A Little Rain, A New Outlook

Every spring in the Mid-Atlantic involves a little rain.  But it's not the cold, dreary, gray rain of the winter.  It's the warm, gentle rain that brings all the shades of green into sharp forefront.  For me, as in my childhood, the spring rains feel inherently refreshing and invigorating.  They usher in flowers, and the nighttime sounds of summer.  They are relaxing.  Or, at least, they can be, given a screened window, a hot cup of tea, and a good book.

With small children, however, rain can mean being trapped indoors, left to my own lonely devices.  Play-dough, books and puzzles can altogether last a good hour, if I am lucky.  A good game of chase always lasts a while and burns some of that unquenchable kid energy, but boo-boos inevitably result.  Imaginary herds of dinosaurs will fight with prehistoric crocodiles and insects until a fleet of monster trucks roll onto the field.  Finally, I'll turn reluctantly to the television, where the dinosaurs are computer-generated.  And then we'll have lunch.

Time in the Little Badger universe seems to move in fits and spurts.  Some moments will feel as though I am moving in slow motion, changing a dirty diaper on a wiggly toddler while one Boy Badger yells about finishing his breakfast and the other refuses to put on his clothes.  And then other moments will pass in a heartbeat.  These are usually the quality time, where my heart is full and the children are happy.  On rainy days, especially, the slow motion seems to take over.  There is an underlying, nagging feeling that there is no escape.  On sunny days, we can always run outside.  On these, rainy, days, I must deal.  I must deflect the energy instead of engaging it.

Of course, we can always plan an outing.  Trips to the local PetSmart, or Ikea, or to a relative's house.  These outings can relieve some of the tension, and also provide Mommy with a way to get her Diet Coke.  But, for all these activities, I still feel somewhat trapped, like my hand is being forced, expectations and assumptions dictating the day.

Ultimately, given a warm enough day and a gentle enough rain, we usually end up outside.  I'll put the Little Badgers in their rain gear, pull on their boots, and fling open the front door.  At first the children will be reluctant, but then they will notice a particularly attractive mud puddle, or a bug crawling bravely along a slippery leaf, and they will venture forth from the porch.  When the Little Badgers come back inside, they pull off their wet clothes and muddy boots and wash their filthy hands.  I feel a twinge of anxiety at the mess, but the little pink cheeks and healthy appetite for a snack (even fruit!) make me smile.  Honestly, I will have found myself smiling more than I had expected to, when I woke up to the sound of raindrops.  The games of chase, the dinosaurs, the books.  All are worthwhile, true, moments.

So, at the end of the day, when rain has changed up our usual plan and sent us scurrying for the indoors, I look back and realize that my feeling of entrapment was mostly self-generated, and perhaps not surprisingly, self-fulfilling.  A sense of new awakening is appropriate this time of year.  I think the next time it rains, I will trade entrapment for openness.  And let the day proceed, with no expectations.

She's Just Like Me

Everyone has seen the columns in magazines where celebrities are photographed picking up kids at school, or grocery shopping, or heading out to the gym.  "Just Like Us!", the headline proclaims.  Well, maybe, but I found myself thinking of those columns today.  My take on "Just Like Us" is that I'm not supposed to feel quite so inadequate with my frizzy hair, baggy jeans, or screaming kid, because it happens to the beautiful people, too.  But, celebrities aside, from an everyday perspective, I do take comfort in seeing even small similarities with other parents.  It's a warm feeling, a sigh of relief.  Especially as a stay-at-home parent, where I find myself very alone at times, the sense of empathy with other parents, manifested in similar choices, or patterns, reassures me.

Today, I took the Little Badgers to Ikea.  The boys signed in to play in the kids' area and ball pit, and Baby Badger came along with me to do some shopping.  We wandered up to the children's section and Baby gravitated towards a group of toddlers.  I joined the Mommies, attentive but standing back, letting the little ones play.  We called out instructions, kissed invisible boo-boos, smoothed hair, and adjusted clothes.  We made low-voiced comments to each other about how funny the kids were, and shared glances of understanding.  We smiled, and rolled our eyes, and gasped together.  As I stood there, appreciating the camaraderie, I noticed something interesting.  One Mommy was wearing jeans and running shoes, her hair pulled back in a ponytail; pretty much my doppelgänger.  Another was pushing a large stroller, her three small children buzzing around her; again, very familiar.  A third was chatting pleasantly with her mother while drinking a large fountain soda; hell-o!  No matter how different we looked, I saw a bit of myself in all of them.

