slim? So I relented.

And now we have a new, formerly-owned monkey.

I guess we still could prop up the thing outside, refreshed from its tour in our washing machine. We still could make that sign after all. But if we somehow don’t manage to, I hereby vow to try extra hard on our next encounter with someone’s lost love.

And So

I am full of beginnings. That’s just how it’s been with me the past week or so. No middles. No ends. Just beginnings.

The biggest of which is this project that’s burning a hole in my pocket. A writing thing. A book actually.

But it’s just an idea still. So fresh and young and new. Something I tend to and nudge along by sitting up with my laptop deep in the night, the rest of the house asleep.

I keep trying to crawl into bed at reasonable hours, but then this need to serve as the night sentry to my thoughts wins out. Causing Mark to stumble into the living room at 1:30 or 2:00, squinting in my direction and and muttering, “You okay?”

“Oh yeah,” I say, barely lifting my eyes from the screen. “Just thinking. Working out some ideas. Figuring out how to get started.”

I’m blessed with that gentleman spouse in scads of ways, really. But one that’s especially handy right now is his writerly, editor-like, contemplative, and frankly genius side.

To say I’ve been using him as a sounding board puts things lightly. If I were to draw some kinda schematic—one of those cool data-driven illustrations—to show just how many ideas I’ve bounced off him recently, there’d just be an outline of his body, covered with big hollowed out holes. All battered and dented, poor thing.

And the dear takes everything I hurl his way so well. In fact, instead of holding his arms up to shield himself, he returns my book-frenzy onslaughts with enthusiasm. Thought-provoking questions. With smart tips and insights.

Like this: A book that lays out a particular premise—like, uh, the growing acceptance of gays in America—isn’t really much more than a term paper, right? Nothing anyone will care to read, and no publishing company will buy. It needs to answer the question, “And so?”

This tidbit (from a book he gave me I’ve been too sleep-deprived to read), was just what this currently stuck-on-beginnings gal needed to hear.

Like today, I met some new women. Mamas who I’ll spend two hours a week with soon, for the foreseeable future. It’s a rotating playdate type thing, where two of the mother folk tend to the young ‘uns while the other two go off and bask in sweet aloneness.

And although I barely know these women, I decided to take the plunge. Sign up to do this thing with them.

A beginning see? No middle yet. And world’s away from an end.

And so?

Well, another thing.

Last week Mark had a company softball game. Some one-off thing someone in his office arranged. I planned to take the girls to SF to watch, then we’d go out for dinner after.

What slayed me about this game–just tore me up really—was the nature of the opposing teams. Two magazines. Wired versus Dwell.

The day of the game I mentioned this to nearly every friend I saw. Wired versus Dwell. The geeks go up against the designers. Isn’t that rich? I mean, who’re the better athletes of those groups? Who wins a showdown like that?

And so?

Well, one last beginning. Or what I’m calling one, at least.

Kate ran a long droopy piece of Scotch tape from her bedroom door to the wall in the hallway today. It was her woefully insufficient attempt to prevent Paige from slamming the door.

Because these days Paige cannot imagine an activity more fascinating and thrilling than opening and closing doors. A phase of toddlerhood I’d totally forgotten–or perhaps repressed–from Kate’s younger days.

And so?

Well, see? That’s the thing. I’m not really sure where any of these things go.

Okay, so that’s not totally true. The book and the babysitting club, well that’s anyone’s guess.

As for the softball game, the geeks beat the house designer/decorator clan. Woot! A victory for those who were smart and unpopular in high school everywhere! Take that you liquid eyeliner designers!

And Miss Kate’s attempts to control her space from the door-banging efforts of her sister? I couldn’t bear to tell her that her tape rigging was futile. Instead I hung back. Marveled at her craftiness, and the innocence of her optimistic undertaking.

