For the first time in my life I am dreading my birthday.
I don't know if this is the result or the cause of the way I've been feeling lately: both overwhelmed by the suffocating minutiae of grown up life, the laundry to fold and play doh to scrape from the carpet, the groceries to buy and children to scold, and underwhelmed by the payoff, more laundry, play doh, groceries and stern talkings-to.
In an effort to avoid one of these gray moods, I decided not to think about the birthday coming tomorrow. Instead, I've been thinking about the birthday I had twenty years ago when I turned 16 and realized for the first time that I wouldn't be a kid forever. . .a notion which, back then, filled me with hopeful optimism.
I got two things on my sixteenth birthday: my learner's permit and a black leather motorcycle jacket. It didn't matter that in the six months that I drove on the permit I burnt through the clutches on both of my parents' cars, nor that I killed any potential coolness of the jacket by wearing it with french-cuffed Z. Cavariccis and shoe boots; the gifts I got for my sixteenth birthday were the tender shoots of the grown up life I was sure was just waiting to blossom for me. The permit promised freedom and the jacket, easily the edgiest piece of clothing I'd ever owned, hinted at adventure and excitement.
Twenty years later, I have no idea where my learner's permit or the bright shining freedom it represented ended up. The jacket, though, is still with me. Through several moves and countless closet purges I've kept it regardless of how poorly it would fit me or how foolish I would look in it should I try to wear it. I keep it because I loved it back then and because I still love the unknown possibilities it symbolized, even though grown up life has yet to present me with an occasion that demands black leather with wrist zippers.
I'm still not thrilled about what's coming tomorrow, but I'm trying to reframe it. I'll look at it as the twentieth anniversary of my sixteenth birthday, and hopefully I can motivate myself to put aside my mood and make this a year that lives up to the promise of the jacket.
Showing posts with label birthdays. Show all posts
Showing posts with label birthdays. Show all posts
Friday, September 23, 2011
Monday, December 20, 2010
Play: The turd or the treasure
Until last week, I had only been to one water park in my life. From that one day I have two very vivid mental snapshots: one of a fly-infested wound, the other of a lone piece of excrement lying poolside. And so it surprised even me when the grand gesture that I proposed to alleviate my birthday party guilt was an overnight trip to a local indoor water park to celebrate Little E turning four.
Let me first explain my previous water park experience. It was Water Country USA, during a family trip to Williamsburg, Virginia the summer before ninth grade. As was the case with most of that vacation (and most of being 13 in general), I enjoyed it but chose to focus on its least enjoyable aspects.
My most indelible memories, besides those of the water park, are miserably posing for photos with my head and arms in stocks in Colonial Williamsburg, watching a mulleted couple pass cigarette smoke mouth-to-mouth as they made out in a roller coaster line at Busch Gardens, and leaving much of the skin from my left knee on the sidewalk of my cousins' suburban Jersey neighborhood after tripping during a jog.
The last of these resulted in the gaping wound that after a day of soaking in chlorine attracted a swarm of tiny flies, many of whom became stuck. I discovered the insects adhered to my flesh only after I spotted a piece of feces abandoned by the edge of the obstacle course pool.
I still have a scar on my leg from the festering scrape that attracted the flies, but it is that second thing that has really haunted me. When I told my mother about it at the time, she brushed it off, saying that it had probably been inadvertently dropped from a sagging diaper. I maintain to this day that it was far too large, perfectly formed, and, well, mature for that to have been the case, and its origins confound me.
With this close in mind, I stepped into the water park on Thursday night. As it turned out there were no skinned knees, no flies and, best of all, nary a bowel movement in sight. And just when it seemed I'd been all wrong about water parks, an enormous bucket perched atop the structure where we stood dumped a torrent of water upon us that nearly swept Little E away. I now had a new image to add to my previous collection: terrified child, wrapped shivering in a towel and refusing to budge from her lounge chair.
I was tempted to revert to my 13-year-old self, as I often do. But I realized I had a choice: I could choose to focus on the bucket-dumping disaster or the fact that I was lounging on a chaise in 80 degree heat on a December night; I could see the turd or the treasure.