Now, appearances are superficial, but the brief feeling of belonging was significant.  In becoming a parent, I've found myself empathizing more, reaching for common understanding, and searching for bonds in new places.  Perhaps it is the amazing new range of emotions that the Little Badgers have brought out in me, or the new depth of feeling that seems to run deeper every day.  Perhaps it is the new, sharp, realization of how vulnerable we all are, and family and friendships, too.

After all, as parents, we've all been through stuff.  Stuff that, in the moment, we think no one else could ever understand.  We're separated by generations, by geography, by a perception of a lack of common ground.  As a parent, there are opportunities to learn the depths of faith, fear, love, and strength.  It is comforting to know I'm not alone.

Distractions

This morning, three high-energy Little Badgers were racing around the house, amped from a good breakfast and energized by the bright sunshine streaming through the windows.  Little Brother asked me to help him with a dinosaur puzzle and we dove in, with Baby and Big Brother playing alongside.  A while later, I realized I was snapping at the kids.  There was an underlying irritation that was biting at the periphery of my contented Mommy-moment.  At first I was confused.  And then, Baby, climbing across my lap for the fifteenth time, really smacked my shin.  I had bruised it pretty badly the previous week, "climbing" out of the van, but, as any Good Mommy does, ignored it.  But, it was still there, distracting me from the Little Badgers' games.  And I got to thinking about distractions in general.  Most Mommies know the call of Facebook and the guilt that goes with it, but, Mommy Media aside, I wonder if I can truly blame myself for everything after all.

I find that some distractions are easy to ignore or push aside, guilt and a form of resentment naturally following.  These are usually physical: my stomach hurt, or I had a monster headache, or my shin hurt like a mo-fo, but the Little Badgers wanted to go outside for a walk, so I gamely went along.  See, only Bad Mommy puts herself before the kids.  I wonder if this is a form of indoctrination from my childbirth class.  Pushing through physical pain seen as evidence for my ability to put my kids first.  No pain, no gain.  Mommy is a bumper sticker.

Other distractions are harder to ignore.  These, of course, tend to be more "of the mind".  Worries about family or friends, worries about work or money, worries about being too fat, worries about whether or not I'm fantastic in bed, and, of course, worries about how badly I am messing up the Little Badgers.  These linger, overshadowing play time, lurking during dinner, creeping into story time.  These are almost impossible to truly push aside and they create their own form of pain that makes Mommy more of a mud puddle than a bumper sticker.

Some days I feel like my entire goal is to be "in the moment".  To enjoy every second and to soak up every Little Badger laugh, every silly joke, every push of the bicycle pedals, every sip of milk.  I had a startling moment when I was very pregnant with Big Brother Badger, that this was the closest I'd ever be to him.  From the moment of his birth, he would be growing away from me.  Mommies are told by sisters and mothers and friends to appreciate everything, that it will be gone before we know it.  And here I am, letting distractions sneak in and threaten those moments.  And here I am, blaming myself for the distractions in the first place.  My fault, my failure, my weakness.

But is it that simple?  Each of these distractions, both mental and physical, can be interpreted as some need of mine.  A need for some rest, or some ice, or some time to focus and relax, or a need for conversation with Daddy River Badger, or my dear sisters.  When Mommy takes care of herself, everyone ends up happier, but this seems to be a situation of dragging the horse to water, but finding the animal refusing to drink.  The jerk standing in the way is most often myself.  Daddy River Badger pleads with me to go out.  Go out with your sister!  Go see a movie!  Go out to the store and grab some chocolate!  My best response lately has been to go out to the gym and hurt myself some more.

I will dive back in tomorrow.  I know I will ignore my bruised shin.  I might ignore a headache.  I will spend my day shoving those mental distractions away with both hands, in futility.  I will throw myself into my job as Mommy, because I love it, and because it is everything I ever wanted to do.  I will appreciate those stolen moments where I forgot to be distracted by anything.  And then I'll work on making it over to Target to pick up that chocolate.

Great Expectations

Today it hit me that the Little Badgers don't mind the unknown.  For them, pretty much everything is unknown, or at least unfamiliar.  Meeting new people, going new places, experiencing new things, all in a day's work for them.  They may worry, or whine, but they go forward, boldly.  Me, not so much.  I  can, and do let worry and fear keep me from new experiences.  Not just obvious experiences like trying a new food, or meeting someone new, but more subtle things, like running as fast and as far as I can, or truly opening my heart to someone.

