Life With Sophia

If She Falls, She Won't Die

noreply@blogger.com (Melissa ) — Wed, 21 Jan 2015 02:15:00 +0000

Anxiety is a slippery slope. It’s not about the thing you fear, but the anticipation of the thing. It’s the what if’s, the mights, the maybes. It’s never what is. If you let anxiety get the best of you, it can be paralyzing. But, in truth, what is, is rarely as bad as what you feared it might be. That’s why people who push through the anxiety invariably find out that they can. That they did. And, in the end, it all turned out okay.

I am an anxious mother. Or rather, a mother who is anxious. With this anxiety comes the gift of prescience. I can see all possible catastrophes before they befall my daughter. Is she about to do a forward flip on the chair and a half? I see that she’s going to brain herself on the coffee table and I quickly step in between her and its sharp edges. Is she going to reach for the tray full of onion rings I just pulled out of the oven? I swoop down and snatch the tray away with pot holders before she singes her tender fingers. Is she going to dance right into that car backing up? I yank her away from, if not certain death, two broken legs.

Is this hovering or saving my impulsive kid from a trip to the emergency room? Am I standing in the way of her learning important lessons from life or am I doing my job? Will she become a rebellious thrill-seeking risk-taker, or will she one day thank me? I’d like to think that my interventions are well thought-out choices. That I act with a plan in mind, because I have made larger decisions about how protective I want to be. But I don’t. I act on instinct.

Which isn’t to say that I never let her fail, fall down and get dirty. There has been more than one occasion where she has fallen out of her chair because she’s hanging off the edge or leaning on the back. In those moments I have stood above her and said unsympathetically, “You see, Sophie? This is what happens if you don’t sit in your seat an eat.” And though I am still tempted to brush her teeth each night when she gives them a cursory once-over, instead I warn of the risk of cavities.

I can mitigate disaster, but I know bad stuff is going to happen. It’s a little bit like belaying her down a mountain. Gradually giving her more and more rope as she slides away from me. Each time I let out the rope, I feel my anxiety rise. But as she successfully makes it another couple of feet, I begin to relax.

This post was inspired by the novel If I Fall, If I Die by Michael Christie, about a boy who's never left the house, due to his mother's agoraphobia, but ventures Outside in order to solve a mystery. Join From Left to Write on January 22nd as we discuss If I Fall, If I Die. As a member, I received a copy of the book for review purposes.

Oh No I've Said Too Much (I Haven't Said Enough)

noreply@blogger.com (Melissa ) — Thu, 09 Oct 2014 01:21:00 +0000

After being in the first grade for, oh, about a week or so, Sophie came home with an Internet Contract that, together, we had to read and she had to sign (or at least print her name semi-legibly).

It marked the advent of her online presence.

First, I read how it was very important that she keep her user name and password a secret. I will never share my password—even with my best friend!

“From you too?” she looked delighted.

“No, everyone except for me.”

“What about daddy?”

“He can know your password too.”

“What about grandma?”

“Grandma can’t remember her own passwords. Its fine if you tell grandma.” I didn’t have to do a run down of every person she knows and who’s on the It’s Okay to Know Your Password List, so I added, “You can ONLY tell close family members. But, like it says, you shouldn’t even tell your best friend.”

“How come? Why do I have to keep a secret from Mimi?”

“Because once one person knows about your password, other people can know it too. And if someone gets your password they can learn very personal information about you. A password is something very, very private. Its kind of like seeing you naked.” She thought this was hysterical, but she stopped asking questions.

“Okay. Next item.” The next item: There are many wonderful places and exciting places I can visit, like museums, art galleries, zoos, and hospitals, but there are also many places that I should not visit.

Now if ever there was an intriguing statement, this was it.

“Like where? What does that mean?”

“Umm…well, just like you can’t want certain movies because they are too grown up for you, there are certain websites that are too grown up for you too.”

She wasn’t going to let me off that easy. “What do they have on them?”

“Umm…well, some of them are really scary. And some of them have bad words that you shouldn’t read…”

Her eyes were shining with excitement. That’s when I said the thing I wanted to cram back into my mouth. “And then there are pictures of naked people.”

“Really?” Again, peals of laughter. “Why?”

It was a good question, but one I wasn’t quite ready to get into with her. “I don’t know, Soph. People do strange things.” We both thought for a minute about the strange things people do. “Promise me something?”

“What?”

“If someone ever shows you something on the Internet that you aren’t supposed to see—something scary or naked people—you’ll tell them that you aren’t supposed to look at that.”

“I don’t think I’d say that.”

“No? Why not?”

“I think it’s better to just say no thank you and walk away.” She was right. What kid is going to say to another kid that their parents won’t let them look at porn or violent video games? A simple no thank you is much harder to mock.

I paused to look at my sweet, innocent trustworthy kid. How long would I be able to keep her this way? My thirteen-year-old nephew saw his first porn when he went over to a neighbor’s house this past year. He got up and left and told his parents. My sister was proud of him.

Sophie started dancing around the kitchen, she was losing interest. I will not give out any personal information that tells who I am or where I live.

“Okay. Can I go read now?”

“One more thing.” I will never use a chat room or talk session unless an adult is with me.

“What’s that?” This Contract was causing more problems than it was solving.

“You can use a chat room on the Internet to talk to people you don’t know.”

“Like when I skype grandpa?”

“Well, kind of like skyping, expect you don’t see each other, you just write back and forth.”

“Oh, like texting.”

“Yeah, kind of like that. So promise me something else?”

“What?” She was already pawing a copy of Bad Kitty.

“That if someone tries to talk with you on the Internet, you don’t talk back.”

“Why?”

“Because they might be an adult acting like a kid trying to be your friend. And that’s weird. Adults don’t try to be friends with kids.”

“Just like adults don’t ask kids for help! They should ask other adults.”

“Exactly.”

“Are we finished yet?”

“You just have to sign here. It says that if you break any of these rules, you may lose the privilege of using the computer or Internet.”

Sophie wrote her name in pseudo-script at the bottom.

“Now are we done?”

“Yes.” I wasn’t sure how much of what I said sank in. I realize that Internet privacy is an issue I’m sure we’ll have to revisit over and over again. Hopefully not too much sank in about the naked people.

This post was inspired by Dataclysm: Who We Are (When We Think No One’s Looking) by OKCupid co-founder Christian Rudder, where he analyzes online data to find out that people who prefer beer are more likely to have sex on a first date. Join From Left to Write on October 9th as we discuss Dataclysm. As a member, I received a copy of the book for review purposes.

Getting in the Game

noreply@blogger.com (Melissa ) — Tue, 30 Sep 2014 16:43:00 +0000

When Sophia and I returned from camp at the end of August, there was an email waiting in my inbox:

Become part of history as Youth Field Hockey begins its inaugural season in [our town]!

A group of dedicated moms were starting a program that extended all the way down to first grade.

When I was in school, I had wanted to play field hockey. In gym, I loved smacking the ball around the field, spiriting it away from my opponents, playing D and supporting the goalie. But when it came to joining the team, I was too convinced of my own clumsiness (I had the bruises to prove it), too lacking in self-confidence, too scared to try.

When I proposed the game to Sophie, she was unconvinced by my poor but enthusiastic description of how the game is played.

“I don’t think I want to do that,” she said, eying me sideways.

“Okay,” I said, because I have learned never to argue with someone shorter than me.

My husband suggested that we show her some YouTube videos. Give her a sense of what it is all about.

But I had to act fast, because apparently I had missed the sign-up deadline. I sent a pleading email to the organizer, casually offering to “help in anyway I could” to sweeten the deal. I pictured bringing the kids orange slices at half time. If field hockey has a half time.

I immediately got an email back, requesting that I drop off a check that day. Another email followed congratulating me on my decision to help coach.

Thank you all for your offer to assist with coaching this inaugural season of [Our Town] Youth Field Hockey League (HYFHL)!

Wait. What?

So, after investing $100 in the equipment, Sophia and I Googled “field hockey for girlsNot only did I need to convince her of field hockey’s appeal, I needed a crash course. .” I found a bevy of homemade instructional videos. Chipper pony-tailed teens smiling broadly to show off their mouth guards and aggressively smacking a hard little ball with a curved stick.

“Wait. Teenagers do this?” Sophie asked. She was sold.

But as game day drew close, I grew more anxious. Convinced of my own clumsiness. Lacking self confidence. A little scared to try. Old fears casting a long shadow.

We showed up for practice, and I met the other coaches. They were all extremely strong-looking women who had played field hockey, in college. When I pleaded my lack of experience, Coach H assured me that she just needed someone to “wrangle.”

Wrangling entailed trying to get the girls to stand in a straight line, while responding to the following:

“Can I go to the bathroom?”

“My shin guards are itching me!”

“Do I have to wear my mouthguard?”

“Coach, M., my goggles are too tight!”

“My hair thing fell out, can you put it back in?”

“When is it going to be time to take a water break?”

They didn’t need another coach. They needed a team mom. I started tending to the flock, when I was approached by one, apologetic, very muscular mom.

“Excuse me, uh, Melissa,” she said reading my nametag, “do you have your certification?”

“My what?”

“Rutgers certification. You need it to be out on the field. “

“Um. No, I was just helping out.”

“It’s a liability thing, so you don’t get sued. There’s a three-hour course being offered Monday night at the high school. You should take it,” she was encouraging. “But in the meanwhile, could you just hang out on the sidelines.”

Kicked off the field on the first day. Sigh. I was just getting the hang of this coaching thing.

The next Monday night, I found myself listening to a local high school football coach read off a set of slides for three hours. I walked out a card-carrying coach. Coach H seemed really pleased. I was too, though I still didn’t know a damn thing about field hockey.

But neither do these six-year-old girls. They’re out there to have fun. Smack the ball around a little, spirit it away from their teammates, and loosely dribble it down the field to take a shot on goal. And as I stand out there, herding the field of kittens, I’m just glad I didn’t miss my chance to get in the game.

This post was inspired by Barracuda by Christos Tsiolkas, a novel where former Olympic hopeful Dan destroys his swimming career and his attempt at redemption after prison. Join From Left to Write on September 30th as we discuss Barracuda. As a member, I received a copy of the book for review purposes.

Glad to Have a Girl

noreply@blogger.com (Melissa ) — Tue, 16 Sep 2014 02:12:00 +0000

This post was inspired by The Underground Girls of Kabul by journalist Jenny Nordberg, who discovers a secret Afghani practice where girls are dressed and raised as boys. Join From Left to Write on September 16th as we discuss The Underground Girls of Kabul. As a member, I received a copy of the book for review purposes.

There was a time when I could only imagine having a male child. I’m kind of a teenage boy myself, disguised in a 44-year-old woman’s body. I figured I would know how to interact with a boy. I like to be gross. I like getting dirty. I like to play rough. I pictured us investigating dinosaur bones together. While pregnant, I squeezed my eyes together and tried to picture my future child. I didn’t get a face, just a pair of legs swinging from a chair in the cafeteria of the local science museum.

Yup, it’s a boy I thought.

We only had one name picked out for him: Holden. And at 11 pm each night, he kicked the stuffing out of me, such that we took to calling him “Boom Boom Moore.”

He had to be a boy.

I wanted his sex to be a surprise, much to my husband's disappointment. When we went in for our week 20, high-level ultrasound, I told the technician in no uncertain terms that though my husband wanted to know the sex of the child, I was to be left in the dark. I didn’t want any pointing and giggling. The technician aimed her wand and peered at the screen, pointing out body parts, like a transdermal tour guide. I followed along, but when she got to the pelvic region I averted my eyes because I didn’t want to accidentally see the penis. She gave nothing away. When it was over, I left the room to pee (they make you do this on a maxed-out bladder), and my husband remained behind to find out what we were going to have.

“I don’t know,” the technician said.

“What do you mean you don’t know?” my husband asked. After all, wasn’t it their job to look for nuchal folds and other things indiscernible to the untrained eye?