I'm proud to say that --at least this time-- I made the right choice.
Let me first explain my previous water park experience. It was Water Country USA, during a family trip to Williamsburg, Virginia the summer before ninth grade. As was the case with most of that vacation (and most of being 13 in general), I enjoyed it but chose to focus on its least enjoyable aspects.
My most indelible memories, besides those of the water park, are miserably posing for photos with my head and arms in stocks in Colonial Williamsburg, watching a mulleted couple pass cigarette smoke mouth-to-mouth as they made out in a roller coaster line at Busch Gardens, and leaving much of the skin from my left knee on the sidewalk of my cousins' suburban Jersey neighborhood after tripping during a jog.
The last of these resulted in the gaping wound that after a day of soaking in chlorine attracted a swarm of tiny flies, many of whom became stuck. I discovered the insects adhered to my flesh only after I spotted a piece of feces abandoned by the edge of the obstacle course pool.
I still have a scar on my leg from the festering scrape that attracted the flies, but it is that second thing that has really haunted me. When I told my mother about it at the time, she brushed it off, saying that it had probably been inadvertently dropped from a sagging diaper. I maintain to this day that it was far too large, perfectly formed, and, well, mature for that to have been the case, and its origins confound me.
With this close in mind, I stepped into the water park on Thursday night. As it turned out there were no skinned knees, no flies and, best of all, nary a bowel movement in sight. And just when it seemed I'd been all wrong about water parks, an enormous bucket perched atop the structure where we stood dumped a torrent of water upon us that nearly swept Little E away. I now had a new image to add to my previous collection: terrified child, wrapped shivering in a towel and refusing to budge from her lounge chair.
I was tempted to revert to my 13-year-old self, as I often do. But I realized I had a choice: I could choose to focus on the bucket-dumping disaster or the fact that I was lounging on a chaise in 80 degree heat on a December night; I could see the turd or the treasure.
I'm proud to say that --at least this time-- I made the right choice.
Monday, December 13, 2010
Dream: For my girls, on the close of another year
I was raised without religion and as a result, my knowledge of The Bible is basic at best. Yet at this time of year I reflect on my cobbled understanding of the Christmas story, and I feel a rush of recognition; though I'm pretty sure this is sacrilegious, I find communion in the story of a woman who, in the dark stillness of a December night, experiences a miracle of birth and light.
It happened to me, too. Twice.
Big E emerged into the December darkness to make me a mother seven years ago. I labored for 24 hours, battered by the pain but unrelenting in my determination to have a drug-free birth. In the last late night hours before Big E was born, I was delirious with pain and fatigue, moaning to the midwife, over and over like a mantra, "I'm dying; you're killing me."
When my husband and I headed to the hospital through a cold, dark December night four years ago, I thought they'd probably send us home. Though the contractions were coming a minute apart, they were nowhere near as crushing as I remembered from Big E's birth. No longer as rigid in my convictions, I was open to an epidural this time around, but the opportunity never presented itself. Little E was born 45 minutes after we arrived at the hospital, to the sound of the Christmas carols our nurse had switched on in the birthing room.
Their personalities often seem as polar as the circumstances of their births. Big E, on turning seven, has graduated from little kid status to just plain kid and scolds her sister for talking too loudly while she's trying to read, which she does almost ceaselessly. Little E, now just about four, still hangs on my leg to be carried. When I tell her she's too big, she pouts that she's just a little baby and I give in, wishing she were right, still loving her clinging presence on my hip. While good girl Big E stands rod straight and loudly enunciates a line from the Daisy Scout Promise to the crowd at her investiture ceremony, comedienne Little E, slumped on my lap, slaps her forehead and moans, "Oh brother, this is taking forever," to the amused agreement of the parents around us.
I never could have known seven years ago what my children would be to me. How could I have realized they would render me at once so immune and so vulnerable? Their existence blunts the stings and throbs of my daily life, yet even the tiniest harms they encounter sear my heart. They are my beacon, the beam that guides me, that filtered through the gray haze of hormones and sleep deprivation after Big E's birth and burned through the dusky gloom of my work troubles last year. If they are okay, my world is okay; thus, I must always make my world okay so that they will be, too.
