Kimberly McCreight's Blog, page 121

Mother Lamb

The other day was picture day at my daughter’s school.  And she came home in tears.

While lined up for the class photo, some boys starting teasing her about the shirt she was wearing, a ruffled, pink-checked number she hadn’t been 100% sure about wearing in the first place.  They kept at it, too, the whole time the class was arranged for their group photo.  When it came time for my daughter’s individual portrait, the taunting shifted to her ears.  When she put her hair behind them, they stuck out something awful, they said.  She looked just like an elf.

An elf.

To this day I still remember the part of my body that I got teased about as a kid: my ankles.  And I am still self-conscious about them.  (If I catch you looking at them if we ever meet, I’m not sure we’ll be able to be friends).

So, the shirt was one thing. I gave her an impassioned speech about being herself regardless of what others think.  A speech she’ll no doubt ignore while she conveniently “forgets” to ever wear that shirt again.  Okay, I can live with that.

But the elf bit?  That made the mother lion in me bust hard out of her cage.  I announced that I was calling the boys’ parents.  If I couldn’t turn back time, I could at least get the boys to apologize for what they had said.  But my daughter didn’t want me to do that.  She begged me not to.

“If you do that,” she said, wiping at her tear stained face. “I will never tell you anything, ever again.”

It knocked the wind right out of me.  I’d always thought I’d have the sticking-up-for-your-kid, momma-lion part of this parenting gig in the bag.  After all, I used to defend people for a living.  I’m the family’s designated bad cop.

Don’t get me wrong. There are plenty of things serious enough that I would intervene no matter what my daughter wanted.  But this wasn’t one of those situations, not by a long shot.  And as she gets older, there is nothing more crucial to her happiness and safety than my daughter knowing she can always come to me or her dad, no matter what.  That she can tell us any secret without the consequences spiraling instantly out her control.

So, I bit my tongue.  And instead I tried to show her how much I love her by listening more, and doing less.  Because every child needs a mother lion ready to storm into battle.  But sometimes they also need a mother lamb who knows when it’s time to be quiet and just hug them while they cry.

Free To Be You and Me, Within Reason

There has never been any love lost between me and princesses.  As a little girl, I was a tomboy, spending most my time in dirt or on horseback.  I never played dress-up and I never understood the appeal of Barbie.  I did not dream of being Cinderella and never once donned a tiara for Halloween.

Of course, this was not part of some well-developed, pre-school feminist agenda.  Princesses and their ilk just weren’t my thing.  Like football wasn’t my thing, or lima beans.

But by the time I had my own daughters, my feelings about princesses had hardened into something a tad more complex.  Suffice it to say, that I wanted my daughters focused on saving themselves, not on waiting for a rescue.

Even now, some mellowing years later, I stand by that view as a philosophical premise.  My execution, however, may have left something to be desired, at least in the early years.  Let’s just say, it did once culminate in me refusing to allow my then four-year-old to have the Ariel-themed birthday party she so desperately wanted.  Instead, I foisted Supergirl on her.  And I’m still not even sure that’s a real actual character.

Unsurprisingly, perhaps, her burgeoning interest in princesses vanished shortly after that.  And I emerged victorious.

For about five seconds.

At which point, my daughter discovered Hannah Montana, years earlier than her peers who were, you guessed it, still all into princesses.   It became routine for other mothers to ask how she’d gotten interested in a tween icon at, “such a very young age.”  Yes, it was a very proud time for me indeed.

Taking a lesson from the beloved children’s book Ferdinand, a recent piece on the Motherlode Blog by Gretchen Rubin argues that one of the greatest challenges and responsibilities of parenting is to allow children to be themselves.

Past bad behavior notwithstanding, I agree with Gretchen (and with Ferdinand’s mom) that it’s crucial that we as parents accept our children as they are, for who they are, no matter how hard we have to bite our tongues.  We must do this so that our children can one day, hopefully, learn to accept themselves.

