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A Good Death

 

Picture from the Juneau Empire files

 

 

For my grandfather, Bill Ray

 

 

These are the sounds after a quick death following a long life: The telephone rings are steady, but not constant. Arrangements are made swiftly, with no big decisions, discussions or surprises. Voices are calm. You hear a lot of sighs. Only a thin layer of shock drifts by, like a cirrus cloud.

 

My grandfather lived to be 91. We loved each other and said so in later years, but we didn’t speak often. He was strong-willed and difficult with those he loved the most. He was a storyteller and a lawmaker. A liquor hawker. A secret-keeper and a gold collector. He was a name caller. A fisherman and a painter and a writer.

He was a child of the universe who was here, and now isn’t.

A constellation of ancestors, long twists and turns of accident or fate. A mother’s eyes, a grandfather’s nose. The birth name, Will, that he grew into, but later changed.

My best memories of him are when he told stories. He sits at a table, one hand on his coffee mug. He is already laughing, his eyes shining with anticipation. “This is a good one,” he says. “Wait until you hear this one.”

It’s the one where his father’s dog, Whitey, fell out of the fishing boat, perilously close to the falls. “‘What’d you do, Dad?’ I asked him.”
‘I said, So long, Whitey!”

He shakes his head and chuckles, his laugh still sturdy among the laughs of his listeners.

I wish I had listened better, had a better memory. I wish I’d written the stories down instead of letting them sing by, all wisps and trails. I wonder where do all those stories go when we die? Do they live on, swirling and hanging in the air where he was? In the cells of his great grandchildren who he never met? In the pages he wrote?

 

“Reaaad boooook, Mama,” my daughter says, pattering over to me.

She hands me Goodnight Moon. Her eyes are big and blue, her cheeks full and smooth. I start reading, my eyes taking in the flat greens and tomato reds of the book. By the time I get to And a comb and a brush and a bowl full of mush, I am in tears.

All those goodnights. The words of the book, a childhood favorite, reach back through my mind, unlocking the little girl inside of me. The one whose grandpa was larger than life, full of laughs and stories. He was big and handsome. He slipped her sips of beer in the kitchen. Sent her postcards when he travelled. He appeared on the radio and TV, making jokes and laws.
 

These are the sounds after a good death: Quiet sobs. Voices on the phone, shaky, but not shattered. Patter of small feet, new tales unfolding. Goodnight stars, goodnight air. The rush of memories, of stories, rising and falling, lifting into the sky.

 

Superpowers

In a wildly generous move, my cousin offered me a free photo shoot with the photographer she works with. So this Wednesday, I met up with cousin Meghan and Kevin Ouelette, photographer and DJ at Amazing DJ Music, Sound and Photography.

Getting my picture taken is not my favorite thing. Despite the fact that I can air many of my vulnerabilities here, there is something about being photographed that makes me feel so very naked. Not in a good way.

I was that painfully shy kid growing up. I kept my lips pursed and my head down, slouched in a desk at the back of the classroom. I internalized most of my emotions. I thought I was fat and ugly and therefore unlovable, so I hid. The more I hid, the more I became convinced that I wasn’t worthy of being seen.

 Add to that a mysterious talent for closing my eyes at exactly the same time as the camera clicks.

 Fortunately, Kevin had a way of putting me at ease. After greeting me with a warm hug, he asked, “So tell me what you don’t like about yourself.”

 I thought for a moment, trying to figure out where to start. I began listing my physical flaws.

“I have a nose smile,” I confessed, referencing the little slash that blooms beneath my nose when I grin. “And sometimes in pictures I look a little cross-eyed.” I almost started in on my “strong” nose, and hadn’t even gotten to body parts below the neck, but Kevin was ready to get started.

“Okay,” he said. “Cool. Let’s go!”

As Kevin drove, we chatted about my writing so he could get a sense of what to capture in my photographs. I told him I wrote mostly about parenting and grief and spirit, and that— SPOILER ALERT!— I was working on launching a new website. Our conversation flowed easily, and I felt instantly comfortable.

What impressed me most was that Kevin operated purely on instinct. He drove around for awhile, then suddenly said, “I’m feeling like I want to park here and walk around.” So we did. Because he trusted his instinct, I did, too.

He asked me to sit on the front steps of a stranger’s house, which would normally leave me feeling anxious. But I didn’t feel anxious. It felt like we were on a fun little jaunt, instead. “Think about elephant bums,” he said, pointing his camera at me.

As if summoned by a camera-wielding wizard, a big, genuine smile spread across my face.

We continued that way, walking and chatting our way through a neighborhood of lovely old houses. We paused at various stoops, stairs and fences per Kevin’s hunches. I cheerfully envisioned the nether regions of pachyderms while Kevin snapped away. I wasn’t thinking of my nose smile at all.

“So how long have you been doing this?” I asked.

“About three years,” he said.

“Wow. And you have no traditional training?”

“None.”

I was stunned, having seen some of his gorgeous photos on Facebook.

Kevin shared that capturing the essence of people was his superpower. He grinned, as if thinking of elephant bums, while he expressed how amazing it was to produce images that helped people feel good about themselves. The way he said it was devoid of ego—he sounded almost surprised that he had discovered this ability. It made me feel happy—what a wonderful way to be able to make people feel good.

At one point, he was photographing me from my left side. “You do have a bit of a lazy eye,” he said.

Though I died a tiny bit inside, and briefly doubted his claim about making people feel good, he said it with kindness and objectivity, as if proclaiming that I had a strand of grass in my hair.

“You knew that, right?” he said, concerned that he had surprised me.

“Sort of.”

After about forty-five minutes of walking and shooting, we headed back to his studio. “You know that this whole time, you’ve only talked about your imperfections? Which aren’t really even imperfections—you just perceive them that way.”

 “Yeah, I do that,” I admitted.

 Back at the studio, Kevin scrolled through the images he’d taken, selecting favorites. We swiftly narrowed it down to our top four favorites, and then he began lightly editing them. “Turn this way,” he said. I did. “Do you have some carrot in your teeth?” he asked, an eyebrow lifted.

 “Oh, dear God.” I stared at his computer screen, where a big chunk of carrot was wedged between my back teeth. I watched as he digitally flossed my teeth.

“Hmm. Show me your other side,” he said, again referencing my teeth. I did. He started laughing.

“Maybe you can photoshop a little bunny into the pictures, going after all the carrots,” I suggested.

I silently made a vow that if I ever had my photo taken again, I would floss beforehand. Twice.

 
As Kevin worked on the photos, I sat there thinking about imperfection. About my Forest Whitaker eye and my carrot teeth and my nose smile. When I zoomed out and focused on the whole picture, the photos looked really, really good. So why was I focusing on the imperfections, which we all have?