“The way the baby was turned, I couldn’t tell, not with certainty.”

We walked out of there knowing one thing for sure, our baby did not have an obvious penis. Well, so be it.

Fast forward to 20 weeks later, when the director of the Maternal Fetal Medicine department stood over me and announced that I had just given birth to a baby girl. Much to my surprise, I was thrilled.

How nice that I could be thrilled. That I don’t live in a society where a daughter means shame and disappointment, where a daughter is something to be mourned or hidden. Rather, that I live in a place where being female means freedom—freedom to wear pants or a dress, freedom to cry or be stoic, freedom to get pregnant or decide not to.

Life might have been different had Sophie been born a boy. Different, but not better.

Pure Imagination

noreply@blogger.com (Melissa ) — Wed, 23 Jul 2014 01:41:00 +0000

The greatest shock of reading Charlie and the Chocolate Factory as an adult (aside from the dark humor, e.g. Chapter 10: The Family Begins to Starve--that must have drifted right past me as a child) is how quick a read it is. I remember rich, delicious descriptions that I realize now, must have been colored in by my eager imagination. Part of Roald Dahl’s genius is knowing just how much to feed little minds—to bait them into dreaming more deeply about fantastic possibilities. The story, the dialogue, the bones of imagery is all there, but young readers must meet the book half way—contributing their own ideas to construct the magical place that is Willy Wonka's Chocolate Factory.

This week, I am bringing you a special mother-daughter edition of Life with Sophia. Together, Sophia and I read Charlie and the Chocolate Factory through my participation in the online book club, From Left to Write. Afterwards, we both blogged in response to the following prompt, encouraging us to insert ourselves inside the pages: What I Would Do If I Won a Golden Ticket

By Sophia, Age 6

First thing: Tell my parents.

Second thing: Put on my best clothes.

Third thing: Get in the car.

Fourth thing: Bring my parents to the factory.

Fifth thing: Be very interested.

Sixth thing: Greetings: “It’s very nice to meet you, Mr. Wonka.”

Seventh thing: Inside the factory: We play “Whip the Cream” and watch as Mr. Wonka makes candy disappear into our mouths. We play a piano that is made out of candy. In one room, it looks like we were outside. And there are trees made out of candy, bushes made out of candy. Everything has sugar. Even the grass and the dirt. The waterfall is made out of chocolate. The bark is mint gum. The wood is dark chocolate, my mother’s favorite. The leaves are made out of mint, cause Daddy likes the color green. The birds are made out of coconut and dried mangos.

Eighth thing: We see a little cottage. The curtains are made out of taffy. The door is made out of a giant cookie. The chairs and tables are made out of crushed mint. There is even a piano made out of licorice. The fireplace is made out of taffy. The windows are made out of blue flattened gumballs. And the chimney is made out of gumdrops. I leave it alone because Mr. Wonka says, “We have to move onto the next thing” (and because it’s his house).

Ninth thing: I get a prize at the end, because I am the most behaved person. My prize is for my whole family to live there!

Tenth thing: I say thank you at the end. So does the rest of my family.

By Melissa, Age 43

First thing: I freak out. It must be a hoax. How did I get so lucky? I get the ticket authenticated. I do not alert the media. I hide it in my underwear drawer.

Second thing: I ask my daughter to come with me. I tell her to tell no one. She announces it to all her friends at school the next day. That evening, the media descends on my house like a swarm of flies on a dead body. They take really awful pictures of me with my mouth open and print them in International newspapers.

Third thing: I cannot sleep at all the night before because I am so excited. This means I will have dark rings under my eyes and will be cranky on what should be the best day of my life.

Fourth thing: I put on my best clothes. I take off my best clothes. I put my best clothes on again.

Fifth thing: I kiss my husband goodbye who doesn’t actually mind that he’s not going to the factory because he doesn’t like chocolate. Instead he will sleep in and watch an entire season of Game of Thrones.

Sixth Thing: Willy Wonka is much shorter than I expected. I am relieved that I do not feel attracted to him.

Seventh Thing: Willy Wonka has invented dark chocolate that will not give me pimples. He leads me by the hand to a Chocolate Bar where all the parents can hang out and sip Shiraz out of cups made of the non-pimple causing chocolate, while our kids go to town mowing mint grass with their mouths. Willy Wonka assures me everything is organic.

Eighth Thing: We all brush our teeth.

Ninth Thing: Willy Wonka tells me that Sophia remembered to say “thank you” and “please” while I was too busy chatting it up with the other parents at the Chocolate Bar to effectively parent. He commends me on such a well-mannered child. He then tells me that he offered her a lifetime supply of chocolate, but she asked that he please foot the bill for her college tuition instead. He agreed.

Tenth Thing: I smile with gratitude and give Willy Wonka a kiss on the cheek. Wait a minute. Is he blushing?

This post was inspired by the classic Charlie and the Chocolate Factory by Roald Dahl, which celebrates its 50th anniversary this year. To celebrate, Penguin Young Readers Group, in partnership with Dylan’s Candy Bar, the world-famous candy emporium, and First Book, a nonprofit social enterprise that provides books for children from low-income families, is launching a year-long international celebration.

Head over to From Left to Write to learn how you and your child can have a chance to win the Golden Ticket Sweepstakes where the grand prize is a magical trip to New York City plus much more! For every entry submitted, Penguin Young Readers Group will make a donation to First Book. Then, join From Left to Write on July 24 as we discuss Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. As a book club member, I received a copy of the book for review purposes.

An Untidy Life

noreply@blogger.com (Melissa ) — Tue, 08 Jul 2014 01:23:00 +0000

If writing had been relegated to the edges of my life before my father came to live with us, it has now been pushed over the precipice and plummeted to its death. Words shattered at the base of the canyon. Letters splayed everywhere. Sometimes, I stand at the edge and look over at the wreckage and feel overwhelmed at the prospect of putting it all back together.

I miss it. The outlet. The opportunity to make sense of the senseless. To construct a narrative out of chaos. Line up the sentences of my life and make them march in order. That’s really what writers do. They tidy. They take the messiness of life and try to make it neat.

Living with my father living with cancer is anything but neat. Every day I find new corners of impatience within myself.

I look at my sink, that once held the detritus of just two people, and now it’s littered with the remains of three. Signs of illness gather in the corners of the bathroom, pepper the sink, lie matted in the drain.

I know he tries to clean it up, which I appreciate. But there’s always more.

Most days, I feel like I am slicing off parts of myself and handing them to others until the end of the day, when there are a only few crumbs left to dab at. At dinner, my father, anxious to share the day, tells us every detail of every moment.

“I had the most wonderful day,” my father begins, his voice still traceable to the Lower East Side. “I went to Shop Rite and spent hours picking everything out, reading all the labels. I brought back the coupon they gave me the last time I bought coffee and they gave me the two dollars, even though I didn’t buy new coffee. Isn’t that wonderful?” He regales us with stories about everything he has eaten, every person he has encountered, everything he has read.

Sophie pleads at my elbow to tell me something. “Dad, could you hold on a sec. Sophie needs a turn.”

“Do I have to eat this?” Sophie says, prodding her eggplant in peanut sauce.

“Just eat the broccoli.” I tell her. “You don’t have to have the eggplant.”

“My stomach hurts.”

“Soph, if you don’t eat, there won’t be any dessert.”

“How much do I have to eat to get dessert?” I sigh.

“So let me tell you about this band that I heard in the park….” My father starts in again.

“Do I have to have the noodles too?”

“Soph, I’m not cutting deals. Eat. If you’re stomach hurts, don’t eat, but you’re not having dessert if it hurts.”

“They were terrific…” my father continues.

I look over at Kevin who is almost finished eating. I have no idea how his day has gone. Nor does he know anything about mine.

Underneath the table, my toenails are menacingly long. Later, in an effort to cover the chips in the polish, I give them a coat of quick-drying red. As I go to replace the cap, I spill the contents of the bottle all over. Bright red splashed onto the floor, the cabinets, the off-white towels, and my leg.

I pour nail polish remover on the floor and get most of it up, but it stubbornly clings to the grout and the fibers of my towel,

“Mommy? What are you doing?”

“I’m trying to clean up nail polish I just spilled all over the place,” I tell Sophie, trying to keep my voice even.

“Can you do my nails when you’re done?”

The hours I never knew were empty are now filled with hospitals and side effects and phone calls. My relationships with my friends have been relegated to texting and facebook and voice mail.

Thinking of u always.

Miss u. Much love.

My working hours stretch deeper into the night, because it all still needs to get done.

I hate being busy. I remember when I once wore it as a badge of honor. How I used to get into these competitive little conversations with my husband about who was busier. I spent years unwinding that knot, trying to create more spaciousness in my life. Not that I was wildly successful, but I had been making progress.

That progress has stalled in the middle of an intersection. Everyone’s honking, and all I want to do is get out of the car.

Charming

noreply@blogger.com (Melissa ) — Tue, 10 Jun 2014 02:46:00 +0000

Sophie has developed her first friend independent of me—someone who she has chosen and who has chosen her. Their mutuality is dictated by something other than sheer geography or parental design. They share the same delicious mixture of creativity, mischievousness, and silliness. Today, they were playing “spa” in the cracking plastic sandbox in the back yard. I happened to glance out the kitchen window just in time to see Sophie “washing” Lola’s* hair with sand.

“No! Stop!” I called out waving my hands. They looked up, surprised. Disappointed.

“What?” asked Sophie. “I was doing her hair.”

“Soph, you could get sand in her eyes.”

“I didn’t. I’m not gonna.”

“Famous last words,” I replied. “Please don’t wash your friend’s hair with sand. Help her get it out.” And she did.

Last week we were at a craft show with my mother. Such things bored me to tears when I was her age, but Sophie looks at every item—whether it’s adult jewelry or sponges cut into fake cheese for a display—with great enthusiasm. “Mom! You’ve got to see this!” She called me over to where she was standing in one booth, “It says Best Friends Forever.”

“It’s a charm for a bracelet or a necklace,” I told her.

“Can I get it for Lola? Please?” She widened those great gray eyes of her in earnest.

I have a hard time saying “no” to displays of thoughtfulness and generosity. I bought two, one for Lola, one for Sophie. Matching bracelets to seal their friendship beyond the last days of kindergarten. Next year, they would be attending first grade at different schools across town from each other.

Sophie happily swung the little Chinese take out box that held the bracelets. Once we were home I set the bracelets aside, for Sophie to give to Lola after kindergarten was over.

I didn’t want the two of them flaunting their bracelets in front of the five other girls they were friends with in their class.

The Monday after our craft fair outing, I picked Sophie up from school and we went food shopping at Wegmans. She asked to sit in the cart, like she had when she was much younger. Somehow, she folded her long limbs and forced her legs through the holes in the seat. I was concerned about how I would get her out without the Jaws of Life.

“Mom, something happened at school today.”

“What?” I asked, scouring the shelves for Marsala. They are constantly moving everything around at Wegmans. I’m sure it’s an evil ploy to encourage you to find and purchase products that you wouldn’t ordinarily even think of. It just makes me hostile.

“I told Lola about the bracelet.”

“Oh Sophie it was a surprise. Why did you do that? What if the other girls overheard you? You wouldn’t want them to feel bad.”

“Well, they didn’t. But then Lola told them about it.” This is exactly what I didn’t want to happen.

“And?” She had my full attention now.

“And Isabella* got really upset. She was crying.”

“Well, put yourself in her shoes…”

“But I didn’t do anything wrong!”

“I know you didn’t mean to do anything wrong. But imagine this. What if Isabella had bought Lola a Best Friends Forever bracelet and told Lola to keep it a secret. But then Lola told you about it. How would you feel?”

Sophie was quiet. I waited. “I’m thinking about it,” she told me.

“I see that.”

“Bad. Jealous. Maybe left out.”

“Exactly.”

