if you can't be a good example then you'll just have to be a horrible warning

This week I did not write much. But on Monday I almost made it through the day without breaking down and crying. It was really close. Moments before Matt walked in the door Charlotte dropped her plate of spaghetti, splattering red sauce over the half of our kitchen that is my work space. I had just cleaned the wreckage of Jude's tea, spilled on the library book and homework strewn table when I noticed Alex scratching his head. My lice paranoia immediately shifted into high gear, provoking a crawly sensation across my own scalp. It all became too much. 

Once the tears began there was no way to stop them. Matt walked in, assessed the situation, shook his head in disgust and asked the kids why they had once again broken his wife. Sobbing my way up the stairs, I retreated with my laptop to the room I refer to as "the hotel" in which children are welcome only by invitation. I watched the debate while following the Giants game, monitoring twitter and the shouting and fireworks outside my aerie balcony. Just as I began to feel human, the kids crept in one by one to curl up at my feet, nestle under my arm and listen to Mitt and Barack duke it out.

I tried to start a blog two years ago, but knew I'd never be able to write consistently with three year old twins at home and three classes to teach. Re-reading that first attempt the other day, then again aloud to Matt, I remarked that things seemed different two years later. He thought they were pretty much the same. After the debate ended and the kids went to their own rooms I had a chance to reflect: how have things really changed in the past two years? 

I still struggle terribly between 3 and 7 pm, that magical time of day when everyone's resources are most depleted and the bulk of the care taking is yet to be done. I might cry a little less often, but it happens with regularity. I behave badly toward my children and am forced to apologize with appalling frequency, but take comfort in the fact that I own my mistakes and attempt reparation.  So I suppose Matt's right that the circumstances which often transform my life into a twisted game of whack-a-mole are substantially the same. As usual, it's only my perception that has changed. Discovering that lonely old blog post was strangely comforting. It reminded me that everyone struggles. That I'm doing fine. That time passes and life changes and the best thing I can do is put away my judgment and fears and show up for the experience. 

My post from December 9th, 2010:

It's not just me, is it?

Recently, I've become alarmed by my worsening condition.  Why am I experiencing a revival of my old mantra "you're not like other people, you can't handle life"?  I am not right sized; I am the worst at everything.  And so I have begun to wonder, is it me?  Is it time for a flex account vacation?  And just when the answer to those queries seemed a resounding yes, little voices of commiseration began to find their way to me.

There was my friend who is always patient, kind, reasonable and thoughtful, who told me how she had discovered that her single (extraordinarily well-behaved, at least from my point of view) child had created a yellow marker masterpiece on the ceiling of her new (to her) car.  She described becoming angry, enraged, completely unreasonable, demanding her almost six year old daughter explain why she would act like a two year old.  Amidst all of the blaming and shaming and bad temper she slammed her way through dinner and banged her way toward her child's bedtime.  When her husband inquired as to her well being she announced that she was "fine."  And when he pressed her she broke down and cried.  For two hours.  Well, that sounds like most days in my house.  Times four.  

Another parent at the school who'd arrived from England a few years before asked me how it was going and upon seeing my overwhelmed face assured me that everyone, simply everyone falls apart after moving house.  She described the adrenaline rush that accompanied her throughout the packing, the house search, the school search, the unpacking, the arranging and the creating of "home".  And the subsequent crash once all of the former had been accomplished.  Sounded just about right.

And finally, there was the phone conversation with my erstwhile writing partner  living with her two not particularly mellow boys across the country.  During our fifteen minute conversation I was interrupted a mere 17,359 times by my twin three year olds who were fighting, screaming, throwing things, kicking, refusing to share, crying, calling me names and generally wreaking havoc.  

"Oh my God," breathed my friend.  
"All day, every day," I replied with a quavering voice.  
(It is an annoying side-effect of my fragility that whenever anyone shows me the slightest kindness I am overcome by the desire to burst into tears.)  
"How do you do it?" my friend asked in awe, and I thought: yes, exactly.  How do I do it?

Not gracefully, as people are likely to tell me.  Not with peace, love and understanding as I wish that I could.  But without drugs, at least.  (Though another well-meaning friend did take me aside at the playground the other day and suggest in all earnestness that smoking some pot at the end of the day would do me a world of good.) Without the copious amount of alcohol that sometimes seems necessary.  Without inflicting bodily harm upon my children and without, as much as possible, inflicting emotional harm. When I inevitably fall short I remind the kids of one of my favorite sayings: if you can't be a good example then you'll just have to be a horrible warning. I am their walking talking object lesson.