“Which one is your favorite?” Kevin asked.

“That one,” I said. I liked the little orbs of light in the background.

 

 

“Really? That’s actually my least favorite. I think you look a little inhibited in that one,” he said. “This is my favorite. I feel like it really shows who you are.”

 

Later, my mom would declare that Kevin had “captured my essence,” in that photo.

 

Ever since I left the studio, I’ve been thinking about superpowers and imperfection.

It occurred to me afterwards that one of my superpowers is that people often feel really comfortable sharing personal things with me. I frequently hear, “I don’t usually share stuff like that with other people.” Just the other day, I was getting some bodywork done and the practitioner, who is highly professional, ended up sharing some very personal issues her family was facing. As I was leaving, I said, “I’m really sorry you’re going through that.”

She looked a little alarmed. “I don’t usually share stuff like that with my clients.”

“I know you don’t,” I said, with a gentle smile.

In retrospect, during my visit, I’d been vulnerable with her and had talked about my issues with anxiety. Though my focused attention on my own flaws causes me a lot of discomfort, I think that my ability to openly share those flaws might be related to my tendency to make other people feel comfortable. Because I am fairly at ease with removing my social masks, other people feel like they can go ahead and lower theirs a bit, too. It’s not unlike how I trusted Kevin’s instincts because I could tell that he did.

So much of my personal growth work is about accepting the whole deal. The grey area. The AND. The carrot teeth AND the photo that I love. The superpowers AND the vulnerabilities, both of which our world desperately needs. And seeing that sometimes, sometimes, they are actually one and the same.

What’s your superpower?

 

 

 

The AND

When I was pregnant with my son, I asked a friend with an almost two-year-old what parenting was like. I knew it was too broad of a question, but I asked anyways.

My friend thought for a moment. Then she said, “Hard. And amazing.”

One of the great, continuing lessons of my life has to do with the grey area. With understanding and accepting that nothing is just black or white. That we constantly hold a myriad of aches and joys, triumphs and tragedies, struggles and success.

Take, for instance, yesterday. We took the kids up to Freeport to have lunch with friends and to procure preschool supplies for the kids. Towards the end of our trip, none of us were happy. And we still had 45 minutes to wait for our son’s backpack to get monogrammed.

Our two-year-old daughter was about an hour past her naptime and proceeded to screech and weave through the crowd of shoppers unless she had the giant L.L. Bean bag containing her new pink rain pants strapped over her little shoulder. Max was whiny.

I hadn’t imbibed my daily quotient of caffeine, and soon I was whining, too. My husband was done with all three of us. Strangers were giving us that look. The can’t you control your horribly behaved children?!? look.

It was hard. Not in a ‘capital H Hard’ way, like with natural disasters or serious illness. More in a why did we decide to take the little crazy people shopping kind of a way.

Finally, Max’s new shark backpack was emblazoned with his first name and last initial, and he was so delighted that he cuddled it all the way home, where the kids and I all napped.

Amazing.

When we got up, we were mostly refreshed. The Kastaways, the mascot band that plays for the local Portland Sea Dogs baseball team, was scheduled to make their last appearance of the season. Max loves music—it is his thing. And he’s been infatuated with the Kastaways since he first heard them play last summer at his very first baseball game. After which he began talking about them constantly.

The thing is, he has always liked the idea of them more than the reality. Often, when we go to hear them play, he just stands there watching, looking slightly frozen and cowering if any of the mascots approach him. The rest of us usually sway and enjoy the chance to hear some live music. You wouldn’t guess by looking at Max standing there on the crimson bricks outside of Hadlock Field that this would be the moment he would talk about for weeks to come. “Tell me about the time we saw the Kastaways and that boy had a birthday and the Kastaways sung ‘Happy Birthday’ to him,” he would say at bedtime. Every night.

Having been a shy child myself, I find it slightly heartbreaking to see him scared and holding back from one of the things that most brings him alive. The thing he talks about all the time and replays in his head and with his words. Often. It is one of those soft spots from my own life that I have to watch out for—it’s far too tempting to try and parent from my own wounds. I have to just let him, sometimes, be scared and frozen and trust that he, like we all are, is on his own path.

So last night, when we decided to go see the Kastaways, we expected him to be shy and tentative. But I actually did the unthinkable anyways; I woke him up from his nap so we could make it in time to see them play. “Maxie,” I said, lowering myself to his bed. His eyelids fluttered, then dropped. “Do you want to go see the Kastaways play for the last time this season?” I whispered. His eyes grew round, and he sprung up, rubbing his eyes. “YEAH!” he said.

When we arrived at Hadlock Field, the Kastaways were taking a break between sets. We sat and waited, while hundreds of people headed in to watch the actual baseball game. Finally, we heard the telltale sound of the musicians saying, “Check,” into their microphones. Sir Nigel Rathbone the Wharf Rat, Spike the Porcupine, Clarence the Clam, Pete the Puffin and Herman Dean the Power Hog strutted by us. They introduced themselves and began to play. I watched a huge grin slide over Max’s face as they started playing “Centerfield,” Max’s favorite. Within moments, Max was tapping his feet and spinning around.

Then, the lead singer, Sir Nigel Rathbone the Wharf Rat, beckoned for Max and another little girl to come up and dance in front of the area where they were playing. I was stunned when our guy headed right up. As the music started, Max started busting out donkey kicks and rock lunges to “Twist and Shout.” He danced for several songs, the sound of the keyboard and drums propelling him. He was wholly in the moment. In his body. In the music. It was beautiful, and it brought me more into the moment, too. My boy—my sensitive, determined, mercurial boy—let the music pool and swirl inside him as dozens of people streamed by.

 

 

 

I watched him, and I watched my husband, who was videotaping the moment. I watched the faces of the other people in the audience, smiling at my son’s freedom. I felt like the late August sun was shining right down into my chest, soaking my heart.

 

It was amazing.  

Life is hard and amazing. Life with young kids is hard and amazing. Sometimes, like this morning, when my chest was pulsing and expanding with love as my kids were snuggling like kittens, and then with no warning, slapping at each other, it is both hard and amazing within mere moments. Sometimes you just get the hard stuff, and sometimes, like last night, you get just the amazing stuff.

 

 

. Lighten Up

Yesterday afternoon, Scott, Max and I went candlepin bowling. We were all excited about the rare chance to spend some time together doing something that would be challenging with our toddler in tow.

Something that most people don’t know about me is that get very competitive when playing games, which vacuums all the fun right out of it for me and those playing with me.