Now, if I happen, in the meantime, to permanently “misplace” a Barbie or two, I might just have to accept that of myself.  After all, I’m a work in progress too.

 

Blair Witch Brooklyn

So my daughters are at an age where they like to take my phone–sometimes with permission, sometimes not–and make movies of themselves usually lip-syncing to Justin Bieber or Taylor Swift, sometimes practicing piano or doing the gymnastics I have forbade them to do inside the apartment at least 1,000 times. They like to take pictures too. Sometimes the photos are of themselves making funny faces or they set up their toys and take strange, slanted stills.

They take photos of me too, always when I least feel like having my picture taken and routinely from unimaginably unflattering angles.  These I try to delete before the horror of viewing them is seared too deeply into my memory.

But today, I discovered these.  All four of them, just like this.  All by themselves.  I have no idea when they were taken.  And I have absolutely no idea why.  But I’ve seen the Blair Witch Project, and I’m totally sure that I do not ever want to know.

P.S. If you haven’t seen the movie The Blair Witch Project and you don’t know what I’m talking about, check it out 1)  I thought it was fantastic (and scary, be forewarned) when I saw it in the theatre a million years ago and 2) You will fully get why these pictures are so totally creepy.

Besides, ’tis the season for witches….

 

 

 

 

Paxil

She was an awesome dog.

She was also totally crazy.  Certifiably so.  Ironic given that her name was Paxil.  Or perhaps naming her that had guaranteed that she would be anything but calm.

I adopted her my senior in college, while living in a dorm that didn’t allow dogs. Several of my friends did the same ill-advised thing and that’s pretty much my only excuse.  And for some reason campus security went along with it, turning a blind eye to us secreting our three puppies in and out of the dorm as we were housetraining them.

Upon graduation, Paxil came with me to New York City and, while I worked long hours as a paralegal, ate an entire loveseat.  She also almost died of Parvo virus.  I am still grateful to the vet who saved her and wrote off all but $500 of the $5,000 bill I could never have afforded to pay.

And for many, many years, Paxil was my family when I so desperately needed one.

That did not change the fact that she was insane, of course.  She was absurdly needy, aggressive with other dogs and would break off her leash and run wildly through the streets of New York until doormen would coral her in their lobbies.

But I loved her, despite her insanity.  After some convincing, my husband grew to love her too, and my babies after that.  And she loved us all back until she died of heart failure five years ago at the age of thirteen.

This weekend we’re headed upstate to pick up the new puppy we’ve waited months for.  A puppy that will, no doubt, be the only dog my children remember.

But I won’t forget.  I will remember Paxil, always.

 

 

Any Given Day

This morning I saw my life flash before my eyes.  Or her life.  I saw her life flash before my eyes.

She is my five-year-old.  And this morning started like any other hectic school morning: me running in from the gym to launch into the packing of school lunches, the dressing of children, the sorting of school gear while my husband races out the door early for work.  The bribing of children into music practice.

Like everyone else, our morning routine is harried, but we manage.  In fact, I like to think we have it down to a science.

But then this morning happens and you are reminded that you really don’t have anything under control.  That where children—where life—is concerned, control is something we talk ourselves into believing we have to make ourselves feel better.  And, if we are very, very lucky, the fates allow us to retain the illusion for a little while.

It started with one of those screams from the bathroom, the kind, as a parent, that you know right away is not the regular kind of scream.  Not the get-annoyed-about kind.  The pitch was too high and it grew louder and louder by the second as my husband and I sprinted down the hallway to see what had happened.

She was in the bathroom screaming even louder when I got to the door.  Her back was to me, a hand up to her face.  And then in one of those moments that moves in excruciatingly slow motion, I turned her around and pulled her hand down from her mouth.

And it was covered with blood.  Her hand.  Her mouth.  Her chin.  It dripped onto the white bathroom floor in awful bright red splotches.

She’d slipped across the bathroom floor and smacked her face into the toilet.

