Pea: “Mama, do some girls marry other girls?” Me: “Yep.” Pea: “And some boys marry other boys?” Me: “They do.” Pea: “But you married a man.” Me: “I did. But you can marry whomever you like,* Sweet Pea.” Pea: “Cool. Can I watch on the tablet now?” *OK, I muttered “state law depending,” but she didn’t hear it.
Look, I didn’t expect an easy ride parenting. No one meets me and thinks, “What a nice, laid-back woman she is.” I’m a misanthropic bundle of nervous energy kept in check by organization and systems and a few OCD tricks. Oh, and the pharmaceutical industry. M? Has a personality as outsized as mine. So believe you me, I didn’t think my child would be an easy one. And to anyone who has read my archives, you know that’s been true. Here we are, though, coming up on 6. The tantrums are rare and usually consist of her being told no after she is tired and she retires to her bed wailing, “Nobody loves me!” I assure her that I love her, even at that…
Piano lessons were shifted to Thursday, so today Pea and I went to the International Rose Test Garden, where we found one Mr. Lincoln in bloom (it’s a bit early yet) and many, many of her namesake climbing roses in bloom. I didn’t tire her out, but it was a good faith effort on my part (we went to the playground afterward). The major excitement in my life is that I located, in a 1986 art gallery exhibition brochure (which arrived today, thank you abebooks.com), prints of charcoal profiles by Charles Balthazar Julien Févret de Saint-Mémin (look, someone with a name longer than mine) of some esoteric historical figures that I am happy to bore people at parties about. And…I did on Saturday. Lest…
…who tells me my kid will lack essential social experiences by doing the last months of kindergarten. With me. At museums. And in the real world…? Will get a poke in the eye with a sharp stick. Those are my missing social skills, apparently.
I love seeing pictures of my friends’ growing families on their blogs and FB pages. Seriously, BABIES! Almost everyone I know is on #2 or #3 right now, it seems. And then I wonder….how? Not the mechanics, but the sanity how and the money how and the energy how. Because even if another pregnancy wasn’t a good bet at killing me, I don’t know how I could do it. What’s more, I don’t have any desire to do it, and didn’t, even when the perinatologist knowingly said, “You’ll be back as soon as she says ‘Mama’ for the first time.” I said, “No, but thank you for all you’ve done.” Because we both made it out alive and that was enough. Other MILPs have…
I’ve pulled myself out of last week’s abyss and have become productive again. (Go, Protestant work ethic, go. This is how I measure my worth, when I’m not measuring it by the state of my house, my age, education, or the behavior of my child in public situations.) Even though sequestration means I won’t have access to some of the archived materials I need, the public domain, Google books, Powell’s, and various digitization projects mean I’ve got enough primary and secondary material to work with until someone in federal governance decides to spend money on public services again. The novel I should be pitching? I’m not. It’s done, as much as it’s going to be done before an editor works on it. I need…
For all of you who had good mothers–imperfect, to be sure, but women who loved and nurtured and set good examples for you–I envy you. I don’t know what that’s like. For years I struggled with the dissonance of a narcissistic, sociopathic mother who occasionally did things that seemed like caring–that maybe even were caring, as much as she could–and tried to reconcile it with the years of verbal abuse, the coldness, the years when I was the bad one, barely tolerated, unjustly accused. Mother’s Day is the worst day of the year when you have a bad mother. There, writ large on every card and every oversized balloon and in every sermon and every floral arrangement, I saw how I was supposed to feel…
We could not escape the gift shop as we left the teaching hospital. We were there for Pea’s dermatology appointment, which was fine, although it was a little awkward when the guy made a lawyer joke to the resident and fourth year medical student in reference to Pea’s chatter, as in, “She talks so much she’ll probably be a lawyer.” I felt compelled to say, “It’s possible. Mom is a lawyer.” (Because really? He seemed like a great guy and a competent dermatologist…but he liked the sound of his own voice pretty well. Also, to those of you without kids, you will start referring to yourself in the third person as Mom or Dad when dealing with professionals. For real.) Pea: “But Daddy is…
I’m working with Pea on taking ownership of her misdeeds. Generally this isn’t a problem, because she self-reported from about the time she could talk. It’s only recently she’s tried to invent stories, but they quickly unravel without much work on my part. This morning it went like this: “Mama, can you come here? Some toilet paper fell into the tub.” “By itself?” I asked. “Yes. In pieces–I mean, I–I–I accidentally–” Big sigh. “No, I did it on purpose. Can you help?” Which is great. I mean, if she’s anything like me, she’ll be lying convincingly about fake sleepovers and states of inebriation in ten years. Some TP in the tub is no big deal. That said, I’m still bitter about the red Sharpie…
Another day, another doctor’s appointment. Today it was mine, to get an order for a HIDA scan of my Schrodinger’s gallbladder (when scanned, it always looks normal). Since any dairy or animal fat right now makes me incredibly queasy, I’m subsisting on rye crackers and Lilly’s Smoked Tomato & Basil hummus.* (This is a perfect meal, but I suspect that I might get tired of it after a year or two.) I would really like to have my gallbladder out. It would be one less body part betraying me. We’d hoped to go to the zoo after the appointment, but there was no parking to be had at 10:30. Instead, I threw caution to the wind and took Pea to the Japanese Garden. It…
