Ich liebe dich, Gustav

Sometimes Paige turns into a small German boy named Gustav.

Never quite sure when it’ll happen. She might be shoving mac and cheese into her gob with both hands and you get an angle on her neck that’s all fatty fat chin. Gustav!

Or she lets loose a machine gun round of farts when she’s in her highchair. Off that plastic seat those toots ricochet good, making nice loud blasts. Total Gustav move.

Or, I don’t know. Maybe she’s just sitting up on the rug and nodding her head up and down vigorously in some weird rhythmic affirmation of something or other that’s not exactly clear.

I mean, anything you could imagine a rotund blond German boy wearing lederhosen and oafish, square-toed, crepe-soled shoes doing qualifies for (but isn’t always necessarily) Gustav-like behavior.

And sometimes it’s just not that clear cut. Gustav isn’t a person per se, he’s more of a, well, state of mind. A spirit if you will. Something—or someone—that can be there one second, then vanish faster than a Top Dog bockwurst.

Although I was the first to identify Gustav, Mark eventually came around to tapping into his presence. Inevitably though, whenever either of us sense we’re in his midst and cry out his name, Kate skyrockets into a “She’s NOT Gustav! SHE’S MY SISTER, PAAAAAAAAIGE!!!” freak-out.

Whatever.

Until he’s goose-stepping around the house or something I don’t really think we have anything to worry about.

Paige’s Plastic Doppelganger

Kate’s bed is by far the most comfortable one in the house. But when I dove into it last week for our afternoon reading and snuggle sesh, I landed on an uncomfortable lump of hard plastic. Turns out it was the doll we’d bought at a yard sale last summer, that bore a terrifyingly strong resemblance to our own Miss Paige.

And, although I’d written about Paigey’s plastic twin back then, I realized I never posted a picture of the two of them.

The photo was taken by exquisite photographer and our dear friend Mary McHenry. Who, by the way, you should call immediately to schedule a shoot of your own family. As should I really, since nine months have passed since this picture was taken, and darling Paige with her fresh crop of sassy curls looks nothing like this doll any more. She’s even MORE delicious.

And God knows yard sale season is back in full swing. (Joy!) So it’s only a matter of time until Kate (my Saturday morning scavenging cohort) and I stumble across another previously-loved doll or toy whose likeness to Paige will cause us to recoil in horror.

When that happens, I’ll try to be more timely about posting a picture.

Chinks in the Armour

I just got back from the chiropractor where I got the unsettling news that my seemingly bottomless wellspring of postpartum body issues—aches and imbalances which just months ago taunted me from the moment I’d swing my legs off the bed in the morning—appear to have rectified themselves. That I’m in good shape, all in alignment and shit, and getting stronger.

It’s so totally weird.

I mean, aren’t chiropractors programmed to tell you to come back next week? Isn’t that part of the Chirocratic Oath they swear to upon graduating from those New Age-ily named schools like Life University that they go to?

I feel like I’ve been in years of complex therapy and suddenly my shrink gave me a playful sock in the arm and said, “Cool, well, looks like you’re cured. Take care!”

But really, blessedly, I’m surrounded by subtle comforting reminders that my life’s not perfect. Like, every night when I go to take off my contact lenses and reach for the case, which currently has two green Right Eye caps on it. A couple of the white Left Eye caps apparently ran off together to a better life beyond my medicine cabinet.

Makes me feel like Eugene Levy’s character in the pants-pisser Best in Show, who had, literally, two left feet.

And then last night I’m rocking the responsible solo parent act with Mark away for a one-nighter work trip. I had the neighbor kid across the street—who I’m trying to sway away from going to college next year in lieu of occasional babysitting stints for us—come over for a couple hours while I went to my book group.

He’d just watched the kids at his house during our party on Saturday, which allowed for my drunk wig-bedecked friends to get into Paige’s crib and dance the Mashed Potato if they so desired. Far be it for me to repress one’s desire to make use of an innovative dance floor. Especially if they’re paying for a sitter.