Upon reflection, the mere fact that I get out of bed every morning and try, try, try to be kind to these unreasonable, self-centered and highly emotional creatures each day is a testament to my sanity and fortitude.  Someday this will be easier.  Until then it is imperative that I remember who I am and how tremendously difficult this life is to negotiate, particularly for someone like me: unreasonable, self-centered and highly emotional.  Most importantly I need reminders that it's not just me.  The stories of my friends and other parents mean more to me than years of therapy.  Apparently everyone is overwhelmed by the things I face in quadruplicate every day.  Contrary to my fears, it turns out I may be doing a better than mediocre job of hanging in there.  At the very least, I am not the very worst.  I'm writing this to maintain my sanity, but I'm posting it to pay forward the gift of shared experience.

looking back, seeing far, landing right where we are

I'm sitting in the kitchen on a perfect gray San Francisco morning. I knit while my daughter draws. We both sing along to the new Fiona Apple record. It suddenly strikes me that I relate to these morose lyrics detailing the paradox of loving someone in whose shadow you feel lost.

 I'm resigned to sail on through, in the wake of tales of you

 I root for you, I love you, you you you you... 

Shit. Am I in a codependent relationship with my children?

I'm not sure what it says about me that I resent my own children for stealing the spotlight, for sucking up all the air in the room and leaving none for me, but I am sure that it's how I sometimes feel.

A few years ago I went to see a friend after the birth of her son. We sat in her living room, cooing over the baby with her mother, who was visiting. At some point I revealed my shameful fear that I might one day envy my child's perfect skin, gravity defying body and limitless future, rife with possibility. My friend's mother immediately insisted she had never (not once!) felt this way, then proceeded to regard me with distaste. Needless to say, this did little to convince me my apprehension was unique. I believe even the most virtuous of parents sometimes experience the secret desire for a freaky Friday. I wish I could say those fears never materialized, but if I'm being honest, not one bouncy booty escapes a wistfully nostalgic glance now and then.

 
I've made my peace I'm dead I'm done
I watched you live to have my fun

I am less susceptible to the bitterness Fiona describes when I develop my own talents in addition to helping my kids develop theirs. Whenever I lament some missed opportunity to pursue interests ranging from music to med school, Matt interrupts my self-pity with the observation: well, you're not dead yet. Suddenly my own path seems longer and more promising. Besides, youth didn't seem to do Fiona much good in Texas.

I am most powerfully immune to resentment when I remember that I'm looking back at fourth grade through the lens of hard won perspective. At the time, I had none and it was no day at the beach. If I somehow managed a do-over, I would be no less confused as the boy down the street hurls dog food at me riding my bike past his driveway on the way home from school, no less oblivious to the fact that 9 year old boys have no idea how to say "I like you" to 9 year old girls.  I'd still run to my room heartsick and wonder why he hated me. Turning thirty, I was grateful to have survived my twenties. In my forties I know who I am, and my skin fits like my favorite Pilcro stet slims. Would I go back and do it again without knowing what I now do? Not a chance, man. Not a chance.

I've found that insight doesn't come without its own collection of scars. While ripping hair from my bikini line, a waxing lady once recommended that I laser off a few stretch marks, birthday gifts from my four children who possess the immaculate skin of youth. My reaction was immediate and intense. As much as I complain about the physical effects of growing older, it turns out I don't really want to erase the record left by time. At least not all of it. Nobody is more surprised than I am by this appreciation of my scars. They tell my story, make me unique, provide the road map that sometimes helps me avoid revisiting painful paths. In their own way, they are beautiful.

Acceptance is unfortunately not my permanent address, but my children's experiences often motivate my satisfaction with the current state of my body, my story. I find reminders while comforting them after a particularly tough day at school, talking them down off the ledge of frustration with challenging homework, or helping to dispel angst over burgeoning feelings for some kid at school. Every once in a while, a well placed lyric does the trick (even if I have to re-write it a little.)

I root for me, I love me, me me me me...

if at first you don't succeed, skydiving is not for you

I should really have a frequent buyer punch card at the ER. Last night I spent another in a long line of memorable evenings in that bastion of universal healthcare. Fortunately this was Charlotte's first trip, and so the topic of CPS was not broached. I fear the next time Jude needs stitches I'll be sewing on the kitchen table to avoid his relocation to a safer family. Charlotte and I arrived at the cleanest and least busy ER in San Francisco around 5 pm on a Friday and settled in for what I knew would be a long night.

Forget what you may have heard about education; the ER is the great equalizer. An older woman, whose clothing and bags of possessions led me to believe she was homeless, arrived by ambulance as a trauma case.  An SFFD trainee whose finger had been smashed in some sort of work related accident sat to our right. A very well dressed older woman with an infection that would not subside after her escalator fall accompanied by her equally elegant looking husband sat to our left. At one point, a blind man with a cane came in requesting follow-up care after he'd been mugged and stitched up Frankenstein style at SF General the day before. His list of symptoms ranged from vomiting to dizziness to insomnia. I suspected he might be casting a wide net in the hopes of acquiring a place to stay that night, and was grateful that for us the ER was an inconvenient pit stop rather than a comparative mecca of comfort. We were a motley crew of people who would not otherwise mix, bound in a strange kinship by our emergent need for care.