I wasn't always this way.  When I was seventeen, I performed an entire concerto with an orchestra in front of a full concert hall.  I threw myself into experiences, with joy and with abandon.  Most things that were new to me were also exciting to me.  A little bit of scary, but a lot of anticipation, and both feelings were all part of the fun.  New experiences were blank slates.  More recently, however, I found myself somehow thinking differently.  The scary got bigger and the the anticipation got smaller until the scary is almost all there is.  Perhaps being a parent does that to a person.  Being a parent forces me to consider all scenarios, to plan ahead, and to be aware of the dangers in everything.  Popcorn, strangers, a stray dog, riding in the car, all contain hazards that could, in a second, take away or injure my children, the most important part of my life.  I can no longer turn a blind eye, either with willful ignorance or with careless abandon, to anything, and I think it's rubbed off on my own, individual, self.

I thing I miss most is that truly blank slate.  The unknown.  Just rushing off and doing something on the spur of the moment, with no prior planning or excessive worry.  Now, when I face an unfamiliar situation, I inevitably do my research.  I'll Mapquest the location, Google the menu, worry myself into a frenzy, and, as a consequence, create wild expectations.  I'll expect amazingly good things, or amazingly bad things.  And, as it turns out, not so amazingly,  I'll pretty much always be wrong.  Most of the time, new things turn out just fine, and my obsessive treatment creates a tunnel vision whereby I find myself unable to fully appreciate the experience.

My children instinctively trust me.  They know that, no matter what situation they find themselves in, I will be there.  It may be unknown, or unfamiliar, but it will be fine.  I think I need to start trusting myself the way that my children trust me.  I need to get back to that place where I was not afraid to jump, or to run.  I need to step away from the grip of planning and worry, and fear, that I find myself in often as a parent.  After all, if there's anything I've learned from the Little Badgers, it's that the most intensely-planned-for situation rarely goes as scripted, and that joy can be found in the most unexpected places.  Places where we found ourselves by chance, going boldly into the unfamiliar.

Lost and Found

When I was little, I lost a ball.  I had left it outside, in the middle of a field, and had woken up the next morning to find it gone.  I searched everywhere, but that ball was never found.  A simple, rubber ball with a pink and orange design on it.  While I had it, it wasn't my favorite toy, but, in losing it, it gained a kind of special significance.  It was one of the first things that happened that my parents couldn't fix.

The other day, I took the Little Badgers to Ikea for breakfast.  We were planning on meeting some friends and were running a little late.  While I was pulling the stroller out of the back of the van I felt something bump my leg.  But, of course, I ignored it in favor of calling out instructions about exiting the vehicle and moving to the sidewalk safely.  Turns out, that bump was Big Brother Badger's favorite Lightning McQueen ball.  Oblivious,  I guided the Little Badgers into the store while the ball rolled its lonely way in, I presume, the opposite direction.

I was standing in line with my three little ones when a lady tapped my shoulder.  She had two children of her own and had parked very close to me right about the same time I had been pulling Badgers out of the car.  She told me that she had seen the ball fall out, had retrieved it, and put it safely on a bench in front of my van.  I thanked her profusely, and, indeed, we found our ball right where she had said.  Big Brother Badger was a bit confused to find his ball outside of the car, but took it in stride.  Later that day, I was hit my memories of my lost ball, long ago.  That was something lost, and resulted in a significant childhood memory, even tears.  Big Brother Badger would have been heartbroken if his ball had gone missing.  Did we, with the help of a stranger, dodge a similarly significant moment in Big Brother's childhood?  

A rubber ball is nothing, really.  But the feeling of having something that was mine, as a child, disappear without explanation left a strong impression on me.  It left me with a feeling and a memory that's carried through decades.  One little incident that my parents really could do nothing about.  I worry constantly about screwing up as a parent, but I've always focused on the big things.  The memory of my lost ball in the context of the one lately found brought it home that might be the small, unpredictable things that really stick.  The things that I can't do anything about.  

Funny Sentimentality

I was digging around in my jewelry box this morning when I found a little plastic tag.  Anyone else would have seen it as trash and dismissed it, but I knew what it was right away.  It was the end of the plastic bracelet I wore when in the hospital delivering Baby Badger almost two years ago.  The rest of the bracelet is in her baby book, so why keep the tiny snippet?  Well, I have a sense of funny sentimentality.  The smallest things catch me unawares sometimes, and I find myself unable to let them go.  More subtle than photo albums (although I have plenty of those as well), more personal and secretive than a journal, some items trigger memories for me alone.  No one else would understand.

I had a box of baking soda in my cupboard that I bought right before Little Brother Badger was born.  I didn't really use it for anything, but I remember that I had just left for my maternity leave and was feeling very domestic.  I bought the box to help freshen our refrigerator and I guess I never opened it.  But, it reminds me of that exciting, scary time before my second child arrived.  I remember feeling so happy, and yet so worried about getting through childbirth.  And then the questions that seem silly now, as a Mommy of three: Could I possibly love my new baby as much as my precious boy?  How am I going to handle two children?  What if my boy doesn't like his new brother?

