What There's Time For

Ups and Downs

Maybe I wanted him to jump up and down and squeal and gush about how I was the best mommy ever in the whole world.  Maybe that's why I tapped "buy" on Star Wars Angry Birds on Wednesday morning.  Or maybe I was just thinking that it was a cheap way to get him to leave me alone for a bit while I tried to debug a particularly irritating animation for the new app.

Not that either of them is an especially noble motivation (is there a noble motivation for buying Star Wars Angry Birds?), but at least if it had been the first reason, I would have been gratified.

Because he did jump up and down and cheer for me (MomMEE!  MomMEE!) and tell me I was such a nice mommy, the best mommy in the whole wide world.  Soon, he was playing the game and enthusiastically narrating the whole thing for me (sweet, but not exactly the peace and quiet I might have imagined).  He starred the first level and... then began the downward spiral.

It was frustrating, he didn't know how to go to the next level (neither did I), he wanted me to fix it (I refused to try), he found a screen that said we could buy ourselves a jump to Alderon for $1.99, which he DESPERATELY wanted (I refused).  About this point, I became the meanest mommy in the whole wide world and a major meltdown was coming ashore.  I explained that he should actually be mad at the people who make Angry Birds because they were the ones who decided to put in that button that said you could pay to skip all the levels.  He wailed.

This general scene has repeated more than once since Wednesday, of course.  Eventually, calm returns, he plays with something else or goes back to Angry Birds and, with a fresh perspective and some tension released, clears the level.  Then we're back to jumping and enthusiastic narration and pointing and wanting me to see.  Or he keeps failing the level and finds some new thing that you clearly MUST buy if you're ever going to pass the level (a gold Millenium Falcon for $10.99!  he WANTS it!  he NEEDS it!  I am the MEANEST!  Oh!  Look!  *This* spaceship over *here* only costs...  How much does it cost, Mommy?).

The whining for the $1.99 jump to Alderon finally stopped this morning when I explained that we bought the game for him to play it and so I wasn't going to pay more money so that he could play less of it.  He seemed surprised, asked some clarifying questions, considered briefly, and then said, in what I have come to think of as his I-am-a-completely-reasonable-nearly-all-grown-up-human-being-even-though-I-was-just-bawling-so-hard-snot-was-smearing-all-over-my-face voice, "Never mind, Mommy, I don't want to jump to Alderon anymore."

Shortly afterwards, in the same voice, he has a new proposal for me, "Could we hire somebody to help me play Angry Birds?"

Presumably because I've been telling him over and over that he knows more about it than I do and therefore I really can't help him.

"The most good person to hire would be Kenny," he informs me.

And who is Kenny?

"He's at my school.  I don't know where he lives.  He would be the best person to hire.  He got the most targets in Angry Birds."

 

There but for the grace of God

This is one of those days that you come to the end of and catch yourself silently crying out to the universe, How did anyone with these genes ever survive childhood to reproduce and torture another generation of parents???!!!

Because, seriously.

We spent the morning on the couch watching tv, coughing and passing tissues, me in the middle with the final rounds of the sweater and a child on each side, a blanket over our laps.  It was peaceful.

Then came time to try to feed them and get them to drink something so they will continue to recover from the swine flu, and they did not like that.  Oh no, mother, we want to dehydrate ourselves and end up in the hospital on an IV (actually, Shmoogie having a recent experience with the hospital and IVs was scarable into drinking an entire glass of orange juice).  Things started to devolve.  It got pretty bad, especially when I refused to turn the tv back on for a while, but then Shmoogie asked to draw and within moments they were both sitting peacefully at the little table in the kitchen, engrossed in drawing, cutting, and stapling a nearly-endless stack of paper.

I smiled to myself.  I felt like a good mother.  I felt like my children were good children.  We had turned the corner and things were going to start righting themselves.

I took a pile of laundry upstairs to put away.  (Because, really, when things start righting themselves it's a lot because mother's started righting them.)

I'm not sure how long I was up there, and that's probably where I went wrong, but I was only putting away laundry and stripping sheets off beds.  How long could it have been?  Seriously?  Even with my flu-demented brain?

