Princess and the Pea

The S word

There was a book review recently in the Boston Globe on A Nation of Wimps: The High Cost of Invasive Parenting by Hara Estroff Marano. The reviewer, Barbara Meltz, saw it as a spanking to the current generation of parents, for the emergent attitudes and values to protect your child at all costs from pain, discomfort or failure — a reprimand to the indulgent parenting style, the lack of limits, do no harm approach of Americans.

I doubt there is a need to read the book because I get the point from the title.  But the review appeared the morning after a particular dinner time episode.

As it were, pushed to my own limits by my younger daughter, I shrieked the now tabooed words for any seemingly competent parent, “Shutttttt Upppppp!”  Adele began to wail, spewing instant tears like some Peanuts character; and Rosie, the elder just looked at me with a raised brow insinuating, “What’s up with you?”

This all transpired after the question of the missing gift envelope with 50 bucks for the sitter who just graduated from college.  She was to come by at any moment.  Had Adele simply said her token, “I have no clue” it would have remained the May Money Mystery.  Instead, she elaborated a long tale of who handled the card last, where it was placed, the smiley face colored on it and so on.  This is the familiar discourse and  rather commonplace scenario enacted in our house for missing objects, such stuffed animals, soccer cleats, hair brushes and my cell phone.

My head was spinning, feeling my own shudder at the timber of my voice, and yet a pragmatic part of me thought, “These kids need to know when they’ve pushed me to the edge." It was less about the money than it was about the high-pitched squealing, breathless diatribe, and incessant yelp yelp yelp of an 8 year old in full throttle.

I know other parents who take the chummy parenting role, befriending their child at every turn, talking over every issue as if a child has the cognitive capacity for abstract thinking.  And you know what? They have the kids that are either anxious or stunningly entitled.  “She’s a unique, sensitive child,” is what I hear. I give a lot over to genetics and disposition — god knows I had a feisty temperament growing up. I also swallowed many a dose of old fashioned discipline.  Boundaries were clear.

When I was little I was often punished (I did not know about deploying the acronym “DSS” as an effective threat to my parents).  Punishment consisted of a spanking here and there, no dinner, and being sequestered to my room where I developed a very lively imagination. But the worst by far was the cringing humiliation I felt when my mother reported my obstinacy to the neighbors or my best friend’s mom.  Yet my mother’s limits were pretty clear and I eventually learned to navigate them, egg her on when I felt the battle was worth it, or occasionally run away for a few hours with my Raggedy Ann sleeping bad and stuffed leopard.  I’d eventually sneak back in the house when my tummy rumbled.  I think it was a safer time back then, or there was less access to the daily news about abductions and random madness, for I would not tolerate my kids running away for more than 30 minutes.  On that point I’ll side with the overanxious modern parent.

Earlier I wrote that I worry that my daughters’ lives are relatively stress free — that while the girls are fortunate that no major life stressors have wreaked havoc on the household, I wonder how they might develop some more grit to deal with the inevitable disappointments, frustrations, and yes, even tragedies that will likely cross their paths — like the type of events that were sprinkled throughout my upbringing.

For now they will just witness their mother lose it from time to time.

Exuberance

I’ve been watching the HBO series In Treatment that follows a therapist and his sessions with various patients over the course of 9 weeks.  I watch it partly to keep track of how my profession is portrayed in the media and partly because I’ve come to like HBO programming (the monthly cable fee is considerably less than going to the movies every weekend, squeezing in a meal like my husband I used to do pre-children, and paying for a sitter). My favorite character is the teenage girl, Sophie, who makes suicidal gestures in her effort to make sense of her confusing life with a depressed mom and elusive dad.  I find her characterization the most authentic of all the characters.

But even more so, I can see glimmers of my own girls’ sweeps of mood, impulsiveness, and yearning – and I suppose my own recollections of a torn childhood with divorced parents.  I could as well say my mom was depressed and my father elusive – and that I made it through OK.   I think what strikes me now, watching the character of Sophie unfold and her sense of self solidify in her growing attachment to her therapist, is that adolescence is one wild card and it’s a wonder any of us survive it at all. 

Sophie has sex with her mentor and gymnastics coach, rides her bike into traffic breaking both arms, verbally abuses her mother, idealizes her absent father who sleeps with the models he photographs, and she only finds structure and control in the restrictive world of competitive gymnastics that keeps her body like a child's.

