cherish every moment

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Pearls

Carla is, at this very moment, operating a library in our living room. She has made a circulation desk out of couch cushions and has brought down fabric bins from her room to hold books (we are not thinking about the current location of the original contents of the bins) (*cough cough* her bedroom floor) (nor are we thinking about how much less fun it is to dismantle a library than it is to create one). She has divvied up the books by category, which seem to be: Realistic Fiction, Fiction, Piggy & Gerald, and Non-Fiction. She has rounded up all of my library books, from the real library, to use in her offerings. She has her (my old) laptop on the circulation desk and created a Google doc in which she typed the title of every book on her shelves. She has created personalized “photo” library cards for her critters. And now her stuffed animals are asking her for recommendations and checking things out. I already checked out Anastasia Krupnik and read two chapters out loud to the librarian, who sometimes still sucks her thumb. 

Not sure why one of the patrons is being used as a step stool, but we all do our part to encourage reading I suppose.

Carla is at this wonderful age between Little Kid and Tween. She’s got all these responsibilities and behaviors of a big kid, and yet she still loves playing make believe and she still has that childlike wonder and delight in the world around her that transforms my heart into a big neon sign pulsing behind my ribcage.

The little round thing on the right is the library card scanner; the black lamp illusion box is the book scanner. I’m not sure which cat is checking out Little House in the Big Woods, but I hope they won’t argue about it. Not the line of library users waiting their turn to check out.

She had to accompany me to the grocery store this morning because my husband is at the hospital. Call Week bleh. Big as she is, I am just not ready to leave her at home alone for an extended period of time. (My husband and I left her alone for about 30 minutes once, while we went to pick up takeout, and that seemed both fine and terrifying.) She was initially extremely grumpy about being dragged along to the store. Who can blame her, really. 

Each cat has her own library card.

But almost as soon as we went inside, she became quite cheerful and inquisitive. She wanted to push the cart, which she can (mostly) do now without ramming into displays or other shoppers. She asked me what various things were (kumquats, delicata squash, figs) and pointed with glee at the baby artichokes and requested we buy many, many types of fruit (yes: kiwi, plums, blueberries, mango, grapefruit; no: whole coconut, pie pumpkin). I love being able to say yes to her at the grocery store, and I was able to say yes a lot: to two types of yogurt (yes, child! Ask for ALL the yogurt!), to a pumpkin roll from the bakery, to a package of mini stroopwaffles (to share with her father), to packages of frozen cherries and frozen raspberries. 

There was a brief mishap in the refrigerated case that holds things like Pilsbury bread and cinnamon rolls. We were in the rice/quinoa/grains aisle, and the case was at the end of it, and all of a sudden a bunch of cylinders tumbled to the floor. Carla ran to help, along with multiple grocery store staff members, and informed them cheerfully that it “just collapsed out of nowhere!” (I really hope they saw that she was not anywhere nearby when this happened. It really was one of those moments of invisible chaos.) As we walked past, I saw one staff member holding up a cylinder that had popped open, the uncooked dough bulging out.

Then we got to the meat section and while I was putting ground beef into a baggie, she told me she was going to the fish counter to see if they had any live crabs.

No live crabs today, but they did have a WIDE selection of clams. Carla begged me to get her a clam, and I felt kind of terrible about it but I said no. I don’t like clams and I have no idea how to cook them, let alone a single clam. 

Then she pointed out the oysters.

“Do you think they have pearls in them?” she asked. 

I told her no, I didn’t think so, but it was possible. And she wanted me to ask the person staffing the fish counter if there were pearls inside. I told her that it was impossible for that person to know. The oysters were closed, and would remain so until they were cooked.

“No, mommy,” she said, knowingly. “They open and close like this in the water.” She showed me with her mouth. “It’s how they swim. Someone could look inside and see the pearl.”

Okay, fair. But this particular grocery store staff member was certainly not in the water with these oysters before they were caught. 

“I think you should just ask, Mommy.”

I did not want to ask. So we stood there for a few more moments, discussing the probability of finding a pearl in a grocery store oyster. 