Sophie looked like she was ready to cry. “Honey, I don’t mean to make you feel bad. And it’s okay for you to give a gift to Lola, but you want to do it in a way that’s not going to hurt other people’s feelings. I was going to have you wait until after school was over to give the bracelet to Lola.”

“You didn’t tell me that!” It’s true. I hadn’t. I thought out-of-sight, out-of-mind. I had underestimated her excitement. And her ability to be discrete.

“You’re right. I probably should have. But you learned something from this, didn’t you.”

“I won’t ever talk about a gift in school again. Ever.”

“Well, more like you have to consider how doing something like that might make other people feel. Don’t worry. This too will pass.”

I gave her a hug.

But it didn’t pass for Sophie.

Saturday morning there was a knock at my door. Sophie came bounding into my room, throwing a handful of bracelets onto my bed.

I pulled myself into a sitting position and looked at the clock. 7:15. Sigh. I had set the clock for 7:45 because we had an End-of-the-Year breakfast for her class to get to. I could have slept for thirty more minutes.

“What’s all this?” I rubbed the blear out of my eyes.

“I made everyone charm bracelets!” She had taken six of her very own bracelets, wrote her friends names on little paper tabs she decorated with drawings of flowers and stick-on jewels and stuck the tabs to the bracelets with tape.

“Now everyone will have one. No one will be left out. I want to give them to all the girls at breakfast.”

She’s becoming more and more of her own person. Not just developing her own, meaningful relationships, but understanding how to navigate the complex social world, and generating creative, caring solutions to some pretty thorny problems.

“They’re beautiful,” I told her, smiling, and basking in the warm aura of my charming daughter.

The Intruder

noreply@blogger.com (Melissa ) — Sat, 17 May 2014 23:48:00 +0000

I haven’t written for awhile, because I’ve been conflicted. Each time I set pen to paper (or fingers to iMac), I realize that I can’t talk about Life With Sophia without talking about the turn that our life has taken.

I’ve been waffling, as I always do, about how much to share. How much of the story I would be telling is my story, and how much of it is someone else’s story. To what extent do I want to make the private public. But the effects of not writing about it are inhibitory. The reticence spreading like the very disease that has entered our lives. That’s how it is when you make something taboo. If you don’t talk about something, you find that you have to talk around it, and everything you say feels like a half-truth.

Part of me hopes that if I do talk about it, I will draw the support to me that I need and, maybe I’ll say something of value along the way that will be helpful to someone else.

I don’t mean to be so mysterious. My father has been diagnosed with metastatic throat cancer. He is coming here to live with us through the duration of his treatment and recovery…whatever that may look like.

I have fears about what that may look like. Fears that visit me in the night.

Last night I had a dream. I was trying to get Sophia ready to go to school and there was a strange man in my house. He opened up my freezer and took out a frozen sheet of naan, as if he had every right to do so, leaned against our Formica countertop and chewed it, eyeing me.

“I’m sorry, but I’m going to have to ask you to leave,” I told the man. “I’m taking Sophie to school, and I have to lock up the house.”

He ignored me, went on chewing, and said, “Don’t you love Barq’s root beer?”

“Uh, I do like root beer, but like I said, I really have to get going. Could you please go?”

“I’m not going anywhere,” the man replied menacingly. I began to feel anxious—the pressure of needing to get Sophie to school on time, to get to work on time, and not knowing what to do about this uninvited guest.

“I have to lock the door behind you,” I insisted, standing next to the door, trying to reason with him. He pressed a code into a pad on the door—something I had not noticed before—and replied, “I’ll lock up behind you. I know the code. “

“I don’t want to have to call someone,” I threatened vaguely and hoisted my bag higher onto my shoulder.

He moved in close to me. I could smell his breath, which was boozy. He kissed me lightly on the lips, and, still close, whispered, “You’re not going to call anyone.”

Then I woke up, still frightened. It had all felt so…intrusive. I felt helpless. It wasn’t until I was sharing the dream with Kevin as I prepared breakfast that it occurred to me: the intruder was Cancer.

And that’s how it feels. Insidious. By the time you discover it in your house, it has already established residency. Made itself at home. Spread out. Taking. Locking itself in. Refusing to depart. Cancer doesn’t care if you have other things to do, places to be. It demands your attention.

My father’s cancer is incurable. In a week, they will begin to try to attack it with chemotherapy. Cisplatin. A heavy metal and a cellular poison—as deadly to healthy kidney cells as it is to cancerous cells. But even this “big hammer,” one of the original cancer drugs that still works better than anything else they’ve got for throat cancer, will not eradicate every mutant cell from his body. It will shrink the tumors, hold them at bay for sometime, minimize symptoms—difficulty swallowing, breathing, speaking—extend his life. But all it takes is one microscopic cell, dividing over and over again, because that’s what cancer cells are—a mutation of the DNA in a healthy cell that creates the uncontrollable division of cells in the body—to form new tumors.

I wonder if it feels like a betrayal of his body. I watch my father struggle to understand what is happening to him—not just the medical realities, but the metaphysical whys.

It is hard not to look at the hourglass and spend one’s days exclaiming, “My sand is running out! My sand is running out!” What a thing to suddenly realize that your life is finite. My father, who is seventy, had assumed more time. I had assumed more time. There always seems to be more time. So we fritter, and we worry, and we fight.

I am scared. I don’t know how to do this. I don’t know what to tell Sophia as my father grows more deeply ill. I worry that our attachments will deepen, and then I will lose him.

A Matter of Time

noreply@blogger.com (Melissa ) — Sun, 20 Apr 2014 15:55:00 +0000

We are headed home from North Jersey. I hear on the radio that the Turnpike is a mess. Having already spent an additional half an hour on the Parkway behind a five-car pileup, it seems like a good idea to take an alternate route.

That, of course, is trafficked too. Apparently, I’m not the only one with this idea. We’ve been in the car for two hours already, and will be at least forty minutes late for dinner. Sophie is being a trouper. Sick of reading, she’s got her headphones on and is lip syncing to Kidz Bopp. Every now and then she shouts out, “I love this one!” jarring me out of my own podcast reverie.

Then, all of a sudden, we have an emergency.

“Mom! I have to go to the bathroom RIGHT NOW.” How is it that there is never any fair warning? That she goes from perfectly comfortable to explosive bladder in a split second? As a teacher, I could hold it for seven hours straight. I’ve got sphincters of steel.

I was planning to stop off at Whole Foods to pick up a piece of fish on the way home. Perhaps she could hold it until then. It’s only about five minutes down the road.

“Can you hold it for just another couple minutes?”

“No! I can’t! Mom, could you just pull over? I can’t wait another second.” Of course, there’s nowhere to pull over. We are surrounded by industrial parks and grassy shoulders. We are not going to make it to Whole Foods. I’ve got to hope that something comes up soon before she soaks the backseat.

Ruby Tuesdays appears on the horizon.

“Look! There’s a place! Go there!” Alas, another detour. Such is the life of a parent. You have to go with the flow.

I pull over. Here is the true challenge. Getting her from the car to the stall without incident. Sophie has a Pavlovian response to bathrooms. Just seeing the toilet sends her system a message. I have been the victim of classical conditioning before. It’s particularly irksome when it happens just before she sits down.

But this is not one of these times. She whoops triumphantly as I breathe a sigh of relief. We won’t be slinking out of Ruby Tuesdays, leaving a puddle behind. This time.

I check my watch. It’s twenty minutes later than the last time I checked. We are never getting home.

Sophie pops out of the stall, adjusting her belt.

“Wash your hands, please,” I instruct, drying off my own. She walks towards the sink, but gets stuck in front the full-length mirror on the wall. Pop music is being pumped into the bathroom, and Sophie starts to gyrate.

If I weren’t in a rush, it would be cute. I might even join her.

“Sophie! It’s not time for dancing! Please wash your hands!”

She acts like she hasn’t heard me, giving a couple more revolutions of her hips before I bodily usher her over to the sink.

“Hey!” She says, “You don’t have to push me!” Uh, yes, I do.

She squirts some soap on her hands and immediately rinses it off.

“Soph, you’ve got to rub your hands together,” I squirt her again, despite the fact that now we’ve been in the bathroom at Ruby Tuesdays for almost ten minutes. She sings as she washes her hands, saunters over to the paper towel dispenser, and proceeds to meticulously dry off her hands.

I hold open the bathroom door, “Let’s go.”

“Mom? Why are we rushing?” It is a good question. To get home five minutes faster than we would otherwise? What does it really matter, now? Why am I stressing myself out more in service at arriving home at an arbitrary time? Why don’t I just text Kevin and tell him: I’m going to be late. Really late.

I do.

“You want to go out for dinner? Meet at Zinburger?” Kevin texts back. The thought has not occurred to me. I have been so consumed with plan A, with getting back On Time to Make Dinner, I never considered that there might be another, more gentle way.

“Yes. Thank you. That would be perfect.” I type.

The sun is setting. We get back into the car. The road opens up, I release my grip on the wheel, turn on the radio and together, Sophie and I just enjoy the ride.

Reasons My Daughter is Freaking Out

noreply@blogger.com (Melissa ) — Mon, 14 Apr 2014 02:29:00 +0000

This post was inspired by the book, Reasons My Kid Is Crying, by Greg Pembroke who captures frustrating yet funny parenting moments through well-captioned photos of unhappy kids. Join From Left to Write on April 15 we discuss Reasons My Kid Is Crying. As a member, I received a copy of the book for review purposes.

Tantrums at six look at lot different than they did at two. For one, they are far more verbal. Whereas a toddler will throw herself down on the floor kicking and screaming bloody murder, a six-year-old will engage you in a lawyerly argument about what an awful parent you are, how maligned she is, and how, after she is done haranguing you, she may never speak to you again.

Ever.

At which point it takes everything in your maternal power not to say

In my dreams

But the one thing that remains unchanged is the endearingly irrational reasons she is having a tantrum in the first place. Here are a few of Sophie’s from the past couple weeks:

I sang Let It Go wrong and now we have to start all over again.
I told her it was time to take a shower.
She wasn’t allowed to have Oreos and Marshmallows for dessert.
I asked her to do her homework, and handed her the wrong sheet.
I put broccoli in her eggs.
I wouldn’t let her wear the same pants three days in a row.
I asked her to put her jacket on when it was 40 degrees and raining.
I took her out to lunch and to see a play, but she just wanted to be home with daddy.

If I was to snap a picture of Sophie in one of these low moments, I think she would bum rush me and break my iPhone. I’m not going to try it and find out. I’m not stupid. Besides, I wouldn’t want to. What might have gone unnoticed at two, would be humiliating at six. The sense that I was mocking her would only thrust her more deeply into her angry and injured position.

To be fair—if someone did that to me, I’d flip out too. (Despite what I may think, my reasons for throwing a fit are no more sensible at 43 than they were at 6—we want what we want and sometimes our desires defy all rationality.)

If there is one thing I have learned in four years of meltdowns, it is best to let the storm rage and blow over. To avoid stoking it with words or attention, making it a bigger deal than it already is.

In these moments, I find it best to take a step back, appreciate the absurdity of the moment and laugh, but silently and to myself.

Join me. What’s one of the reasons your little one flipped out recently?

Protecting the Family Jewels

noreply@blogger.com (Melissa ) — Mon, 07 Apr 2014 21:13:00 +0000

My poor, poor husband.

He never learns. You would think that pain would be an awesome teacher. But he seems to have amnesia for suffering. The way women who have multiple children do. Night after night he grabs Sophia and tickles her mercilessly and night after night he winds up bent over, his brows screwed up in pain, gasping, “Just give me a second!”

I plan to get him a cup for Christmas. The man needs protection.

This is how it goes down:

Sophie says something like, “Daddy! Don’t tickle me!” with a twinkle in her eye and her dimples as deep as two holes going all the way to China.

He says something like, “You mean I shouldn’t do this…” wiggling his fingers menacingly at her.

She then shrieks with delight and begins running in circles around the partition that separates the dining room from the kitchen from the living room—like an excited puppy. He takes off after her and within two strides is upon her.