I cry nearly every time I have to clear their drawers of outgrown clothes, reminiscing over every chocolate stained T-shirt and threadbare pair of jeans, and yet I thrill at every new stage, every little skill mastered, every small step taken. I hate that we have moved through another year, but I would never want to miss knowing the women they will become.
And bittersweet as it is to mark a year gone, I know that as long as my girls are anywhere in this world there will be light in mine.
It happened to me, too. Twice.
Their personalities often seem as polar as the circumstances of their births. Big E, on turning seven, has graduated from little kid status to just plain kid and scolds her sister for talking too loudly while she's trying to read, which she does almost ceaselessly. Little E, now just about four, still hangs on my leg to be carried. When I tell her she's too big, she pouts that she's just a little baby and I give in, wishing she were right, still loving her clinging presence on my hip. While good girl Big E stands rod straight and loudly enunciates a line from the Daisy Scout Promise to the crowd at her investiture ceremony, comedienne Little E, slumped on my lap, slaps her forehead and moans, "Oh brother, this is taking forever," to the amused agreement of the parents around us.
I never could have known seven years ago what my children would be to me. How could I have realized they would render me at once so immune and so vulnerable? Their existence blunts the stings and throbs of my daily life, yet even the tiniest harms they encounter sear my heart. They are my beacon, the beam that guides me, that filtered through the gray haze of hormones and sleep deprivation after Big E's birth and burned through the dusky gloom of my work troubles last year. If they are okay, my world is okay; thus, I must always make my world okay so that they will be, too.
I cry nearly every time I have to clear their drawers of outgrown clothes, reminiscing over every chocolate stained T-shirt and threadbare pair of jeans, and yet I thrill at every new stage, every little skill mastered, every small step taken. I hate that we have moved through another year, but I would never want to miss knowing the women they will become.
And bittersweet as it is to mark a year gone, I know that as long as my girls are anywhere in this world there will be light in mine.
Monday, December 6, 2010
Play: You know you're a mother when...
You know you're a mother when even a birthday party comes wrapped in guilt.
Big E's first real party, when she turned 3, was a direct result of my guilt about the baby that was about to shatter her attention-soaked little world. She had some friends over to do craft projects, eat pizza, ransack our home and force their hovering parent to make awkward introductions and small talk. This was nice and all, but it couldn't quite offset having to share a bedroom, so she we threw her another party with the family. Then we sent her to school with cupakes. Then we had a smaller, more intimate party for the three of us. And I still felt guilty.
By the time her fourth birthday rolled around, I realized that all that baby guilt was unnecessary. Big E had taken easily to big sisterhood and was proud to have Little E at her party, held in the gymnastics center at the local Y. Kids bounced on the trampoline, parents walked the balance beam, and I very nearly escaped any feelings of guilt. I would have called the whole thing a success had it not been for the one little boy who clung to his mother's leg and covered his ears at every loud noise. I felt bad for the boy, but, having been there myself at many a party, I felt worse for his mother. And so I fretted for days about whether I'd appropriately communicated my sympathy.
The year she turned five was rough. Her closest friends had left daycare for kindergarten, but, because of her December birthday, Big E was still there and not too happy about it. Determined to make sure that she had high attendance at her party, I invited all of the girls in her class and all of her old friends to a party at Build-a-Bear, followed by a restaurant lunch. It was great, until, as I led a line of teddy bear-toting little girls through the mall, I remembered that not only were there starving children in Africa, but possibly within spitting distance of the mall. And my daughter was dressed in a tiara and tutu.
Last year's pool party at the Y was fine, and still I woke at 2 a.m. consumed with guilt. Despite spending the rest of my pre-work sleeping time replaying every minute of the party, I couldn't pinpoint the source of my self-reproach. Apparently, at that point it was simply habit.
