When Did I Get Like This?, page 17
At moments such as these I hardly recognize my oldest child, but I take solace in remembering it’s not about me. He’s not giving me a hard time, the books tell me, he’s having a hard time. I can therefore meet Connor where he is right now with a modicum of perspective, knowing that as soon as he refinds balance, one of his siblings will leap to take his place. If the good news is that only one of my children is in disequilibrium at a time, the bad news is that one of them is in disequilibrium at all times. There have been moments in the last seven years when all three of my children have been sleeping well, not sick, and generally happy, but those times have come around about as often as a blue moon.
But while a mother’s children get to take turns playing the heavy, the mother never gets to tag out, because all her children’s disequilibrized antics, while aimed at a general audience, are really about getting a reaction out of one person: her. A mother’s disequilibrium tornado is a thin one, always hewing close to the side of anarchy. And a mother’s relationship with her current problem child will have a similarly narrow helix shape, veering from uneasy coexistence to times of prickly standoff, not once every six months, but once a day, once an hour.
No matter how often these standoffs occur, though, and no matter how skillfully her buttons are pushed, a good mother must not, under any circumstances, offer reaction or resistance. In its chemical definition, equilibrium occurs when a process and its reverse pull equally in opposite directions, so that no overall change takes place. But in order to neutralize a child’s ranting, a mother is supposed to betray no sense of the surging tsunami that is within her, even after a two-hour drive in which she has heard “Mo-omm, he is looking at me!” no less than five hundred and seventy-three times. It is up to the mother, though she will live her life in a constant state of disequilibrium, to act at all times as if she is not—to be a paragon of moderate heart rates and vocal timbres. If she fails for a moment, if she meets a child’s rage with a tantrum of her own, she will (so the experts say) have stooped to her child’s level, and succeeded merely in creating more disequilibrium. I do believe that this is probably correct. I also believe that it is a hell of a lot to ask.
Maggie has not yet taken an extended turn as my most difficult child. Other than waking up an hour and a half earlier than I would like, she is a dream baby, and we are still in the throes of blind, utter intoxication with each other. “I Mommy’s girl,” she will say, snuggling her head in beneath my chin, and I think, She will never betray me! She and I will exist eternally in this blissful codependency!
I realize, of course, that it is folly to think this way. One day Maggie will ascend the Child Most Likely to Make Mommy Throw Something throne, precisely because she will be tired of having been so well behaved, and therefore benignly neglected by her mother, for so long. Headstrong as she is, I can also predict that her own periods of disequilibrium will likely put her brothers’ to shame. But here is comfort: the laws of nature intend it to be this way. While disequilibrium may be the constant state of mind I have chosen for myself, it will only be like this for, oh, about another twenty years.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Taco Night
One night last spring, we went to visit some friends who had recently moved to the suburbs. We were sad when Susan and Rob moved away, because our kids are all in love with one another, although it’s very Midsummer Night’s Dream because none of it is reciprocal. Their three-year-old is starry-eyed over Seamus, who in turn is gaga for their eight-year-old, who keeps asking us where Connor is. And so on.
Susan and Rob invited us over for “Taco Night,” which I fully intend to steal as an entertaining idea if I ever start entertaining. I was amazed that Susan was managing to host guests just two weeks after moving into a new home. “Oh God, I just threw this together,” Susan said in her new, enormous kitchen, where she had laid out little bowls of freshly chopped cilantro and minced jalapeños next to the taco shells and ground beef. There was plenty of wine, the kids would have fun, everyone would be fed from someone else’s kitchen—this was going to be as good as a night off for me.
Susan and Rob’s new house was gorgeous and a little intimidating. They had gone in a decidedly modern direction with the furnishings, and upon being invited into the living room David and I both stood there for a moment, not sure which of the aluminum-and-glass structures was a table and which a very low-slung and backless chair. “Where are the toys?” Seamus asked, always one to cut to the chase. (In our house, you can stand in the foyer and have seven Christmas mornings’ worth of booty well within view.)