As it turned out, Paige lost interest in showing all the doors in the house who was boss. After skulking around the entry to Kate’s room, she eventually scooted off on her ass, seeking adventure elsewhere. I later found Kate’s tape in a wad, clinging to the lid of the kitchen garbage can. Apparently she’d gotten bored with her door-stays-open engineering and yanked it all down before Paige even tested its strength.

Which seems to indicate (to me at least), that the middles and endings for all these beginnings may be utterly unexpected. Which is certainly something to look forward to.

Mama Bunny in the Hizouse

Should I be concerned that inanimate objects appear to be speaking to me?

I mean, you’d think I should be, but the thing is, everything they’re telling me is so damn encouraging—so just-what-I’m-wantin’-to-hear—how could I turn a deaf ear to it? Why, they’re all but tapping me on the shoulder bellowing, “YO! Bruno!”

So here’s the thing. We got this bunny book for Kate at a yard sale. And I know what you’re thinking. That I’ve got to stop imagining the universe is communicating with me through my yard sale loot.

But we’re reading this book the other day. And it’s wrapped in cellophane, clearly some library rip-off that some folks had the audacity to sell to me for 25 cents. And I had the poor taste to buy.

So this book, which I only feel half-bad about owning since I’m bound to mistakenly return it to the library one day anyway—it’s a real cute old-timey book. Great illustrations of bunnies all dressed up in Victorian-era clothes.

But I admit that when I first cracked it, despite the lovely pictures, I was hesitant to read it to Kate. Based on there being a lot of words. This tends to not be an issue with my own books, but with the read-aloud kids ones, I mean—honestly? I’m usually just trying to meet my two-books-before-bedtime quota in the fastest way possible.

Admit it. If you’ve got a kid, you’ve done this yourself. Maybe even skipped a sentence or page or two, before the twerp got wise enough to call you on it.

But this day, knowing Kate wasn’t going to nap anyway, it seemed like I’d get the most horizontal time and snuggles myself by reading a long book. And, as it turned out, some of the pages were text text text, but others had really big space-taking-up pictures.

So the book explains that there isn’t just one Easter Bunny. What single cotton-tailed beast could deliver the world’s Easter baskets in one night? There are, it turns out, five. And when one of them gets too long in the tooth (couldn’t resist that), they call a meeting of all the world’s bunnies and pick a replacement.

So this one country bunny, our protagonist, as a kid she used to say she’d be an Easter Bunny one day. And, being rag-tag country stock, folks mocked her.

Then, like many a hapless country lass—especially one of her well, breed—she took up with some fellow and “much to her surprise” had, get this, twenty-one baby bunnies.

Next page: Her dream of Easter Bunny careerdom is shot to shit. I mean, she has TWENTY-ONE babies to tend. Twenty might be doable. But twenty-one?!

And if the fact that she “stopped thinking about hopping over the world with lovely eggs for little boys and girls” while she changed what one can only imagine were GAZILLIONS of diapers—if burying her dream wasn’t heart-wrenching enough, then some male bunnies come onto the scene and say, “Leave Easter eggs to great big men bunnies like us.”

At this point, I’m clutching the book white-knuckled and wild-eyed. “DOWN WITH THE WHITE MALE OPPRESSOR BUNNIES!” I’m screaming, causing Kate to recoil from me, fearful and confused.

“Let’s here it for working Mama bunnies!” I bellow. “We CAN have it all, sisters!!!!”

So then, I’m pawing my way through the now tear-stained pages, heart racing, while Kate likely stares at me in abject terror. Though by this point I’ve frankly all but forgotten she’s in the room. That I’m ostensibly reading to her.

What happens, you ask? Does the Mama bunny rise up?

Well, blessedly, thankfully, she just waits a while until her bunnies mature some. Then she comes before the Grand Bunny Dude who picks the replacement Easter Bunnies. And where at first he doesn’t even consider her (misogynist), she manages to eventually get his attention and he comes to see that Mama has Got. It. Going. On.

And, yes. She gets the job.