So anyway last night he comes over and I have the kids fed, PJed, and both happily, safely a-snooze in their beds. I jaunt off, book in hand, reminding him my cell number’s on the fridge and the monitor’s on the coffee table.

When I get back he’s deep into one of Mark’s rape-and-pillage type video games. Such good clean educational fun. (Hey, whatever keeps him coming back at $8 an hour…) And he tells me at one point he’d turned the monitor on to check on Paigey, make sure she was quiet and all.

“But I hear this voice talking,” he says, “and I’m all thinking, what IS that? I mean, I know there’s not, like, anyone in there with her.”

And of course my mind goes to the Irrational Fear Mama Place of “everyone wants to steal my baby—someone broke into the house to take the baby.”

But I’m trying to mask my abject terror and feign relaxed light interest in his little story. While blocking out the blare of machine gun fire and screaming women from the TV.

“And I’m like, wait, I know that voice!” he continues.

And at this point I’m in a full-bore flop sweat. I’m holding myself back from running into Paige’s room to see signs of a struggle and a stark empty crib. Just waiting for him to say the voice he recognized was the leader of some violent gang from his school who was on some baby-stealing spree as part of a nothing-better-to-do-on-an-unseasonably-rainy-Monday-night antic.

“And then I listen again and I’m like, WAIT! It’s my mother! She’s all on the phone! And it’s like, wait, what?! And then I’m all, oh I got it. You guys forgot to take the other part of the monitor from our house Saturday night when you came to get the girls. So here I am all here and stuff, but I’m listening to what’s going on over at my house. How rad is that?”

And as my stomach unclenches I reach for the arm of the couch to steady myself, and emit a little sweet laugh.

“Oh, ha! Silly us. I guess we did forget to get it, didn’t we?”

Songs about Stars

A few hours ago Mark staggered through the door, finally home from his European business trip.

It was uncanny how Paige decided to start barfing just hours after his departure Tuesday morning, and maintained a steady stream of miserable maladies straight through to today, when I had to arrange a weekend doctor appointment for her inconsolable (and uncharacteristic) bawling.

Oddly, the doctor couldn’t find a thing wrong with her, which I could tell was bugging him. Diagnostic performance anxiety, I guess. I should have just told him she was trying to maintain a high level of drama and neediness up until her father got home.

When she wakes up tomorrow I’ll bet the college savings she’ll be pink-cheeked, perky, and all smiles. Daddy’s little girl.

The temptation to swan dive into self-pity when I was mopping up vomit while Mark dined in a room hung with Picassos and Chagalls was great at times. I won’t lie. But I know Paige didn’t set out to make my solo parenting stint extra challenging. (That’ll come when she’s a teenager, right?)

And through it all I did manage to find the silver lining to a week’s worth of Just Us Girls. The one thing I learned about myself is that it’s my instinct to move a puking child. Why do I do that? While holding a baby who is spewing forth, whatever reason would I have to want to walk her through other rooms of the house? Oh wait, honey, you didn’t get any on the hall carpet, let me quickly usher you through there!

On two occasions, instead of limiting the, well, splash zone, I took long circuitous pathways through the house to eventually get to a toilet. By which point Paige was essentially dabbing at the corners of her mouth with a napkin and giving me a well-I-feel-MUCH-better-now-that-that’s-over look.

Fool me twice! And as I was on my hands and knees maniacally Formula 409ing every visible surface, I started chanting an internal don’t-move-the-puker don’t-move-the-puker mantra. But it was like when someone always makes the same kind of nasty or hurtful or weird comment to you, and even though they’re a repeat offender you still find yourself so stunned you never manage to bust out a zingy retort. And then in the shower some morning you decide you’re not going to take it any more, damn it, and you craft a brilliant scathing response. But then you lie in wait to defend yourself and they never come back at you. Aaaargh!