“They’re in the playroom upstairs,” Rob answered, firing up my real estate envy even further.
“Come on up!” the young hostesses called from the landing, and up the open-plan, railing-free staircase the two boys went, sixteen-month-old Maggie struggling to follow them in a half-crawl. “Want to join me in the kitchen?” Susan said. I looked at Maggie, wobbling uncertainly up the stairs. “Don’t worry about Maggie. My girls will watch out for her,” Susan added, reassuring me. I wavered. I did not want to be perceived as overprotective, but there was enough room between each step for Maggie to slip through and plummet to the high-gloss lacquered floor below. However, it seemed the Defcon Three alert was ringing in my ears only; Susan was already heading for the kitchen, and David was deep in meaningful conversation with our host. If the stairs were safe enough for Susan and Rob’s two-year-old daughter to climb every day, maybe there was no reason for me to be such a party pooper. “I’ll come out in a bit,” I called after Susan, then sat at the bottom of the steps pretending to follow David and Rob’s conversation while watching Maggie climb safely to the top.
A few minutes later, I excused myself to no one in particular and went upstairs to check on her and the other kids. The playroom was a lavender PBteen paradise, with a thousand stuffed animals and one large television deeply engrossing all the children in some Nick tween sitcom. Since they all seemed content enough—even Maggie, who was busily chewing on a stuffed rabbit—I returned to the adults downstairs. “Are they good?” David said.
“They’re fine,” I answered. He nodded and returned to his dialogue with Rob on the debatable merits of the three-point line in college basketball.
Okay, I needed to relax a little. The kids were all fine up there, at least until iCarly was over. I asked David to keep an ear out for Maggie, then grabbed my glass of wine and walked toward the kitchen to join Susan. I paused in the doorway; something told me to turn and look up. And that is when I saw Maggie, who did not know how to negotiate her way down any staircase, let alone one without a railing, stepping confidently out into space like a very young (and female) Mister Magoo. “Hi, Mommy,” she crowed as she stepped into my arms 1.5 seconds later, having known all along I’d be there to catch her.
How did David react? He didn’t notice. Engrossed in his PGA tour chat, he was completely oblivious to the death-defying acts happening directly over his head. As I carried Maggie safely to the ground floor, my heart hammering in my chest, I wondered: Why is it always the mom’s job to save the kids from leaping to a certain leg fracture? Why is the mom the only one who even notices such things are happening?
Cocktails continued for another half hour before tacos were served. I had to save Maggie’s life another eleven times. As David and Rob wandered outside to examine Rob’s mulching efforts, David said, “I’ll watch Maggie for a few.” I quickly repaired to the kitchen, feeling guilty that Susan had been out there alone all that time. Two minutes later, I looked out the plate-glass window to see Maggie one centimeter from the swimming pool, behind my dear husband’s turned back, while he was having a meaningful discussion about the continued relevance of the designated hitter in Major League baseball.
As I pounded on the glass, to no avail, then ran through the living room and out the front door to rescue Maggie, I wondered: Does David do this on purpose? So I will do all the child-chasing myself? So I won’t let him take a turn? So I will always sit next to the baby (and/or crankiest child) on the plane, or at a restaurant, or in church? So that no matter where we are, the children are always, for the most part, my problem?
This is, in my house, how things have been divided: I am in charge of the children. For fifty dollars, my husband could not give you the name and address of our children’s pediatrician. For double or nothing, he could not give you all three of their birthdays, plus our anniversary for another hundred. I know this because I have won all of these bets. David’s brain synapses are not sagging with minutiae like our children’s birth weights and current shoe sizes, or, say, what’s for lunch. That’s what I’m for. Where the kids are concerned, as long as I’m around, he can go off-duty in his head.