The screaming is earsplitting. I’m usually in the background saying things like,

“Can you guys please take that somewhere else?”
“The shrieking. I can’t take the shrieking.”
“Kevin, do you remember what happened the last time you did this?”

All to no avail. Kevin picks her up like a sack of potatoes, throws her onto the bed or the couch, and sets to tickling the daylights out of her.

You have to understand that Kevin has been waiting years for this opportunity. He used to torment me in this way, back when we were dating. I hated it. HATED it. I view tickling as a form of inhuman torture akin to waterboarding. In fact, if anyone ever wanted to get information out of me, all they would need to do is wiggle their fingers in my general direction and I would spill my guts.

I’m that much of a wimp.

I used to try to fight back, but Kevin has about 80 pounds on me, so it was often a losing battle. Finally, we agreed to draw up a Tickle Treaty in 2000. Fourteen years later, neither of us has broken the treaty, which means that Kevin has been having to do something with his sadistic impulses.

They have been bubbling and brewing and building for those 14 years. At last, he has met the ying to his tickling yang, because she loves it.

Until she doesn’t.

This is when I call out my final warning, “Somebody’s going to get hurt in a second.”

Sophie laughs and giggles and thrashes, her limbs go flailing and she looks something like the Tasmania Devil from Looney Toons. It’s all fun and games until, eventually, she starts screaming for him to stop.

This is when he should stop.

Of course, if he does stop, she begs him to start all over again.

But if he doesn’t stop (because he knows this, because she’s still giggling her irresistible giggle) invariably Kevin gets a swift kick to the groin.

I have to bite a hole in my tongue to keep from saying, “Now what did I just say?” in the teacher voice that makes everyone want to punch me in the nose.

Instead, I shake my head and throw up my hands. As Kevin rolls around in agony, Sophia is already taunting him, “Daddy….you can’t get me….”

And out of nowhere, Kevin gets his second wind and goes for her underarms.

I slip into another room. It’s better if I don’t watch.

Back-to-School Blues

noreply@blogger.com (Melissa ) — Tue, 18 Mar 2014 01:05:00 +0000

“My stomach hurts,” Sophie whines, picking at her bowl of oatmeal. Then, she bends in half, clutching her stomach and starts screaming, “OW! OW!” at the top of her lungs.

One would think her appendix was exploding.

I stand there, waffling:

On the one hand, we have just had another long weekend, due to the 900^th snow day this winter. Both Kevin and I stayed home, each taking a turn playing with Sophie so that the other could work. We baked cookies. We played board games. We snuggled in front of the fire and read books. Sophie was in heaven.

On the other hand, Kevin just had a stomach bug a few days ago. I was sick the week before that. Sophie doesn’t usually complain of illness. And she isn’t eating…

Is she sick or is it the back to school blues?

Kevin walks in, grabbing a banana before heading out the door. “She’s fine. Send her to school.” He says, kissing me on the forehead. And he’s gone.

Sophie gives me a pained expression, “Mo-om! Please can I stay home?” I have a client scheduled at 9:00. It’s 8:20 right now. I have exactly 10 minutes to get her out the door, so that I can drop her off at school and beat my client to the office.

It’s likely the back to school blues. But what if it isn’t? What if she’s really sick and I bring her to school and she starts barfing. And what is her teacher going to think of me, dumping Sophie off in her classroom, while she’s carrying on like this. I’ve been a teacher. I know what they are going to whisper behind my back:

Worst mommy ever.

It doesn’t help that I’ve got a really messed up relationship to illness. In the 8^th grade alone I missed a whopping sixty days of school—one third of the school year. (I still have the certificate of commendation that my best friend made for me, congratulating me on this feat.) Most years, before and after, I was absent from school for weeks at a time. Bronchitis. Sinusitis. Long, lingering, upper respiratory infections that seemed to take on a life of their own. To this day, I am uncertain whether I was truly sick, a skilled malingerer, or just deeply anxious and depressed.

I can remember the anxiety that grew with each passing day. It would start out fairly innocently. I’d be out for a couple of days, with congestion and a terrible cough. My mother would take me to the doctor, who’d give me a pill and a written excuse, validating the illness. My mother would coddle me, making Lipton tea and playing gin rummy with me in the afternoon. And I wouldn’t get any better. One week would turn into two, two into three. Meanwhile, the make-up work would mount—piles of textbooks would sit untouched on my desk. Due dates would come and go. Entire units would be reviewed. Tests would be given. The longer I stayed away, the more impossible it seemed to return. Despite my loneliness. Despite my boredom. I was never quite sure where the illness ended and my anxiety began.

My husband, on the other hand, rarely missed a day of school. He graduated from high school with perfect attendance. A couple years ago, he actually did go to work with appendicitis. A colleague made him go to the hospital just before his appendix burst.

Back in the kitchen, I tell Sophie, “Honey, I’m sorry your stomach hurts. Maybe you’re just nervous about going back to school.”

“Mommy, please? I want to stay home with yooooooouuu.”

I want to take her seriously, but I don’t want to feed into malingering. Hoping that Kevin is right, I usher her out the door and into the car. Once at her school, I share my dilemma with her teacher, who promises to keep me apprised of Sophie’s condition. She sheds a few real tears as I head for the door.

Oh, the guilt.

Later I get a call. She’s been listless all morning. Didn’t eat her snack. Has been asking for me. I wrap things up and rush over to the school. When I get there, she’s running around with her friends, smiling.

“Mom?” she begs, “can’t I stay a little bit longer?”

This post was inspired by the novel The Divorce Papers by Susan Rieger. Young lawyer Sophie unwillingly takes her first divorce case with an entertaining and volatile client in this novel told mostly through letters and legal missives. Join From Left to Write on March 18 we discuss The Divorce Papers. As a member, I received a copy of the book for review purposes.

Spill It

noreply@blogger.com (Melissa ) — Sun, 16 Mar 2014 13:08:00 +0000

My mother likes to remind me of the somewhat exaggerated fact that every time she poured me a glass of Tropicana orange juice, I spilled it. The fact that the juice was Tropicana is key here, because, according to her, I only spilled the expensive stuff. If she gave me orange juice from concentrate or some off-label brand, I managed to keep it in the cup.

I also probably didn’t drink it, orange juice snob that I was. I’m sure the frequency with which I spilled was directly proportional to how frequently I raised my glass to my lips.

I have the clumsy gene, passed on to me from my mother. Our legs are dappled with black and blue marks, and have been as long as I can remember. Growing up, the piano bench was my mortal enemy. I couldn’t come down the stairs, round the corner at the base and walk the dining room without making contact with it. I can picture it there, waiting to strike, snickering as it heard my footfalls nearing. Thus, I had a perpetual violet slash just above my knee. Today, I can rarely trace the ugly elliptical bruises to a particular insult. Which is to say, I walk into far too many objects to lay the blame with any one in particular.

I do not need to wait to have our genomes sequenced to know that this is carried on the x-gene, a dominant trait, that has been now been passed on to my daughter. Sophie is also a klutz. Maybe I’m not being fair. Our maladroitism is probably better attributed to a dreamy, head-in-the-clouds state of being than to an inherent lack of grace.

Sophie is always whirling, twirling, jumping, bumping, crashing, crying and suddenly flying again—just as fast as I can call out, “Be careful! Look out!“ By now, I would think she’d be made of tougher stuff, but she takes her bruises hard—every minor scratch is worthy of gooey maternal attention.

But when it comes to beverages, I got smart. I wasn’t going to bemoan the loss of $2000 worth of organic milk due to spillage. I was going to prevent the spillage from happening in the first place. Thus, well into her sixth year, against my mother queries of, “don’t you think she’s old enough to drink from a regular cup?” she imbibed from a cup, capped with a straw.

And every time it came crashing to the ground with nary a leak, I commended myself on my utter brilliance. Independence be damned.

But there comes a point in motherhood, where you start to grow uneasy with your intrusiveness. You start to question the degree to which you might be enabling instead of empowering. It’s an invisible tipping point. A gentle nagging as you look at all the other children around her drinking from regular, grown-up glasses…isn’t it time.

But I wasn’t ready to turn over our glasses to Sophie. Bestowed to us wedding gifts, uniquely square and now irreplaceable, they have thinned in number due to my ongoing drinking problem.

Fact of the matter: I should still have a cap and straw.

There had to be a happy medium. A training glass. Something she could wrap her slippery paws around made of such strong stuff, they would bounce instead of shatter as they hit our hardwood kitchen floor. So I googled it.

Low and behold, there is such a glass, the Picardie by Duralex, which has been the primary drinking glass in French school cafeterias for decades. Durlex introduced tempering in 1939, which renders glass 4 to 5 times stronger than standard glass.

I realize I sound like a commercial. I swear, Duralex did not sponsor this article and I am not in the business of promoting particular products, but I was excited to find something to replace the plastic Take n’ Toss cups we have likely been using for far too long. Particularly as we discover that almost all plastics—even those that are BPA-free and thought to be safe—have some level of estrogenic activity.

I showed the image of glasses to Kevin who noted that they looked very similar to the cups he drank from as a child. In fact, we still had two in the cabinet. He retrieved the two small 6-ouncers that were stashed away on the top shelf, next to our shot glasses. Sure enough, they bore the Duralex made-in-France stamp at the bottom.

Kevin’s mother had purchased these somewhere in the vicinity of 35 years ago. At once, I felt a quiet kinship with her and saddened by the fact that she was no longer alive to have given me this bit of advice. I might have made the transition sooner.

That evening, I filled the glass –the one her own father drank from as a child, though I doubt he dropped it much, if at all—and set it in front of Sophie. Her round grey eyes grew rounder with pleasure as absorbed it’s implications—this new level of trust.

Falsely Accused

noreply@blogger.com (Melissa ) — Sun, 02 Mar 2014 02:03:00 +0000

Sophie had a friend over for a play date yesterday. Lola is a sweet girl with whom she has a lot in common—and not just in terms of their interests—though they both enjoy playing pretend, coloring, and dancing. It’s something more ineffable than that. There is something secret, almost conspiratorial between them. They’re always whispering. Scheming. Hiding in corners and tittering. Their relationship reminds me of one of my first friendships. Thirty-six years after meeting Emily, I can’t say what initially drew us to each other, but I imagine it is the same glue that has kept us together all these years.

I picture Sophie and Lola being friends for a very long time.

They had been playing together for several hours—Sophie as the mother, Lola as the baby, when Lola’s father showed up to take her home. There are a couple of dads at Sophie’s school who I’ve become friendly with. Ones that I see each morning at pick up and drop off, who I’ve coordinated play dates with, and on a couple of occasions, have pulled our whole families together for a cross-generational play date.

Dave and I got caught up talking, as we often do about this and that. The unrelenting snow. His recent trip to Florida. The looming Broad Street Run, for which we’ve both registered to run. The girls, realizing that we might be a while, snuck away and stationed themselves behind the large leather chair in the living room. About 15 minutes into the conversation, we both noticed that it had gotten awfully quiet.

“I’ll go upstairs to find them,” I told Dave. As I did, the leather chair snorted.

“I think I found them,” Dave said. Peering down from the landing, I saw them too, crouched behind the chair, teetering on their balls of their feet as they giggled.

“Come on out Lolalee,” Dave said, “it’s time to go.” But there was no conviction in his voice. Lola knew it. And, sure enough, Dave and I drifted back into conversation. The girls saw their opportunity and seized it. Neither one of us noticed that they had slipped back upstairs.

Fifteen minutes later, Dave remarked that he should probably get going. This time I found the girls hidden behind Sophie’s door, their hands covering their mouths to stifle their glee.

“Okay, come on you two. Outta there,” and I waved my hand towards the stairs. After many protests, dawdling, ardent goodbyes which involved lifting each other off the ground in great bear hugs, and making an appointment to see each other two days later that neither would be able to keep, Lola left.

That night, Sophie and I were eating dinner. Kevin, who was ill, had his head on the table and was looking like he was trying not to barf.