I can’t predict what my Rosie or Adele might be like as teens but I can be pretty sure that they’ll do some pretty stupid things. I can see it in the inexplicable burst of tears and the occasional storming up the stairs and the impulsive and sometimes provocative dancing around the kitchen table – I know these behaviors will exponentially increase. There’s apt term in Barbara Strauch’s book, The Primal Teen (a primer of any parent with the approaching adolescent) where refers to this manifestation of teen behavior as the brain’s “exuberance”.

I would say that’s a pretty good “positive reframe”.  I hope I remember it in a few years.

Sock Hop Opt Out

There’s another 4^th grade sock hop and I’m going to miss it – you know the chaperone part.  I like being an outside witness to all the tweening.  After the disorganized first sock hop earlier in the year, I can only hope that Friday night’s dance might offer a tad bit more organized entertainment. 

“So, Mom,” began Rosie, “I know you sort of think they are crazy but there’s another sock hop. [Long pause, bright blush] Sooooo…Can I go?”

Like I would deprive her of the girl shrieking, groupie encouraging, cultural indoctrination into heterosexual flirtation? Like I have that power?

Of course, Rosie and her friends have already planned the carpool and which parent will be driving (the one with the mega SUV and inconsistent parenting rules).  I’ll be a good 4 hours away in another city feeling a tad guilty and yet relieved to be saving my ear drums.  I mentioned the girls’ plan to my husband, who will be a single parent for five days. 

“Do I have to go to it?” he asked, cringing. 

I suggested it may be an interesting experience – bringing back those good old memories of childhood excitement and angst.  For me it brings up an Indie movie we watched in our early dating years, The Doll House.”  It was a story about a middle school girl ala Ugly Betty at 12 who was so awkward, naïve and unprotected, it was painful to see.  I think every viewer left that theater feeling mortified, if not somewhat nauseous from the post traumatic trigger of preadolescent shame.  We’ve all been there.

But still, sock hops in 4^th grade seem to me an unnecessary push toward dating and mating rituals.  Unfortunately, this time I won’t be able to learn about any innocent flirtations, double date scheming, and secret trinkets.

But I bet her little spy sister, Adele, will tell me.

Mom's Dilemma

It’s been said that working moms suffer anxiety and stay-at-home moms suffer depression.  I heard that from another psychologist at a lecture on stress management and I’m not sure where she found the data, but it makes sense.  She’s was being funny, I think, and it made me laugh at the time.  It’s not greener on either side of the fence.

Now I’m on a train back from a two day trip and I’m not sure if, as a working mom, I feel anxious or depressed or both.  I spent my time with hard working women – who are not mothers – and I found myself in the situation feeling awkward even  mentioning  my children or requesting  some lead time for business travel so I could make plans on the home front.  How did my mother, divorced and single, ever manage it?

My mother made her way selling Avon door to door. By the time she was working in the corporate offices in New York City I was about 10 years old.  She’d wake us before she’d head out to the commuter rail and when I was older I would warm up her car for the drive to the train station. 

She was very organized.  Part of our daily chores was to set the breakfast table the night before – and she’d pack our lunches, too.  (Bagels from Zaro’s at Grand Central Station). She’d often pull out frozen meals to defrost and have my sister or I preheat them before she got home in the evening.  For her it was a 12 or 13 hour day.  Anxious? Well, yes. And it manifested in a persistent need to control anything she could.  When the Post-It notes became a prevalent office item, she’d have these 2x2 inch notes stuck to the door jams at eye level (the only color at the time was yellow).  The lemon notes read:

“Take your shoes off.”
“Turn off heat.”
“Do not have heat above 68F.”
“Remember to turn off stove.”
“Keep basement door shut.”
“Take your vitamins.”

My sister’s best friend simply loved coming into the house after school and going from room to room reading all the notes out loud in an exaggerated German accent. “Dahrrrlings, do naut haff heat ah-boff zixty-ate degrheez!”

We didn’t mean to make fun of her.  In fact, we got away with an awful lot being unsupervised for those few hours after school.  The least we could do was follow the post-its as a means for the least possible conflict.  And there was conflict.  So tired would she be after a long day that we have to be utterly quiet, could not stay on the phone gabbing with friends, and lights were always out early.  My sister and I became very fluent with the creaks of the floor boards and which steps to skip when we got older.  We pretended to go to bed, wait until a safe hour when our exhausted mother was asleep, and sneak out of the house.  We didn’t do this together, as we had quite different circle of friends – hers more edgier.  And somehow my sister got caught in more shenanigans than I, until she was sent to boarding school for a few years.  Sometimes we’d cover for one another, not out of loyalty, but as an unconscious need to build up some equity… I’ll cover your ass if you cover mine.  It didn’t always work out that way.  And we weren’t all that friendly to one another given tumultuous childhood circumstances blended with teenage angst.  The culture of control overshadowed the desire for connection. Our need to be heard, nurtured, and accepted came from outside of the home.  And when I look back, that was the saddest consequence of all.

