What's Wrong?

 “You think I’m too messy, but you don’t think Clayton is too neat!” Dee Dee wails.

This outburst comes at the end of a recurring fight, in which Clayton is infuriated by Dee Dee’s mess and Dee Dee, in turn, is enraged by Clayton lobbing her toys into her room and bossing her to tidy up. Their father, annoyed by their constant bickering, tells Clayton flatly that he is “too neat” and Dee Dee that she is “too messy,” and charges them with finding a way to live together.

Clayton immediately seeks me out in the kitchen.

“I don’t think it’s possible to be too neat. Is it?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “Maybe.” I think of my Italian roommate, Fabiana, who regularly cleaned the inside of the kitchen drain with a toothbrush and asked me to go outside to brush my hair, lest any fallen strands contaminate the bedroom.

“But am I too neat?” Clayton persists.

The diplomatic answer would be no answer, or a noncommittal shrug. After all, Don and I are supposed to be a united front. But I can’t help valuing Clayton’s sense of order and our shared appreciation of a tidy house.

“Am I?”

I shake my head wordlessly, not realizing that Dee Dee is watching me like a hawk. She buries her face in her hands.

“You don’t think Clayton is too neat, but you think I’m too messy,” she cries through her fingers.

“I never said that!” I backpedal desperately. “You’re just different! I love how creative you are, all the crafts you—”

“But you still think I’m too messy!”

I remember when the kids were very little, and I’d be pushing the twins in the double stroller with two-year-old Clayton on my back. The diaper bag would be packed as if for an apocalypse, my shirt stained with breastmilk, my shoulders knotted as tree branches under the perpetual pressure of the Ergo straps. Seeing me, moms with older kids would nod sympathetically.

“Don't worry, it gets easier—” they would begin, before shaking their heads and giving an apologetic shrug. “Actually, I'm not sure if it does.”

I would smile and nod amiably, but secretly, I wondered. How could it not get easier? Maybe they just felt guilty that they were out of the trenches, while I was still clambering over barbed wire and dodging mines in No Man’s Land. Or maybe mothering young children is a bit like childbirth; we know that it is laborious and painful without being able to remember, precisely, what that pain and labor felt like.

Now that my kids are older, I can almost understand what those moms meant. I would never dare say that to a new mom, though, as there are certain things— certain important things— that do get a great deal easier. After all, you do eventually sleep through the night (barring a senile dog who scratches at the bedroom door, not remembering that he just went out an hour ago). Meals never cease to be a daily chore, but at least now putting food on the table is the extent of your responsibility; you are no longer charged with both putting it on the table and spackling it between your offspring’s toothless gums.

But while the physical labor of childrearing has undeniably lessened, I am finding it harder and harder these days to navigate the emotional map of living with three emotionally complex youngsters. If it’s not “You think I’m too messy,” it’s tears because “You’re mad at me,” or a gloomy moodiness that has no discernable cause at all.

Because, let’s face it, humans are complicated, emotional creatures. With five of these creatures living in the same shared space, our moods and emotions are bound to bump up against each other. They are also hopelessly intertwined.

After one lengthy conversation about why Clayton can’t be as nice to Dee Dee as he is to Sylvia, he confesses, “I love Dee Dee, but I just worry that she’s better than me.” There is no amount of heart-to-heart discussions about multiple intelligences and different individual strengths that can quell this fear, that can rip out this awful, gnarled nugget of “I cannot measure up.” I know, because I’ve been chipping away at mine for decades, and I can still feel it in there if I press hard enough.

Nor can I take from Dee Dee the persistent longing that seems lodged in her soul. Dee Dee just yearns. She yearns for understanding and praise and compassion. She yearns for a best friend, a cat, a place of her own. Mostly, she yearns to escape the limitations of her eight-year-old self. She wants her crafts to turn out exactly as they look in her mind’s eye. She wants to stop wallowing in the uncertainty of her future and just be a teacher already, a baker, a chemist, a writer. She wants to have done with the murkiness of childhood and get started on her life’s work. And because she can’t, because she’s stuck, for now, in the life of a child, she gets started on the next best thing, which inevitably involves a hot glue gun, some clothespins, and a little mess.

Sylvia has always been my laid-back child, my go-with-the-flow, happy-go-lucky girl. But I am slowly learning that beneath this easy-going surface, she has her own emotional depths and potholes, and they are all the more surprising because I stumble into them unexpectedly. With Dee Dee, a harsh word will bring an immediate torrent of tears, as if a floodgate has been opened for the sole purpose of letting you know just how miserable she is. (If she is sent to her room, she simply ups the volume on her sobs, lest you forget that she is wounded and misunderstood.) Sylvia, on the other hand, licks her wounds in private. I will find her in her bed after a quiet half hour, dismayed to find that she has been crying all that time because she thought I was mad about a less-than-perfect grade on a progress report, or some slight reprimand that she took unexpectedly to heart.

