Dream: All in a sigh

When I'm missing something, it always seems to turn up in the last place I look.

A couple of weeks ago, I brought Big E to the two-hour dress rehearsal for her skating show. I sat bundled in a parka on the grimy bleachers and pulled out a thick folder of essay drafts.  Amidst a swirl of giddy little girls, blaring show music and chatty moms, I tried hard to scour for comma splices and pronoun-antecedent agreement.

The mother of a boy in Big E's class settled in front of me. We'd both been spending our Thursday evenings in those bleachers since fall and we'd talked a few times.  I smiled and said hi but quickly turned back to my essays, fluffing the pile with dramatic flourish and hoping that this would discourage further conversation. 


My standoffishness wasn't just about my workload.  There was, first, the fact that I'm just not a chatter.  I hate making small talk; friendly chit-chat eludes me and I find myself awkwardly smiling and nodding, desperately searching for a polite exit. 

Also, if I'm really being honest, there was my not-so-generous assessment of her (which, I realize, reflects less flatteringly on me than on her). She spent a lot of time volunteering at the school and was, in my opinion, a little boastful about it.  She complained in a braggy way about all of her kids' activities, and though I would politely smile and nod, I would be inwardly rolling my eyes at her pride in overscheduling.  Then there was the way she'd suddenly get all shrill on her kids in a way that, while probably not permanently damaging, made me uncomfortable.  Oh, and there was her son's fauxhawk.  I mean, why do people try so hard to make their kids cool in the first grade?  Also, she had definitely said li-berry more than once.  So, I was a tad judgey...

I wielded my essays like a conversational shield, not biting when she asked if I was doing work, shrugging good-naturedly but without elaboration when she asked if I could really get anything done with all the racket.  But soon I found myself smiling and nodding through a detailed description of her daughter's costume for her dance recital, stealing glances down at my papers as I made polite noises during a recap of her son's hockey season.

Then we got to talking about pre-schools.  She told me that her son had spent two years in a private nursery school but that her daughter had attended the public pre-school at the elementary school, and I said something profound, like "Oh, really?"  She looked away and said very quickly, "Well, she has an IEP. So..."

And then I put down my pile of essays, because I knew that second of hesitation.  I had felt it myself earlier that week when we ran into a neighbor as I was signing out of the elementary school office after Little E's occupational therapy session.  Just as he cheerfully inquired whether we'd been helping out in Big E's classroom I'd faltered, feeling both protective of Little E and just too tired to explain.  When the secretary interrupted him with a question, I was relieved to let the moment pass.

I had spent the months since we'd had our concerns about Little E's underdeveloped motor skills confirmed agonizing over it from all angles, and no one, however well-meaning, had been able to say a thing that made me feel better.  People, trying to lessen my concerns, talked about Down Syndrome and disease, which made me feel petty and unappreciative.  Some advised second opinions, suggesting skepticism of our plan and making me feel an incompetent advocate.  Others tried to sympathize with stories that meant to parallel my experiences with Little E, but which only made me feel less understood for their dissimilarities.

I leaned forward then, and I told this mother in the bleachers that Little E had just been put on an IEP.  I hoped to hear from her that thing that I'd been looking for, whatever that was. 

Instead, she launched into a dizzying list of her daughter's struggles, an inventory that dwarfed my worries.  She inquired about our interventions and then ticked off all that she would be doing in our shoes --coins in Silly Putty, sticker mosaics, bead stringing --and I nodded feigning new interest at suggestions that I'd heard over and over in the past months. I tuned out as she started chronicling the expert opinions she'd sought on her daughter's behalf.  She was clearly not going to say whatever words I'd been looking for.

By the time she began to wind down, her daughter's group was on the ice.  She looked down to the far end of the rink, and concluded, "But, so...yeah."  Then she dropped her shoulders and sighed softly, never taking her eyes off her little girl, who was working in earnest to keep in line with the other skaters in her group.

For one crazy second I had to fight myself back from reaching out and grabbing hold of her hand.