But, lo, what scene I beheld as I descended the stairs.  Two children in the living room (not the kitchen), Mr. Pants busy with the wooden creche puzzle I love so much, which made me slightly nervous until I saw the uncapped marker lying next to it.  Then I was maybe kind of shrieking.

Maybe?

Ok, definitely, there was yelling of a shrieky kind of pitch (luckily, the damage turned out to be minimal and will be hidden when the puzzle is assembled).  Two brand new sets of markers got dumped in the trash, at which point I discovered the kitchen, littered with paper scraps, chewed marker caps, crushed pretzels(?!) and, most oddly amidst the wreckage, a small clump of Shmoogie-colored hair, tangled into a knot and then snipped off her head.

Odd, because I had left them not so long before freshly bathed and combed, not a single hint of a knot in anyone's hair.

Confronted with the evidence, Mr. Pants smoothly explained that he had to cut Shmoogie's hair because "the bubble thingy" (little handheld battery fan + bubble blowing loop) had gotten stuck in her hair and that was the only way to get it out.

It's like they've been conspiring for days how to get in maximum trouble as soon as I dared to leave the room.  Like the entire swine flu episode was just intended to weaken me for the kill.

There were lengthy, emotional time outs.  There was a lot of screaming and crying (not from me anymore).  There were apologies, some more effectively entoned than others.  Most memorably, Shmoogie took the child-size guitar on her lap and started an improvisational song, looking up at me soulfully, "It's ok, Mommy, you don't have to be mad,/ It's ok, you don't have to be mad, You don't have to be angry, / It's ok..." there were other more creative words that followed, which I dearly wish I could remember, but I can't (likewise the tune).

I glared at her longer than you'd probably think possible, but eventually even I, her sorely aggrieved and flu-riddled mother, couldn't help but smile.

Not that the day really improved much after that, but it was something.

Authority

Mr. Right and I passed the parenting baton in the driveway Sunday afternoon, which is not the way I like to think our lives go, but it kind of is right now, at least sometimes.

The kids were excited to take me inside and show off the gingerbread men and dinosaurs they'd made with Daddy while I was gone.

"Oh, they're beautiful!" I told them.

"And they taste really good!!!" said Mr. Pants.

"Ooo! Really? Can I try one?"

Two pairs of big serious eyes looked up at me (one from under a floppy wool hat - the day was our first coolish one and they were pretending it had snowed), "You have to ask Daddy."

"Really? You don't think I can just have one?"

"No," they remained solemnly sure and slightly horrified by my presumption, "you have to ask Daddy first."

Authority

Mr. Right and I passed the parenting baton in the driveway Sunday afternoon, which is not the way I like to think our lives go, but it kind of is right now, at least sometimes.

The kids were excited to take me inside and show off the gingerbread men and dinosaurs they'd made with Daddy while I was gone.

"Oh, they're beautiful!" I told them.

"And they taste really good!!!" said Mr. Pants.

"Ooo! Really? Can I try one?"

Two pairs of big serious eyes looked up at me (one from under a floppy wool hat - the day was our first coolish one and they were pretending it had snowed), "You have to ask Daddy."

"Really? You don't think I can just have one?"

"No," they remained solemnly sure and slightly horrified by my presumption, "you have to ask Daddy first."

Squabble Squabble Squabble!

The Better Angels of Our Nature (almost finished!  anyone else reading it?  don't you want to talk about it?!) tells me that 2 years old is the most violent human age.  I'm really hoping that 5 and 2 is also the height of sibling squabbling because if it gets any worse... I'll be having colorful duct tape fantasies.

We arrived at the pool during break this morning, so they started off in the baby pool while I sat in the shade.  Within minutes, Mr. Pants had splashed Shmoogie more than she liked, I saw her scowl at him and announce, "I'm going tell on you!" and then the race was on to scramble out of the pool and get to me first.

Mr. Pants won.  "Shmoogie is saying...!"  Then Shmoogie herself burst between us, "Mr. Pants spwashed me!!!!"

I looked at them sternly.  They looked at me expectantly.

I said, "Children, do you want to stay at the pool?"