My sister got me a little stuffed cat that sits in my car, and has for 12 years.  She got it for me when I had just bought my first car, and was about to make the drive out to California to start grad school.  That drive was noteworthy for many reasons.  It was the first time I was out on my own, away from my parents and the East Coast.  It was my first great adventure.  And I made the trip with my relatively new boyfriend, who eventually became my husband.  That car was my first big purchase, my freedom, and my pride.  I ended up keeping it for ten years, letting it go only when it became clear that three kids were never going to fit into a two-door vehicle.  And that stuffed cat sat there the entire way.  It now sits in the van.  Not quite as prominently, as Baby would commandeer it immediately if seen, but there nonetheless.

My sister-in-law had a wedding shower and one of the favors was a pretty pen with a fabric flower wired onto it.  I still have it, and she just had her first baby.  I'm not sure if it still writes, but it reminds me of the happiness I feel in having the family I do.  I feel like my sisters-in-law are, indeed, my sisters, full-stop.  The transition from "child in a family" to "adult in a family" to joining another family and finally being part of that exalted pantheon of Aunts and Uncles seems like it happened in a heartbeat.  Such a small party favor, and yet, to me, such meaning.

Some items I will keep forever, like that snippet of hospital bracelet.  Some, I've had to let go, like that box of baking soda.  I imagine that somewhere down the road my children or grandchildren will shake their heads at how many small things of mine have persisted through the years.  They will throw away threadbare stuffed animals.  They may smile briefly, perhaps remembering how I refused to let something insignificant just get thrown away, or wonder why I still kept an unsharpened pencil from long ago, one with my name on it and decorated with tiger stripes.  My sense of sentimentality is somehow a little selfish, kind of an inside joke for me, myself, and I.  Lucky for me, my sentimentality can mostly fit in small spaces.

Improv!

Back when I was in the seventh grade, we had an improv assignment in our acting class.  Father John asked each of us awkward twelve-year-olds to go up to the front of the room and, using a prop, give a spontaneous comedy routine.  Most students dutifully went up and attempted a joke, or just shrugged and rolled their eyes.  When it was my turn, and I was up there, in front of all my peers, I felt fear, panic, and, then, inspiration.  I wouldn't say I channeled Kathy Griffin up there, but I got a few laughs.  I remember it as a success; the first time I had pulled something funny, or surprising, out of nowhere, for an audience.  I still use the hidden talent I discovered that day, many years ago.  On the Little Badgers.

Baby Badger has reached a stage where she hates having her diaper changed.  Hates it.  I tried explaining to her that all she needs to do is start sitting on the potty, but she is having none of it.  She kicks, and yells, and refuses, and I improvise some funny.  I'll grab a toy, a rock, an attractive piece of paper, or the cat.  You should see the show.  I usually get a 15-20 second window to clean and change, and then, release!

Or we'll be in the grocery store, and the cookie aisle looms in front of the Little Badgers.  Time for some improvisational distraction.  I'll make a big fuss over how cool the milk jug looks, or whether my shoe is untied, or if anyone wants to try a turn carrying Mommy's purse.  Find a prop and add some desperation, and I've got a shot at making it to the cash register.

Big Brother Badger adores his nature shows.  Dinosaurs, prehistoric mammals, giant insects from the Carboniferous, anything that crawls or climbs or bites.  But, try to get him to leave the television after his show is over?  Now I have to improvise in a different way.  Present a successful alternative, and be convincing.

While a sense of humor is always important to bring to the table in parenting, the thing I've noticed is that improvisational talent is not restricted to just being silly.  Those same initial feelings of fear and panic can show up anywhere.  The mall, on a walk, at breakfast, at Grandma's.  You see a situation coming, and it's like an instant of tunnel vision.  What to do?  A diaper blowout is cake compared with the short fuse of an overtired child, or a scared child, or an angry, frustrated child, one who would love nothing more than to communicate exactly why she feels uncomfortable, but cannot.  Improvising can coax a smile from behind the tears, or a needed distraction, a shift of focus.  It is as true and honest as something spontaneous and unrehearsed can be. It tells of the desire to calm, to soothe, to bring humor and love to a complicated situation.

I used to think that being prepared will always get me through, making me feel as though I'm ready for anything.  My Dad has a saying that I heard all through childhood: "Prior Planning Precludes Piss-Poor Performance".  Indeed.  But being able to improvise can actually lend its own sense of security.  Even if the plan fails, I can still pull something out of nowhere.  And spinning in a circle, singing, "Itsy, Bitsy, Spider" while holding Baby's "oink" (her piggy bank) is totally worth it to avoid another nasty diaper rash.