That sigh was quiet but unequivocal validation of the mess of emotion I'd wallowed in for the past months: the uncertainty, the melancholy, the hope, the guilt, the worry, the loss, the frustration, the overwhelming love.  I felt it all there, whether she'd meant it or not.

I'd been looking for months, searching over and over in a sea of words.  And there it was, all in a sigh. 

Play: It was a very good day

Yesterday was one of those days.  No, not one of those.  It was the good kind, one of those where all of the parts, big and small, come together to make the kind of day that is so soaringly happy that you almost feel sad in knowing that most other days will not feel as good. 

It was the kind of day I dreamt of when motherhood was still hypothetical.

There were excited preparations.

There was family and rides on the same shoulders that held me aloft when I was four.

There was Big E's spring skating show and celebratory flowers.

There was Little E's very first signature (and her proud big sister's embellishment).

 There was Chinese take-out.

And there was homemade ice cream pie.

There was also my fortune cookie, which told me this: Don't be pushed by your problems.  Be led by your dreams. 

When Big E has a momentary slip in her skating routine I jump up and wait anxiously for her to get off the ice, afraid she'll be crushed.  I stay up nights and fret over my four-year-old's college prospects. 

But I dream of days like yesterday. 

Thanks to the good folks at Szechuan Taste for reminding me not to let my pursuit of these dream days be overshadowed by puzzling over my problems --big and small, real and imagined.

Play: The view from the sideline

Little E returned to swim lessons this weekend after a year-long hiatus.  It was her first class without parent participation and I went to bed Friday night thinking that I was relieved that I wouldn't have to wedge my pale winter weight into last summer's suit and start my weekend in a chilly pool.

Then I woke up in the middle of the night with jiggling blob of anxiety filling my chest.

It was tough when I was shunted to the sideline of Big E's activities.  At her first kids-only story hour while all of the other mothers chatted or browsed the library, I set myself up on a chair about three feet from the door to the activity room and popped up every few minutes to be sure she wasn't sobbing disconsolately in my absence or being quietly tortured by the other children.

It's even harder to watch Little E shed her Mommy and Me activities.  This may be because when Big E began leaving me on the sideline, I still had a baby on my hip.  It may be, too, that, though I often imagine Little E as a second coming of Big E, they are very different children.

I want to be the calm and reasonable mother, the one who manages to maintain some perspective as she watches from the sideline, who loves her kids but knows that the minor disappointment of losing a soccer game or not passing on to the next swimming group will be good preparation for the big bad world.  I am not there yet with Little E.

A couple of weeks after we sat in a meeting to help write Little E's IEP, my husband and I watched as her skating teacher sighed impatiently at her slow shuffling and then steered her by the shoulders to a lower group, demoting her on the spot.  The fire that welled up within me right there in the bleachers burned so strong that had I known her license plate number I'd likely have fled to the parking lot to do some damage. 

In the absence of that information, I sent death rays onto the ice and my husband gushed pointedly to the teacher of the lower group about how pleased we were to have her back.  And while I can admit that Little E was much happier back in that group, where the teacher seemed to actually like her and the lesson consisted of more than spending 45 minutes of skating from one side of the rink and back, it hasn't really squelched that fire. I still glare snake eyes at the old teacher and whisper snarkily to my husband, "Check out Speedy Gonzalez there in the Bruins jersey.  Good thing our daughter isn't there to slow him down."

When I thought about signing her up for a gymnastics class, the kids-only follow-up to the parent-tot class she'd enjoyed last spring, my heart began to race at the slew of what-ifs that I conjured before I'd even asked her if she was interested.  What if she couldn't do it and the other kids laughed at her?  What if the instructor rolled her eyes?  What if Little E told them all she was a puppy and got on her hands and knees and growled at them the way she does several times a day at home? 

But on Saturday, despite some impassioned protest in the locker room, she was great.  She did everything her teacher told her to: slid into the water, dipped in her chin, paddled across the pool. In between she held tight to the side of the pool, bobbing and blue-lipped, and beamed up at us on the sideline. 