They looked startled.  (Shmoogie's face was a fascinating sort of startled scowl, actually.)  Then they looked at each other.  Shmoogie said, "Le's go back to the pool, Mr. Pants," and they were off, laughing.

If only I could do that all the time.  Or even most of the time.  Or even some significant minority of the time!

On His Mind

At the pool this afternoon, Mr. Pants announces, "When I grow up, I'm going to marry a boy."

"Oh," I say, "Why is that?"

"Because I like boys."

I mention that is true of most boys his age, but he might change his mind by the time he's actually getting married.  He frowns.

"What if Chick-Fil-A is mad at me?"* 

I laugh and hug him and ask, "Well, that wouldn't really matter, would it?"

He giggles, "No, 'cause they're not the government!"

***

"When you make me go to school it just makes me feel like you don't care about me at all!" his face is contorting and tears threaten to escape his eyes.

He has been lobbying for weeks for me to "just stop" going to work.  An explanation of why that can't happen only resulted in begging me to "sign another contract that says you don't have to work anymore" and perplexed questions about why the "school" (the lovely sun-filled, wood-floored daycare he and Shmoogie are at three days a week this summer) won't let him stop coming.

So, does he feel like I don't care about him at all on the other four days of the week when I'm home with him?

"Not really."

"What about Daddy?  Do you feel like Daddy cares about us?"

"Yes."

"But Daddy goes to work every day, for even longer than I do!"

He shrugs his shoulders, "But I still feel like he cares about me all the time."

At least he's honest.

Shmoogie, of course, was listening to most of this, in her own way, and she's been quite dependent on Mr. Pants for her opinions lately.  Curious, I asked her a bit later, "Shmoogie, how do you feel when I drop you off at school?"

"Happy."

"Oh!  And how do you feel when I pick you up?"

"Happy."

Well, then.

***

*  (Both the kids are upset that I won't take them to Chick-Fil-A anymore, but I'm not ready to cave yet.  I tried making our own nuggets the other day with this recipe (somewhat ironic source, considering; I <3 the Internet!), which worked really well — especially the soaking for an hour part — but I doubled the dry ingredients (except I used only 1 Tbs of powdered sugar...  powdered sugar!  on chicken!) and it turned out to be way too much salt, at least double too much.  Also, it seemed to work fine to just put the drained soaked chicken all at once into the flour and mix it up.  More even coating on all pieces.  And I used about 2/3 veg oil and 1/3 olive oil because I didn't have enough veg oil.)

Unasked

We finally read the recent Atlantic article Why Women Still Can't Have It All by Anne-Marie Slaughter.  For context, I haven't read any of what I imagine was probably a classic Internet brawl over it, except for an angry tweet here and there when it first came out.

Overall, I liked the article ok.  It's nice to hear something like realism from a highly successful woman with children.

But there are two things screaming for attention in the whole thing that were almost completely ignored.

The first is the obvious one:  Why are we still only talking about women?  Why do we take it for granted that successful men have no desire to have a life outside of their work, a life which involves spending non-negligible time with their children?  Or with anyone or anything else they might care about?  Maybe some don't.  Maybe some do.  Maybe, in a different culture, more would.  I certainly didn't expect Slaughter to go deeply into these questions, but I was disappointed that she skimmed past them almost as if they weren't even there.

Instead, there was a whispered assumption that most women want to have children and want to spend lots of time with them, but men don't.  Later in the article, she said some nice things about fathers nowadays wanting more time for their families, too, and it's possible that if the article had been titled "The Future of Work-Life Balance in High-Powered Careers" I would have read it with a different attitude.  (And it's quite possible Slaughter didn't come up with the title.)  But.

Second is the existential question at the center of the whole mess.  (It continues to amaze me how rarely anyone publicly contemplates existential questions.)  What is all this for?  Are we here to scramble like crazy in the highest echelons of power each of us is capable of reaching?  If so, is that because we are here to amass as much prestige as possible?  As much intellectual stimulation as possible?  To do as much valiant, hero-scale good for as many people as we can?

On the other hand, why have we brought our children here?  For our enjoyment?  For our pride?  For our naturalistic imperitive to carry on the human race?  The vestigial animalistic pleasure of seeing our genetic material carried on into another generation?  Our economic duty to supply future workers?