First Snowboard

There’s a little ski hill in the neighborhood.  The rains washed much of the snow from earlier in the winter and we feared that winter recess camp might be more like a mud fest.  It’s the little hill that could because, low and behold—in spite of the patchy slopes— it is teaming with overdressed children and underdressed teens with their snowboards or skis. Adele had worn me down over the past few months, begging me to let her take snowboard lessons. She’s petite for her age and can be easily missed or hit, depending on how in control those teen boarders are with all that ginseng Pepsi. I’ve been skiing on that hill with my daughters, more or less, on snowboarder alert.  But she’s a mighty fine one not to let such requests lay to rest (it’s up there with getting her ears pierced; and I’m sticking to the age 12 milestone.) She intuitively knows snowboarding is the cool kids’ winter sport and is keen on the baggy, low riding snow pants and hip hop caps.  What’s more—she knows she can master the sport.

It only took her 4 hours.  At the end of the first day of camp, I see my purple puff of a kid surfing on the bunny hill.  She didn’t see me watch her and just as well.  She scooted past me onto the “Magic Carpet” and up she was pulled, with some other kids on skis behind her. (What happened to the good old rope tows and T-bars?)

“S_T_O_P   N _O_W” Adele was spelling at the top of her lungs to a girl in pink named Isabelle, who was scooching her skis up close behind.  I bet she doesn’t want to fall at the top and have a pair of skis up her butt, I thought.  Smart kid, but she could less of a bully about it.  And then down she sailed—with one topple, but right back up.  I gave her the thumbs up.

I knew she was proud because she ignored me—and I caught a smile on her face.  “I want to go to Big Blue!”  She exclaimed.  What did your instructor say?  “That I had to stay here.”  Well, Okay then.

She’s gonna push the envelope and I bet by the end of the week she’ll be up on the big hill. In a recent post I worried about my kids’ lack of grit in the scheme of their relatively privileged life (how many kids have a dumpy ski hill practically in their backyard?).  But Adele has gumption.  When she sets her mind to something and it’s worth the fight, she’ll do it.

And the exasperating thing is —I was just like her.

The Paradox of Privilege

It’s been on my mind a lot lately.  That my children know little hardship other than their own rivalry and that I won’t let them get their ears pierced until they are 12.

By the time I was 7, Adele’s age, my parents were in the throes of a vicious, dish flinging divorce and I feared for my mother’s safety.  By the time I was 10, the age of Rosie, we were living from one apartment to another trying to make ends meet.  Child support was rare.

It sort of built up grit in me.

This has come up now because I did one of those crazy once-every-five-year things.  I had a tarot card reading.  It was all well and good. Harmless really.  I asked about everyone in my family.  When I asked about Adele and her temperament the psychic simply asked, “Has anything changed in her sleep lately?” 

Why yes.  In fact she and her sister no longer share a room and the guest room is now Adele’s very own.

“How is the energy in the room?  Does she sleep with a toy?” 

Why yes.  In fact, she has taken to my childhood worn stuffed leopard,  Rango, that I picked out of the FAO Schwarz catalog in 1970 as the only thing I wanted from Santa. (I could only ask for one thing.)

“And what is the vibe (or something along those lines) of the stuffed animal?’

A heavy sigh.

Good god, it’s terrible! Sad. Angry. He soaked up all my childhood tears!

The Aha moment.

The next weekend I took Adele to the esoteric shop where I had the psychic reading and she picked out cool stuff for her room – under the pretense, mind you, that she could sparkle up her room. 

What did she pick?  A dream catcher; a glow in the dark gargoyle; and a fairy dust necklace.

She was happy – and had no idea of my ulterior motive.

Rango is still her nighttime companion, along with a dog named Scruffy, who likely balances things out.  But I look at Adele in her sweet slumber and think she has no idea of what struggle is.  Would she have a survival instinct?  Would she be resilient in that face of hardship? Or would she fall to pieces because things weren’t working out her way. 

I reflect on this for Adele and her little middle class friends, too. They blissfully play, fight and make-up.  So my next parenting cause… teach my girls about social action.  Forget the annual holiday gift drive (in which parents pay for the toys anyway) or the cereal Box Top challenge at school to raise money for supplies when they are getting by just fine.  Let’s raise money for other little seven-year olds who don’t even have a pencil.  Make connection in the hearts and minds of these kids. It’s a start.

