Dream: The growing season

I had really high expectations for this summer.  I wanted it to be just like the exultant summer of 2010: the days all sand and salt water and the nights starry skies and ice cream. This summer we went to the beach a lot, we went out for ice cream regularly, and still it wasn't the same.

I blamed myself for this. Who complains about having over two solid months off to lie on the beach and gorge on ice cream? Apparently I do, and so clearly I deserve a large chunk of the blame.

I'm embarrassed to admit that I also blamed my kids at times, because whereas they skipped hand in hand through last summer, they have spent much of this summer at odds with each other. Just the other day Big E came to me exasperated and reported that Little E was "breathing down her neck". As I tried to patiently explain to her how much her little sister looks up to her and loves to spend time with her despite how intrusive it might feel at times, Little E came in and began to actually pant heavily and noisily on Big E's neck, which is apparently what she had been doing all along. If not the kids themselves, their newly minted sibling rivalry deserves a bit of the blame.

I blamed last year's part-time schedule, too. The school year that preceded 2010's summer included some of the actual worst days of my life. In contrast to that, the summer felt more than fun and relaxing; it felt triumphant. This past school year, I spent my mornings teaching students who were usually interesting and almost always entertaining, and I spent my afternoons focusing on my family in a way that satisfied me and smoothed over a lot of the guilt I've felt since I first put Big E in daycare seven years ago. I didn't need the time off half as much this summer as I did last summer, and thus I didn't enjoy it as much. So, I blame part-time, though not so much that I'm not happy to do it again this year.

The biggest culprit, though, didn't reveal itself to me fully until a week ago in the lunchbox aisle at Target. It was there that I had to gently talk Big E out of choosing the same doggy-shaped lunch bag as Little E. I told her that I was afraid she might grow out of it and change her mind about it once it was too late to get another. What I really meant was that much as I would love it if she could carry a dog-shaped lunch bag for the rest of her school days, much as I swear to one day fulfill the request she made a few years ago that I live in her dorm room when it's time for her to go away to college, I cannot stand the thought of the other second-graders laughing at her too young lunch bag. She ended up settling on a pink splash-painted number that she seems happy with, but I'm still hating myself for pushing her, even in a small way, to grow up any faster than she wants to.

I realized that it is all the growing up I saw this summer that has really kept it from measuring up to last summer. This summer I reluctantly packed up Little E's toddler bed, I nervously sent Big E on a five-day trip to Michigan with my parents, and I bravely fought back tears and the urge to vomit when I brought both girls in for their very first haircuts and watched the "stylist" at the overpriced kiddy haircutting place lop off three inches of sun-bleached baby curls that I'd been twirling through my fingers since Big E was a nursing infant.

They have to grow up, I know that. I need to accept it, if only to avoid spoiling any more perfectly good vacation time. Still, next week when school starts up again that lunchbag is going to get me. And the hair. I may be mourning the hair until next summer.

Work: Those days that sting

When Big E was a baby she attended the teen parent daycare in the school where I taught at the time.  Every morning I would file into a classroom turned nursery with the teen moms, all of us toting backpacks and babies, and I would hand over my firstborn to a daycare staff that I knew had decades of experience and the patience and kind nature to not only spend the day on the floor playing with babies but to build trusting relationships with the high school-aged mothers, as well.

I knew that I'd be down to feed my daughter her applesauce at lunchtime, and that if I didn't run into her and the other babies riding their big red buggy through the corridors, a student or co-worker would and I'd get a full report.  Still, every morning of those first months of working motherhood when I'd hear her Separation Anxiety-fueled cry as I walked up the stairs to my classroom I would marvel in horrified fascination that as my heart figuratively broke, I could literally feel the smart of each stab of her gasping cry.

I would arrive at my classroom, usually late and with a class's worth of freshmen sitting cross-legged on the floor waiting for me, and I would suffer through the visceral sting brought on by those cries. I was too wounded to absorb a student's  heavy sigh or exaggerated eye roll as easily I would have in my pre-baby days, and everything felt so much harder than I'd calculated it would.

Time has helped to lessen the frequency of those days that sting, and this year's part-time schedule has helped even more.  But still, there are occasionally those days and yesterday was one.

On Wednesday night my husband attended Little E's Pre-K teacher conference and found that her teachers were not noting the progress in her fine motor skills that we and her occupational therapist had seen.  He also learned that through a series of miscommunications on both ends, we had not registered her for a slot in the class we'd planned for her to be in next year and so our only option would be for her to repeat this year's curriculum, during which, I suspected, she would continue sit quietly and be overlooked. After I got all crazy on the phone with my husband, I tried be less crazy on the phone with the center director.  She spoke in sympathetic tones and promised to look into the registration situation, but I got off the phone feeling no better and found myself lying awake at 2 a.m. berating myself for warehousing my child in a place that was convenient for me but not all that great for her.

I went into work feeling as if I'd betrayed my daughter by sending her off that morning to the place that had angered me to tears the night before. Little E knew nothing of this and she is pretty much okay with the daycare, but lately I  suffer even the smallest slight to her like a slash at my weakest point and so I got to work rubbed raw, too severely abraded to weather a snide comment, stray giggle or nagging e-mail.  But just as I cannot come home from a bad day, curl up in a ball on the floor and tell the children, "Work sucked today. Now leave me alone," I really cannot explain the trouble with corporate childcare or the crippling guilt of working motherhood to a roomful of 16-year-olds.  I had to play through the pain, but I knew I was hobbled.

There are countless women who manage this balance with more children I have and more important and time-consuming careers than mine.  It seems, though, that no matter how I try to make it work, both sides of my equation are somehow diminished. Yesterday I tended to my wounds by shopping and drinking frappuccinos with Little E, fabulous parenting if ever there was.  But I also fought on, setting up visits at two other childcare programs for next week. 

Flawed as I may be at work and at home,  I can only keep trying to get it right.

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.