It now occurs to me that she's spent a lot of time there herself over the last four years while her sister took center stage. So, I'm (bravely) planning to sign her up for gymnastics during the next session. 

And we're taking a needed break from skating.

Dream: On taking up space

As I touched the blue auto parts supply sign, our finish line, I was surprised not to see Big E waiting for me, as usual. I turned expecting her to come charging at me momentarily.  My heart sank when I spotted her half a rink away, cautiously skating along at the edge of the ice, her arms out for balance and her mouth twisted into anxious concentration.

This was all my fault.

Skating with Big E is one of my greatest pleasures. As much as I enjoy gliding around the rink myself, I love watching her do it even more.  Her confidence on the ice thrills me; the only time my responsible, rule-following girl does anything daredevilish is when she's on skates.

She's been taking lessons for a couple of years now and can not only twirl and do a few little hops, but stop and start and change direction on a dime.  This is what she was doing that morning as we raced around the rink.  Every other lap she gave me a head start but, as usual, darted past me before the finish line, ducking nimbly through the crowds of amateurs leaning on red training bars, waiting for me at the finish line with a grin.

I know the fun of circling the rink with your hair whipping behind you, your body warm from exertion, your face blasted with cold breeze, and that enjoyment is inarguably increased when everyone around you is teetering precariously on bent ankles.  This day, because it was during the vacation week, was particularly crowded and that crowd was especially wobbly. 

After I watched one particularly unsteady lady in gray sweatpants cast a long sour look at the whoosh of Big E as she glided by expertly on one foot, I began to fret.  What if Big E got in someone's way? What if her speedy darting caused sweatpants lady or someone like her to panic and stop short?  Surely sweatpants lady would fall, and certainly she would be angry, and she really did look exactly like the kind of woman who feels it her right and duty to scold strangers' kids in public.  Wouldn't this, ultimately, be all my fault?

So I pulled Little E aside at our finish line and I told her to relax a little, to make sure she stayed out of the way of all the sweatpants ladies and their red bar-clinging kids.  She cast down her eyes and agreed to be more careful. 

She was.  And I wished I'd never mentioned it.

I tend to apologize my way through life.  In the grocery store I smile sheepishly and offer sorry and excuse me to nearly everyone I pass.  Please excuse me for stopping my cart to pick up a box of Cheerios, if only I could have grabbed them on the fly so as to avoid delaying you for even a second.  So sorry for taking up space as I wait at the deli counter, for allowing my toe to stray into the path of your cart, for existing in such a way as to potentially inconvenience you, random stranger in the dairy aisle. 

I have noticed similar tendencies in my girls.  A few days before that morning at the rink we went to the science museum, also packed with school vacation crowds.  I watched as both girls suffered the quiet frustration of having more aggressive kids push in front and box them out at exhibit after exhibit.  As much as I encouraged them to do the same, I understood that their desire to step confidently to the front was foiled by their inability to defy the rules and manners they'd been drilled in at school and home. I had done this.

After Big E made a few more miserably polite passes around the rink, she told me she was done.  By then I'd come to a realization that I wish I could have had back when I was her age: the lady in the gray sweatpants did not likely regret her sub-par skating taking up space on the rink that could have been put to better use by my infinitely more proficient seven-year-old, so why should I have worried about Big E inconveniencing her?

Afterwards, I tried to undo my mistake.  Before we left the parking lot, I turned to the back seat and told her how much I loved to watch her skate, how proud I was of all the hard work she'd put into to honing her skills, and how wrong I'd been to tell her that she should worry about everyone else more than herself. 

She gave me a smile just devilish enough to give me hope that I hadn't done permanent damage.

I've possibly set back my attempts to raise considerate, well-mannered girls and have surely ensured more sour looks to come my way.  That's okay, though, because there's a lesson needs more attention: you are entitled to take up space in this world --without apology.