Which is all to say that once I had my stay-rooted easy clean-up baby barf approach all mapped out, she moved onto other gastric issues and didn’t upchuck again. Figures.

And despite the weird role reversal of Paige workin’ some illness drama and getting all the attention, it was Miss Kate–the one who’s usually with top hat and cane doing jazz hands up in yer face–who stole the show this week in the sweetest quietest way.

I almost never put Katie to sleep any more. With Paigey still doing the pre-sleep boob thing, it makes Mark and my division of bedtime labor an obvious one. But on my own I put Paige down first, then Kate and I run through her bedtime routine.

Aside from the realization that, despite her overflowing bookshelf, she often wants the same books I read her during the day read again at night, I noticed for the first time the glow-in-the-dark stars Mark painstakingly mapped out on her ceiling. If you set aside your jaded they’re just those glowy star stickers mindset, and lie down on the bed, take maybe the first relaxing breath you’ve had all day and gaze up at them, they really are quite beautiful.

Our post-reading, pre-nighty-night moments only lasted a few minutes. But that first evening, marveling at the beauty of the stars and giving Kate a fresh interest in them, I realized she has yet to go camping and to experience the wonder of sleeping outdoors. (Something I regretfully never did myself until my twenties.) And so, whispering–as I was directed to so as not to wake her babies–I explained what sleeping in a tent that’s open to the sky is like, and promised her that we’d do that together soon, while assuring her that, no, there aren’t any tigers that come to eat you when you go camping, and leaving out the part about how maybe bears will.

The next night, Kate capitalized on her ceiling stars, an asset she knew at that point impressed me. The moment the light was out she pulled me down on the bed imploring, “Look at the stars, Mama. Look at them!” I had to remind her to keep her voice down for the barracks full of sleeping dolls lined up under small blankets all along her floor.

On Night #3 the stars were still cool and all, but what really moved me was having my little bundle of three-year-old energy in a rare sleepy snuggy mode. The girl who, understanding full well the power she wields over her adoring mother, rations hugs and kisses like bottles of bourbon during Prohibition. The same gal who recently made the weird world-weary “I have no love left to give” remark—odd and adult-like enough to make me wonder if she’s been Tivoing As the World Turns behind our backs.

Anyway, somewhere in the course of the week she determined that once the lights went out, after a brief period of admiring the constellations, she’d roll over, back herself up to get really close to me, and request I sing her a couple ditties. Namely, “Silent Night” and “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star.” (Note the theme she’s going with?)

Of course, I needed to whisper-sing, since God knows her babies are extremely sound-sensitive sleepers, despite what I’ve told her about having it be preferable to get them used to sleeping without having to tiptoe around them. But does she ever listen to her old-fashioned mother? Noooooooo.

Anyway, let’s just say that there are notes towards the end of “Silent Night” that I struggle with. And whisper-singing only seems to exacerbate my cracking voice. But Kate just burrows into my side quiet and listening. She doesn’t seem to mind my singing voice. And for the sweet few minutes of snuggles it affords me, I don’t either.

Kate and I are wired the same way. Whatever it is we’re doing we’re always busy busy busy. We’ve got things to do, places to go. But this week reminded me that I need to carve out more time for the two of us to stop and do some star-gazing together.

And while I’m at it, I should come up with a few more songs about stars to add to my repertoire.

Yo, William Safire

Magazine obsessives that we are, even Paigey subscribes to something. And the mags, like all of Paige’s possessions, Kate immediately requisitions for her own amusement, until she eventually loses interest. Then the moment Paige so much as glances in the direction of whichever discarded item, Kate reclaims it, dragging it back to her bedroom lair, where Paige will be lucky to ever lay eyes on the thing again.

Some day we’re hoping that Paige will have her own toy.

So last night I was putting Kate to sleep and reading her Paige’s newly-arrived magazine, a publication that’s geared towards giblets far younger that Little Miss Precocious. Despite that, as Paige’s property it was being processed by Kate, and was still being held for inspection and assessment.