“Mom?”

“Yeah?” Why is it that she always needs confirmation that I am listening before she says anything to me?

“Did you kiss Dave?” I nearly spit my grapefruit essence Perrier out all over the table.

“What makes you think I was kissing Dave?”

“We thought we heard you ask him for a kiss.”

“Whose ‘we’?”

“Me and Lola.”

“No, Sophia. Dave I and were talking. There was no kissing involved.” This, my friends, is how rumors begin.

Kevin, in spite of his nausea, was snickering.

“I think if I was going to be kissing anyone other that Daddy, I’d be a little more stealthy about it.”

“What does that mean?” Sophie asked.

“Mommy’s just being silly,” Kevin told her.

“Oh you think?” I asked slyly.

“Do you love Dave?” Sophie asked suddenly. Must she do this every time I take a mouthful of something?

“Well, honey, he’s a friend. I wouldn’t go so far as to say I love him. I love you and daddy.”

“So you didn’t tell him you love him?”

“No!”

“I though I heard you say that you did.”

“I think you need to get your ears checked. Again.”

Neither of us said anything more about the subject. But I was left wondering: Where was this imagined intimacy coming from? A strange fantasy of hers that we could merge families, and that she would become Lola’s sister? Concern that I was throwing over her father for another guy? Or just an unclear understanding of the constraints of monogamy? A innocent inquiry born out of a more fluid conception of love.

The "S" Word

noreply@blogger.com (Melissa ) — Sat, 15 Feb 2014 19:44:00 +0000

Sophie and I had to re-up her supply before the big storm, so we headed over to the public library after school.

As we came down the stairs to the basement of the building modeled after Jefferson’s Monticello, Sophie asked:

“Mom, can I take out Junie B. Jones. Please? Anne brought it to school today and Ms. M read us the first chapter. There were no bad words in it. Really.”

“Soph, I don’t like Junie B. Jones.” I don’t. Junie B. Jones uses bad words. It’s a gateway book. Like the Berenstain Bears book about bullying. It’s intended to teach children bullying is bad. However, a research study cited in the book, Nurture Shock, which cleverly debunks the conventional wisdom on a number of parenting topics, found that The Berenstain Bears and the Bully actually has the opposite effect on children. It teaches them how to bully.

Just like Junie B. Jones unwittingly teaches children to use what I deem are bad words.

“I know you don’t like it mom.” We walk through the doorway as Sophie argues her case at full volume:

“But every time I read the ‘s’ word, I can think of a different ‘s’ work, like ‘silly.’”

At this, the head of every parent in the children’s reading room swivels in my direction.

This is what embarrassment feels like.

I say very loudly to everyone and no one in particular, “The ‘S’ word, by the way, is not the word you’re all thinking. “ Now I realize I’ve gotten myself in a bind, because I can’t tell them which “s” word I mean without saying the “s” word out loud, in front of Sophie. “It’s a word I consider to be much worse. Synonymous with unintelligent.”

No, this is what embarrassment feels like.

The parents take their eyes off the crazy woman who just entered the room and turn back to their children, whispering unintelligible things (about me).

I decided to give Junie B. Jones another try. Maybe I haven’t given her a fair shake. I walk over to her section, which is not far from the Magic Tree House books. Number One is entitled, Junie B. Jones and the Stupid Smelly Bus.

Nope. Can’t do it. That….silly…book isn’t coming home with us.

Ahh! Creepy!

noreply@blogger.com (Melissa ) — Mon, 10 Feb 2014 03:11:00 +0000

Gradually, the sphere of influence surrounding our children broadens. At first, they seem to be made in our image, imitating our words, our expressions, our actions. But as they grow older, strange phrases appear. Things they couldn’t quite have invented on their own, and yet now it is their own because they heard it, it appealed to them, and they’ve made it so.

At dinner, Kevin says to Sophie: “What if you came down to my room in the morning, and it was very dark…”

“Don’t scare her,” I warn.

He holds up one finger and continues, “And you cuddled up against me, only to find that I wasn’t wearing a shirt.”

“Ahh! Cr--eepy!” Sophie shouts with glee, but the way she says it—like a catch phrase on a sit com—indicates that she doesn’t quite get what the word means.

“That would be creepy,” I agree, smirking at Kevin.

I realized that he was trying to get her to say this for my benefit. Every time she says it, I experience a strange joy. She clearly associates “creepy” with a feeling of surprise or strangeness, and now overgeneralizes it to any surprising situation—whether she’s being tickled, or going upstairs by herself, or sees a spider in the basement.

But she didn’t learn it from us.

“Soph, who says that?” I’ve asked her, sure that she must have heard it somewhere else, and that it captured something for her, gave her language for a feeling previously unarticulated.

“We all say it at school.” By we all she means the thick clique of all the girls and one or two boys in her Kindergarten class.

In other words, it is a thing.

I like it so much, I’ve started to use it…whether Kevin has snuck up behind me in the kitchen for a kiss, or I’m all by myself and hear a bump in the night. And when I do this, I am charmed by the fact that it is now a two-way street.

She’s teaching me the lingo. She is becoming my portal to popular culture. Kevin warned me the other day, that pretty soon, we will look to her as our technology consultant, our liaison to the post-millennial world. We will need her to translate for us, as we once did for her.

Ahh! Creepy.

Hired Help

noreply@blogger.com (Melissa ) — Sun, 02 Feb 2014 13:35:00 +0000

At six, chores are sort of like homework. Fun, exciting, and a hallmark of being grown up. Sure, Sophia hates to pick up her toys like every other child on the planet. But tell her that she has a chore to do and she jumps up with enthusiasm. Give her a whole list of chores, and she’s on it. If I start cleaning, she practically begs me to join in.

I’m not being facetious. She really does want to help.

And I wanted her to help too. What got in the way? My goddamn perfectionism. Allowing her to mop the kitchen floor nearly drove me insane.

“Soph, you want to start off in the back and work your way out of the room.”

“Let me do it my way, Mom.”

“Honey, your way is going to get this side of the floor all wet and then you won’t be able to get to the other side without walking all over the clean part.”

“Okay, okay. Like this?”

“Yes, only take a look where you’re mopping. You missed a huge spot right there.”

She gave the area a brief swabbing, still missing a large swathe.

“Here, let me show you.”

“No I want to do it!”

“And I want you to, but I want to show you how first.”

“I already know how!” I wrestled the mop from her, and demonstrated.

“Hey! You’re doing the whole thing! Let me have a turn.”

“There is plenty more to do,” I assured her. I rinsed the mop and handed it over.

She ran the mom back and forth over the area I had just mopped. Within a few minutes she stopped.

“What’s the matter?”

“I’m tired. Can I go read now?” I’m not sure which she found more exhausting—the mopping, or me standing over her, making unwelcome suggestions.

Perhaps it wasn’t merely a matter of my impossible standards. Maybe I was selecting the wrong tasks. I saw a list of “age-appropriate chores,” on the Motherlode, the New York Times parenting blog, a few days ago, originally posted on Maria Montessori’s posthumous Facebook page:

Yes. She could definitely be doing more, I concluded. Starting now. I was not going to raise an entitled, dependent, shiftless post-millennial who leaves a path of Legos and drawings of penguins in her wake.

So at breakfast, I proposed that we come up with a list of weekly chores that she would be expected to perform.

Sophie loved the idea. “Okay, mom!” she said, springing from her seat. Thirty seconds later, she had fetched me a blueberry-scented marker and a sheet of paper from my printer.

“Write at the top, ‘Sophie’s Chores,’” she instructed.

I did, and then paused, the marker hovering over the paper and the sickening smell of artificial blueberries filling the air, “How many chores do you think you should do, each week, Soph?”

“Seven. Write the numbers one to seven.” Seven seemed like a lot to me, but who am I to squash such ambition? Together, we composed the following list:

Bring my dishes to the sink.
After school, put my things away.
Fold my laundry, take the basket upstairs and put my clothes away
Set the table.
Dry the pots and pans.
If I play with something, I put it away.
Make my bed.

“Can I get started on it right now?” Sophie asked eagerly. “I’ll go make my bed. Will you come with me to watch?”

“Hold up a sec, Soph. We have to discuss the terms of the agreement.” I don’t like to dumb it down.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, if you’re going to do all this work for us, I think that you should receive compensation. Money. An allowance. That way, if there’s something that you’d really like to have, you can save your money and buy it yourself.”

Now, I know that it’s generally not a good idea to reward children for things they are already intrinsically motivated to do. But I wasn’t thinking of it in terms of an incentive. I’d really like for her to start to learn the value of a dollar and the virtue of saving.

But what to pay her? A quarter was my first thought. She has no sense of value yet. She would be pleased to earn this and watch her shiny coins pile up. But then I thought about how very long it would take to actually be able to buy anything. Even a pack of gum is a $1.50. Kevin and I settled on a dollar. If she did everything she agreed to do. Payable on Sunday.

As a child, my own allowance was sporadically paid. I’m not sure if this was because I was an entitled, dependent, shiftless Generation Xer who didn’t hold up her end of the bargain (likely, I can recall trying to duck out of my duties to clear the table and rake the lawn, claiming stomach aches and allergies) or because my parents simply forgot to pony up (equally as likely). So, I knew I would have to be on it, if this was to work…and continue to work over time.

So would she. Well, it’s only day one, but Sophie has been holding up her end of the bargain. Today she joyfully:

Took her dishes to the sink
Made her bed
Folded her laundry, took it upstairs and put it away
Took out the compost
Put away her trains when she was done playing with them. Ditto for Twister.
And began to set the table of her own volition, before we told her that we were going out to dinner.

I have no illusions that she can keep up this pace. But it was a banner day. Tonight, as I tucked her in to her freshly made bed and she promised, “I’ll make it as soon as I get up in the morning, Mommy.”

“You did good today, kid.” I told her, and together, we took inventory of her hard work.

“I think you did about a week’s worth in one day. Tomorrow’s Sunday. You’ll get your first dollar.” Immediacy is key.

Her face brightened. “Then I’ll give some of it to you, Mom.”

“Huh?”

“I’ll share it with you. Because you helped me.”

Underwater

noreply@blogger.com (Melissa ) — Mon, 27 Jan 2014 03:17:00 +0000

Sophie hadn’t been hearing us for several months now, her ears perpetually filled with fluid. I try to be patient, but it is wearing to constantly have to repeat yourself. To constantly be shouting. I get frustrated.

I wonder if other parents of hard-of-hearing children feel this way.

The ENT was reluctant to place tubes in her ears again. He wanted to see if the fluid would clear on it’s own. This Fall, she had two ear infections, but he told us the magic number was three. “Let’s just go ahead and schedule the operation, anyhow,” the nurse told us, surreptitiously, after the doctor had left the room. “I’d hate for you to wait and then not be able to get in.”

Sophie never had the third infection, but when we went in for the final ear check, she was still clogged up.

“It makes sense to do it,” the doctor conceded. He told us it was standard to take out her adenoids as well, the second time around. “They can block the ears from draining,” he explained. So I signed the paperwork, and we waited for the appointed day.

The night before her operation, I had a silly, irrational fear:

I love her so much; is this the moment in time when I will no longer be allowed to have her?

There is still a part of me that feels like she is on loan. I have the sense that it’s a leftover from my miscarriages. An insidious little seed of fear that I am unworthy of having a child. That I got lucky. That my luck will run out.

My very pragmatic husband, who does not believe in things like luck, who never believed we would not have a child in the first place, reassured me that it would be fine.

The fear gnawed at me a bit, the night before, but I managed to fall asleep.

The day of the procedure, there was fourteen inches of snow on the ground. All the world was still, except for the sound of a shovel scraping against the driveway—my husband shoveling a path from our Subaru to our icy street.

“Can I please have something to eat?” Sophie asked, knowing that she couldn’t. Probably asking because she couldn’t. On most days, she’d much rather read or play than eat breakfast.