My father once said— of being chair of the engineering department— that he spent most of his days “putting out fires.” I find that that it is a good metaphor for motherhood, too. Between the rinsing out of lunch boxes and the matching of dozens of little white socks, I am often caught up in a whirlwind of consoling, encouraging, mediating, and sympathizing. Sometimes I find myself thinking longingly of the time when my children's grief was less complicated and could be assuaged with a handful of baby cheese puffs, a quick nurse, or a few refrains of "Twinkle Twinkle."

And while I find the old adage mostly true, that a mother can never be happy if her children are sad, it seems that, in my home at least, the inverse is equally true. If I slump in my chair with an exhausted sigh, or groan out loud about some frustration— the plumber still hasn’t called me back, or the washing machine is leaking again— my children immediately want to know what's wrong. Clayton, especially, constantly monitors my moods.

"Momma, are you happy?" he will ask, mostly when he suspects I'm not.

And even if I'm grumpy or tired or annoyed with the plumber, I always nod and tell him that I am. And it's true. Because I find that happiness is like the overstuffed diaper bag of old. All the frustrations and discontent and melancholy and regret can somehow be crammed inside that big, old bag of happy.

"Yes, I'm happy," I assure him. "Are you?"

Dee Dee's Thinking Place

 

“When are you going to write a blog about me?” Dee Dee asked me the other day.

“I’ve written blogs about you,” I said defensively. But, really, when was the last time I wrote about Dee Dee? When she was younger, the same antics that made her such a handful— spackling the furniture with her poop, dashing through parking lots at top speed—also made for good stories. Now that Dee Dee has grown into herself, she is much harder to put into words.

“It seems like Dee Dee has the role of the troublemaker in your family,” a family friend observed to me recently, having just been regaled by Sylvia with the “poop as spackle” story. “Is that true?”

I nodded reflexively, and felt a momentary satisfaction at having it laid out so neatly. Dee Dee was a troublemaker. But was it true? Certainly the old stories and photographs back it up: Dee Dee stealing Elmo from a tearful Sylvia, Dee Dee upending a pound bag of shredded cheese onto the kitchen table and eating it by the fistful, Dee Dee emptying entire shelves of books onto the floor at the library.

Now, it’s not exactly trouble that Dee Dee makes. Clayton would say it’s messes. The remnants of Dee Dee’s projects are forever sullying the house. Last Friday, when she stayed home sick from school and was losing her mind with boredom, she ventured outside with a ziploc bag on which she had printed “Signs of Fall” in neat letters. (Two previous attempts lay on the counter: “Sings of Fall” and “Signns of Fall.”) When she came back ten minutes later, she had collected an autumn leaf, a strip of bark, a piece of charcoaled wood from the firepit, and a shred of styrofoam she had pulled off a pool noodle destined for the attic until next June.

It was a good, wholesome idea: creative, outdoorsy, self-initiated. But it’s things like that that drive Clayton a little crazy. In her brother’s world, every item should have its place, and where exactly is the spot for a thing like that? In Dee Dee’s world, it doesn’t matter. Having executed her idea, she’s done with it. She’s already on to the next thing, and she certainly doesn’t want to hear about the permanent marker she left out on the counter or the fact that her “Signs of Fall” are now cluttering up the coffee table.

If there’s any one word that describes Dee Dee, it’s busy. She is always up to something: making shrines for the pets who have passed away, throwing butter-making parties for her stuffed animals, dressing up Alexa for Halloween, mixing up “science experiments” in mason jars. While Sylvia searches the internet for videos of girls taking care of their dolls, Dee Dee looks for craft ideas and science projects.

Last night, inspired by something she saw on “5-minute Craft Ideas,” she mixed up yet another concoction in a glass jar: water, blue food coloring, and glitter glue. The effect was striking; ribbons of silver glitter swirled in the turquoise water.

“I think I’ll take this to show my teacher tomorrow,” Dee Dee said proudly, holding the jar up to the light.

“Hey, can I see that?” Sylvia asked her, already reaching for it.

Maybe Sylvia’s hands were still slippery from the bath; maybe the hand-off was not what it should have been. But Sylvia’s words still hung in the air as the jar crashed to the floor and shattered across the dining room. Glittery blue water streamed across the tiles.