I don’t know why it charmed me so much, but it did. How hopeful she was about the possibility of a pearl! How certain she was that the fish counter staffer would know whether pearls were present. How startlingly knowledgeable she was about bivalves. How willing she was to discuss it with me, and how carefully she constructed her arguments, trying to get me on board. 

I don’t think I’m conveying it all well enough, but my heart was so full. It was such a happy shopping trip, such a fun time we spent together even though we were both doing a chore.  

Sometimes I wish I were an oyster, so that I could wrap a morning like this one in gleaming nacre, protecting and preserving these fleeting moments of childhood like the precious pearls they are.  

And now it’s time for lunch. Carla says she will close up the library and take her lunch break in the Book Nook Cafe, which she, the librarian, also owns and operates. It serves Lunchables.

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The Teenage Years

One of the most difficult aspects of parenting (for a highly-anxious, prone-to-catastrophizing person like me) is that there is an endless number of potential issues to contend with, and that so many of them come up without warning or context, leaving you to wonder, Is this a normal variation that is just part of a typical childhood? Or is this pathological and requires intervention? 

I don’t even know what to give as an example, because the things seem to come entirely out of the blue and I have ZERO idea how to handle them. But things like lying or bed wetting or stuttering – all things that could be Just A Phase, or could be Signs Of A More Complex Problem, but you don’t know until you know, I guess? I hate that. I want to be able to ask my mom or go on Google and hear/read, “A small percentage (5 to 13%) of children DO tend to turn purple at some point, usually between the ages of 6 and 11, but sometimes as early as age 3. Sometimes the hue leans a bit more toward blue or a bit more toward magenta; it typically fades after six months, but can last for up to two years. Avoiding crucifers during this time can truncate the duration. If your child’s skin develops yellow polka dots during the purple phase, take them immediately to the doctor.” 

Like, just CLEAR and COMFORTING information that says, this is not super common, but it DOES happen, and here’s what to watch for if you are concerned it’s taking an atypical turn… Why can’t there be that for every possible variation of child behavior? WHY. 

(I know why.)

Anyway, what I am hoping to discuss currently is The Teenage Years. 

It seems that I have had MULTIPLE encounters lately with adults who like to say, “Just wait until she’s a teenager.” Sometimes, this is in response to Extreme Sassafras (why is there only one S on the end of this word??) on the part of my child, who sometimes turns up the sass factor because she has the mistaken impression that people find it charming/funny. Well. Some people do, in fact, find it charming and funny, which I find tiresome and irritating. But they don’t have to experience True Sass on a daily basis, so I suppose I should give them a break. Sometimes, this baffling warning comes in response to witnessing/discussing something lovely that my kid does – like how she still holds my hand (sometimes) when we’re walking, or how she’ll still sit on my lap while I read to her, or how she still loves to run up and fling herself at people she cares about for a big hug. “Just wait until she’s a teenager,” they’ll intone, this time with a tenor of pre-wistfulness or knowledgeable sadness.

I am familiar with the “cherish the moment” faction. And I am familiar with the “better sleep now, because you won’t sleep again once the baby’s born!” faction. And I am familiar with the concept of people who either forget how much they disliked being forewarned about things you can literally do nothing about or who feel in their heart of hearts that they have somehow encountered The One Person who has gone an entire lifetime without encountering the concept of a phase of life that literally all people go through. People are just… going to do this. From now until the end of time, probably. And yet, I still find this so irritating I want to scream. 

Probably it is because I am growing increasingly anxious/fearful of The Teenage Years with every passing day. 

And also, I am irritated because it feels inescapably gendered. I don’t think my friend who has sons gets “Just wait until he’s a teenager”ed every five minutes. Plus, I cannot tell you how many times I have heard people say things in knowing, faux-concerned voices about how a person (usually the father) is going to endure life with THREE TEENAGE DAUGHTERS, as if that is just the absolute worst thing that any human can live through. 

But mainly, I am irritated because I cannot do anything about it. Nothing. If we are very lucky, my daughter will grow and age and at some point become A Teenager. That is a thing that happens. I cannot prolong her not-a-teenager years any more than I can prolong my own youth. 