Honestly, at this point I was quite wrung out. I mean, I was thrilled, relieved, and well, really a whole host of emotions. But what lingered with me longest, what I was thinking about as I closed Kate’s door and set Paigey down in her crib, was a calm and certain feeling of readiness.

I sat down at my desk and sent out a few emails, asking around about nannies. It seems this Mama bunny is finally ready to get back into the game.

Spider Bites and Love Webs

The greatest truths are spoken in the kitchen. Don’t you think?

Like yesterday. I was with two Mama friends waiting for some mac and cheese to cook. Our five girls were playing in the next room. And my friend, who I’ll call Molly, started riffing off Ayelet Waldman’s media-frenzy “love my hub more than my kids” comment.

Molly’s all, “I mean, if the girls and J were all standing at the edge of a cliff and someone had to go? I’m sorry but, ‘Goodbye, J!’”

That life-altering decision would come as little surprise to her husband, she explained. In fact, the two of them make sport of those kinds of things.

“Oh we play this game all the time,” she said. “Which could you stand to live without—mint chip ice cream?” holding one hand up in the air. “Or the baby?” raising the other hand, then balancing them back and forth.

Giving the pasta a stir she looks at us laughing. “Mint chip ice cream IS pretty good.”

It sounds crass, but Molly’s an all-star mother. And she adores that fine man of hers.

The thing is, those of us who work this Mama gig fulltime need this kind of emotional outlet. It’s like love leeching. Undistracted by conference calls, irate clients, and Friday bagel days, we’re immersed undiluted in the worlds of our children who we love so fiercely. To the point where it can gets sickening. You need a break, a little let-up.

Before having kids I’d heard parents yammer on about their hearts existing outside their bodies. They’d say they couldn’t watch Law & Order any more. The crimes they’d show against kids were just too painful.

I always found that a bit dramatic. And, in my pre-Mama days, frankly boring.

But then I had Kate. Not only did I feel some version of my heart living outside my body, I felt at times like it was wrapped in barbed wire. Some days it was being dragged down the street behind a speeding car.

Last week, during her after-school snack, Kate mentioned, “No one wanted to play with me today.” This news flash, delivered so off-handedly, made me want to turn from the table and barf.

When Kate was a wee babe-ish, I was in her room, rocking her in a chair that was positioned in manner that could best be described as a feng shui train wreck. I’m not sure what compelled me to cram it at the window alongside the crib, but there it was. And there I was. Wedged in and rocking.

Maybe it was the hormones, maybe the tragic feng sui, but as I sat there gazing at her small human-ness, I had the thought that some kid might tease her on a playground some day. That someone might be mean to her. And that nearly destroyed me. Tears and snot started dripping down my face.

Then, because it’s fun to sometimes push oneself to an even more painful level, I had the thought that she could get sick. I’m not talking bad scary sick, just like a cold. And that threw me over the edge.

I was shaking and snorting and wondering how we could hole up there in that room with the poorly-arranged furniture and live out our days. Safe from mean children, germs, the world.

And then, since none of these imagined atrocities were even upon us—or her, as it were—and I was handling just the thought of them so poorly, I started blubbering even harder. Dismayed by how poorly this all boded for my ability to cope as a parent.

As I said, it might’ve been the hormones. But it might also have just been my first concentrated dose of Mama love. It’s so huge it can be downright staggering when a wave of it rolls over you sometimes.

But blessedly, that love spigot ain’t turned to full blast 24×7. That’s what refusing-to-get-dressed tantrums are for, right? To give one a bit of perspective that, well, someone being mean to her on the playground might not be the worst thing ever.

I mean, in Molly’s game if you don’t pick the ice cream answer sometimes, you’ll just sit in a rocking chair weeping and forlorn with love all day. And that’s just not productive for anyone.

But hearing no one wanted to play with Kate—when friendlessness ranks high as an unimaginable hell for me—was brutal. There she was, eating her vanilla yogurt. Not being whiny or demanding or grabbing toys from her sister. Being so mild and wide-eyed and innocent.