My eyes shot to Dee Dee’s face. Would she be crushed, her precious craft destroyed so soon? But Dee Dee looked almost relieved; for once, the mess wasn’t entirely her fault. She tiptoed around the shards of glass to rummage in the craft supplies. Was there any more glitter glue? She would just make another one tomorrow.

That’s the other thing about Dee Dee. She lives in the present. Clayton and I shake our heads, for as much as she loves books, she never seems to finish one. Everytime I look, she has a different book in hand.

“What about The Cats of Tanglewood Forest?” I ask her. “Did you finish that one?”

“No,” she says, turning the page in Wings of Fire. “I’m just reading this now.”

Again, Clayton can’t stand it. “You have to finish it, Dee Dee!” he bosses her. In his mind, the dozens of books she hasn’t finished are just another form of Dee Dee’s general clutter.

“This is just the way I read,” Dee Dee answers defiantly. She doesn’t put Wings of Fire down and reach for another book just to annoy him, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it had crossed her mind.

Dee Dee is complicated. She can be moody and emotional, bursting into tears at the smallest reprimand or burying herself with cushions on the couch, her mouth a perfect frown.

“What’s wrong, Deeds?” I ask her, trying to conceal my exasperation.

“I don’t know!” she wails.

This is frustrating for both of us. In Dee Dee’s opinion, she is entitled to her moods. After all, she can’t help how she feels. But having her mope around the house like a preteen is unsettling for everyone. I can certainly recall my own moody spells at that age, but I remember them being more private than hers— moping in my own room or the backyard, for example, not the living room. I’ve considered asking Dee Dee to go to her room if she’s going to be sullen, but it doesn’t feel like a very kind option. Ever since Sylvia’s baby dolls moved into their room, Dee Dee really doesn’t like going in there alone.

At bedtime, Dee Dee is often troubled by the many thoughts swirling in her head. I put my lips against her temples and her forehead and pretend to suck them out so she can sleep. Immediately, her face relaxes.

“You’re the best mother in the world,” she says.

I remember when Clayton was a baby, and I was not yet pregnant with the girls. A friend with a young daughter came to visit, and at one point we were all in a public restroom, each in our own stall.

“Mommy?” I heard the little girl say. I waited for what was coming. Did she need help? Did she need toilet paper?

“Yes, sweetheart?” her mother answered.

“I love you.”

Oh, I thought, so that’s what it’s like to have a daughter.

But not just any daughter. Sylvia, although loving in her own way, does not gush. Dee Dee gushes. “I love you,” she tells me easily a dozen times a day. At one point, she was saying it so much, we agreed on a code word, so she could express the feeling without wearing out the words.

Now when we go for walks, she grabs my hand. “Tomato,” she says urgently.

“Tomato,” I tell her.

Of all my children, Dee Dee reminds me the most of my own childhood self. Although not horse-crazy like I was, she loves animals with a fierce passion; when we are away from home, even if only for a weekend, she misses the pets desperately. She also yearns, like I did, for a special place of her own. Yesterday, while Clayton and Sylvia did their math homework, Dee Dee— whose blessed teacher does not believe in homework—carefully made a sign: “Dee Dee’s Secret Thinking Place.”

“It’s not going to be very secret if it has a sign,” Clayton pointed out, reading over her shoulder.

Dee Dee huffed in exasperation, but quietly redid the sign: “Dee Dee’s Thinking Place.”

Later, as we walked the dogs, Dee Dee asked me casually, “Do you think we could ever build a little house?”

“How big a little house?” I asked, imagining the fairy houses we used to make from sticks in the woods behind the house.

But that was not what Dee Dee had in mind. “Oh, about this big,” she said, and she held one hand over her head and stretched the other in front of her. “Somewhere where I could have a little shelf for my books, and a chair, and maybe a little desk?”

We will never build a little house, I thought sadly. But then, suddenly, I was inspired. Last weekend, I emptied out the closet downstairs so that I could pull up the carpet in the office. Underneath the stairs and still mostly empty, it is the perfect thinking place. It even has a little shelf for her books. I told Dee Dee she could use it, if she wanted.

Her face lit up. “And it will really be mine?” she asked pleadingly.

I hesitated. The house doesn’t have enough closets for all three of my children. But Clayton has his own room, and Sylvia—well, Sylvia just doesn’t yearn for that sort of thing.

“Yes,” I said. “It can be yours. I’ll help you get it set up this weekend.”

“Oh, Momma, really?” she said. “Thank you so much!”

I often think that I would give the world for my children, but in that moment, it was like I really had. 