“Soph, you know you can’t. When your operation is over, I’ll make whatever you want.”

“Even chocolate chip pancakes?” she asked slyly.

“Even chocolate chip pancakes,” I assented, ushering her into the shower. Though she fussed as I washed her hair, I reminded myself to be patient. I had the thought that I didn’t want a single harsh word out of my mouth that day. Just in case.

The roads were quiet. Even the hospital was silent. It felt as though everyone in the world had gone underground, with the exception of our family and the receptionist checking us in.

Once inside there was considerably more activity—nurses bustling about, machines beeping. A child wailed continuously in one room, with a sing-songy video tape playing in the background. Sophie was weighed, measured, and given blue pajamas to change into. She looked excited and happy as she hugged Snakey Pie to her body. Snakey Pie looked filthy and I wondered if a dirty stuffed snake would compromise the sterility of the operating room. The only thing Sophie remembered about her procedure from last year was the Icee machine in the recovery room. She asked the nurse what flavors they had. She made a face as she sipped her giggle juice. Before the Valium was flowing through her veins, I began to feel woozy, as if it were me, not her, who had taken the medicine.

Before long, three nurses converged to wheel her away. They asked her questions about Snakey Pie and which grade she was in as they lifted the rails of her bed. “Kindergarten,” Sophie mumbled, her eyelids falling to half mast.

“You’ll see your mom and dad again in a few minutes,” one nurse told her. Sophie’s eyes flew open, fear trumping the sedative effects of the giggle juice. She started to cry.

I was fine until she started to cry.

I managed to hold back my own tears until I had said a few words of reassurance, that I loved her and I would see her in no time.

One of the nurses reminded me that the Valium creates some amnesia for this moment. And then she was gone. Kevin and I were ushered into the waiting room. It was suggested that I eat something, “We don’t want you winding up on a stretcher next to your daughter.”

“That happens?”

“More times than you’d think.” I wasn’t going to pass out, but I was hungry. I decided to get a cup of coffee. The Kerig machine wanted 75 cents for a cup.

I raged against the coffee machine. Didn’t pay, and left my punctured pod of decaf inside.

The forty minutes passed more quickly than I had expected. Suddenly, the surgeon was in the room telling us in his hurried way that the operation went fine, she was packed with fluid—“underwater”—her adenoids were “moderately swollen” and it had been the right thing to do.

Finally, I could exhale.

There is nothing like seeing your child in pain. I can recall my own mother saying to me, when I was in pain as a child, “I wish that it was me, not you.” Like my mom, I would have gladly switched places with Sophie in the recovery room, just so that I would not have to see her face screwed up, her eyes full of tears.

Sophie refused the Icee that the nurse offered to her, moaned, “Mom,” and reached her small hand up towards me.

“I can give her more medication,” the nurse said, injecting acetaminophen and codeine into her IV. Within a few minutes, Sophie was back asleep.

“She’s having a very good response to the pain medication,” the nurse reassured me. “You’ll see. If she can get another hour of sleep, she’ll wake up much more comfortable.”

“Why don’t you have a seat,” Kevin said, offering me the chair next to her bed.

“No, thanks, I want her to be able to see me when she wakes up.” I stood, and whispered to the nurse about nursery school, her daughter’s new teaching job, and the instructions for Sophie’s discharged, while the machine hooked up to her offered a steady beep.

After an hour, Sophie stirred again. She shifted in the bed as if she couldn’t get comfortable. The nurse held a continuum of faces in front of Sophie and explained that the 0 face was no pain at all, and the 10 face was pain so bad it made you cry. She asked Sophie what her pain was.

“An eight,” Sophie squeaked out. This surprised me. She isn’t one to exaggerate.

“I could have used a chart like this after Sophie was born,” I joked to Kevin. When I was hemorrhaging internally, complaining of pain the nurse misattributed to hemorrhoids, she had asked me the same question. The pain was so bad, all I could think about was there was no way to be—I was in too much pain to stand, too much pain to lie down. “A six,” I had told her. I thought that a 10 must be what it was like to be in a car accident and lose a limb, or have bones and intestines exposed.

The nurse gave Sophie another dose and again she dozed, this time more briefly. When she awoke, she refused an Icee again.

This was indeed the worse I have ever seen her. I started second guessing our decision to have her go through this.

When she was conscious enough, she slipped on her clothes, allowed Kevin to lower her into the wheelchair, and the nurse pushed her out into the frigid parking lot. On the way home, she fell asleep again, opening her eyes suddenly when we pulled into our driveway.

“Mom, I just want to sleep.”

“Okay. Okay, shhhhh.” I told her. Kevin carried her upstairs and tucked her into bed.

“Mom, would you just sit in the room with me.”

“Sure, sweetheart.” I sat until she was fast asleep, and then I headed downstairs and had some lunch. She woke about an hour later.

“You left my room,” she accused. “Did you tell me?”

“Yes. I whispered, while you were sleeping, that I was going down to get some lunch.”

“Can I have some lunch?”

“Of course. You’re hungry?”

“Very.” All traces of pain seemed to have dissipated.

“What would you like?”

“Mom! You know! Chocolate chip pancakes.”

“Okay. Right. That was what we had talked about. I wasn’t sure you were up to it.”

“I’m up to it. And mom?”

“Yes?”

“Could you please stop talking so loud?”

Music to my ears.

Tastes Change

noreply@blogger.com (Melissa ) — Sun, 19 Jan 2014 23:17:00 +0000

Life, with it’s constant barrage of novelty and unpredictability, can be quite distressing to those who like things a certain way.

Sophie, like many children, clings to the familiar: food, clothing, daily routines. Changes require forewarning. Often there must be conversations, and sometimes, resistance and tears before she dips her toe in the newness.

Getting her to try a new food, in particular, is a painstaking process. I can’t help but think that picky eating is a feature of privilege. A feature of plenty. Would children who have nothing to eat turn their noses up at spinach? I doubt it. But to the child who knows her refrigerator is full of things she’d rather be eating, she knows she is not a beggar, and therefore, can be a chooser.

I struggle with feeling pissed off about this. I work with a lot of children who don’t have access to fresh, healthy food. So, it irks me when my own rejects it. And though I think my mother pulled the “think of all the children starving in China” card when I was a kid. I refrain. Guilt makes for a very poor motivator. (And the retort in my head was, “Well why don’t you ship this liver off to them.)

So, whereas I don’t exactly force food on Sophie, I do have a taste rule. Another family I know calls it the “no thank you” bite. She must take one substantial bite of something new, before having her more desired food. I make sure a desired food is part of the meal when I plan to do this. I also make sure I have plenty of time for the fit that will ensue. It has taken Sophie up to an hour to sample her unfamiliar serving.

But then, after that, if she rejects it, so be it. There have been a number of occasions where she has exclaimed, “I love this!” So, often, she’s just apprehensive of its newness. Evolutionary psychologists would say this wariness is an adaptive behavior. We should be skeptical of new foods. They could be harmful. Dangerous.

I also make sure that the new thing is not something spicy or too exotic for her taste buds, food that requires a more sophisticated palate than a six-year-old can be expected to have.

And then I introduce it again. And again. And again. Because what we know from research is that a child often needs to try a food over a dozen times before he/she will incorporate it in his/her repertoire.

“Tastes change,” we tell Sophie. Which is certainly true for me. I eat a whole host of foods I wouldn’t have considered touching as a child.

But her resistance to what’s new extends beyond food. Sophie is notoriously stuck in her ways. If she finds a dress she loves, she wears it over and over until it is in tatters. If I introduce a new game that tickles her fancy…she wants to play it every night, ad nauseam. If she reads a new book she enjoys, she’ll read it many times over with the same level of interest and excitement as when she first encountered it.

So, flexibility is something that has to be encouraged to avoid the inevitable meltdown that occurs when that favorite dress is dirty, Mommy is tired, the book has gone missing.

Thus, it was to my great surprise when Sophie and I walked into the mall one snowy day, in search of boots and she suggested that she try on a pair of jeans. Sophie had not worn a pair of pants, since she was old enough to protest. I tried to hide my glee.

“Really? Soph? Jeans. You’ve always hated the way they feel. They can be stiff. How about a pair of jeggings?”

“Mom. The way things feel can change, just the way tastes change.”

The moment was like a crocus poking out of the ground. A first sign of Spring. When an opportunity like this appears, you seize it.

“Okay, let’s do it.”

She fell in love with the first pair she put on. They fit her well. I had never realized quite how long her legs were. It was strange to see her in pants. Shocking really. She looked so much older as she strutted back and forth, modeling them.

“I love them.”

“Are you sure? Because I’m not going to buy a pair of pants that you’re never going to wear again.”

“I promise. I will wear them every single day.”

With that promise extracted, she wriggled out of them, and we took them over to the register to purchase.

I don’t know if has been my persistence in encouraging Sophie to venture outside of her comfort zone, or if it’s simply a natural unfolding that has taken place over time that prompted this sudden spontaneity. But I’m so glad there are signs of Spring.

Girls Chase Boys!

noreply@blogger.com (Melissa ) — Tue, 07 Jan 2014 01:36:00 +0000

For as long as I can remember, I’ve been kinda boy crazy. And for all my shyness and introversion, I have usually been the aggressor.

My earliest crush dates back to when I was three years old. I was in the bathroom of my Jewish preschool, sitting on the toilet, swinging my legs, which did not touch the floor, back and forth. The metal doors in the bathroom were a drab gray. Looking at them I thought to myself, “Gray. That sounds like Greg. I love Greg,” Sigh. Greg must have been some three-foot high sproglet, oblivious to my yearning. I don’t remember him returning my affections. In fact, I don’t remember him at all.

I had my first requited love when I was seven. Alan was a skinny wet-lipped, Jewish boy who shuffled his feet when he walked. I can’t for the life of me remember what the attraction was. Perhaps it was simply that he was game.

One day, when lining up at the door, another classmate, Kristin, sang, “Melissa has a boyfriend!”

“I do not!” I replied, indignant. I hadn’t been ashamed of it, until that moment, when she called me out, and made it sound like a bad thing.

“Well,” said Kristin, “he’s a boy, right?”

“Yes,” I admitted.

“And he’s a friend,” Kristin added. I saw where this was going, and would not concede this fact.

“Then he’s your BOY-FRIEND!” It seemed that everyone else around us had chimed in, teasing, “Melissa has a boyfriend.”

In truth, Alan was my boyfriend. He came over to my house. Up in the spare room I suggested that we might try kissing. We hid deep inside the walk-in closet that runs against the side of the house. The bare bulb was turned on, but the door was closed. The air was dusty and the closet was filled with bags of my mother’s nursery school materials. Alan kissed me over and over again with those wet lips of his, until mine began to chap.

“Can you wait a second?” I asked him, running to the bathroom to fetch a wad of tissues. When I returned, we resumed kissing, pausing every few seconds so I could wipe my lips clean.

I do hope he’s improved his technique.

So, thirty-five years later, I find it completely unsurprising my daughter Sophia, at six, has a thing for boys. Not just boys. A boy. Anthony.

“I love Anthony,” she tells me dreamily.

“What do you love about him? I asked.

“He’s cute, and he’s smart, and he’s fast.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“He’s the fastest boy in the class. He’s even faster than me.”

“How do you know?”

“We had a race.” They may have arranged this, but from what I have observed in the playground, it’s more of an ambush than a race. The kindergarten girls gang up on a few unsuspecting fellows acting like power rangers or spider man and declare, “GIRLS CHASE BOYS.” The boys then run for their lives.

I interviewed Sophie about this.

“So Sophie, tell me about “Girls Chase Boys.” What happens?”

“Well when I chase Anthony, he just runs away, but he doesn’t scream.”

“What happens if you catch the boys?”

“We hug them…and kiss them.”

“Where do you kiss them?”

“Wherever we can find a spot.”

“Why do you run after the boys and try to kiss them? Why do you want to kiss them?”

Sign. “Um. I don’t know. We just like them.”