I managed to hold myself back during bowling. I will admit to smugly thinking I was winning the whole time, only to realize at the end that I was looking at Scott’s score, not mine. The mild deflation I felt was redeemed by knowing that Max had a blast, slamming the small balls down the lane, equally distributing them between the left and right gutters. In between turns, I sipped my ice coffee and looked at Max, trying to figure out once again how he morphed from the tiny, red-faced infant into a small person who could walk and talk, play the drums and bowl. Earlier in the day, Scott had told me I needed to, ‘lighten up.’ I was trying to take his words to heart. Trying to be present.

After we finished the thread of bowling, we migrated to the small arcade behind the lanes. Max wanted to play air hockey. I was delighted, as I love air hockey. And by love, I mean it sends me into a frenzied fight or flight cortisol party, where my pulse ramps up and I slam the puck around as if fighting for my very life.

 Which would be okay, except I was playing against my four-year-old. “Too fast, Mama!” he whined.

“Sorry bud! I’ll slow down.”

Thwack.

I couldn’t slow down.

“I want to play with Dada instead!”

I reluctantly handed the paddle to Scott and positioned myself on the sidelines.

Scott and Max gently passed the puck back and forth, back and forth.

Oh, I thought.

Slap.

 

Maxie giggled and cheered as he scored on Scott. “Yay, Maxie!” I yelped.

Slap.

Maxie and I cheer again. Scott made a pretend pouty face.

It was at this point that I realized Scott was letting him score. The thought never would have occurred to me while I was playing.

 “Mama, do you think you can chill out a bit and play with Max again?” Scott asked.

“Of course. Sorry, Max. Mommy gets a little excited when she plays air hockey,” I said. “I’ll relax.”

I glance at my sweet, fiery four-year-old. So big, yet still so little. Lighten up, I thought.

But the minute the paddle was in my hand, my wrist flicked, firing the puck off the sides of the table and slap, right into Max’s goal slot.

 “MAMA!” he cried, throwing himself onto the carpet.

 “Baby!” Scott said. “What the heck?”

 With my head down, I silently handed over the paddle to Scott.

 

 

Lightening up, relaxing, having fun—these are challenges for me.

Later that night after we picked up Violet from daycare, I had another opportunity.

Max loves music. It is like breath for him, and it has been since he was an infant. We encourage his passion, though it is often very, very loud. For reasons that I can’t quite explain but blame solely on Scott, lately Max has been into “Africa” by Toto, circa 1983. Most nights, he asks to watch it on Scott’s iPad while he slams away on his drum set.

Last night was no different. Scott put the song on.

I hear the drums echoing tonight

 
We huddled around the drum set while Max crashed about on his drums with abandon, not unlike the way I had become possessed with the air hockey paddle in my hands only hours before. I listened to the song, which somehow sounds better and better each time I hear it. Which is often. The melody washed over me as I watched the musicians on Scott’s screen, and I found myself swaying.
 

Hurry boy, It’s waiting here for you

 

I listened and I watched. I didn’t even stop to make any jokes about the curly 1980’s mini-mullet on the lead singer’s head.

Or the keyboard player, who looked like this:

 

Without really thinking about it, I zoomed upstairs and may have came back looking like this:

 

 

I seek to cure what's deep inside, frightened of this thing that I've become

I lightened up. I grabbed my son’s keyboard and rocked the hell out. Of course, even as I was lightening up, I was thinking, Hey! I’m lightening up! This is me, lightening up! Hey, do you guys see what’s going on here? I’m all light and stuff! Weeee!

We played the song another time or two, and then the day was done. Without too much ado, the kids were in bed and quiet. I collapsed onto the couch to watch some Netflix. We had bowled and air hockeyed and rocked out. I had possibly found the seed of an idea for my Halloween costume. I settled into a long, deep sleep. Lightening up is hard work for some of us. 

How do you lighten up?

High Needs Mother

When my son was a baby, I wanted answers.

This new little red-faced infant wanted to nurse every twenty minutes. Max was up six times a night. The ‘quiet alert’ phase that we heard about—the one we imagined where our peaceful, silk-cheeked baby would silently gaze at us—was non-existent.

Long days dripped by in a haze of milk and tears—both of ours. Our pediatrician said that he didn’t have colic because he could be soothed by nursing. And Max didn’t save his sadness for just the witching hour—any hour of the day or night was fair game. In my attempts to ‘fix’ my son, I lugged him to osteopaths and homeopaths. I went on an elimination diet consisting of brown rice and carrots. I spent hours with him hooked to my breasts while I surfed the internet for solutions. For a way to make him happier. To make us both happier.

I came across an article by Dr. Sears, a leading proponent of attachment parenting. In the article, Dr. Sears described ‘High Needs Babies.’ These intense babies tended to sleep poorly and required constant holding and attention. Max fit ten out of twelve of the criteria. The article suggested that it was possible that my son’s temperament was just who he was, who he was born to be. Not something to fix. I was a bit devastated by this theory; if I couldn’t fix it, the tears and sleepless nights would continue. We were already utilizing many of Dr. Sears’ suggestions for calming the ‘High Needs Baby’—co-sleeping was the only way for any of us to get any rest. I carried him in the Ergo so often that I felt like the straps were melding with my skin. I nursed on demand—and the demand was high.

The only thing that really helped was time. Ever so slowly, our nursing sessions stretched out. After about sixteen months, Max finally started piecing together four or six hour stretches of sleep.  

Max is four and a half now. He’s been weaned for a few years now, and he usually sleeps through the night. But he is still intense. When he’s happy, he’s down-to-the-toes effervescent. And when he’s not—which is often— he’s shrieking, writhing puddle on the ground miserable.

We have a daughter now, too. She smiles and laughs easily and often. Loud sounds don’t phase her, and she weaned with little effort. At 21-months, she still requires a lot of care. But her whole being vibrates with ease, with lightness. I sense that life is much easier for her than it is for my son.

Than it is for me.

You see, I’m a High Needs Mother.

Before my kids were born, I practiced extreme self-care. I went to yoga and dance classes. I attended twelve-step meetings and therapy. I took long walks and joined a Unitarian church. I signed up for retreats and workshops. I did all of this to help me simply feel normal, which has always seemed much easier for most people than it did for me. Maybe it’s because I’m an introvert. Maybe it’s because I struggle with anxiety and depression. Maybe it’s because I’m what Dr. Elaine Aron describes as a ‘Highly Sensitive Person.’ Or maybe I’m just in touch with myself, and aware that humans weren’t really designed to withstand the fast-paced, over-booked life that much of the western world thrives on.

My husband and I vowed that when we had children, I would keep up my rigorous program. We promised we would support each other in doing the things we loved and the things that kept us sane and happy.

And then my son arrived.