Fish Brigade

Over the weekend, while we were away celebrating my mother’s 70^th birthday, the oil ran out in our week-old shiny oil tank.  We came home to a frigid house. It was zero degrees in New England).  Some pipes froze.

Our foremost concern, we quickly realized, was that Adele’s tropical fish were near comatose in the very room the heating pipes froze.

After several rounds of unpleasant calls with the oil company about their neglect and the four of us thawing around a fire in the fireplace, we planned our fish rescue.  I collected all our water pitchers and flower vases and lined them up in on the kitchen counter.  I covered the floor with beach towels.

We scooped out the fish first.  According to Adele’s fish roster taped to the tank, the finned members included:

Blondie – White/blue eyes

Fat Joe – Grayish/silverfish/red eyes

Nacho – Orange, small, black/black eyes

Mini-me – Grayish/silver/ red eyes, smaller

Glee – Small orange/black black eyes

This list is very helpful to me, since the names change over time according to Adele’s whims. This signified some sense of permanence.  Perhaps more inportantly, the fish are part of a “reward” chart. If Adele can sleep in her own bed over the month of January, she can get 2 new fish.  So far the plan was working and hence the rest of us were highly sensitized to the significance of saving them.  Otherwise all could be lost, especially our sleep.

So one by one we scooped out water.  We carried the vessels upstairs to Adele’s room.  We emptied the tank until only a few inches of mucky water remained, pour out the guck, and brought it up as well.  We had to distill fresh water of course, and so Adele’s room looked like the inside of a chemistry lab, with pastel vases illuminated by her night light.  We all prayed that the fish would survive the night in the pitcher on her desk.

She was beside herself with excitement.  “I’m so happy!  Happy! Happy!  This is the best day! I have my fish with me.  O Happy Day!” She could barely settle down, as hummed and two stepped on her bed.

I myself was leaving early the following morning for a business trip.

When I awoke I first checked if the little guys were alive. To my surprise they were. It was with relief that set off for a three-day trip. 

The fish were poured into their tank and life went on.

Until I called home from the airport on Thursday. 

Blonder (a variation of Blondie – “she” must have turned into a “he” over the last few days) was discovered floating on the surface.  Rosie had quietly informed her father, and both braced for how the news would affect Adele.  It wasn’t good.  She wailed for about an hour over dinner.  Crocodile tears turned into heartfelt ones.  Her Dad did the best he could but nothing worked.  He offered her more milk. 

“No,” she wailed. 

So much for that.  After a few minutes, she stammered:  “Well, aren’t you going to even ask me why I don’t want more milk?”

“Because the color reminds me of Blonder!” she screeched.

I arrived at 8:30pm to a pencil drawing taped to the front door -- evidently to drive the drama home to the absent mother.

At the top of the picture was Adele’s face drawn with pencil, strewn with tears.  Underneath was the fish tank with the dead Blonder, tongue sticking out, and “x” where an eye should be.  Underneath was a tombstone with the label “R.I.P.” and an engraving of happier fish days, indicated by a heart. 

Around the tombstone was a cross and roses.

Flummoxed, he asked, “Ok, Why?” 

Go ahead, blame Mom

It’s always the mother’s fault.

I heard that from my mother. I heard that when I was a grad student in clinical psychology. Now I am the Mother at fault.

At least with my seven year old, Adele.

I think yesterday was a Blame Mother Day. It was fitting since Adele had to go to her First Reconciliation experience – first confession – at the local Catholic Church. She was chosen to have a bit part in “Examination of Conscience” – a series of readings with other children. Her line was: “For the times we have been dishonest or unfair, together we pray…. Forgive us, Lord.”

Where was the line: “For the times we blame our mothers for everything, when they are just trying their best and willing to take all the hits because they love us”? I really must recommend it for next year’s class of second graders.

I usually get in trouble because, from her perspective, her older sister gets to do anything she wants, is never in trouble, and is off with friends all the time and she’s never included anyway. I get blamed because she’s the youngest, not only in our small family but relative to her cousins as well (she is a month younger than her twin cousins who, if my sister’s pregnancy hadn’t been a high risk pregnancy, just maybe Adele would have entered the world before them. From a kid’s point of view, even one day – or one minute – trumps the age game when vying for family status. Just ask the twins and who is older by a minute). Anyway, that’s not something I can change and there are no plans for younger sibs.