“Do you ever catch Anthony?”

“Sometimes.”

“What do you do if you catch him?”

“Tackle him.” She pauses. “We don’t actually tackle them. We just plop on top of them and kiss them.”

I laugh. Sophie gets annoyed. “No, not like that. Mom!” What did that mean? I wonder.

“I just think it’s funny. What do they do when you kiss them?”

“Just run away again. They try to run away. “

“They escape? These poor boys. Do they want you to kiss them?”

“I don’t know. They never told us.”

“Are they smiling when this is happening, or do they say ‘no, please don’t do this.’”

“Mmmm….It’s a game we do.”

“Yeah, but do they know it’s a game?”

“I think they don’t know it’s a game.” is her somber reply.

Like mother, like daughter.

Fear Itself

noreply@blogger.com (Melissa ) — Sun, 08 Dec 2013 00:53:00 +0000

Sophia loves gymnastics, so it came as quite a surprise when she freaked out at the prospect of moving up from “Tiny Tumblers” to “Beginners.” I naturally assumed she’d be thrilled to join the bigger girls, be able to do more. Instead, she burst into tears.

“I don’t want to,” she objected on the way from the gym to the car.

“Please don’t make me,” she begged, shaking in her booster seat.

“I just want to stay in Tiny Tumblers!” she wailed, her tears real and heavy, rolling down her face.

I had hoped that, perhaps, with some time to think about it, she’d get used to the idea. But no, every morning, when she woke up, as if she had been wrestling with the idea all night long, she’d sob, “I don’t want to be in Beginners.”

Would it be cruel to make her do this thing she feared so much?

I wrestled with it too. On the one hand, it seemed to be an irrational fear. Like I said, she loves gymnastics. She bounces with excitement the whole time she’s there, a grin stretched out on her face as she does c-drops on the trampoline, swings from the lowest of the uneven bars, walks with great poise across the balance beam and cartwheels through an obstacle course. On the other, do I really need to push her to do any activity at her age? There’s time, right?

But here’s what I know about fear. Avoidance of the feared thing validates the fear. It feeds the fear, and the fear grows. What starts out as a pang, soon looms large as an impossibility.

Facing our fears, a little bit at a time, is the only way to overcome them. In cognitive behavioral therapy, this is known as exposure. You create a hierarchy of various gradations of the feared thing and gradually expose yourself to them over time. Since fear is anticipatory, once you see you can handle lesser versions, you gain confidence, and eventually mastery over your fear. So, in this case, it might be that Sophie starts by observing the Beginners class with me at her side, praising her for this first step. Next time she watches for a while and then joins them for a short period of time, maybe just one activity, still with me in the room giving her the thumbs up. Then she might stay for increasingly longer periods of time in my smiling and winking presence. Finally, I would begin to fade myself out, moving from inside the gym to the observation room where the parents gather to watch their children, mouthing “Good job, Soph!” from behind the plate glass windows.

Any suggestion of this to Sophia, however, instantly brought on a spate of tears.

I shared my concerns with the gymnastics staff. They let me know who her new teacher would be. Fortunately, it was the same dynamic, fun, energetic teacher who had orchestrated her recent birthday party at the gym, Mr. D.

“Would you like for him to talk to Sophie?” the woman at the desk asked me, the week before we were due to make the switch.

“Yes! Please!” I replied, a little too loudly.

“Not a problem. We don’t want little Miss Sophie to be so upset!”

And so, that week, the last week of Tiny Tumblers with Miss Heather and all of Sophie’s tiny, tumbling friends, Mr. D called Sophie aside. I watched from the observation room. He was smiling. She nodded a few times.

When class was over, I told her I saw her talking to Mr. D.

“What did he say to you?”

“He asked me if I wanted to be in his class.”

“What did you say to him.”

“I said ‘maybe.’” Well, this was progress.

I placed a moratorium on any discussion of gymnastics. There seemed to be no sense in stirring her up further.

The following week, on the appointed day, I picked Sophie up from school. As we made our way to the car, it dawned on her where we were going.

“I don’t want to go to gymnastics! Please just take me home!” I felt a physical pain in my heart.

“Soph, I know you can do this. I know you can be brave. And you’ll see—Beginners is just like Tiny Tumblers, only you’ll be with kids your own age and you’ll get to do more cool stuff.”

“I don’t want to do more stuff. I want to do what I was doing.”

“I know, hon. But you’re getting to be a big girl. Tiny Tumblers is for 3-5 year olds. You’re six now. And they told me that you’re ready. I promise, I wouldn’t make you do anything that you weren’t ready for. “

Nothing but sniffling in the back seat.

“You know what I think?”

“What?”

“I think that people who are brave should be rewarded.” I glanced in the rearview mirror, a wry smile on my face. It was time to bring out the big guns: Bribery.

“Rewarded?” Sophie was smiling too, in spite of herself.

“Yeah. Like in stories, heroes are always rewarded for their bravery. I think it would be a brave thing for you to try out Beginners today. Do you know what being brave means?”

“Yes. It means doing something you think you can’t do.”

“Yes, that and something that you are afraid to do. It’s about standing up to your fear.”

Sophie nodded, digesting this.

“So what kind of a reward do you think you should get for doing something you are afraid to do and think you can’t do.”

“I don’t know, mom. You tell me.” Sophie is often unable to choose, when faced with the prospect of getting something special.

“How about we go out for ice cream?”

“Can I get a topping?” She ups the ante.

“Sure.”

“Any topping I want?”

“Yes. Any topping you want.”

“Okay, mom. I’ll do my best to be brave.”

We arrived at the gym and Sophie quickly changed in the bathroom. As she did, she told me about a dream she had had:

“We were warming up in gymnastics. Miss Heather took one of my arms, and Mr. D took the other. Like they were playing tug of war. And they pulled at me until my arms came off and I couldn’t go on the bars anymore!”

My poor, poor baby. I hated to watch her go through this. “You’re going to be fine, Soph. Be brave!” I gave her a hug.

Once inside the gym, I was informed by a man with a list that Sophie was going to be in Miss Ricky’s class, not Mr. D’s. Why this switch was made, given the circumstances, was beyond me. But I decided not to let Sophie see me sweat.

“Okay,” I said brightly, “Sophie is a little nervous about moving up to beginners.”

“A lot of kids feel that way,” said the man with the list.

“Okay, if I bring her over?”

“Sure. And if you need to stay for a bit, that’s cool.”

I walked Sophie over to Miss Ricky and was thrilled to see that one of Sophie’s friends from nursery school was in the class. Sophie, wrapped herself around one of my legs and began to cry. The teacher helped pry her off.

“This is Sophie,” I said.

“Hi Sophie,” said Miss Ricky.

“Who are all of you?” I asked the girls. Each one said their name, and Sophie’s little friend grabbed her by the hand. “Sophie! We’re doing cartwheels,” she began to explain.

I took this as my opportunity to back up a few steps. Sophie continued to sniffle, but she allowed me to walk away. “I’m going to be right over there.” I said, pointing to the wall. I stood by the wall and watched flashing smiles and thumbs up, each time she looked my way. The third time, she gave me a thumbs up back.

After twenty minutes, she was fully engaged, smiling, laughing, bouncing just as she always had. I pantomimed that I was going to go up to the observation room.

Sophie nodded.

From the room, I watched as for the first time, the teacher let them use the chalk before they pull themselves up onto the uneven bars. Sophie carefully covered every bit of her hands until they were bright white. She held them up to the window to show me.

After class, I asked her how Beginners was.

“Awesome!” Sophie declared, “Can we come every Wednesday?”

We had a lovely evening that night. Eating our ice-creams and pretending to be sharks. Two days later, we were in the kitchen, making pancakes for breakfast together. Sophie pull a magnet off the refrigerator.

“Mom! This is what I did about gymnastics!”

The magnet had a quote on it from Eleanor Roosevelt. The quote had gotten me through a difficult period in my life, when I fought to overcome my shyness and was learning to facilitate trainings of large groups of people. It is something that I now do with relative ease. In fact, I had done three just this week.

The magnet reads,

You must do the thing you think you cannot do.

Games Psychologists Play

noreply@blogger.com (Melissa ) — Mon, 02 Dec 2013 01:05:00 +0000

We are sitting around the dinner table, Kevin, Sophia, and I when I suggest we play big, medium, or little problem.

“Okay, Mom! Sophie says enthusiastically. Give me one.”

“Big, medium or little problem—you want to wear a particular outfit one day, but you realize that it’s in the laundry.”

“That’s easy. Little problem.”

“I agree,” I say.

Kevin jumps in, “Big, medium or little problem-- you have no place to live.”

“BIG PROBLEM!” Sophie calls out.

“That is a big problem.”

“My turn! My turn! Sophie insists.

“Hit me,” I say

“Your house burns down so you have no more food and nothing to drink and you dehydrate and die.”

“That sounds like a big problem.” Kevin ventures.

“One of the biggest, “ I add.

The point is not just to relish the misery of others; this is not a game of schadenfreude. Rather, we are trying to teach Sophie to differentiate what’s worth flipping out over and what isn’t.

This lesson has been slow in coming. Some kids are just more than others—more intense, more emotional, more volatile and easily triggered by even the slightest of insults. It’s hard to know what will set her off:

· Her shoes are too tight (because she pulled the Velcro closure until to was cutting off her circulation)

· There’s a fleck of pepper on her brussel sprout

· She didn’t make a perfect “m”

· Everyone (in kindergarten) will think her very adorable hat looks stupid

There’s crying, screaming, falling off of chairs, grand exits, door slamming, and, occasionally, I get bitch slapped.

It is during these times, that I must reach deep within myself to find my empathy. Can you imagine, going through life, so tortured by these details? I can see it in her eyes. She isn’t enjoying this. She’s in pain.

Not being able to regulate your emotions is a skill deficit. Most kids develop internal controls by the age of six, but some do not. I see kids with the same problem every week in my work.

It used to be that at work, I’d develop curricula for social skills development. I’d train others to teach these curricula. I’d design interventions. I teach parents how to implement them. But at home, I’d get frustrated.

Eventually, I realized that hoping she will grow out of it and trying to be as patient as humanly possible is simply not enough. I have to practice what I preach.

The key is that you have to play the game in times of peace. You can’t stand over your child who is having an apoplexy just because you sprinkled a little cinnamon on her oatmeal against her unspoken wishes and ask, “Is this a big, medium, or little problem?”

At least not initially.

But if you do, and you do it frequently enough…not so frequently that it becomes oppressive and clinical, but often enough that your child comes home from school one day and tells you:

“Today at lunch we played big, medium or little problem.”

“Oh yeah?

“Yeah. Ms. R. Said ‘big, medium, or little problem: you eat too much vegetables.”

“And what did you say?

“No, I didn’t answer, Ava did.”

“Well then, what did Ava say?”

“She said Big Problem! I said little problem because it’s healthy for you. Miss R. said if you’re used to it, little problem. If you are not, big.”

“Ms. R. sounds like a smart woman.”

“She is,” Sophie nodded.

It has become part of her repertoire. A tool in her toolbox. Something, now, I can gently ask her to remove in times of trouble.

Of course, there is an art to this. There is a sweet spot. A small window of time during which you can jump in and gently suggest that she conduct her analysis. It’s the beat, the infinitesimal space between realizing she has a problem, and getting hijacked by her amygdala again. That tiny part of the brain responsible for fight or flight when one feels threatened.

If you miss it…the game becomes part of the problem. But if you catch it…

We were at the Thanksgiving table. I set a small pile of roasted brussel sprouts on her plate. Sophie’s horsepower kicked in, she revved from 0-90 in a split second:

“I DON’T WANT ANY BRUSSEL SPROUTS! TAKE THEM OFF MY PLATE.” She slumped down in her seat, as if the brussel sprouts were an oppressive weight on her very soul.

“Soph, you’ve got too many vegetables. Big, medium or little problem?”

Her eyes were still fighting me, but a smile broke out on her lips.