And I was the only one who could sooth him.

I fantasized that my husband could induce lactation so my nipples could get a break. I pumped milk during the three minutes a day that my son wasn’t nursing. After a few months, I went to a yoga class by myself. As I backed the car out of the driveway, I felt half giddy to be on my own, and half naked, because my constant companion wasn’t strapped into the empty car seat in the back.

At the class, I breathed. I tried to root my body on my yoga mat, to let the ground cradle me like I so often cradled my son. In between surrendering to gravity, my mind wondered how my son was. If he was screaming. If he would take the bottle. If he would nap. During the closing shavasana, I felt the sharp zing of my milk letting down. In those days, I rarely went an hour without nursing.

 

 

 

I kept attending yoga classes, though I’d often return home afterwards to a sobbing child and a frustrated husband. The classes were a small burst of freedom, but it wasn’t enough. I fantasized about the day Max would start kindergarten, the day’s hours stretching ahead, all mine. But kindergarten was still years away. Between working so hard to meet my son’s high needs, and my inability to take care of my own, I felt withered.

When my son was twenty months old, we discovered that my husband’s work would subsidize part-time child care. We enrolled Max two days a week in a nearby daycare. The guilt I felt was expansive. I had wanted children, badly. So why did I so need to be away from my son? And how dare I ask other people to care for him two days a week when I wasn’t going to be filling all of that time with paid work? When I might use some of it to go to a yoga class or do laundry or lug my laptop to a coffee shop and write?

My guilt was huge, but my need for a break was bigger. When I dropped my son off that first day, I came home, melted onto the couch and cried. When I finally peeled myself off the couch, I wrote Max a letter. In my home, alone, all I could hear was the hum of electricity. For the next several hours, my body was all mine. I felt guilty and blissful, free and lost.

With time, the guilt shrunk.

I hate that as a mother, I felt like I had to choose between caring for my child and caring for myself. Because really, I can choose both. I can teach my kids—by example, which is perhaps the most potent way of teaching—that they are worthy of listening to their own needs. To the quiet, still voice that might tell them they need a break. That they need to lie on a yoga mat and sink deep into their own body and breath. To wander through a cemetery, alone, slow enough to read the names on the gravestones. To sit down and write about how they’re feeling, or to surrender to sweet sleep for an hour.

Maybe you don’t need to hear this. Maybe you are a working mother who longs to be home with her kids but needs the paycheck. Or a stay-at-home mother dreading your child’s first day of kindergarten. Or a home schooling mom who finds that the daily tasks of child-rearing light you up from the inside out. I honor you. We are, like all humans, all mothers, the same but different.

When I take good care of myself, I am more present for my babies. I can play air guitar with my son and orchestrate dance parties to Footloose. And when I don’t take care of myself, I’m a stringy, soggy, limp wash rag of a mother. Slowly, over the years, I have been able to add more and more self-care back into my life. To come back to myself and meet my own needs.

Over time, I learned that there was nothing wrong with my son. He just happens to be a lot like me.

This

So, this really amazing thing happened this week.

I sent one of my recent blog posts to the Huffington Post and they published it. And all these friends and family members on Facebook have been complimenting me and sending love and it feels like a really great birthday, like going from celebration to celebration and getting piles of cards with little notes from all my favorite people. It feels like lying at the beach and letting the sun sink into my skin. It feels like being at my own funeral and soaking in all the really sweet things people have to say. Except I get to be alive.

There's been some hard stuff this week, too. Someone close to my husband died. The kids were a bit spasmic. I worried about some people close to me.

Life is hard and good. Parenting is hard and good. Love is hard and good.

But right now, I'm going to do something I don't do so often. I'm going to soak it all in and enjoy it a bit.

And then I'm going to write.

The Good Mother

 

I remember talking to another new mom at a mom’s group at Birth Roots when my son was a newborn. The other new mom was clearly connected with her infant daughter; I could almost see the cord of love twining them to each other. I could see it in the gentle but sturdy way she held her daughter and the way she smiled and gazed at her. While my son alternated nursing and crying, nursing and crying, we chatted.

“I have this ‘good mother’ voice in my head sometimes,” she admitted. “The other day, Julia was napping and I realized I’d forgotten to turn the baby monitor on. I checked on her and she was still sleeping, but I thought, ‘a good mother wouldn’t forget to turn the baby monitor on.’”

I nodded, but not because I agreed that a good mother wouldn’t forget to turn the baby monitor on. I nodded because I had that voice, too. It seemed to have arrived about the same time as my son’s placenta and was equally unpleasant, but unlike the placenta, it carried no nutrients. It said: A Good Mother wouldn’t forget to bring extra clothes when her baby has a diaper blowout. A Good Mother would read her baby books every day! A Good Mother would be fully focused on her child instead of surfing the internet while she was nursing. A Good Mother would know how to soothe her baby.

Unfortunately, four and half years later, the sneaky, unpleasant voice still pipes up. I was bringing my son to school this morning, and in the bright sunlight, I noticed that his shirt had a few small pink smears on it, most likely dribbles of frozen yogurt. My mind raced. Getting dressed this morning had been a battle, as my son is still in his monochromatic clothing phase. It is “Wear your class color” day at his school today, which meant his friends and teachers from the Green Room at his preschool would be wearing green. After a brief, heated discussion, I realized that my son would wear his favorite matching grey shirt and shorts instead.

“I want to be in the Grey Room,” he sulked.

“Honey, there’s not a Grey Room at your school, unfortunately,” I replied.
“Mama, make it the Grey Room!” he demanded.

So as we were walking and I noticed the stains on his grey, not green, shirt, I quickly decided that the easiest thing would be to let him wear his soiled shirt. He didn’t care. But the Good Mother did. A Good Mother wouldn’t let her son wear a dirty shirt to school! And a Good Mother would’ve noticed the stains before she left the house, she hissed. I shooed the voice away, but she popped back up when we arrived at my son’s school and I saw the sign for the school potluck, which happens to be tonight. I had forgotten all about it, and I have no idea what to bring. A Good Mother would have a casserole, the voice whispered. Apparently, the Good Mother voice comes from 1955.

 

I am curious about whether dads have a Good Father voice. I often hear people saying, “Scott is such a great dad.” My husband is a great father. He is affectionate and fun, and he spends a lot of time with our kids. He bathes them and changes diapers and takes them out for ice cream and tries to soothe them when they’re sad. But it occurs to me that we set the bar much lower for fathers than we do for mothers. Because all those great things that my husband does, I do, too. I smother my kids in hugs and kisses. I say, “I love you,” with my words and my actions throughout the day. I take them to the beach with their friends and keep them reasonably clean and reasonably well fed. I read their favorite books to them over and over again until the words feel like they’re melting my brain. And still, the Good Mother voice pops up to remind me that it’s just not good enough.