This year Big E has asked to have her party at home. There will be a craft, pizza and a movie. The only extravagance, assuming I can pull it off, will be the from-scratch cake decorated to look like a puppy. I should feel okay about this year's party; I'm fulfilling her wishes while maintaining a reasonable scale.
My guilt this year comes from doing for one child what I'm not doing for the other. I am not having a full-blown party for Little E. There are various reasons for this, chief among them the fact that I just don't think she would enjoy it. Instead, we'll spend the night at a local hotel with an indoor water park and have a family party, where both sets of grandparents can make awkward small talk and I will again attempt the puppy cake. So as not to deny her the spotlight that I suspect would ruin a party for her, I'm also going to send her to school with goody bags and cake.
I think I'm doing the right thing, and yet I worry that Little E will see it as inequity and that it may breed resentment for her sister, become fodder for a therapy session down the road, or, worse, make her feel less loved. Here's the truth: I love them both to a degree so unmeasureable as to make it impossible to compare my love for one to that for the other, yet I love them as individuals.
And I really hope that I'm right to treat them as the individuals that I know them to be.
Big E's first real party, when she turned 3, was a direct result of my guilt about the baby that was about to shatter her attention-soaked little world. She had some friends over to do craft projects, eat pizza, ransack our home and force their hovering parent to make awkward introductions and small talk. This was nice and all, but it couldn't quite offset having to share a bedroom, so she we threw her another party with the family. Then we sent her to school with cupakes. Then we had a smaller, more intimate party for the three of us. And I still felt guilty.
By the time her fourth birthday rolled around, I realized that all that baby guilt was unnecessary. Big E had taken easily to big sisterhood and was proud to have Little E at her party, held in the gymnastics center at the local Y. Kids bounced on the trampoline, parents walked the balance beam, and I very nearly escaped any feelings of guilt. I would have called the whole thing a success had it not been for the one little boy who clung to his mother's leg and covered his ears at every loud noise. I felt bad for the boy, but, having been there myself at many a party, I felt worse for his mother. And so I fretted for days about whether I'd appropriately communicated my sympathy.
The year she turned five was rough. Her closest friends had left daycare for kindergarten, but, because of her December birthday, Big E was still there and not too happy about it. Determined to make sure that she had high attendance at her party, I invited all of the girls in her class and all of her old friends to a party at Build-a-Bear, followed by a restaurant lunch. It was great, until, as I led a line of teddy bear-toting little girls through the mall, I remembered that not only were there starving children in Africa, but possibly within spitting distance of the mall. And my daughter was dressed in a tiara and tutu.
Last year's pool party at the Y was fine, and still I woke at 2 a.m. consumed with guilt. Despite spending the rest of my pre-work sleeping time replaying every minute of the party, I couldn't pinpoint the source of my self-reproach. Apparently, at that point it was simply habit.
This year Big E has asked to have her party at home. There will be a craft, pizza and a movie. The only extravagance, assuming I can pull it off, will be the from-scratch cake decorated to look like a puppy. I should feel okay about this year's party; I'm fulfilling her wishes while maintaining a reasonable scale.
My guilt this year comes from doing for one child what I'm not doing for the other. I am not having a full-blown party for Little E. There are various reasons for this, chief among them the fact that I just don't think she would enjoy it. Instead, we'll spend the night at a local hotel with an indoor water park and have a family party, where both sets of grandparents can make awkward small talk and I will again attempt the puppy cake. So as not to deny her the spotlight that I suspect would ruin a party for her, I'm also going to send her to school with goody bags and cake.
I think I'm doing the right thing, and yet I worry that Little E will see it as inequity and that it may breed resentment for her sister, become fodder for a therapy session down the road, or, worse, make her feel less loved. Here's the truth: I love them both to a degree so unmeasureable as to make it impossible to compare my love for one to that for the other, yet I love them as individuals.
And I really hope that I'm right to treat them as the individuals that I know them to be.
Monday, November 29, 2010
Dream: My moment of delayed gratitude
We hosted my parents and brother for Thanksgiving dinner this year. When we sat down to eat, for some reason everyone looked to me to share words of gratitude. Exhausted by an already long day and fuming over a just-discovered grease stain on my new shirt, I sighed and said that clearly we all knew we had a lot to be thankful for, and so we really didn't need to make a big thing of and let the food get cold. Amen.