“It’s okay.  You’re okay,” I kept saying as I held paper towels against her face, hoping that I would not discover her lip had been completely torn off and hating myself for not getting around to taking that first aid course.  “You’re going to be fine.”

And then I prayed that I wouldn’t get woozy from all the blood pouring out of her mouth.  She needs you.  Keep it together.  I kept telling myself.  You are not allowed to freak out.  But man, oh man, did I want to.  On the inside, I was having a full-on breakdown.

And that’s the craziest thing about parenting.  You do.  You manage to hold it together for them in those moments when all you want to do is fall apart.  But the truly terrifying thing is that you can’t really be sure you’ll be able to until you already have.

The good news is that the bleeding did eventually stop.  Her lip is still attached.  Now, several hours later, she’s playing happily as we await an appointment with a plastic surgeon for what will probably only be a few stitches.

And I have been duly reminded to be grateful.  For their health, and their happiness.

For the chaos of an ordinary day.

Great Expectations

At the beginning of every school year, I am blindsided the litany of administrative responsibilities required to get my children’s lives back up and running.  There are the haircut appointments to make, the school supplies to purchase and the lunches to pack.  There are the soccer uniforms to pick up, the music lessons to schedule and the endless forms to fill out.

And you need to remember, all of it.  Because none of it will matter much to your child if done correctly, but it will be the most important thing in the world if you do it wrong.

There are the new teachers to greet and, hopefully, make a good impression on too.  And this means dropping your older child off at the appropriate location at their beloved, but harrowingly over-crowded elementary school.  And it definitely means not forgetting your younger child’s very first kindergarten snack.

I, of course, committed both these infractions on the first day of school this year then spent the rest of the day stewing in a dread cocktail: one part I-am-such-a-bad-mother, two parts holy-crap-what-else-did-I-or-will-I-forget.

I consider myself pretty good with details, too.  Okay, obsessed maybe is a better word.  But it doesn’t matter how focused on details you are.  Motherhood has a way of exceeding your greatest expectations, in ways both good and bad.

And so I braced myself all day for my eight-year-old’s withering stare when I retrieved her from that first day of school.  After all, she had made me promise at least six times that I knew with absolute certainty where she was supposed to be dropped off.  (It seems, perhaps, that she’s inherited a touch of my need for precision too.)  And I waited for my five year-old to regale me with tales of her classmate’s homemade granola snacks and how her lack thereof had made her feel, “lonely.”

(By the way, a little part of me died just imagining her saying that.)

She didn’t, of course.  She never mentioned the snack at all.  (And yes, I asked.  I couldn’t help myself.)  My older daughter didn’t even give me the hint of a stink eye. Instead, both my girls just ran to me with ear-to ear grins, hugging me tight as they spilled out with stories of their day.

Because that’s the biggest mercy in all of this: kids aren’t interested in holding grudges, or keeping score.  They want what they want, sure, but not for the sake of making us feel bad.

And they don’t need to, do they?  After all, we’re so very good at making ourselves feel bad, all on our own.

How Writing is Like Life: They’re Both a Bloody Mess

Junot Diaz is badass.  That was mostly my takeaway from this week’s New York Times Magazine edition about inspiration.   As a craftsman and storyteller, his skills are extraordinary.  Awe-inspiring, in fact.  And now, he’s a veritable genius, having just today won a MacArthur grant.

But that makes him a gifted writer, not a badass.  What makes him so incredibly cool—beyond his supposed penchant for swearing which is apparently contagious—is that he is so open about admitting just how hard writing is.  The sheer mess of it.   In the New York Times piece, Diaz describes the creation of his remarkable stories as being as much about what he throws out as what he keeps in.  He describes a wild process, beyond any reasoned control.

This is not true for all writers, of course.  For some, the words simply come out right, the very first go round.  For these lucky few, stories and novels spring forth fully formed from some deep recess of their brains with only a quick dust off and polish up required.  Other writers use careful preparation and detailed outlining to get there without too many needless detours.

I fall into neither group. 