Slaughter's article was supposed to have me thinking about family leave policies and ambitious women's potential career paths, but her "of course this is what my job was like" description got me stuck on the existential question.  Woah.  What on this earth can one person be doing at meetings, on phone calls, at receptions, in hearings, in speeches, on their computer that can possibly justify this ceaseless level of busyness, of sheer hours awake and "productive"?

Either these careers absolutely require all this if the human race is not to fall apart (or, more parochially, our country is not to fall apart, or our way of life is not to seismically shift... except that MIGHT not be a bad thing...), or no career requires this (and actually doing a good job may be damaged by such excess!) and maybe we should be wondering why it seems so necessary.

Either way, it's unsettling to realize that we who are hoping to improve the playing field for men and women, parents and non-parents, who believe that frenetic working must be tempered with time for contemplation, with time for relationships, with time for living, are largely dependent on an elite in power who may think they believe in those things (or may simply not), but cannot (or feel they cannot) actually speak those beliefs through the one life they have to live.

And that is either tragic or terrifying.  Or maybe it's just curious, something to think about, something that maybe could actually change someday.

Slaughter brushes past this question, too, but there's a glint in there when she describes working with Orthodox Jewish men (including the current White House chief of staff) who, of course, do not work (or even commute) from sundown on Friday until sundown on Saturday.  To keep this commitment, to faith, to family, to something other than work, is apparently possible (and is — the irony! — greatly admired by coworkers) even in "an enormously demanding job".

***

There's another, related question, but it is too messy for me to tackle in my own words today.  If you can handle reading radical stuff and honestly considering the points being made even if the rhetoric sometimes gets a bit heated, you might try this short piece:  Housework Under Capitalism, the Unpaid Labor of Mothers.  I know nothing about the author, it was just what I got when I googled "capitalism unpaid labor women" and it makes a lot of the points I'm gnawing on, though not always in quite the way I think I would make them.

An Afternoon to Remember

Mr. Pants and I had a locked-horns kind of morning today.  I thought things would improve when I took the kids to the pool, but it was only temporary and by the time we got back home, there was more mischief and mayhem and I very nearly lost it.

Actually, I maybe did lose it, depending on your definition, but only for a few seconds and only when I was alone on the first floor of the house (Mr. Pants and Shmoogie having retreated, giggling, to the bedroom upstairs), so by my definition I'm not sure it counts.

By the time Shmoogie was down for a nap, though, things were calmer and Mr. Pants joined me in the kitchen for a promised special activity:  making Rice Krispie treats.

I was starting to feel like a good mom again.

Then, as I'm pulling out the marshmallows, Mr. Pants decides he's not interested, after all.  I can make the Rice Krispie treats, he tells me, he'll just go watch a movie. 

But I want to do something with YOU, child, I try to explain, without sounding needy, as I follow him out of the kitchen.  Would you like to read another chapter of your book?  Or something else?

I follow him into the toy room and sink into a chair, deflated.  We could play, he says, with little enthusiasm, shrugging his shoulders at the room.

I take a deep breath.  I hate playing.  I know that's dreadful, but it's true.  I take a deep breath, though, because I really want to get this day back on track, and I say, "Ok, what do you want to play?"

He does a slightly staggering circle around the room, scanning for anything interesting, grabs an enormous red teddy bear holding a lace-edge valentine and says, "Or, we could just take a little rest," as he climbs into my lap with the bear and cuddles into my chest.

"OK," I say, astounded, putting my arms around this curled up boy.

We sat there for about ten minutes, I think, mostly in silence, my big five-year-old re-cuddling himself into my lap a few times and once sitting up to ask why airplanes don't just fall apart and sink into the ocean (I explained they were built to be safe and he said they don't feel safe when you're on them), then snuggling back down again.

Then, on some signal known only to himself, he picked his head up and said, "That's enough of a rest" and we went back to the kitchen and had a grand old time making Rice Krispie treats (which are still as good as I remember them being if you make them yourself; it's been a long time since I've had a real one).

 

Sputtering

"Why did you give me a pink lollipop in my lunch?!"  Mr. Pants sobbed at me.