Much maligned, I find that the doctors and nurses in the ER are usually far superior to many I've encountered in civilized offices. Having learned to relate to all walks of life, they seem a kinder, more compassionate group. Many doctors specialize once they begin their careers and lose touch with developments in other fields of medicine, but not those who labor in the grab bag of afflictions. During any given shift one might be called upon to treat a gunshot wound, diagnose a heart murmur or stitch the laceration incurred by a little girl who fell from her bar stool while eating at Pig + Pie. In addition to possessing the skill to treat these varied maladies, ER docs must also deal with frightened people's anxieties, irate people who have waited hours to be seen, and disoriented patients plucked from daily life and thrown spontaneously into the emergency room subculture, all the while prioritizing by severity of injury. How's that for magical medical multi-tasking?

Last night I was presented with the gift of time unencumbered by any expectation or ability to accomplish work. I used it wisely. My daughter and I were together for hours without television, computer or siblings to distract us. We analyzed a bizarre coffee table book of photographs left behind by some previous patient we chose to believe had been cured and released. The aspiring tome created a collective snapshot of life in post-9/11 America for the stated purpose of edifying future generations, a pictorial time capsule of sorts. It's not often that a parent has the opportunity, complete with photographic illustration, to explain wide-ranging topics from botox to the devastation left by tornadoes in one sitting. After perusing the book, we brushed up on our Spanish by eavesdropping on the family behind curtain number three. We laughed, we cried, we braided each others' hair. We hypothesized possible causes for the strange screaming emitted from behind the trauma patient's curtain and applauded the doctor who graciously accepted the gift of the shirt literally taken off a patient's husband's back. The lemonade we created from the lemons handed to us on the floor of that hipster food joint in the Mission was oh so sweet.

In addition to mother-daughter bonding time, the ER bestowed another gem: the chance to reconsider Mitt Romney's revelation that universal health care already exists in the form of the Emergency Room. Initially I was incensed by his idea that those without insurance or resources should be relegated to the infamous and largely avoided ER. Though there is good to be found in emergency rooms, I can't quite imagine them being my primary source of healthcare. Seeking treatment in the ER is terribly time consuming, exorbitantly expensive and exposes one to the dangers of unidentified diseases and potential gunshot wound revenge seekers. I explained to Charlotte that we might be spending our entire evening in the ER to get two stitches requiring, in the end, a mere 20 minutes of our time because emergencies are unplanned, thus treatment cannot be effectively scheduled.  Additionally, while the ER is venue of last resort for insured patients and the wealthy, it is often the only option for the medically underprivileged masses. By the time an uninsured person makes it to the ER, many complications preventable by regular health maintenance have likely occurred, necessitating more costly and time consuming intervention with less probability of success.

Yet upon closer examination there is a nugget of genius to be mined from this proposal, surely unintended by Mitt. We need health care professionals with the multidimensional medical and relational training earned in the ER, care givers who can treat the whole health of a patient in a time and cost effective manner. I'm no doctor, despite the many hours I've logged watching McDreamy, McSteamy, and their far steamier predecessors Kovac and Pratt. Yet even I can think of three ways this might be accomplished off the top of my head. First, require all doctors to return periodically to an ER rotation as Continuing Medical Education. Second, compensate ER service appropriately given the stress of the job and the almost encyclopedic knowledge necessary to successfully diagnose and treat the wide range of maladies presented in this setting. Third, remedy the issue of long wait times in the ER while simultaneously reducing the amount and severity of actual illness by providing those with non-emergent problems effective care sources other than the ER. In other words, back to you, Obamacare.


This same reasoning applies to other unappreciated and undervalued jobs. The two examples that immediately come to mind are parenting and public school teaching, though I'm sure there are more. The world would run more smoothly and with more compassion if everyone were required to take a rotation in the ER of life, prioritizing and solving the widely varied problems of dependent, irate and often anxious people while simultaneously managing the workflow of an institution. Furthermore, those institutions would be more productive if the parents and teachers who labor in them were given the respect, support and compensation they deserve.