One of the hardest things for me about being a mom is that I make about 107 little decisions every day, and most of the time, I am totally winging it. Unlike work at a paid job, I don’t get regular feedback on how I’m doing.  

So I think that as moms, we need to tell each other, “You are such a good mom.” And we need to really hear it when our friends or family says it to us. We all parent differently. We parent from our personalities and from our wounds. From our heads and our hearts. We parent from our unconscious family patterns and from tips on books and blogs. And it is never perfect because we are human and messy, and our kids are human and messy.

Maybe someday I’ll know what to bring to the school potluck and be more caught up on my laundry. But maybe not. It doesn’t mean I’m a bad mother if I don’t do those things. And it doesn’t mean I’m a good mother if I do. Honestly, the Good Mother— the one in my head— is not much fun. She doesn’t laugh when her son makes a joke about boogers. She is so busy baking casseroles and folding underwear that she misses out on dance parties in the living room.

When I quiet the Good Mother down, which requires a good deal of mental duct tape, here is what I think makes me a good mom: My kids know they’re loved. They are growing. They trust me. I keep them safe. And they go cuckoo with delight when I pick them up from daycare.

And maybe, just maybe, by cozying up to my imperfections, my laundry list of weaknesses, I can teach them that they don’t have to be perfect, either.

I’m a good mother. Say it with me, even if your kid is wearing a yogurt shirt today like mine is. Say it if you have no idea what’s for dinner. Say it after you raise your voice because your kid won’t get in her freaking car seat. Say it out loud to yourself. Say it to your friends or your wife or your own mother. Keep saying it, even on the hardest days.

Especially on the hardest days.  

You’re a good mother.  

Migraines, Mojo and Moments

Last Saturday, I got a migraine for the first time in about fourteen years. It started as a lingering headache, which stayed at bay while my husband and I went out on a rare dinner date. The moment we got back home, a small squiggly, clear worm floated into my field of vision, and I knew the headache was about to get worse. I went to bed at 7:30 PM and slept and slept and slept. The next day, the headache felt like it was resting in the nape of my neck, ready to uncoil and spring back into action at any minute. I felt spacey all day, like I probably shouldn’t be driving and what the hell am I doing at the gym? and there is no way I can go to the potluck for my kid’s classroom. I handed the kids off to my husband and slept for most of the day.

When I woke up on Monday, the headache had retreated a bit more, but I still felt spacey. In fact, I felt spacey all week. I started googling things like migraine brain tumor and sleepy aneurysm head. I finally went to my doctor on Thursday, who theorized that my body was just all freaked out from the migraine, and I probably wasn’t dying. This was good, relaxing news, and I felt ready to re-enter my life and start writing and exercising again.

That night, my daughter came down with a fever and was home from daycare with me the next day, so my plans for writing and running were replaced with incessant reading (“Elmo book! Elmo book!”) and naps and lying on the couch while my daughter watched Thomas movies on Netflix.

I don’t like it much when things don’t go the way I plan them to. I complain and I pray and I try to go with the flow and then I complain some more. Despite the fact that so much of life consists of things not going how we plan them to, I still fight it.

Yesterday, I heard a man say, “Around every corner is another spiritual experience.” And I thought, Oh.

Things had felt good lately. Writing has helped me circle back around to myself. When I’m really in the flow, it feels like a spiritual experience. Like I’m doing no more than just sitting here, letting the words stream through my fingertips.  And running, or yoga or dancing brings much needed endorphins my way. So when I miss these things, for even a handful of days, I feel bereft. I feel like I’ve lost my mojo. Instead of not being able to wait to sit down and write, I want to avoid it. Same with exercise.  

Maybe the spiritual experience of this unplanned week is that life is about moments. That despite the crappiness of that headache, damned if it didn’t feel good to sleep. That in between being grumpy that my daughter was home sick, we nuzzled up to each other, and I felt like a mama cat with my little kitten, close and warm and right. And maybe getting my mojo back is as simple as sitting down and writing even when I don’t feel like it, even when the words are trickling instead of flowing, and running that eleven minute mile even when it feels like slogging through mud.

The Head and the Heart

 

The band is from Seattle, where I lived for a year half a lifetime ago. I try and focus on the strings and drums and words, to let the music swirl around me. But most of my attention is on my son Max and his friend Iza. They shriek with joy, tossing fistfuls of grass at Iza’s dad, Patrick. I laugh, too, and I listen. I glance around the large crowd a bit; it’s an eclectic mix of families, teenagers and older couples.

 

My friend Dorota, who sits next to me, asks, “Have you ever been to Seattle?”
“Yeah, I actually used to live there.”
“Really? How old were you?”

“Twenty,” I say. This is what happens when you become friends because your kids are the same age. You start off in small conversations, a baby clamped to your breast. You talk about the babies and how they eat and sleep. Slowly, over the years, between trying to stop the kids from hitting each other or running into the road, between feeding them and fielding a constant stream of hey, mom’s, you weave in stories about your own life. The parts of you underneath all the diapers and bisected grapes, all the fatigue and fidelity, and slowly, you find out what each other’s lives were like in that alternate reality Before Children. And if you are lucky, and Dorota and I are, you find out that the Before Children versions of you would have been friends, too.

 

“Twenty,” she says. She shakes her head and smiles. “Can you imagine?” I imagine we are both thinking all that freedom. All that youth. We will both turn forty within the coming year. I think for a moment about that twenty-year-old me, and how she is both still completely me and not at all me.

 

The kids are screeching, and before I can shush, a lady with red glasses yells at us. I assume she’s telling us our kids are too loud, or that we’re outrageous failures as parents, but I honestly can’t hear a word she’s saying. I just see her angry red lips moving and her narrowed eyes beneath the red glasses. Her husband stares at us like a principal. We gather the kids and try and separate them in hopes of dampening their volume.

At twenty, I had short, purple-tinted hair, a beautiful little loft apartment, my parents’ full financial support, and I was miserable. Which seems impossible, because I was so free. So much of what I struggle with now comes from being so tethered, so owned, so consumed by our kids. I want to tell Dorota about how lonely I was, and how I used to chain smoke on the roof of my apartment while scribbling out lyrics to songs no one would ever hear. How I didn’t know how to make friends. I want to tell her about the beautiful little loft with candles everywhere, and how I couldn’t enjoy it because I was so completely untethered, so alone in that big, wet city. But I can’t say any of this because the music fills up the air and I’m trying to divide my attention between the sweet sounds and keeping my kid from making the lady with glasses yell at us again.