Add to that, changing Paige’s dipe that morning, I noticed 20-odd angry red splotches on her legs. Marks that, after several friends inspected them throughout the day, I concluded were spider bites.

Some malevolent spider invaded Sweet P’s crib to prey on her while she slept! And now the poor girl was distraught, clawing at the itchy welts and looking, well, diseased.

I’m scared shitless of spiders, but if I ever saw the thing that did that to her, I’d punch it square in the eye. Damn baby biter.

Though I have to admit thinking that spider must’ve been psyched to’ve found Paige. One bite of that plump gam and he knew he’d hit the flesh-eating jackpot.

I went to a writing class Wednesday. The teacher, a divorcee in her 40s with no kids, writes mostly memoirs and personal essays. She mentioned she’d recently hit a dry patch. Not finding much life fodder to make the subject of a story.

Here she is, wrung dry. And I’m desperately—sometimes painfully—in love with three people, who all live under the same roof. I spend idle moments daydreaming about a third child, thinking it could maybe sop up some of this surplus of love.

With my luck though, I’d likely just produce more.

Brown is the New Green

My brown thumb is on display right now. Out in the open for all to see.

You see, I’ve got these tomato plants. And, I mean, I think the Presidential Victory Garden is charming and all. And I do my best to feign interest when my fervid gardener friends ramble on with glassy-eyed glee about their purple beans and pygmy harlequin kale. Good for them for getting into it. (And good for me when they share their spoils.)

But me personally? I’m not swept up in the whole ‘grow your own’ movement.

But my tomato plants came to me special—raised from seeds from my friend Jack, whose wife packed me off with them after a visit their house. It seemed silly to pass up the offer. Coming up with a reason to not take the plants would take energy. And I’ve always maintained a healthy level of apathy with all things garden-related.

I want to be clear and say right now they aren’t dead yet. But damn they are thirsty!

I mean, I put them on the wall along our front steps—right out there in plain view—with the express intention of seeing them as I pass by several times a day, and prompting my mind to ignite the thought I SHOULD WATER THEM.

So far though, it’s not worked.

In fact, like kindly folks who feed waifish wild cats, our gaybors occasionally water them for me. Sweet men just can’t bear to watch the things die.

But knowing others have had to pick up my slack hasn’t even helped. In fact, I’ve come to learn (and accept) that I contain a finite amount of nurturing. Some people might have a bottomless-coffee-cup supply of caregiving. But mine, well, it eventually just runs dry.

I’m keeping two human children alive, people! So sorry that I can’t also tend the tomaties.

Like the front-stoop plants, I’ve positioned Kate and Paige conspicuously inside the house so when I wake up I’m bound to notice them. After padding around scratching and stretching for a while, and making myself a big mug of tea, I eventually look down at them, see the word MILK I’ve written across their foreheads in black Sharpie and think, “Wait a minute here… They might want something to drink too!”

Getting them milk makes me think they may also want food, and before you know it I’ve even thought to dress them and point to where the toys are.

So far this system’s worked for me.

But really, I’m prouder of those two girls than I ever would be about growing even four tomatoes. They dazzle me daily, in an amount equal to if not more than they exhaust me. If I’m ever in some family-packed setting where another parent asks me “which ones are mine” I’m only too happy to pull out my laser pointer to proudly identify them. I spend whole days marveling in disbelief that they’re mine.

But on the flight back from New York, and the other day at our library, people’ve seen Paigey scooting on her bottom—still not walking, and doing her asymmetric upright hopalong-like crawling thing—and have looked up at me and asked, “How old is she?”

And it crushes me.

I’ve found I ALWAYS WANT TO LIE. I’m not proud of that, but I’d almost prefer they think of her as an overgrown 7-month-old with timely developmental milestones, than an 18-month toddler who, when they learn her age, I’m certain will look at her with pity. Will think, “That poor cute curly-haired girl has something wrong with her.”

It may be egocentric or petty or neurotic (or “D, all of the above”) for me to assume these random strangers are spending any time thinking about or judging my kid. But I fear that they are, and that they do.