“Can you take some of these off my plate, please,” I modeled.

“Can you take some of these off my plate, please,” she parroted.

Kevin removed some of the brussel sprouts. Great weight lifted, Sophie rose back up in her chair. Peace and harmony were restored.

Later, she asked for a second helping.

Saying Goodbye to the Furriest Member of Our Family

noreply@blogger.com (Melissa ) — Thu, 21 Nov 2013 01:30:00 +0000

I had been waiting for a sign from Maxwell that it was time. Though his health has declined significantly in the past year, and his quality of life along with it, he still seemed to take pleasure in our presence and ate with gusto. Max had been an insulin-dependent diabetic for over three years and this year was diagnosed with hypertrophic cardiomyopathy. I couldn't justify euthanizing him when he didn't seem to be in any pain. What a Catch 22--do you wait until the animal is suffering before making the decision, or do humanely let him go before he reaches that point?

Months ago, I had a sad, but beautiful dream. Max's was lying on the hardwood floor of my childhood bedroom; his body had turned to golden sand. The particles were rising in the air, floating away and I was trying to capture them in my hands, blocking his departure. I wasn't ready.

Last Thursday, Max threw up repeatedly and refused to eat or drink. I sat down next to him on the cold tile floor of the bathroom and petted his oily fur. He managed to work up a purr for me, but his eyes were pleading. What more did I need?

Coincidentally, friends of ours, Ada and Jeff, had come to Philly for a visit. Ada used to be Max's veterinarian, before he was diabetic. On Friday, she gently examined him, gave him some Pepsid-AD and syringe-fed him my mother's chicken soup, leftover from our Passover seder. Apparently, its healing powers do not extend to cats. Later that day, Max had thrown up the little food she gave him and his water remained untouched. I was afraid to give him his insulin--I didn't want him to hypo on me. I tried to test his blood, but he was so dehydrated, he wouldn't bleed freely. After three tries, I decided to stop tormenting him. I tried syringe-fed him some water, but he wrestled with me and I don't know how much he actually drank. The next morning, Ada called to check on Max. She reminded me that most vets have Saturday hours. In my anxious state, I had completely forgotten the Cat Doctor, the office of his usual veterinarian, would be open until 1. I called and they gave me the last appointment of the day.

Before I got there, I made up my mind that this time--no heroic efforts. No tests. No life-extending therapies. It was time to let him go.

Resigned, I strapped Sophia to my body, carried her car seat in one hand and Max in the other. Helen, the receptionist, gave us a room where we could be alone together and brought me a glass of water. I sang to Sophie and Max, trying to soothe both of them at once. In waves, the magnitude of the decision that weighed upon me would hit me, and I'd begin to sob. Sophie looked up at me from her Snugli and laughed, tickled by the sounds I was making, unaware of what I was feeling. Of what was happening. The incongruity of it pained me. After an agonizing 45-minute wait, the doctor arrived and transferred us to a warmer room with a large comfortable chair. She took Max out of his cat carrier. I was ashamed at how filthy he was. Max had long stopped using his litter box and had been urinating and defecating in my bathtub. I would clean it out and sanitize it three times each day, and Kevin and I would give him a bath each week, but his underbelly was still soaked with urine. And he smelled.

I was grateful that the doctor didn't seem to mind or judge me for this. I caressed him as she inspected his mouth for signs of dehydration. She tried to take his temperature, but he cried so pitifully that we decided it made little sense to put him through the trial of the examination. She turned to me and said simply, “I fully support your decision.”

It is a difficult thing knowing where to draw the line. But I had already made up my mind. I nodded, my throat clogged with tears. She explained what would happen and gave me some time to say goodbye. When she left the room, Maxwell beelined for a corner and crouched down next to a bucket labeled hazardous waste. I sang taps to him, and hoped that it would not scar Sophie, to whom I sing taps when I put her to bed.

It's not as morbid as it sounds--the words are quite lovely--my father used to sing it to me when I was a child: Day is done, gone the sun, from the lakes, from the hills, from the skies, all is well, safely rest, God is nigh.

The doctor came in and gave him an extra-large dose of Ketamine and Valium to relax him. I asked how we would know it was working. She said that he'd start to put his head down. She left the room and I continued to pet and sing to him. Sophie began to cry for milk, and in the middle of this ordeal, I sat in the large comfortable chair and fed her. The tension around Max's eyes, which held them wide open, relaxed, and he almost looked happy, the way he used to when he would sit with Kevin and me in the living room--Kevin on the couch, me on the chair and a half, and Max perched on the coffee table between us, paws-a-hanging, lording over his people. The doctor returned with the drug that would stop his heart. She placed him on the table. The vet tech took Sophie, and I stroked Maxwell looking deep into his eyes. It's okay, I told him. I love you. I will always love you. You won't hurt anymore. I'm letting you go.

I couldn't tell that he was gone. His eyes remained open, staring into mine. The doctor checked his heart and assured me he had passed. I cried at this reality. They took him away to wrap him in a blanket and duct-taped it closed.

The vet tech placed Max in the trunk and I made the 2-hour drive up to my father's, to bury Max in the yard next to my childhood cats, Patches and Shadow. I stopped halfway, in Princeton, to feed Sophie. When we finally arrived, Sophie was a hot mess. We had blown through her morning and afternoon naps. I tried to put her down, but she just screamed and screamed. Dad and I went out to the yard, which was riddled with rocks and roots. We tried a spot next to Patches, then under the lilac bushes, and finally in the abandoned rock garden in the back yard, before being able to break ground. Dad picked at the stone-infested dirt, and I dug up what he loosened. It took a while to dig a shallow Max-sized hole.

“I want to dig it deeper,” I told him. My father thought it was deep enough.

“What if an animal digs him up?” I worried.

“There's nothing larger than raccoons around her,” my father replied. “We'll put rocks on top.”

I removed Max from the trunk. Through the blanket I could feel his body, still warm and pliable. Dad took Max out of the blanket and dropped him in the hole. I cried out as his body flopped inanimately and settled. Dad hurried to cover him. Together, we built a pile of rocks over his fresh grave. Standing back, it looked nice. Intentional and artful.

Dad and I returned to the house and spoke for a bit about the funerals we had attended. So much loss these past years. My mother-in-law. My miscarriages. Parents of friends. And now Max. Dad retreated to the television. I fetched the still-miserable Sophia and left, desperately needing some time alone.

Goodbye Max, Mr. Bootles, Max-a-million, Gluteous Maximus, the Notorious C-A-T. Goodbye my companion of 14 years. Goodbye my pet. I love you.

I decided to re-post this blog, originally posted in April 2008, inspired by Buddy: How a Rooster Made Me a Man a memoir by Brian McGrogry. Brian's story of how he had to euthanize his dog brought back the sadness and the awful decision I had to make five years ago. Please join my online book club, From Left to Write on November 21 as we discuss Buddy: How a Rooster Made Me a Man. Other bloggers will similarly share posts inspired by the book. As a member of From Left to Write, I received a copy of the book for review purposes. You can find the book here.

First [Bad] Words

noreply@blogger.com (Melissa ) — Sun, 17 Nov 2013 19:24:00 +0000

Sophie and I were putting together a truly phenomenal feat of engineering, the Lego Friends Dolphin Cruiser, when her hand slipped as she was pushing down hard on a piece. She scraped her hand as the piece dropped to the floor.

“Dammit,” Sophie said.

Let me add, that it was said with the cool confidence of someone who has uttered these words a thousand times. There was no sidelong glance my way, to see how I would react.

Thus, it was immediately clear to me that she thought it was fine to say Dammit. That this is something someone would naturally say when sustaining a lego injury. It was also clear that this was me. All me. The intonation. The word choice. I, of course, say dammit.

I think of it as the softer side of “fuck.”

So, now I was faced with a choice. Do I bring the profane nature of the word to her attention, risking making a big deal of it and thus reinforcing future use of the word. Or do I ignore it, and, perhaps in doing so, am complicit in allowing such behavior, increasing the likelihood that it will occur again, however innocently.

Always one to make a stink when there is an opportunity to do so, I went with option A.

“Sophie!” I exclaimed. “That’s a bad word. It’s like stupid. I realize that I may say it from time to time, but that doesn’t make it right. I will try not to say it, and I don’t want you to say it again either, okay?”

“Okay, I’ll try my very best” she said, not taking her eyes off her careful assembly of a tiny brick oven. Not convincing.

Just then, Kevin walked in. His eyes said, “Are you kidding me?” He had heard everything. My eyes wearily replied, “Yeah, I know.”

I imagined the deluge of bad language to follow. All the tiny words that slip in moments of frustration and pain.

Just days away from her 6^th birthday, she said her very first swear. There’s another one for the baby books. One that marks the beginning of a decent? Up until this point, all the milestones have been steps in the right direction: walking, talking, toilet training…. And now the first bad word…what other naughtiness is destined to follow?

What a Drag It Is Getting Old

noreply@blogger.com (Melissa ) — Sat, 09 Nov 2013 01:36:00 +0000

I just sat here for about five minutes trying to remember what it was I was going to write about. I had started to write it in my head this morning—always a mistake to not write it down. I’m sure all my best ideas have been lost to malfunctioning, inept, or rotting neurons.

The great irony? It was, of course, about forgetting. Or rather, forgetting being the key developmental milestone of aging. There comes a time, in life, when the developmental firsts are fewer and farther between.

Initially in life, they come so quickly, one can hardly keep up—holding one’s head up independently, rolling over, grabbing at objects, sitting up unassisted, up on all fours, crawling, pulling up, standing, stepping, walking all over your parents. Not to mention the verbal milestones…babbling, sounds in imitation, first words, two-word phrases, sentences....

Then, they slow down. Baby books are abandoned. The first tooth is lost. The first word is read. And then many years later, the first period, first kiss…first heartbreak. And as you make your way into your twenties they come even more slowly…the first job, the first apartment, the first marriage. All this while, you’re still growing, still developing in important ways.

And then suddenly you aren’t. Suddenly you find yourself saying to your daughter:

“Sophia, can you please help me find the raspberries. I know I had half a box of them. I gave you some in your lunch this morning, and then I put the rest of them away. But I can’t find them for the life of me.”

Sophie peeks into the fridge, lackadaisically moves an item or two and says, “I don’t see them either, Mom.”

I keep looking, exasperated. What the hell could I have done with them? Five minutes later, after a fruitless search, I give up.

The next day, I’m making breakfast and I open up one of the cabinets. There, sitting atop the dishes are the raspberries, room temperature, but in tact. I feel a touch of panic in my stomach. I have started to go backwards. I have developmental decay.

Isn’t this how it started for my grandmother? She thought people were coming out of her television to steal her food. That’s what she said, once we started noticing something was wrong. Once we intervened. What came before that? What were the earliest signs? I show Kevin the raspberries and make him promise, for the third time that month, that he will change my diapers, when, inevitably, I will no longer be able to control my bodily functions.

“It’s just stress. You’re doing too much,” Kevin assures me, adding the raspberries to his cereal.

“You’re evading the question.” I note. “Just say yes.”

“Yes,” says Kevin, rolling his eyes, and, likely crossing his fingers behind his back. I just know he is going to put me in a home.

Since that time, when I have an episode of forgetting—I misplace my keys, I can’t remember why I walked into the room, I forget to go to the gymnastics make up class I scheduled because I forgot to take Sophie to the original gymnastics class, Kevin smirks and says, “Raspberries!”

Easy for him to say, as he has yet to break 40, and to my knowledge, has never left fruit where it doesn’t belong. I give him my most exasperated smile, but underneath I feel a twinge of fear. I just was getting the hang of life. I’m not ready to start aging.

Oh, I suppose there are still many firsts ahead—but I’m ready to stop running towards the next milestone. I spent so many years wanting to grow up, to be older and able to do more. Now, here I am—making up the rules, paying the bills, calling the shots—and I want to push pause. Not go back, but stand still and enjoy life in the middle.