 

It is after nine now and Max is fading fast. He morphs from the bright-eyed, excited kid who gets to stay out past bedtime with mom, to a wiggling, pushing, irrational version of himself. Every time I try and exchange a sentence or two with Dorota, he karate chops the space between us. The sky has turned navy and the band is finally playing their hit song, “Down in the Valley.” I pick Max up and he is wriggly and yelling, “I don’t like being a kid!” I want to tell him to enjoy it, please, please enjoy it, because it feels like just yesterday that all I had to do was ride my bike in wide loops around my neighborhood, and today my to-do-list is as long as those loops.

 

Instead, I close my eyes and the music sinks into my blood and I breathe. I just want to swallow the song, but Max is kicking at my shins and I can only give the song a sliver of my attention. And at the same time, I am a little bit afraid to really let the music in because it might hurt, it might leave me restless, the way music sometimes does.

 

I look behind us for a moment. Three girls huddle close, singing along. They are seventeen or eighteen or nineteen. One has her eyes closed, and her face looks so content, so smooth, so blissful. I release Max to the soft grass. He says, “Mama, look at all the stars!” I smile wide and stare at the lady with the red glasses, daring her to complain.

 

Then I close my eyes and decide to let this be enough, this smallest moment of stars and violin and curving words: I am on my way back to where I started. The words make me want to drive and drive and drive, all the way back to Seattle, all the way back to twenty. So free.

 

I open my eyes, and there between my friend and I, is my son. His face is so beautiful in the diffused glow of light from the stage, and for just this second he is smiling and flirting with my friend. I look over at Iza, who is falling asleep in Patrick’s arms. Her eyelids flutter like Violet’s do when she’s falling asleep, and I think when was the last time I saw Max’s eyelids flutter like that? And I think of how less lonely I am now than when I was twenty, how much I’ve opened to love, and maybe right now— and maybe forever— love takes the place of all that freedom. That freedom that was so endless that I didn’t know where or how to start carving a life from it. I pick Max up again. He is so heavy, but I wonder if he will remember this, if he will be imprinted by this moment of music and mom, and that thought lifts him up, makes him buoyant.

 

And there’s that song, oh god, that song, and I feel like I might burst because this moment has to be enough, it is all we have, and so it is enough. I think of that twenty year old me and this almost forty year old me, and how we both have something the other aches for. The warm anchor of my son and the weightlessness of the music both fill my chest and I think thank you, thank you.

 

 

Outwards and Inwards

it's a spiral party!

 

The other day, I wrote about the concept of an upward spiral. In a nutshell, if we are mindful and conscious about our lives, I believe we move forward. But sometimes as I move forwards, even after much work and therapy and training and re-training, I feel stuck. The old issues rear up again, and it feels like I haven’t budged an inch. Instead of thinking I’m backsliding, I like to think that this means I am moving up and around. And as I do, I’m bound to revisit the old, hard stuff.

I’ve been thinking about the space around the spiral. On the outside of the spiral are all the material parts of life. Our jobs, how many likes we get on Facebook, our homes, our clothing, television. The things that are mostly solid and tangible and exist outside of us. These are fine and fun and mostly necessary things, but I don’t think they’re the most important things.

The best stuff is on the inside of the spiral. Our souls. God, or whatever I call something bigger than me: love, the ocean, music, sunlight. The things I can’t touch with my fingers, but that pour into me like blood and fill me up.

Lately I’ve been focusing too much on the outward stuff. Countless times throughout the day, I check my texts and my email and my page views. It is unconscious and mindless and it distracts me from slowing down to breathe and pray and eat foods from the earth and remember that I’m enough, this very second, exactly as I am, I am enough.

When I focus outwards too much, I get lost. I get dry. I eat more food than my body needs. I get snappy and distracted with my babies.

Balance has always been hard for me. So I’m trying something new. Each time I find myself reaching for my phone or my laptop, I’m going to remember the inside of the spiral. I’m going to pause and whisper a quick prayer. I’m going to take a breath big enough that I can hear it. I’m going to read a meditation or listen to a favorite song. Maybe I’ll simply put my hand over my heart until I feel a small shift, an opening, a quiet, steady beat.

How do you fill up and re-center?

 

Onward and Upwards

Fear crouches in my chest. The voices start up: who do you think you are? Why don’t you get a real job? You are going to embarrass yourself. You should be spending more time with your kids instead of writing.

Really? You guys again? I think.

With my recent recommitment to writing, I feel more like me. More alive. I’m finally, finally doing that one thing that I’ve always wanted to do but been too stuck or afraid or busy to really dive into consistently.

I’m not sure why writing feels easy and fun right now. Maybe it’s because I’m on the fast track to 40’sville and I’m realizing this is it, this is my life. Maybe all those years of therapy are finding kicking in. But wherever this tailwind is from, I’m grateful.

 
But I’m also scared.

I used to get frustrated when I’d work and work and work on an issue, seemingly moving forward, and then without warning, I’d backtrack. Fear and external challenges would pop up and sometimes I’d sabotage myself. The sabotage usually showed up as overeating, too much television, or isolation.

Then I heard of the concept of the ‘upward spiral.’ The theory is that as we move through life, working on our issues, we move forwards and up, around and around. On the Slinky of life, if you will. We don’t backtrack. But as we circle around, propelling upwards, we revisit old places. Hard places.

As a slowly recovering perfectionist, the idea of backsliding is blasphemy to me. But the idea of spiraling up makes sense. I’m writing and I’m running. Most importantly, I’m cozying up to myself. I’m showing up and showing myself: the awkward parts, the scary parts, the funny parts. All the parts.

I’m cycling up and around.

Last week, someone I care about criticized my writing, and worse, me. Because I believe in kindness, I’m not going to say more about that. But because I also believe in truth telling, I’m going to say that it sucked and my heart hurt. And for about 24 hours, that external, critical voice melded with my internal, critical voice and those voices were freakin’ loud. I doubted myself and the choices I was making in writing and sharing this all with you.

And then I talked to some friends and to my husband. I realized, oh, I bet this is that upward spiral thing again. And I breathed and I slept and when I woke up the next day, I felt a lot better.  

So see, you silly voices? I’m on to you. You saw me circling around and came out to meet me. You even brought friends. If you’re right? If this writing thing doesn’t work out? I can get a job. I can regroup and try something else. But before that, I’m going to give this thing a chance. This one thing that brings me alive, that brings me up and up and up.

The Dress

“Do you want that little sundress for Vi? The one you wore in Spain when you were little?” my mom asked yesterday morning.