I think I am right about this. But if I bring it up, David will say, puffed up with hurt feeling, “Let me tell you something. Compared to some guys I know, I am not that bad.” And really, he’s not. If he gets home and the kids are still awake, no pipe and slippers for him; he grabs a kid or two and gets cracking, detouring to our bedroom only to take his tie off. However, he does have a suspicious ability to time his arrival for exactly at bedtime; Maggie will already have had her stories in the rocking chair, and the boys will be under the covers, leaving just enough time for Daddy to rev them all back up again. I can hardly blame him. Bedtime is my favorite time of the day, and why not just show up for that part if you have the choice?
But this division of parenting labor does tend to make weekends particularly hard. During the week, my kids have a clear routine: school, playground, dinner, bath. Once I got to three children, I also got a babysitter to help me with the staggered afternoon pickups and drop-offs and bath times, and we function quite well together. On a Saturday morning, David will grandly announce, “Let’s all go to the diner!” and then disappear to the bathroom for half an hour with the weekend business section while I get the four other people in our household ready to go. Every once in a while, he’ll yell through the bathroom door, “Let’s go, guys!” as if (1) he is himself ready to go, which he is not, and (2) this, in itself, is making any contribution whatsoever to our departure. In the same time it takes for him to finish up, then brush his teeth and run a comb through his hair, I will have scouted the house for three pairs of sneakers, packed the diaper bag with a superabundance of crayons and juice boxes, changed Maggie’s diaper twice, and dressed three unwilling children. Only then will David emerge from the bathroom, just in time for me to throw on a sweater from the pile on the floor over the sweatpants I slept in. Makeup? Why, I haven’t even washed my face! Hair? Who has time for petty things like personal appearance? David is at the front door, natty as ever, yelling, “Let’s go, guys!”
Weekends are exhausting. David does mean to be helpful—it’s just that he never takes a turn noticing that it’s already 5:40 P.M. and there’s nothing in the refrigerator the kids will eat. The schedule lives in my head. When I ask my husband to help with an item on that schedule, he follows my request to the letter. Unfortunately, he will do exactly that and no more. This is probably an error of wording on my part. On a Sunday evening, instead of saying, “Can you give Maggie a bath?” I should say, “Can you give Maggie a bath, and then drain the tub, and take the towel that fell in, and find somewhere besides the bathroom floor for it to drip dry; and then take her to her room, and put a diaper on her, and choose a pair of pajamas, and then close the pajama drawer, and then put them on her, right-side out; and then comb her hair before it dries that way; and take her old diaper, and tape it shut, and throw it in the garbage can, rather than leave it splayed open on her changing table?” Of course, if I took the time to say all that, I could have just done it all myself. But if I am not that specific about my wishes, there is such a battlefield to be cleaned up in his wake, a swath of crap cutting across several rooms, that I regret having asked at all.
This may be calculated on his part. It certainly makes me feel like I am not free to leave all three children with him for any meaningful length of time. Once David offered me a “Mommy’s Day Off” for my birthday, a quiet summer Saturday when Seamus was barely a year old and Connor was two and a half. I had known this day was coming for a week, which was good, since it took me that long to prepare the snacks, and the meals, and the outfits, and the backup outfits, and the proposed itineraries for their day. I was up early for my day off, out of the house by 8:30 A.M., cell phone left behind. I was off the grid and dizzy with the thrill.
I took myself to breakfast, my foot tapping impatiently for the check. I went shopping and didn’t buy anything. I sat at the park and read without comprehending. By 3:00 P.M. I was out of ideas, and returned home ahead of schedule to find both boys still in their pajamas, Seamus with his diaper on from the night before. Connor was drinking from a sippy cup I had last seen six months earlier, before it rolled under the couch. The house looked like it belonged to one of those compulsive hoarders you see on A&E, narrow walking paths laid out through piles and piles of Duplo blocks and torn bits of paper. “We watched a lot of shows!” Connor yelled by way of greeting. And I spent the rest of my birthday working twice as hard to catch up as if I had never left the house in the first place.