It doesn’t seem realistic for me to ask these people to come home for dinner with us so they can bask in the amazing loving dumpling radiancy that is Paigey Waigey Wiggle Pop. For even just a half hour. Just 15 minutes! Her bionic loveableness has nearly brought folks to tears in a five-minute grocery store line. If those people experienced a drop of her charm, they’d be binding their own kids’ legs to get ‘em to scoot just like her. It’d be the Parenting cover story!

If they just knew her they’d see that all that sweet loving juju she’s sending out is just short-circuiting her walking skills temporarily. She’ll be up and about soon enough. Then she’ll be wielding her pure love power on the move. And look out people, because IT WILL BE BIG.

I’ve no doubt there’s a remote mountaintop of hopped up Tibetans looking at a photo of Paige this very minute and Google-mapping their way to Rockridge to dub her the next child lama. She’s just that amazing.

Which is why it confuses and saddens me oh so very very much when someone looks at her, raises a mental eyebrow, and assumes something’s wrong.

Something most certainly is wrong with my tomato plants. I’ve made no attempts to hide that from peering neighbors and passersby. But see and think what you will, I’m 100% confident and here to tell you that my Miss Paige is perfect.

Angels and Demons

Growing up in my family it was like this: Someone would ask someone else, “You want a piece of toast?” And the other person would say, “No, thanks.” “You want some cereal?” The other person, “No.” And—it just turns out I’m using this classic Italian food-forcing example, but really it’d happen with any string of questions that elicited negative responses—then The Asker would say, “Do you want a punch in the nose?”

Now, my husband tells me that his family did not do this. Ask the punch in the nose question that is. And, likely, not force food on the unhungry, although, again, that’s not the point here.

Turns out, according to Mark at least, that asking someone if they want a punch in the nose as a joke isn’t terribly funny. And is even, he claims, somewhat disturbing.

But, that’s what passes for humor in my family. So, say what you will.

That, by the way, has nothing to do with anything that’s happened to me recently, but I was thinking about it yesterday anyway.

Maybe, actually, Kate was all “no-this” and “no-that” and it made me think of it. But if that did happen, I refrained from offering up bodily harm to her, because I’m trying to save room in her dysfunction for some of the weird things Mark’s family did. I don’t want her to get fucked up by my personal family history alone.

Speaking of family issues, such as the second kid getting squat compared to the first, I finally signed up Paige for one of those overpriced kiddie music classes that seem like such a good idea until you’re in one, sitting on a mold-smelling carpet making buzzy bee noises and wishing instead that you were having your armpits waxed.

But Kate attended several of these classes. And to spread the trauma evenly between them, I decided to shell out the excessive amounts of cash to expose Paige similarly.

The good thing is the place is nearby, and it was a sunny, warm morning, so we had a lovely, if not somewhat hurried, jaunt to class on Tuesday. Just listening to birds and admiring flowers and playing a lilting round of the I-put-Paige’s-sun-hat-on-and-she-throws-if-off game.

At one point in our hat toss game, I bend over to snatch the thing off the ground. We’re in a driveway and, as in many of the driveways in our ‘hood, the car in it is parked behind another one and it’s tail end is butted up right next to the sidewalk.

So I whisk up the hat, take one step forward, and the car, which I’d assumed was just parked there, quickly lurches back all fast-like. I mean, just one second of hat-grabbing delay would have left me, Paige, her stroller, and her already somewhat limp hat, flattened FLAT.

It’s kinda like once when an old BF was teaching me to surf in a little deserted lagoony-type area on Hawaii. And after an hour or so when we got out of the water, some local guy walks by and says, “You swam there? No. Do NOT swim there, dudes. That place is packed with sharks.”

Even though we were unscathed—post surfing and post hat-grabbing—I still got all wobbly and dry-mouthed and barfish for a while after.