My mom disappeared into the basement for several minutes, then came back holding it. The small white dress boasted Spanish looking red and green embroidery and was sprinkled with pink and yellow flowers. Knowing how toddlers roll and knowing how messy I am, I found it hard to believe that I ever actually worn it, and that it survived for nearly four decades, pristine. It didn’t feel like it had been mine.

We wrangled Violet into the dress, and she prettily strutted around my parents’ condo. I looked at my mom, who has olive skin and dark hair and eyes like I do. We watched Violet and I pondered, as I often do, how this little sparkly little blue-eyed, paper-white skinned, reddish-haired girl could have sprouted from my body.

Last week, when my son was sick, I laid next to him on the couch. He was a bit sour smelling from throwing up, and he was sweaty and vacant-eyed. But when I snuggled in with him, my arms sticky from his feverish skin, I thought we belong to each other.

I don’t feel always feel the same way with my daughter. Maybe it is because she’s younger and we haven’t had the time together that Max and I have. Maybe it is because Max and I braided tightly together through the hell of his infancy. Or because Max and I are both stubborn, intense and sensitive. Or because he looks so much like my brother.

Maybe it was because Violet was a surprise. I found out I was pregnant on April Fool’s Day. At first, it did not feel like a happy surprise or a zany turn of events. The timing felt bad, and the hormone surge of the new pregnancy sucked me into a depression. Combined with the constant nausea and exhaustion while trying to take care of a spirited two-year-old, the pregnancy felt like something I couldn’t survive.

I considered ending the pregnancy. Every morning when I woke up and the nausea and thick wall of depression met me, I said to my husband, “I can’t do this.”

He said, “You can.”

I said, “I feel like I can’t and I need you to be okay with that.” He would hug me and try to meet me where I was, but if you have ever experienced depression, you know that people can’t really meet you where you are. It is a foggy, shrouded place that spouts a constant stream of distorted thoughts. You look like yourself, but inside is the worst version of you, lost and dark.

Whenever I drove by Planned Parenthood, I would stare at the building and wonder if I would be walking through those doors the next week.

I told my therapist about my doubts. “Thirty-seven-year old married people don’t get abortions,” I said.

“They do. They absolutely do. Far more often than you would think,” she said. She had sat in her chair talking with clients for many, many years, and when she said that, I believed her.

One day when I drove by Planned Parenthood and stared, I thought but what if this is my little girl? I let my fingertips touch my belly, imagining the small seed of a baby instead of a detonating hormone bomb. I made some phone calls and got medication for the nausea and depression.

I survived.

We survived.

 

When she was born, the midwife placed her on my chest. “Is she still a girl?” I asked.

I had always imagined a daughter. She would have my dark features and be sensitive and creative. She was tiny and light in my arms. She had pale skin and blue eyes. We took each other in.

 

In the first weeks of her life, we had a terrible health scare with Violet. I will write about it someday. The scare made me feel she was even more slippery, less mine. I thought that perhaps I just didn’t deserve her, since I once contemplated not bringing her into being.

 

On the Fourth of July, Violet woke up in full diva mode. She is usually independent with an easy laugh. Her eyes hold a hint of mischief. She is one of those bright spirits who it just feels good to be around. But yesterday, she started squawking demands and displeasure from the moment I pulled her from her crib.

We headed to Peaks Island to be with Scott’s family for the day. Max pranced around outside with his cousins all day long. Violet clung to me. She took quick breaks to demand cantaloupe and snap peas and cookies. I sat with her, feeling both delighted and agitated to be so tethered.

The kids’ uncle James gave us a ride back to Portland on his lobster boat. Max got to steer the boat for a few minutes, and he looked proud and wide-eyed. Violet was terrified. I held onto her tight. I had a quick dark thought of her slipping into the water. I locked my arms around her. She was still wearing my dress which was now her dress, and I felt the soft fabric and her softer skin and I thought I will never let you go. And as soon as I thought it, I knew it was a lie. I will let her go a thousand times throughout her life.

As we rushed through the glittering sea, I tried to swallow the moment. Surrounded by family, still young and lovely. My boy, proud and awed. My husband, strong and handsome, glued to Max to keep him safe. Such a good father. My girl in my arms, the surest place she knows. Just for the moment, they were all mine.

 

 

 

Circles: What I want my son to know about death

 

Last winter when a friend was diagnosed with an aggressive cancer, friends were asked to send mail. I sat down with Max at the dining room table with a few blank sheets of paper and a pile of crayons.

 
“Do you want to make a drawing for our friend? He’s not feeling well,” I asked Max.

“Sure!” he said. He grabbed a crayon and made a few wide circles on the paper. “Circles help you feel better,” he said.

**
“I don’t want to die,” Max said to me yesterday as I buckled the straps on his car seat. He wore his camouflage costume from last Halloween, his face serious under the floppy green and brown hat.

“I know, Maxie. Nobody wants to die,” I said in a soft voice.

“I’m never, ever going to die,” he said.

  I could think of nothing to say, so I kissed his nose and closed the door as gently as I could.

 **

At our friend’s ceremony on Sunday, people told stories about him. I hadn’t known him very well, and I soaked in the stories. I heard of his generosity, how much he adored his wife, and his lifelong fascination with turtles.

After the stories, the few hundred of us, dressed in bright colors per his wife’s request, stood in a field of grass in a huge circle. We rubbed our hands together while thinking of our friend’s energy. The friction of our palms created heat, and we raised our hands towards the empty sky to send him on his way.

**

 “I’m never ever going to die, right?” Max asked the other day. I was parking the car so we could go to the playground.

 

“Let’s just go have fun,” Scott said. I looked at Scott. “He’s four years old. He doesn’t need to know that we all die,” he said. I nodded my head. We headed towards the brightly colored playground.

**

When my brother died when I was 24, I spent a lot of time sitting in rooms with other grieving people. I heard about their husbands, mothers and children who had died. We sat in circles and told each other’s stories. The details and relationships were different, but the emotions were the same. “I feel like I’m going crazy,” someone would say. I stared at the candle in the middle of the room and I listened and nodded.

Sometimes I shared. I talked about how scared I was that more people I loved would die. I talked about how much I worried about my parents. How I couldn’t relate to my friends anymore because they were worrying about things young people worried about, like dating and college and cool shoes. Meanwhile I just sat on my parents’ porch in the dark. I blew smoke towards the stars and looked into all that air, hoping for a sign.

**

An early memory. I am four or five. I am standing in my backyard blowing bubbles. I lift my face up to watch them float, round and iridescent. The edges of the bubbles shimmer pink and blue as they rise and pop. And there is something about the colors and the empty sky that makes me think of my mom’s friend Gail who died. Something about all that shimmer and sky. And I thought that Gail was there somehow in those bubbles, in the slippery colors, lifting and disappearing. I was grateful for the crunch of the small pebbles beneath my feet to steady me.