What really chapped my fanny was that David seemed to think he’d been me for the day, and golly, that wasn’t hard at all! If he “babysits” (his word) and the kids aren’t locked out or missing limbs when I get back, he expects a ticker-tape parade’s worth of gratitude. “Aren’t you even going to thank me for unloading the dishwasher?” he asked me one night as I lay beached on the couch watching television for twenty minutes before bed. I snapped back, “Yes, I am. Thank you. Now, are you going to thank me every single other night, when I unload the dishwasher?”
I’m used to our division of labor at this point. I just want my husband to get that he doesn’t do a whole hell of a lot—or at least that what he considers “a lot” is not the half of it. And that is where our opinions differ. We bicker about it every couple of months, and sooner or later, David always plays the same trump card: “I’m way more helpful than our dads were.” Argument ender. He has a point.
My parents came to visit us right after Seamus came home from the hospital. David’s best friend Jon had sent over his trademark lasagna (by the way, Jon and his cooking skills are always my trump card in the aforementioned disagreement). I had set the lasagna on the kitchen counter so everyone could heat up his or her own dinner when the mood struck. “What’s for dinner?” my father asked me as I struggled to latch Seamus on to my enormous, postpartum bosom.
“It’s in the kitchen,” I answered through gritted teeth.
He walked out to the kitchen, where he stared at the lasagna pan for a moment, then called out to my mother, “Nancy, I’m ready for my dinner now.” He had no idea how to render the cold, plastic-wrapped lasagna suitable for consumption; after all, his dinner had always been served to him hot.
Then there’s my sweet and gentle father-in-law, who asserted shortly after Maggie was born that fathers did not change their daughters’ poopy diapers, as if this were a matter of common knowledge. When I pressed the issue, he explained that he had himself never changed his two daughters’ diapers, because as a male, he was ill-equipped to negotiate all their “nooks and crannies.” David laughed so hard his Coke Zero came out his nose. His father took his lumps with good grace, but both he and my mother-in-law seemed genuinely surprised that David and I might do things another way.
There, I think, is the rub: the difference between our generation of parents and the one that raised us is that back then, our fathers were never really expected to help in the first place. If you needed help, your mother lived next door; at least that’s how it happened in Scranton. Now, we mothers expect our husbands to participate, and ever since he was in the delivery room to cut our children’s umbilical cords, David has been more hands-on than his father ever dreamed of being. But I cannot say that our day-to-day division of household labor is that different from the way our parents did things. David goes to work every day, and I am (more or less) at home. We both agreed that it should be this way. As an actress, I was unemployed about 80 percent of the time, so I could hardly stake claim to being our primary breadwinner. Plus, as the oldest of six, I had vast child-care experience and maternal inclination to boot. It was the right choice for us. But sometimes I want to be the guest star. I want to be the one who swoops in five minutes before bedtime, Greco-Roman-wrestles the boys into a frenzy, and then gets on a conference call. I want to let someone else pack the diaper bag, or keep Maggie from falling in the pool, for a change.
Barring that, I want my husband to at least give me credit for how much I am juggling. I have never thought David is some benighted chauvinist. But on a sunny Sunday afternoon, when I have all three kids at the supermarket and David is gone golfing for eight hours, it is hard not to harbor some resentment while standing in the checkout line. One day there was an Orthodox Jewish mother in front of me in line, balancing her groceries atop her double stroller with three kids inside. I imagined what her household must be like. Built on the ancient bedrock of Tradition, I assumed. God, her husband probably never lifted a finger. Wasn’t she tired of it all? But if she had any simmering anger, I could not see it.
When I saw a flyer a few days later advertising a seminar called “Manage Your Mothering Time” at the local Chabad Center, I knew I had to go, if only to pick up a few pointers on how to get it all done without choking on one’s own resentment. Though the flyer had stipulated that all were welcome, I wondered too late, as we went around the room introducing ourselves, whether that included a mother of children named Connor and Seamus, a mother dressed in jeans and a T-shirt. But none of the dozen or so Orthodox mothers gathered seemed to mind.