For me the writing process is akin to driving at high speed into a pitch-black tunnel praying that some damn light spills out from the other end before I crash head-on into a wall.  Or my car breaks down in the middle of it.

For many early drafts I hurtle forward—bird-by-ugly-bird (thank you Anne Lamott)—praying that, in the end, I will discover that I’ve known much more about my own story than I ever could have hoped.  That, in fact, I knew everything all along.

But between here and there, the whole thing is pretty much a bloody mess.  And, as a control freak, I’ve had to learn to be okay with that.  To trust myself.  And to know that my process is not better or worse.  That it is simply mine.

In that way writing is like so much of the rest of life—marriage, parenting, friendship.  With all these things there are no known quantities or well-calibrated absolutes.  All you can really do is what your gut says you should.  And then, when all else fails, close your eyes and pray.

 

Double Duty

I am incredibly lucky.  After years and years of setbacks and struggle, I finally have my dream job.  It’s one that allows for a flexible schedule too.  I can even mostly do it from home.  Should one of my children fall ill at school I can be there within minutes to pick them up and I can usually juggle my schedule to accommodate work deadlines and midday parent-teacher conferences.  In the life of a working parent, these are huge advantages.  (Please don’t hate me for them, remember that dark, dark decade of struggle…).

This arrangement is not without its quirks, however.  Most of them are grounded in hubris.  With no clear demarcations between work and home life, you begin to think, “hey, I can sneak a little work in with my kids around, no problem.”

So I do things like risk taking an important call from an editor with tired and hungry children present only to be forced seconds later to dive into my bedroom to muffle the sounds of my five-year-old screaming from the toilet that she needs to be wiped.  Or while browsing with my children for summer reading books in the local independent bookshop, I decide that it’s time to announce to the owner that I have my first book coming out.  After all, it made sense to tell them.  Neighborhood author, community loyalty and all that.  It couldn’t hurt.  And why not do it right then, with my kids there.  Why wait?

It was the first time I’d told a bookseller about my book and they were warm and lovely.  In fact, everyone was flushed with goodwill as I purchased the books for my children and we strode out into the warm Park Slope afternoon.  But once on the sidewalk things took a dark turn.  My five year old spied the Where’s Waldo book my eight-year old had purchased—a choice she’d mistakenly believed was off limits (I have strict and probably arbitrary rules about my children’s book purchases).  Full on meltdown ensued—a red-face, tears, there may have even been stamped feet.

For various reasons—few of which had to do with good parenting—I decided to let her exchange her book despite the tantrum.  This meant going back into the church-quiet store with a still-screaming child.  Already, I could feel my smooth and sophisticated literary façade slipping.   Further impinging my credibility, as we proceeded back into the store, I was also now cradling the two cups of cereal that I had let my daughters purchase earlier at the bagel store.

Okay, they were Lucky Charms.  I know.  I know.   I’m worried about books and I’m letting them eat Lucky Charms, the irony is not lost on me.  (And if I say it was a once a- year-treat, that only makes me look defensive, doesn’t it?)

After some awkward smiling with the booksellers—whose confidence in my storytelling abilities seemed in free-fall along with their opinion of me as a parent— we paid for a second Where’s Waldo book.  We were about to make our escape when my eight-year-old startled me with an emergency question about tornadoes.

My hands were far too full for the pirouette I did and so I ended up tossing not one, but both cups of Lucky Charms onto the polished floor (it’s a really nice bookstore).  They spilled out spectacularly in every direction too, a neon avalanche of sickly sweetness.

On the upside, my five-year-old stopped crying instantly.  And there happened to be a broom and dust pan right nearby that I used to sweep up the cereal faster than one would think humanely possible.   On the downside, the owner didn’t seem to find my recounting of our little cereal debacle (I had to confess; I couldn’t be sure he hadn’t seen it happen) nearly as entertaining as I was pretending to.

But I have to hope they’ll still put my book on the little table of local authors.  Community compassion and all that.  And hey, at least it’s a novel and not a parenting guide.