The last page had a picture of a gorilla on it.

“G is for…” I said, leaving her to fill in the blank. Lately, she’s been super curious about letters and words and such.

Looking up out of the corner of her eyes she said slowly, “Geeeee is foooooor… Gelephant!”

Well, yes Kate. Oddly enough, I guess that’s true.

The Bruno Triple Throat Clear and Other Unfortunate Legacies

I wandered into a used clothing store yesterday in that aimless way that mothers sometimes enter stores where they have no interest in the products but just want to gain a feeling of exasperation from wedging a bulky bright red off-road stroller through narrow clothing-lined passageways and tight corners populated with old women burrowing through rayon blouses.

Halfway through my why-the-hell-am-I-in-here-and-how-will-I-ever-get out realization, a woman in the store sneezed. Not just any sneeze, but a deafening sonic boom aaaaaah-choo! that caused everyone in the place to recoil in shock. It was so sudden, and so terribly loud, it created what I indelicately like to refer to as a “tampon-expelling moment.”

Anyway, the gal’s apparently sent shock and awe through other shopper-packed stores because as some of the older patrons were still blanched by the event and readjusting their wigs, she made a brief and unembarrassed announcement.

“Sorry!” she called out. “Yes, I’m a loud sneezer. I inherited it from my grandfather.”

Okay, so who really cares about Grandpa’s sneezes? If I were her life coach I’d help her work up a better post-sneeze remark.

But the little episode did get me thinking about The Bruno Triple Throat Clear. It’s one of those divorce-able habits that are the patented (and only) approach the women in my family unconsciously (and constantly) use to clear their throats. It’s a kinda “mmm-mm-mmmm.” A peppy throaty trifecta that actually makes me miss my mother to even think about because it’s one of those little things that was just so her.

And, as it turns out–unfortunately for our spouses–is so my sisters and I too.

Of course, my annoying habit is one thing, but Mark ran into the room where I was the other day wild-eyed, as if he was about to report a family of rabid badgers had set up house in his boxer short drawer.

“Kate!” He bellowed right up in my face. “She just did The Triple Throat Clear!”

Of course, I could just smile coyly, thinking about how she sucks all the water out of her toothbrush after using it, then gives it two quick taps on the edge of the sink before putting it away.

“Oh. Really?” I eventually said. “Huh.”

Maybe some of the stuff my family does is easier to pick up on since there are four of us, and we’re all girls. That has to make it easier to detect our shared annoying habits, right?

Case in point. We were all just back in Rhode Island for my Dad’s 80th birthday extravaganza. I think it was after the party, later at home, when we were beaten down from excessive socializing, daytime alcohol consumption, and the sweet relief of having the shindig successful and behind us. I walked into the living room to see my sister Judy sprawled asleep on the leather couch, her left arm slung up over her face and her mouth gaping open. It was the exact stance I’d seen Ellen in on the blow-up mattress earlier that morning. And that night, in front of one Law and Order show or another, my father nodded off, head turned to one side, mouth agape. (He didn’t do the arm sling thing. We got that part from Mom.)

At this point in my life, I can tolerate the humiliation of knowing that every time I fall asleep on an airplane the flight attendants could set a cocktail napkin and bag of nuts in my open mouth. (The Bruno Flung Arm Sleeping Maneuver is thankfully too difficult to enact in a seated position.) What concerns me at this juncture is which shameful traits my little innocents will pick up from me. Which crosses of mine, as it were, they’ll have to bear.

Miss Paige has always been a star sleeper. (My genes, thank you very much.) But in the past few weeks she’s somehow realized that she can sit up in her crib and look around her room. Something she finds so fascinating–reviewing an unchanged space she sees every day–she now does it at the beginning of every nap. The problem is, tired as she may be, she hasn’t managed to make the connection that she has to lie down again in order to sleep.

