Thanks, Mom

Yesterday, my mother gave my son a kazoo.  (I could just end there, huh?)

So, yesterday what really happened is that my son fell in love with a kazoo.  We have had at least 3 hours of kazoo time in the last two days.  Loud.  Obnoxious.  Kazoo.  It has been grating on my nerves like crazy.  I have had visions of watching the kazoo tumble off a cliff or accidentally get run over by a very large car.  My ears burned and I felt a little like vomiting until…

M is really into the song Some Nights by Fun.  So, I turned it on fairly loud in the car hoping he would start singing like he usually does.  Today, however, the song came on and he played his kazoo right along.  It was maybe the funniest thing I have ever seen.  His head was bobbing and his feet were flopping all around as he played his little heart out.  I fell halfway in love with the kazoo in that moment.

The other half (making me also fully in love with that super annoying little piece of metal) came when we pulled up to the grocery store to grab a little lunch and this really cool guy was playing a kazoo he had rigged up right next to his harmonica.  He was playing guitar and the kazoo at the same time.  M was in rapture.  We had to go get his kazoo from the car to show this guy.  He thought M was pretty neat and told him all about being a musician.  That episode sealed the deal for me and the kazoo.  Who knew?

So, my kind-of-shitty day was turned around by a little boy and his terrible kazoo playing that made me laugh out loud despite myself.  Thanks, Mom.

-Betsy

 

 

Bravery

There is a video that has been floating around the internet for the past little while.  It is a video of a young man who is dying of cancer singing a goodbye song he wrote to all the people he loved.  I watched it this morning and have felt a strange mix of sadness and amazement all day.

I was going to write a lot more, but I think you will get more of an impact from watching his videos:  

-Betsy

Graduation Day

I live on a college campus, which has been abuzz with the energy that can only precede graduation.  I Love ceremony like this.  I always cry, no use trying to hold back.  People look at me during some rite of passage, tears streaming down my face from behind my sunglasses, wondering what is wrong.  My sheer inability to control my emotions is something I have come to love about who I am.  It is just part of me.

Graduation is tomorrow morning.  It is expected to be a glorious morning, sunny skies and mild temperatures (to make up for the polyester bags the graduates must wear).  I will take my son and another little friend to hear the pomp and circumstance of it all.  And…I will cry.  I will watch all the parents and elderly grandparents file in, knowing that for some it was a challenge to get here: financial, physical, emotional.  I will cry when students walk by with their dogs or their new babies.  I will cry when a younger brother or sister runs up to hold the hand of their graduate.  I will cry in anticipation of the day when my child experiences such an achievement.  I will cry for the letting go I know I will have to do one day.  I will cry for how hard life will be for my boy some days and for all the joy I know he will taste.  I may even be crying now.

Tomorrow, I will arrive with pockets full of tissues and cheese sticks to keep to boys distracted from my waterworks.  But if they see me, I will tell them that sometimes, my heart is so full of love that it spills out my eyes.

-Betsy

PS.  My mom sent me a link to part of a graduation speech by David Foster Wallace.  Thought you might find it interesting: http://www.upworthy.com/the-earth-shatteringly-amazing-speech-that-ll-change-the-way-you-think-about-adulthood-4?g=3&c=upw10

You Can(‘t) Call Me Char

Lately my three-year old daughter has taken to calling me “Char.”  It comes out in a playful way, often when calling for me- “CHAAARRR!!!”- from across the lawn or our apartment and is followed-up by either a mischievous smile or even an uproarious snort of laughter.  She finds this hilarious.  She likes the reaction that it gets and she likes that she has picked up on that my spouse calls for me in this way- “CHAARRR!!!!”- from the kitchen while cooking, the bathroom when bathing our daughter and she needs a wash cloth, our daughter’s room when she needs a cup of water when it is her night to put her to bed.  I also find this amusing on one level, particularly because her mini voice sounds pretty cute calling my name.… but another part of me doesn’t love it.  Char?  You, my dear daughter, calling me Char?  I know plenty of progressive parents throughout time have been cool with their kids calling them by their first names, but I’m personally not a huge fan.  I mean, I’ve worked hard for the title of “Mummy” (or lately the other name she’s been calling me- “Mum”- which I really, really love… now if only she had a three-year old British accent… ADORABLE).  Maybe I’m sensitive to it because I didn’t give birth to her and am also not biologically related to my daughter so the title of mother feels so critical to me- like a societal nod toward my validity as a parent.  I don’t need this per se, I do know I’m her other parent, but I sort of want it.  What I don’t want is for the person in line behind me at the grocery store to hear her call for “Char” and assume I’m the babysitter and not her mother (did I mention we also look nothing alike?).  Plus her other mother gets called “Mama” with great consistency so I’m admittedly a little extra sensitive.  That’s us: Mama, Adelaide and CHAARRR.  I’m not especially down with the cause.  Maybe I’ll start dealing with the situation with wit, since she does have such a great sense of humor… I’ll call back to her like this: “yes, DAUGHTER???”