I am not discounting the very real effects of hormonal changes on young adults! I realize that teenagers CAN be moody and distant and disrespectful and all the terrible things! I get it! Puberty is an actual phenomenon that changes people’s behavior!  

But I am just super annoyed at the people who keep saying, “Just you wait.” WHAT am I supposed to do with that information? Cherish every non-teenage moment, I suppose. 

Today, I am going to make two lists. One list of things that I can look FORWARD to about the teenage years, and a list of things that I want to address when my daughter is a teen. Preferably, my husband and I would discuss and have a plan for these things well in advance, but to be honest, they seem both so horrifying and so far away that I am struggling to focus on them. 

Things About the Teenage Years to Look Forward To

  • Having a kid who can drive herself to / from places (I recognize that this is also a negative point, because I cannot fathom my precious baby a) operating an enormous motor vehicle or b) driving around in the world with so many oblivious idiots)
  • Being able to watch ALL (most) movies together
  • Prom
  • Having more time to myself / more silence (“Just you wait,” says the knowing post-teenage parent, “When she’s a teenager you’ll find yourself LONGING for the days when she talked nonstop for four straight hours.”)
  • Fewer toys cluttering up the house
  • Real conversations 
  • No need for a babysitter
  • Another cook in the house
  • No more playdates – or, at least, not being in charge of scheduling/organizing playdates and enduring the unbearable awkwardness of interacting with parents I don’t know 
  • No longer needing to be the communication bridge between my kid and her friends

Things I Want to Figure Out How to Address

  • Social media
  • Phone / screen time
  • Peer pressure around sex / drugs / alcohol / social media / appearance
  • Sexual assault
  • Driving, with and without friends
  • Spending the night at other kids’ houses
  • Romantic relationships

Well, these lists both seem too short. I did consult a few online lists along the lines of “Great Things About Having a Teen!” Some of them – like enjoying shopping together, or sharing clothing and makeup – seem difficult to predict; I don’t know if Carla will care about shopping or clothing or makeup. And I want to emphasize academics and career-planning, but I’m not sure how to do so in a way that prioritizes Carla’s personality/goals rather than emphasizing the values I grew up with, so I’m not putting it on the list currently. I will continue to think about these topics and add to the lists as I come up with new items. Let me know what you would include. (And if you have any good books about anticipating / raising teenagers, I would be interested in those!)

In the meantime, I ordered this book over the weekend: 

image from amazon.com

While Carla is not quite nine, we are knocking on nine’s door. I am really hoping that the heretofore kind, measured Louise Bates Ames doesn’t say anything akin to, “Just WAIT until she’s a teenager.”

by

Sunshine

Sun

It’s been a long time since I wrote, explicitly, about how this pandemic is making me feel. There’s still some of the off-kilter feeling of the early days, but less of it. Or maybe I’m just accustomed to it now; off-kilter is just normal. More, lately, I’ve been feeling resignation. This is what it is.

I know part of this has a LOT to do with the upcoming school year. Carla’s (small, private) school is planning to welcome kids back, in-person, in early September. Of course I have ALL the feelings about sending her back to school. And, along with other parents of her classmates, I anticipate that we’ll have, at most, weeks before school moves to an entirely remote situation. I am resigned to this probability, even as I hope it doesn’t happen.

But These Unprecedented Times – as steeped as they are in uncertainty – are not without their pleasures and joys.

We got together with friends this past weekend – friends we haven’t seen since the Before Times.  We went for a hike in a canyon and slogged through a river and the kids played in miniature waterfalls while the grownups talked. It was one of those perfect summer days that musicians write songs about. The sun was shining in that specifically summertime way, where it was caught and reflected a million times across the water, and tossed upward like a child’s ball and shared, branch to branch, among the trees so that everywhere you looked you were dazzled by its sparkling.

The air was warm but not heavy. The water was cool on our feet. The scent of wet earth and rocks baking in the heat. The cheerful hollers of the kids. The world fell away leaving just the five of us in that liquid sunshine. It was magic.