We had had kind of a rough morning and I was coming in to his room to end his time out and see if we could get in a better groove.

"Because you like lollipops!"  I had dropped a watermelon lollipop in his lunch a week ago, trying to do something especially nice for him.

"But I hate pink!  Pink is a girl color!"

"Well, did you taste the lollipop?"

"Mhmm."

"Did you like it?"

"Yeah, but it was pink!"

There followed a surprising conversation.  His feelings about pink are, in fact, complicated.  He hates pink.  Pink is kind of a pretty color.  He's afraid he might sometime decide he likes pink.  Pink is a girl color.  He hates pink.  (I don't know if he remembers he used to like it.)

I told him that pink is just a color and it's true that our society says it's just for girls, but that at other times and in other places people have thought that pink was for boys and not for girls!  Isn't it silly that people think things like that?  I want you to like what you like because you like it, not because it's what everyone says you should like.  There are a lot of things that people are going to tell you you should do and say and think and like and be because you're a boy.  It doesn't matter.  I want you and Shmoogie to be good, strong people.  A good man is a good person.  And a good man can like pink.

My tone was serious.  I've been reading a fair amount of feminists lately —thanks to Twitter and the shock of finding my gender to be such a small minority of my current passion — and just this morning, I'd read this astonishing post by Shannon Hale, a female author of young adult literature (who I've never heard of, but now wish to read).  She gives talks on writing at schools and often finds that the schools have separated the classes for her presentation — the girls are taken to hear her and the boys stay in their classrooms and miss the whole thing.  I'm so dumbfounded by that, I'd be sputtering if I were talking.

I try to keep it cool, to raise my girl and my boy to be whole and happy people, comfortable with but not defined by their gender.  But then I take them shoe shopping and the whole store is divided down the middle.  The pink and purple sparkles on one side and the red and blue flames and menacing superheroes (Mr. Pants has only recently overcome his terror of "Iderman", aka Spiderman, who is pretty scary-looking if you think about it) on the other.  Shmoogie picked ladybug rain boots over pink flowered rain boots and Mr. Pants wanted some, too.  "Do you?" I aksed, not sure what to do.  "I'm not sure they have your size.  Let's go look at those over there and if you still want the ladybugs, we'll come back and ask about your size."

He picked firechief boots, thrilled at how well they will go with his intended Halloween costume — Super Fireman.

And I quietly sighed in relief that I didn't have to prepare to explain why his friends were making fun of him for wearing ladybug boots.

What if they were called "redbugs"?  Would they still be the exclusive province of adorable little girls?  What if they were "bloodbugs"?  How unladylike.  But everybody knows boys are all about blood.

It makes my stomach churn to see a little boy show up at the park in full military camoflauge, ammo belt and toy gun.

My heart sinks when we walk down the Lego aisle at Target and everything is clearly aimed at "boy" and most of it is frightening or violent.  It's a narrow representation of Lego's product line, which I generally think of as being gender-neutral (although if you click on their homepage link there, you'll see new specifically "girl" products assailed by Ruth Suehle on opensource.com and by blogger Kate Bacchus), but it's what Target thinks my boy should want.

And, I don't know about you, but Target where we live is pretty much the arbiter of taste among the preschool set.  It's rare that a trip to the playground, the zoo, or the pool doesn't involve exchanging knowing grins with other parents over the matching strawberry hats on our daughters or the t-shirts on our sons.

It always makes me think uncomfortably of the time we watched Goodbye, Lenin with a friend who grew up in East Germany.  I had read about the one soviet brand of pickles in the reviews, of course, but I was still flabbergasted when she exclaimed, "That baby blanket!  We all had that baby blanket!"

It was a blue blanket, if I recall correctly.

Mirror

Mr. Pants, having just been told "no" about something, lets out a loud exasperated sigh.

Mr. Right doesn't like the attitude and says, "You need to stop making that noise; it's very rude."

Mr. Pants, with a perfect air of innocence, answers, "But Mommy does it."

Mommy looks to Mr. Right in shock... me?!

Mr. Right only raises an eyebrow and tips his head, almost hiding a smirk.