- Charlotte

Alone Time

Today, like other days, I was Craving alone time.  I woke up in a bad mood and felt grumpy most of the day.  All I wanted was a little time to close a door and maybe snooze a little or take a nice, hot bubble bath.  Instead, I didn’t sit down until 7:00 p.m.  Cleaning the house, washing diapers, running errands, mowing the yard, fixing dinner.  That was my day.  After we ate, M and S decided to go for a walk and I was SO grateful.  A few minutes on Fakebook…I mean Facebook…then off to the tub.  No audience, no tub companions.  And the water was REALLY hot.  The only problem: after a few minutes I started to miss my family and kept listening for their voices to come in the door.  I guess I am addicted to them (mostly to my boy…S and I do time away pretty well).

My mom is back in action after having her hip replaced 2 months ago.  She came over today to hang out with M so I could get stuff done around the house.  She mentioned that she is ready to start watching him more regularly.  She said she and my dad would come take him for story-time at the local library on Thursday and then she could put him down for a nap.  I told her that it was too much, too soon.  She asked, “You don’t trust me?”  I said, “No.  I am not ready to be away from him that much.”

I have grown accustomed to our days together.  We have a good rhythm going that makes me happy.  I have been able to have M join me in a few of the things I do for me.  He is great at stirring whatever concoction I am brewing in the kitchen.  He has potted flowers and played in the dirt while I planted a garden.  We go for walks and play in our fantastic yard.  While S is at work, we are a unit.

I know it won’t always be this way and that it is good for him to branch out.  I just don’t want to miss anything.

-Betsy

And we’re back…

I took a week off from writing.  We went to the beach, played in the ocean and had a great time just  being together as a family.  And now I am back.  I wanted to take a little time away from this blog also.  Sometimes it is hard to keep writing every day not knowing who is reading, if anyone.  It is a challenge to make oneself vulnerable by posting about parenting’s trials.  The time away had me thinking about why I want to write this blog in the first place.  I want to write, I remembered, because I can recall how alone I felt in those first few months of my son’s life.  Trying to figure out where I belonged in my own family and in the eyes of the world at large was exhausting.  So, now that I have a good idea of where I fit, I write to share my experiences.  I write to let you know that you aren’t alone.  Sometimes I write because I want to hear from you.  I want to know your experiences to help me feel not so alone.  I write for all of those reasons.  So, just a short one today. Titillating topics to come…

-Betsy

PS. Way to go Minnesota!  12th state to pass marriage equality!

This I Can Share

Today was the first day when I felt like I couldn’t remember what winter felt like.  It’s a bizarre New England phenomenon: when I’m in winter it’s as if there was never a summer, all my brain can register is SNOW, SNOW, SNOW.  Then summer comes in all its majesty and it’s as if a cold wind never blew through our little valley.  Autumn and spring are fast and fleeting, but perhaps that’s part of their magic.  May is particularly stunning in western Massachusetts. The flowering trees and shrubs are starting to bloom, many of the most showy flowers unveil themselves, the sky turns a brilliant azure, and the sun… oh to feel the sun!  With summer imminent also comes longer days, so today after work I was thrilled to be able to have time in our yard, or should I specify, our gardens. 

I love gardening.  I remember this twenty-something game where people would ask, “what order would you put sleep, sex, and food in in terms of your favorite things?”  Me, I would wedge gardening into that divine cocktail (and don’t even ask me to sort them).  I could spend hours in our gardens doing everything from mundane maintenance (aka weeding, weeding, and more weeding) to getting filthy and sweaty wrestling deep, entangled perennial roots that need to be split.  There’s something about being with plants and the earth that gives me an incredible amount of peace.  I like working my body strenuously and cultivating beauty through my efforts.  I actually like it when my hands and feet become so dirty that the soil is etched into the lines of my palms and angles of my feet.  It gives me a strange sense of satisfaction.  One day I dream of taking a master gardening class once our kids are older. 

So today it gave me great joy to have an hour after work to garden with my three-year daughter and spouse.  My daughter was eager to pick up the pitch fork, dragging it across the lawn under its weight.  She has her own watering can and she ran to get it so that she could water the new rhubarb plant we got from a friend (that is miraculously named, “MacDonald rhubarb,” my spouse’s maiden name).  It gave me such great joy to see her enjoying these small tasks; at the ready to help.  My mother was a devote gardener and I am convinced that gardening is something that is shared across generations.  My brother is an avid vegetable gardener, digging rows of annuals each year to supplement their meals. 

Being a non-gestational, non-biological parent to my daughter, I might not be able to give her my loose curls or my lanky, straight frame or even the way my biggest laughs are those  when no sound comes out, but I can give her this. 

This past weekend we walked along the river path by our house and I taught her the names of all the spring wildflowers and plants that were flourishing in the woods.  Trout lily, bloodroot, ostrich fern, skunk cabbage. She repeated their names and I smiled. This I can share with her.

- Charlotte