I was chatting with the wife half of our friends (there is a husband half, too), and we were talking about how good it was to see each other in person, to be together, to watch our children playing. And I was overcome with such grief. Not for the moment, of course, because the moment was perfect. But for all the moments we’ve missed – collectively – and for all the uncertainty of the moments ahead of us.

Right now, we have so many futures spread out across the coming months, just out of reach. Our individual futures, as humans; our collected futures, as humanity. Of course, it’s always been this way – there’s always been possibility and hope and opportunity right there alongside potential for evil and sadness and illness and death. But it’s so overwhelmingly present, now.

During our precious time with our friends, I found myself withdrawing, a little. Not embracing the togetherness as I should have, not facing with stoic good cheer the many, many blessings we do have. But thinking – plaintively, childishly – no, it shouldn’t be like this.

My mother reminds me that there are so many things in human history that have been so much worse than this moment right here. She means this to be comforting. Perhaps it is. To know that things have been terribly, terribly wrong, and yet humans have survived and grown and gone on to thrive and have babies and make beautiful art and feel hopeful and march forward into that great uncertainty of tomorrow with courage and grace. To know that things do get better, if incrementally. To know that this, too, will pass. Of course, it is also deeply exhausting that we continue this eternal seesaw into pain and tragedy and incomprehensible senselessness.

Carla had such a wonderful time, playing with her friends. It was overwhelming, I think – all the physical activity, and the sunshine, and the social interaction. More of each – especially the latter – than she’s used to these days. The next day, we took a break. A “lazy” day, as she called it, where we did no schoolwork, eschewed our regular excursion to one of the local parks, and simply hung out at home. (She made a dragon costume for herself; we built castles out of Magnatiles; I finished a very absorbing book.) I tried to get her to play outside. It was 77 degrees, brilliantly sunny, the air awhir with lawn mowers and honeybees and that wonderful mineral smell of lawns being watered. We need to store up the sunshine, I told her. There’s a long winter ahead and we need to get more than our fill while it’s available to us.

I can make a list of the big and the small, the important and the inconsequential, the silly and the serious – the countless things that I, personally, miss from the Before Times. In-person school and browsing through Target and traveling to visit my parents and talking to someone without wearing a mask and date night and barre class and on and on. We must all have our lists. When will we be able to invite our friends over to our house, to welcome them actually inside our house, to feed them and talk to them for hours about the other worries – everyday and enormous alike – that will continue to fill our lives once the heavy overhang of the pandemic is behind us? (Let it, someday, be behind us.) When will be able to stop punctuating our children’s play by shouted reminders of too close and no touching and six feet apart? When will we be able to look forward to spring, as an inevitable conclusion to winter, instead of feeling like this summer, this afternoon, this breath of sun baked happiness, may be all we get?

What this lengthy, maudlin post is trying to get at, I guess, is that I’m struggling to absorb the fact that this could be it. I won’t stop hoping for the best outcome. But we could have years of political instability and economic collapse and illness and in-home schooling. It’s not inevitable but it’s certainly one of the possibilities. And there’s lots of middle ground between that option and “successful vaccine/election/economic recovery.”

That’s the lesson of life, right? That this, right here, is all there is.

So why not Make the Best of It? Cherish Every Moment and all that? Why is it so hard to live in the here and now rather than despair what we’ve lost, what we still could lose?

Despite the melancholy overtones of this post, despite the normal Call Week stresses and crankiness, it’s been a good week. That few hours with our friends was so restorative, so buoying. When I think back to that sunny Sunday morning, I can almost recreate the joy of being together. I can almost taste not just what was, but what could be again, someday, or someday soon.

But I know my mood is cyclical, too – the down days are right around the corner. So I am going to scoop up my reluctant dragon and drag her outside for as many hours as we can stand it today. Let the sunshine sink into my skin so I can remember the heat of it when it’s just a memory. Breathe it in. Collect it in my pores. So I can dole it out in drops all winter, remind myself that I will feel it on my face again.