So I’ve been having to go into her room and readjust her, gently pushing her shoulders down onto the mattress. At which point she looks up at me grateful and groggy, and dozes off nearly instantly.

The other day, she started in on the why-am-I-still-sitting-up-when-I-want-to-sleep-now? whine. (It’s amazing how you can categorize their different laments.) I was hoping that something in her brain would finally fire and she’d realize she could solve the problem herself. And a few minutes later, as if I’d willed it to be so, she was totally quiet. So I waited a bit, then cracked open her door to take a peek.

And there she was. In a seated position but pitched forward, totally face-planted into her blanket, and sound asleep.

Of course, like any sensible mother I didn’t dare move her for fear she’d wake up and her nap–and my cherished child-free time–would suddenly evaporate. So an hour or so later when she eventually came to, I went in to get her. Her face was pink and indented in the pattern of the lovely afghan that Aunt Terry knitted for her. But she was well rested nonetheless.

Well, she’s found a solution. Since that first ergonomic nightmare of a nap, she’s fallen asleep a few other times the same way. One of these days I’ll put a silencer on my camera shutter and take a picture of it. It seems wretchedly uncomfortable, poor dear, but at least I can say for sure, she didn’t get that one from me.

My Little Indian–er, Native American–Giver

Pre-kids, in our swank San Francisco apartment, Mark and I had a butcher block island in the kitchen. On the lower shelf we kept bulky seldom-used cooking appliances.

One day a friend was visiting with her toddler, and in the midst of an otherwise mellow wine-glass-in-hand hangin’ in the kitchen chat, Mark suddenly gasped and lunged across the room to pluck a large food processor blade out of curious Elias’ wee little hands.

Turns out we weren’t too hip on the concept of childproofing.

Which isn’t surprising since there’s a great divide—nay, a vast wide-open abyss—between observing your friends parenting, and taking a crack at it yourself. The things you’re certain you’ll never do–drink wine during pregnancy, hang charts around the house that show off potty-pooping performance, wipe a baby’s nose with a sock then put it back on her—you may eventually discover you succumb to. Or at least I have.

I’ve long disdained the word “silly.” As a parent I hear myself say it no less than five times a day. I’ve also surprised myself by letting a baby cry herself to sleep, cooking different food for the kids than the adults, (then cooking something else when that other thing didn’t work), licking a finger to spot wash a child’s face, using ice cream to bribe good behavior, and bellowing at the top of my voice, “BECAUSE I SAID SO!”

Oh I’m not proud of these things. In my pre-motherhood days, back when I was naïve enough to think hemorrhoids only afflicted the elderly, I’d sometimes see a parent do something or other and would tell Mark—close witness to this character atrocity, amongst others—how different I’d be when I became a Mom.

Heh.

“Did you notice,” I’d ask him at the end of an evening, a toothbrush sticking out of my mouth, “that they put Devon in a Time Out for throwing food? I mean, I don’t know about those… Is that really the best way to handle a situation like that?”

Ah, hindsight.

The thing is, tragic as it is to admit, even when you’re quite certain there’s a better way to do something as a parent, hell if you can figure out what it is. And since the not-best way may be readily available, in the clutch you sometimes find yourself resorting to it.

One thing I vowed I’d never do was eat a sucked-upon mushy half-masticated food item that my child—no matter how darling the little cherub—offered to me. Again and again I’ve softly gagged witnessing a mother eat a proffered spit-strewn mac ‘n cheese noodle. Something I’d rather be waterboarded than have to choke down myself. And invariably—oddly—it’s lapped up by the recipient with such overly dramatic glee, I can’t imagine what’d possess them to risk reinforcing the behavior in the child.

It’s baffling.

Since Kate’s infancy apparently swept by Mark and I while we suffered a sleep-deprivation-induced blackout—we can barely remember celebrating her first birthday–I can’t say for certain, but I’m pretty sure she never did the “Here eat this, Mom” thing.  And blessedly, nor has Paige.