Paid for by The Committee to Elect Somebody's Mother and Somebody's Teacher

12% of a moment

Nobody reads my blog. This is not self disparagement or pity, it's fact. Well, three people may be reading my blog. I know this because I only shared it with three people. The fear that someone might disagree with or dislike my writing usually prevents me from sharing more than 140 characters at a time. Sending the link to those three people was almost physically painful for me. I did so solely to test my theory: that knowing readers anticipated more would motivate me to continue lest this be chalked up to another project enthusiastically begun then carelessly tossed aside. Sometimes the fear of inadequacy actually works for me. I am at the keyboard for the second time in as many days. So even if you never opened the link, I am grateful to you three potential readers for providing me an audience. Someday I will be willing to share my writing more openly, but for now I remain within my safe little circle; three is the magic number.

Recently I found myself in an uncomfortably familiar situation. I've been helping my son create a blog, and last night we celebrated its launch. My genuine happiness for him was laced with jealousy. This was something I wanted to do. There is safety in supporting someone else who takes risks. Attempting while accepting the lack of control over results has never come easily to me. Yet I deeply regret depriving myself of the intoxicating sense of accomplishment that comes merely from the endeavor. I preach to my children incessantly this powerful philosophy: trying is succeeding, succumbing to fear is failing, actual results are somewhat interesting afterthoughts. I am a hypocrite. At least I was. All of that changed when Matt and I made the decision to uproot our four kids, sell our house in a down market, bid farewell to both sides of the family + a lifetime worth of friends and move to San Francisco.

Turns out risk taking is slightly addictive. Fortunately I am no longer interested in the types of risk frequently accompanied by mug shots or STDs. Still, there is a certain adrenaline rush that comes with that first step into new territory. Moving was terrifying yet incredibly empowering. My husband chose a house for us and I signed on, sight unseen. There are no neighborhood schools in SF, and we had missed the much discussed, often maligned lottery process by which families are assigned to them. I spent a few stressful weeks at the SFUSD office, overflowing with angry, depressed people all waiting waiting waiting; some people openly wept in this waiting room where hope goes to die. Somehow both boys were assigned to the same school, a few blocks from our new house. That the school was rated 1 on the scale of 10 = amazing and 1 = abysmal, I cared not. I have committed, I am invigorated, I will make this work! The 3 year old twins would be attending "the mom school," as the odds of finding two spots in a place I liked and could afford at the end of July were only slightly better than those of hitting a straight superfecta. The reality of our new life was unfamiliar and somewhat inconvenient. I was the largely unsupported transition facilitator for four kids and a husband in a new job, all of whom seem violently allergic to change.

Why, people asked us, did you move into the city when Matt's company is in a safe family community on the peninsula? Why would you move into SF with four kids and a commitment to public education at the time when most families abandon ship to head for the suburbs? Why would you leave your family + friends to live in a place where you have no community while your children are so young? To all of these questions and more we answered: it felt like the right thing to do, and the right time to do it. More importantly, I am acutely aware that what I do will impress my children in a stronger, more lasting way than what I say. I want my children to take chances in life, to attempt things they fear they cannot do. Hopefully, they will explore new places and perspectives, approach life with open minds and be teachable. But if I do not model this, it is unlikely to happen. Faced with a choice between more of the same or a horizon widening adventure, Matt and I chose the latter. And this has made all the difference.

In a little over two years, I have felt my own perspective shift in interesting ways. When people tell me their 'gifted' children are not challenged by their school's curriculum I find that my priorities are different now. My children need to learn to work cooperatively with other people, including those who may possess life experiences, resources and ways of communicating that are unlike their own. The importance (and, frankly, challenge) of grammar pales in comparison. I've also pushed myself to take more risks. When my son began to sing, I discovered an inner musician never fulfilled by weekly childhood piano lessons in the musty house of a tone deaf, though occasionally kind old lady. I took up the banjo, an instrument far too impractical by the norms I'd internalized: beige walls go with everything and nice girls do not wear red pants.

Raising children has provided an incredible, and sometimes painful tour through my own paradigms and their origins.  Reassessing, discarding and replacing old beliefs is powerfully transformative. The lesson of Jackson's blog is that the moment I realize I am cheering from the sidelines instead of playing the game, I am compelled to take action. The cheering is not, in itself a lesser endeavor, but I finally know better than to think I will be content if I don't play.

You don't even know what's in your own trunk! And you know what? I think you're afraid to find out!

All four of my children are now in school. They are in the very same school for the first and last time ever. This is the magical year in which I have six whole hours each day to write, play banjo, run, converse with adults, surf, knit, teach, shop, improve my Spanish, cook, play with a camera, read, and invest in some self-care; it is the year to finally do something. Yet as October winds down I realize I have spent very little time doing these things, and most of my time volunteering in the kids' school. A line is begging to be drawn. This is me, drawing it. 
  
I am repossessing my life. At least enough of it to reclaim the role of protagonist in my own story; a role I'm beginning to think I've been avoiding for fear I won't live up to the hype. Stay tuned...