The clincher yesterday was, however, a discussion in the car of which friends were in what sports. In particular, two of her age mates play ice hockey. Adele, being petite, observed that she wasn’t sure she could even move with all that padding and equipment. I concurred and noted that people have different body types, some suited quite well to certain sports – her two friends, for example, are rather big boned, like their older brothers. Body type runs in families.

Then I heard a blood-curdling wail. I swerved the car over to the side of the road, thinking she got a finger caught or bit her tongue or incurred some such injury to be commensurate with her cry.

“What happened, Adele?” I asked as my heart leapt out of my throat.

“YOU SAID I DON'T HAVE BIG BONES!” she wailed, tears streaming down her cheeks, and a viscous look to pierce my soul.

All I could think at the moment was what on earth will this precious child be like when she’s a teenager. I might as well go on Prozac now as a preventative measure.

Of course, I told her she misunderstood and explained what I meant, but to no avail. I was highly irritated as well since I could have caused an accident on the road. When we arrived at home she ushered her Dad to a corner – an attempt at creating a powerful alliance, and told him the whole thing. I could hear him comforting her, “That’s not what Mom meant, honey, she was just saying….”

Now I refer to the incident as the “big bone thing.” Forgive me, Lord.

Blessings

What happens when you are asked to recall Christmases of past and can’t find too many happy ones? That’s what happened when my youngest daughter asked me to tell a story of when I was a little girl. Of course, I came up with the one stellar story I do recall because it stands in stark contract to the others; a story that pleased since it was about the arrival of a puppy. Other grown ups were around and later over a cup of tea we remarked on the tragedies or sorrows of the past that colored our various childhoods – tough stuff like farm accidents, a drunk parent, divorce, kidnapping, near deaths – and sat in wonder at our emotional survival of it all. It seemed to me grist for the mill that the happy times are always juxtaposed to the sad ones. And it is that which gives life color. Yet my children, as far as I can tell, have had happy, seemingly uneventful childhoods thus far I wonder if they’d ever be prepared for hardship. We all need stress to toughen us up a bit. My past formed me into a highly independent, I’ll–make–my–way-one-way–or–another attitude.

Yet every day this week the newspaper had some horrible story in it, siblings who died in a house fire from a portable heater, a boy side swiped to a premature death by a young man driving while text messaging on a cell phone, the assassination of Bhutto. No Tsunamis this year, but my God, my girls are cruising through life giggling and it makes me wonder when something horrible will happen.

Many years ago, after the birth of my first child, a therapy patient – a mother of two boys – said rather violently: “Why is it that once you become a mother nightmares abound – and of the most horrible images one can imagine?! Blood, limbs, screams.” She was right. And her boys are cruising through life, too, and are young men now.

I suppose given that it is the end of one year and the dawn of another it is indeed a good time to be grateful for the joys and privileges of the times in this small corner of the world. It is after all, part of my remaking, and Christmases are indeed happy.

Cautionary Tale

My mother has two daughters. I have two daughters. No one can predict how the lineage of females will unfold. Yet, it’s interesting when it repeats.

When I look at pictures that are close to 40 years old, I see my mother in a different way than I experience her now (which is complicated). I feel an overwhelming nostalgia and sadness. At the same time I feel what I can only describe as a primal feeling of the power of motherhood.

My mother, born and raised in Germany, in one of the worst eras of that country’s history, came to the USA in 1960 to seek a new life. She got a job and hung out with other Europeans while having the time of her life in a new country that was busting many social barriers. It must have been liberating. She met and married a dashing American man, who’d prove eventually to be irresponsible. She had her first child (me) in 1965.

I was about 10 years old when I discovered that they were married perhaps 6 months before I was born. It was a shocking revelation at the time. In an instant my broken family life started to make sense. My mother married my father because she was pregnant with me. She has never told me this, but I’m sure of it. My sister was born a year later in what I imagine to be an honest try at building a family that could grow a marriage. It didn’t work. Forty years later it doesn’t matter that much to me. I think it’s a rather common story.

As my husband and I are cobbling a photo collection of my mother for her 70th birthday, I look at these photos and see a woman in love with her girls, who committed her life to making things work, and it wasn’t easy – and it’s still not easy.

It’s both humbling to review an archive of photos and cautionary. I wish to have a relationship with my girls that is warm, open and mutual. But sometimes lives take turns no one can anticipate. What heartaches might ensue? Maybe my girls will look at their childhood photos in some computer archive and wonder the same.