Well, that’s not altogether true. Generous soul that she is, Paige has recently taken to holding out a singular black bean offering. She’ll drop it into your hand, but then immediately pluck it back up—going back and forth with this process sometimes up to five times before ending the game by popping the filthy smushed bean into her own wee bouche.

An alternate version of this game involves her taking a, say, broccoli floret, and holding it out to you, but never releasing her grasp on it. She just sort of taps it into your hand, smiles coyly, then retracts it.

I’m not sure how Emily Post (or the Countess deLesseps for that matter) would regard this. It no doubt flies in the face of proper gift-giving procedure. But be that as it may, I’m just happy that with this one thing I said I’d never do as a parent, Paige has not made a liar out of me.

Love, Italian Style

Greetings from Bristol, Rhode Island.

Today I visited my 94-year-old Godmother, Mimi, and her 90-year-old sister, Mary. Both women are more spry than I could ever hope to be when (and if) I live to be even 20 years younger than they are.

Here’s part of our conversation. Pardon the phonetic Italian.

Mimi: [pinching Paigey's cheeks] “Coo-mah zee bell! Coom-oh cool la dee-ahl!”

Me: “Wait, what does that mean?”

Mimi: “Well, you know ‘Coo-mah zee bell…‘”

Me: “Right. [That's 'How pretty you are.'] But what was that last part?”

Mimi: [Pretends to not hear me and starts playing with Paige.]

Me: [Turning to Aunt Mary] “What was that other thing she said? After ‘Coo-mah zee bell?‘”

Aunt Mary: “Well, uh, it’s a kind of funny thing to say. Literally it means ‘like the backside of a frying pan.’”

Me: “Oh my God. I have got to write that down. Okay, Mimi, so say it to me again so I can get it.” 

Mimi: [slowly] “Coooo-mahhh zeeee bell. Coooom-oh cool–”

Aunt Mary: “Oh, and ‘cool‘ literally means, well, bottom. You know…ass!”

Me: “Okay, so what she is saying is, ‘How pretty she is, like the ass end of a frying pan?’”

Aunt Mary and Mimi: [in unison, looking at each other] “Well, yeah. That’s about right.”

Brilliant. I can’t think of two people I love more paying my sweet baby Paige a better compliment. 

It’s truly wonderful to be home.

When It All Began

One year ago today a team of medical professionals took this out of my body. We named it Paige and instantly fell under its spell.

Paige is an incredibly sweet, tremendously happy, delicious loving dumpling of a baby. Her father, sister, and I love love love her silly.

Happy happy birthday, dear Paigey Waigey Wiggle Pop! Happy birthday to you.

Not Quite Ready to Be Set Free

Yesterday was Kate’s first visit to a dentist. And as we sat in the cheesy Hawaiian-themed waiting room, another mother came in with two older kids. Her daughter immediately flounced to the floor to engage with Paigey. And the mom pulled up a tiny surfboard shaped chair, sat, and smiled down at them.

After a few minutes she looked up at me and said, “Please pardon the loud rumblings from my uterus.” A comment which took me a beat to grock, but then totally slayed me.

Me: “Oh God, I hear you. She’s my baby and she has the same effect on me.”

Her: “Here I am, I’m 43, and I already have three kids. When’m I going to get over this?”

Which brings me to the rhetorical question, just how supremely do women rock?

I love that within three minutes of being in each others’ orbits this total stranger and I are revealing our deep down irrational-but-real want-another-baby cravings. It’s the kind of intimacy that some men who were college roommates and have been playing tennis together every Saturday since the first Bush administration still haven’t achieved.

And her remark is timed perfectly to my just-the-other-night musings. Paige refused to nurse, which had me convinced she was harboring a devastating rife-with-hearing-loss ear infection. (I’ve never understood when mother’s say their kids just stopped wanting to nurse one day, since that’s so not been how my boob-junkie kids roll.)