The driver, an old woman who I’ll guess was Russian, yelped from her car, “I’m sorry!” Unable to speak, I just trudged along the sidewalk pushing the stroller and petting Paige’s blessedly intact head. But Maybe Russian Woman caught up to us, driving slowly and leaning out towards her open passenger-side window to cry out in a maybe-Russian accent, “I am so sorry!”

I didn’t know what to say. So, uncharacteristically, I said nothing. And then, before pulling away, she called out, “The angels! They were with us!”

Well, if they were then, they certainly had abandoned us by later that afternoon, when we were swimming with my still-smokin’-in-her-bikini Mama friend, Mo. We were at her schmancy pool club where Kate was blitzing out with joyous aquamania. You know, staying in the pool until her lips turned blue, like you do when you’re a kid.

By this point in the afternoon, our hostess and her kids had already left the club, encouraging us to stay as long as we wanted.

So, feeling only slightly like crashers, we lingered. Kate continued to work on waterlogging her body.

Paige and I were sitting near the pool, when I looked down at Kate who was clinging to the edge and noticed she had an odd look on her face.

“Do you need to go to the bathroom, Kate?” I inquired, in my most loving honeyed maternal coo.

To which she flatly responded, “I pooped.”

Me: [in a frantic whisper] “Pooped? As in already pooped?”

I know, I know, you might have been expecting some other more devastating angels-weren’t-with-us pool episode. But maybe that’s just because your kid has never taken a dump in your friend’s fancy club pool.

Blessedly, the offending scat had been contained in her suit. We managed to get her out of the pool and up to the restroom without anyone sounding the Poop in the Pool alarm. I even remembered to pick up Paige and take her with us in our haste. (I know, now I’m just showing off.)

Later that day, when any mortal would have taken to their bed exhausted by painful baby music classes, near-death experiences, and acts of public poopery, I forged on. We were out in the front yard, playing some sort of game that no doubt stimulated the girls’ creative and intellectual minds, while simultaneously creating blissful childhood memories they’d cherish forever.

When suddenly some woman down the street starts screaming her head off. Before I even look up I know she got her purse snatched.

She was, as it turns out, exactly where I’d been back when I was waddling down the street—yes, OUR street—pregnant with Paige, and yammering away on my phone, when some urban doofus grabbed my dearly departed big black Kate Spade purse. And did I mention it was the light of day?

Tragically, too, my adored purse—now likely the property of some gangbanger’s girlfriend—had been devoid of cash, since I was just back from the East Coast where I’d left my wallet in my sister’s bag on a little shopping jaunt.

Anyway, so when this guy has my purse, I start screaming my head off—just like this lady down the street was doing—and then some car drives by and I yell, “Hey! STOP THAT KID! He took my purse!” But instead, they slow down and let the kid in. My luck, it was his get-away car.

Now, mind you, I’d really rather live in a ‘hood where none of the cars that are driving around are get-away cars. That would be my preference. I would even welcome bad drivers over get-away drivers (though Mark might disagree with me on that).

And I know what you’re thinking. Why then do I live in Oakland, Fourth Most Dangerous City in our fair country? Generally hearing this statistic makes me offer up my hopes that next year we’ll at least make Third Place. Sassy gal that I am.

I mean, I do say that, but I also get a bit defensive that really, where we live in Oakland is actually quite nice. Charming even.

It’s just that those bad guys from the other parts sometimes find their way over here.

So, just like happened with me, the get-away SUV barrels down the street, driving right past my house. But this time, I’m ready for those fuckers.

I take a step off the curb and peer real intently at the license plate, making sure to mutter it over and over again aloud to not mess it up. I gather up the girls and we make our way to the shaken woman, alongside other neighbors who are offering up phones, consolation, assurances that her company won’t care that her laptop’s gone.

“Anyone have a pen?” I call out, Paigey clamped on my hip like a koala, and Kate likely wondering what warranted being dragged away from the sidewalk chalk. “I got the guy’s license plate number.”

Good thing for that lady, this angel was at the ready.