 

 

 

**

“Is he dead now?” Max asked the other night when I came home from the ceremony for our friend. We laid in Max’s bed, the jewel-toned glow of Christmas lights on his wall illuminating his skin.

“Yes, he is,” I said.

“So, he’s down?” he said.

I paused. “I guess so, Maxie.”

“So, his bones are out?”

Another pause. “Well, when people die, they don’t need their bones anymore.”

“Oh,” he said. He smiled at me. “Mama, can you please tell me about when me and Daddy and Papa went to the Red Claws game?”

“Sure,” I said.

I huddled close and told him what I knew.

 

**

Maxie, I believe in telling the truth about death. I know that with these big questions, I am supposed to let you take the lead. I am supposed to give simple answers, and not tell more than you ask for. But when you say, “I’m never, ever going to die, right?” I am stumped. I know all too well that there are no guarantees, that parents lose their children without notice, that the universe doesn’t play fair.

I could say, “I think you are going to live for a very, very long time.”

I won’t tell you that even the thought of you and Violet dying as very, very old people with gnarled limbs and misty eyes and terrible, loose skin makes me hold my breath. That every night, I ask that you two outlive Daddy and I. I ask for you to be safe and healthy and happy, and I picture you both encircled in warm, amber-toned protective light.

That whenever I spot a penny on a sidewalk, I pick it up and think of my brother. I smile and put the cool, round coin in my pocket. That I always find pennies at just the right time.

That for the decade before you were born, I wrote about and talked about and worked around death. I believed that most of what we need to know about life can be found when we sidle up to death. But when I had you and Violet, I got scared and superstitious and quiet about death. That I am still scared and superstitious, but the other day when all those people lifted their hands to the sky, I started to remember what I've been trying to forget.

That someone at the ceremony for our friend talked about telling her children about death and what happens. She said that she believes when we die, we burst off and merge with the hearts and minds of the people who love us. Whatever else happens, I know that much is true. When I heard that, it reminded me of those bubbles popping, and how somehow, those glittering colors and light must go somewhere.

But Maxie, maybe you already know all of this. After all, you told me, “Circles help you feel better.” You were right. 

 

 How do you talk about death with your children?

Photo Credits: Mosaic: Michael & Christa Richert

Bubbles: Przemyslaw 'env1ro' Szczepanski

To my Postpartum Self: What I Wish I had Known

 

Don't drown in it. Every little stage your baby goes through will feel like a riptide, like forever. I don’t know why this happens. Maybe because for your baby, that week of cluster feeding is forever, and maybe, because your baby is stuck to you like Velcro, and your nipples are chafed, and you're pretty sure you're never going to sleep again, you absorb his sense of time. Maybe it’s some hormone-fueled survival code to make sure you take your baby’s needs seriously. But pretty soon, your baby won’t be cluster feeding. He will be teething. Refusing naps. Calling you poopy. You will hear yourself saying things like, “Please take your penis out of the windowsill.” Go ahead and take each stage seriously, but don’t drown in it.

Boobs. For awhile, your boobs will be out. All. The. Time. Your boobs will see more sunlight than you do. Warm, sticky milk drips down your skin and you feel like the stump of an ice cream cone in July. This too shall pass, but for awhile, you’re going to feel like quite the centerfold. From National Geographic.

Do what works. Let your baby sleep in a swing or in your bed or his car seat if that is where he will sleep. You are not a failure if you don’t hand mash organic baby purees. It is okay to make things easier for yourself. There are very few irreversible decisions regarding sleeping and eating patterns in these first months and years. Your child will not head off to college still needing to sleep in a lamby swing. (They don’t make them that big; I checked.) He will not droop with malnutrition if he refuses to eat anything but bagels for a week. Or a month.  

You are not alone. Other mothers struggle, too. They flicker like candles, awake in the night in a thousand bedrooms. They hunch over their babies, nursing. They are limp and worn, like wrung out washcloths. Remember them when you are up in the night for the fifth time. When your baby won’t stop crying. When you can’t stop crying.   

Take a time out. Take time to yourself. Often. Beg, barter or pay someone to watch your child. Go to yoga. Go for a walk. Go to a movie. Your baby doesn’t need you present but drained, a mom zombie. A mombie. Your baby needs you to be okay. Your baby needs you to be you. Needing time to yourself does not mean you are trying to get away from your baby.

Okay, so you are totally trying to get away from your baby. That is okay. Find a way to do some of the things that keep you sane and happy. Your baby needs you sane and happy.

Ask for help. Ask your husband for help. He does not mean to just sit there in his chair playing Mortal Kombat. He will eventually show more interest in the baby, when it can giggle and hug and go to baseball games. But for now, he needs you to tell him you need help. Ask.

When you do, don’t tell him how to care for your child. Or tell him, but then let it go. He will probably watch Pulp Fiction with your baby. He will let your precious little one gnaw on pizza crusts like a junkyard dog. Your baby will be okay on both counts.

And then leave the house. If you don’t, your husband will rise from his chair like Zeus. He will find you, and he will suggest that the baby needs milk. Even though you just nursed him.

Don't clean. Your house will still be messy in five years. I am sorry, but it’s true. So when your baby sleeps, take a nap. Read a book. Masturbate. Look at pictures of clean houses on Pinterest. Look at pictures of clean houses on Pinterest while you masturbate. But don’t clean.  

Find your tribe. Find other moms who admit that it’s not all baby powder and bliss. Playdates were not invented to overschedule and socialize your child. They exist so you can admit that you yelled, “For the love of God, will you just freaking sleep?” at your six-month-old this morning. That you plopped your son in front of Elmo for several hours yesterday afternoon when it rained and rained and rained and he wouldn’t nap.

Be a hater. And those moms who appear to have it all together? The size six supermoms who appear perky and well-rested? The ones who haul big designer diaper bags brimming with healthy snacks and water and sunscreen and extra outfits and hand sanitizer? It is okay to wish them small misfortunes, like fecal incontinence or eye herpes.

You are on your way. Listen. I know you feel like you’re doing it all wrong. I know the stakes feel so high and all the other moms look like they know what they're doing. Take a break from reading books and articles about how you’re supposed to be raising your child. Your baby is reasonably clean and growing. See how he melts into your shoulder and falls asleep? And how when you actually go to the grocery store all by yourself, you find yourself standing in line gently swaying, as if he were still on your body? And you smile at the mom with a baby about the same age in the next line, and your milk lets down and you feel like hey, I’m missing something, did I forget my keys? And then you realize that what is missing is your baby? You are doing just fine.