Paigey was back to her old milk-chugging self a few hours later, but the experience got me thinking as I was a-sway on the ugly Dutalier glider. If I were to suddenly stop breastfeeding, it seems like I’d need to put my body to another practical use. Truly. In much of the past four-and-a-half years I’ve either been gestating or breastfeeding, and odd as it is even for me to realize, it’s set me in a kind of groove I’m not sure how to get out of.

Doing neither of those things seems so, uh, kinda lazy. Or maybe it’s not that so much as just not productive enough.

Years ago when Mark (then I) started seriously obsessing over cooking, we read Michael Ruhlman’s excellent The Making of a Chef–a great first person account of a foodie journalist being thrown into the mix at the hardcore Culinary Institute of America. Aside from food chemistry and knife skills, clean-as-you-go, and never serve anything that you know ain’t right, one of the critical things you learn at cooking school is how to be crazy efficient. If the walk-in’s at the end of the kitchen, you think of all the things you’ll need from there so you can make just one trip. And on the way back to your station you grab the Chinoise or mixing bowls or grater that you’ll need from the drying racks. It’s all piled up in front of you so your arms are breaking and you can barely see, but the other thing that you learn in cooking school is cooking is hard work. That is, it’s physically taxing.

In cramped, fast-paced, and (proverbially and literally) hot restaurant kitchens, running around in circles is for rookies. It’s just not done. It confuses your mind, expends unnecessary energy and ultimately puts you in the weeds. In other words, a quick way to find yourself out on the sidewalk, considering getting an office temp job to pay the rent.

So Ruhlman. He describes how this hyper-efficient planning and intense economy of movement unsurprisingly slipped over into his out-of-the-kitchen time. (Kind of like when I played so much backgammon in college I’d look at a pub booth packed with people as a cluster of pieces–all safe since there wasn’t one sitting out alone. For my brain at least, that was the result of excessive backgammon. Imagine if I’d used that time to study!) So Ruhlman described how one day he realized he was getting ready in the morning in turbo efficient mode. Get socks and shoes and grab car keys and knife case all in one quick sweep of his apartment. Socks and shoes on mechanically fast, grab keys and knife case, and up and off you go. Or something like that.

And so here I am, just three days away from Paige’s first birthday and realizing how this mother thing has managed to wire me in a similar way. Efficient? Yes. Getting kids bathed, diapered, dressed, fed, snacks packed, car toys grabbed, hats, sweaters, shoes that have been already pulled off put back on. All that glamor that you know every mother–including your own back in the day (call her right now and thank her, please) goes through.
 
But aside from the machinations of kid tendin’, there’s of course the physical connection us mothers have. And whether we’re precious about it and read non-stop about how it all works or not, it just happens. We’re using our bodies to the fullest of their capabilities, like old-school VCRs that–though baffling and unused to their max by most folks–without even reading the manual we’re instinctively able to do the trickiest things to like updating the clocks, and setting them to advance record.

It’s actually weird how mindlessly one can grow a healthy baby.

There are the glossy hair ‘I am woman hear me roar’ pregnancy highs, and the all-my-friends-are-dumb-when-they’re-drunk-and-I’m-sober resentment. Stuff even outsiders can cotton to. But more discreet, and ultimately more powerful, is the latent accustomedness your body seems to develop for being put to these practical maternal uses. So from where I’m standing, at the precipice of not having such a physical Mama task ever again, one might be left feeling somewhat un-tethered. A bit lost.

It’s the place where some woman, no doubt, feel liberated, set free. Back to one’s skinny jeans for good.

But for me, and it seems for the dental office Mama too, it’s a much harder transition. Bittersweet in all the love and intimacy and care that was associated with all those bodily demands, despite how grueling they could sometimes be. There’s an unaddressed expectation, a void that some of us reckon with, when our bodies are suddenly not called into service any more.

Perhaps I’ll have to take up tennis. My mother always played a wicked doubles game. Maybe I can just try to make that do.