Lately I've been wading through a muck of various frustrations, stressors and grievances and feeling weighted by the darkness of shortening days. Even worse in this season of holiday meals, Christmas card photos, and both girls' birthdays, I find myself feeling entitled to perfection, though it consistently eludes me.
This sense of entitlement comes from my youth, when the golden hand of perfection seemed always to alight on me when I needed it most. My everyday was decidedly imperfect. I chewed my nails and could never tame my frizzy hair. No matter how good my outfit looked in my bedroom mirror, it generally turned on me as soon as I left the house, and the right thing to say or, often, anything to say escaped me in most situations. Yet my team always won the big game, my hair was always perfect for the dance and my admissions essay got me into my first choice college. I came to count on perfection at the opportune moment.
My gilded age came to an end in college. I no longer had a team, I came to realize that even for a big night I could only count on looking passable, and that the gleaming success promised by my first choice school never materialized. It was a nice run while it lasted, and I don't usually miss it too much.
There hasn't been a big game in nearly 20 years, and there's no big dance coming up, just a PTA bake sale. It's tough to feel too terrible about your outfit when you work in education; the fashion bar is set fairly low. I still bite my nails, but I've developed some minimal small talk to pull out as necessary and I've gotten a handle on my hair. Yet there are times, particularly around this season of celebration and preparation, that I feel I deserve an occasional glittery touch of that magic from my youth, that at the very least I should be spared that splotch of turkey grease on the only vaguely glamorous top I own.
But on Friday night, my moment of delayed gratitude came to me. As we ate a dinner of leftovers for my husband and me and nutritionally-bankrupt Scooby Doo mac and cheese for the girls, I felt it. There I sat with the boy I'd met when I still had frizzy hair and too short jeans and somehow we'd come to be grown-ups sitting in our wildly imperfect house with two full-fledged people that we'd made all by ourselves --people who, though they laughed with their mouths full and couldn't be convinced to wear pants to the table, will always be perfect to me, no matter anyone else's assessment. And I felt grateful to have made it there, even without the gilding.
This new attitude of acceptance and gratitude served me well the next day, when the perfection fairy clearly skipped our house on the morning of the big Christmas card photo shoot. It was, as you can see, perfectly typical.
Lately I've been wading through a muck of various frustrations, stressors and grievances and feeling weighted by the darkness of shortening days. Even worse in this season of holiday meals, Christmas card photos, and both girls' birthdays, I find myself feeling entitled to perfection, though it consistently eludes me.
This sense of entitlement comes from my youth, when the golden hand of perfection seemed always to alight on me when I needed it most. My everyday was decidedly imperfect. I chewed my nails and could never tame my frizzy hair. No matter how good my outfit looked in my bedroom mirror, it generally turned on me as soon as I left the house, and the right thing to say or, often, anything to say escaped me in most situations. Yet my team always won the big game, my hair was always perfect for the dance and my admissions essay got me into my first choice college. I came to count on perfection at the opportune moment.
My gilded age came to an end in college. I no longer had a team, I came to realize that even for a big night I could only count on looking passable, and that the gleaming success promised by my first choice school never materialized. It was a nice run while it lasted, and I don't usually miss it too much.
There hasn't been a big game in nearly 20 years, and there's no big dance coming up, just a PTA bake sale. It's tough to feel too terrible about your outfit when you work in education; the fashion bar is set fairly low. I still bite my nails, but I've developed some minimal small talk to pull out as necessary and I've gotten a handle on my hair. Yet there are times, particularly around this season of celebration and preparation, that I feel I deserve an occasional glittery touch of that magic from my youth, that at the very least I should be spared that splotch of turkey grease on the only vaguely glamorous top I own.
But on Friday night, my moment of delayed gratitude came to me. As we ate a dinner of leftovers for my husband and me and nutritionally-bankrupt Scooby Doo mac and cheese for the girls, I felt it. There I sat with the boy I'd met when I still had frizzy hair and too short jeans and somehow we'd come to be grown-ups sitting in our wildly imperfect house with two full-fledged people that we'd made all by ourselves --people who, though they laughed with their mouths full and couldn't be convinced to wear pants to the table, will always be perfect to me, no matter anyone else's assessment. And I felt grateful to have made it there, even without the gilding.
This new attitude of acceptance and gratitude served me well the next day, when the perfection fairy clearly skipped our house on the morning of the big Christmas card photo shoot. It was, as you can see, perfectly typical.
Wednesday, September 22, 2010
Dream: I will never be 17 again
I will never be 17 again, and every time I remember this I feel sad.
This week I will turn 35; I am on the verge of lapping my 17-year-old self. It's hard to accept that I am travelling on a one-way ticket and bewildering that I will never make the return trip.
I am a high school teacher and spend my days steeped in teenagedom. This might partially account for my attachment to 17, but I know there's more to it than mere proximity. What I miss about 17 is the giddy terror of considering the endless options fanned out before me and making the decisions that I was sure would lock in the trajectory of my life. What I miss about 17 is the shimmering novelty of humble endeavours like cooking a meal or driving to the store alone to pick up some milk. What I miss about 17 is velocity.
All of the time that I spend around teens reminds me that 17 isn't all promise and anticipation. To be sure, there is the heavy gray fear that you will somehow slip up and erase those options or bungle those choices so irrevocably that you will never recover. There is the quivering doubt that you will ever figure out how to look, act, feel or be right. There is the covert yearning to slam on the brakes.
Still I feel the pull of 17.
If I am lucky enough to see my seventies, to lap myself once again, I know that I will look back and see 35 burnished by time. The frustration that sometimes wells up out of seas of others' nagging, whining, questioning, needing will be replaced by the satisfaction of indispensability. The short-breathed rushing and stamina-sapping busyness will look more like high purpose. What feels stalled in the moment will reveal motion when viewed from a distance.
In those moments of frustration and cursing the rush, I try to tell myself that someday I will see it all in the rearview mirror, as I now do 17. I hope that at 35 my girls are lucky enough to be swept in the same swirl of nagging and tugging, rushing and running and that they'll invite me in for a return visit. Still I know that I should remind myself more often that it is all fleeting.
Because I'll never get back to 17, and with that realization I feel a stab of mourning.
This week I will turn 35; I am on the verge of lapping my 17-year-old self. It's hard to accept that I am travelling on a one-way ticket and bewildering that I will never make the return trip.
I am a high school teacher and spend my days steeped in teenagedom. This might partially account for my attachment to 17, but I know there's more to it than mere proximity. What I miss about 17 is the giddy terror of considering the endless options fanned out before me and making the decisions that I was sure would lock in the trajectory of my life. What I miss about 17 is the shimmering novelty of humble endeavours like cooking a meal or driving to the store alone to pick up some milk. What I miss about 17 is velocity.
All of the time that I spend around teens reminds me that 17 isn't all promise and anticipation. To be sure, there is the heavy gray fear that you will somehow slip up and erase those options or bungle those choices so irrevocably that you will never recover. There is the quivering doubt that you will ever figure out how to look, act, feel or be right. There is the covert yearning to slam on the brakes.
Still I feel the pull of 17.
If I am lucky enough to see my seventies, to lap myself once again, I know that I will look back and see 35 burnished by time. The frustration that sometimes wells up out of seas of others' nagging, whining, questioning, needing will be replaced by the satisfaction of indispensability. The short-breathed rushing and stamina-sapping busyness will look more like high purpose. What feels stalled in the moment will reveal motion when viewed from a distance.
In those moments of frustration and cursing the rush, I try to tell myself that someday I will see it all in the rearview mirror, as I now do 17. I hope that at 35 my girls are lucky enough to be swept in the same swirl of nagging and tugging, rushing and running and that they'll invite me in for a return visit. Still I know that I should remind myself more often that it is all fleeting.
Because I'll never get back to 17, and with that realization I feel a stab of mourning.
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