Labors of Love

 

Two months ago, one of my best friends asked if we could meet her family over Labor Day weekend at a campground near the Grayson Highlands in western Virginia. At the time, it had seemed like a great idea: quality time with dear friends in a gorgeous area we’d been to only once before. But I had not reckoned on the exhaustion we would all feel after the first week back at school, especially a week in which the usual beginning-of-the-year chaos was compounded by a dead refrigerator, a new kitten, and three trips to the orthodontist for a palatal expander that “just collapsed” in Dee Dee’s mouth three hours after being installed.

By Thursday (day six without a fridge), the thought of packing up all the gear and taking the kids camping by myself—Don would stay home to receive the new refrigerator and take care of the kitten—was more than a little daunting.

I hated to disappoint the kids, though, so I broached the idea with them, inwardly hoping that they, too, might be longing for a relaxing, three-day weekend at home. But what child ever, when asked, “Do you want to go camping?” hasn’t answered with a resounding yes? Certainly not mine. Only Sylvia seemed hesitant, her forehead knit with worry.

“What’s wrong?” I asked. “You don’t want to go?”

But her reluctance was the same as mine.

“I want to go,” she said adamantly. “It’s just it’s so much work to get packed.”

“I’ll pack your clothes,” I reassured her, thinking that was what she meant.

“No,” she said, sighing. “It’s my babies. I have to pack for them.”

For the past few months, almost all of Sylvia’s free time has been taken up with baby care. Even out of earshot, I would not presume to call her careful routines of feeding and diapering “playing with dolls.” Taking care of her babies is serious business. For one, both Rebecca and Sparkle drink actual liquid. (Rebecca pees hers out as one would expect; Sparkle’s excretory system is limited to crying and the occasional upchuck.) Although both dolls are supposed to consume only water, Sylvia is constantly mixing up colorful concoctions for them to drink; Rebecca’s tiny diapers—which our dog, Soča, likes to tear to shreds and strew around the house—are disturbing shades of blue and red.

Like any new mom, Sylvia scours the internet for tips. From one youtube video, she learned that she could make “juice” by scribbling with marker on a paper towel and then dunking it in her baby’s bottle. For our camping trip, she calculates that she will need supplies for seven feedings; she packs two markers (tropical pineapple and orange) and seven small pieces of paper towels. Unfortunately she has run out of diapers; the babies will just have to pee in the woods like everybody else.

There was a time in my life that I would have ranked camping as the epitome of pleasure, a time when, given the opportunity, I would have opted for a sleeping bag on the ground over a bed between four walls every time. What happened? I have lived in North Carolina for fifteen years now, and for most of that time, I have blamed the climate and the terrain. Here there are no dry nights under canopies of brilliant stars. Here there are dripping trees and deluges that swamp your tent, and the stars, if they are out at all, are barely visible beyond the foliage.

This weekend, it occurred to me that it is not only the weather that makes the camping experience feel so different now. Yes, all the dampness gets to me, every surface spongy and moist and moss-covered. But the real difference is bigger than that: like Sylvia, now I have children to pack for and take care of.

One of the reasons camping used to feel so delightful was that it was so uncomplicated; everything I needed could be crammed into a fifty-pound pack on my back. Back then, camping was pure recreation. Now, going camping feels a little like being transported back in time. At home, the kids mostly take care of themselves. Using the bathroom, getting dressed, even having a bowl of cereal—all of these things have long since ceased to necessitate a parent’s involvement. But when we are camping, it’s “I need to pee!”, “Where are my clothes?” and “Where do I spit my toothpaste?” Suddenly my children’s most basic needs are my responsibility again.

Clayton and Dee Dee can’t understand Sylvia’s new preoccupation with taking care of her babies.

“It just doesn’t seem like fun,” Clayton complains, missing the days when Sylvia played Calico Critters with him or jumped on the trampoline. Even Sylvia gets worn down with the demanding regime of meal times and potty needs. Sometimes she puts her babies to bed early just so she can get a break.

“Do babies sometimes go to bed at six?” she asks me hopefully.

“Oh, yes,” I tell her. “Definitely.”

And yet, despite how exhausting their care can be for her, she keeps at it. She even decided not to do ballet this fall so she would have more time in the afternoon to take care of her babies. Clearly, all the work is meaningful for her, or these babies would be stowed away in the toy chest like so many other toys.

Sylvia used to say she wanted twelve children, but I think she’s changing her mind.

“I don’t know how you did it with three kids,” she tells me seriously as I kiss her good-night. “Even two babies is a lot of work.”

What Sylvia seems to understand—and what camping last weekend reminded me—is that the work is its own reward, each act of care really an act of love. Sylvia mixes glue, white paint and water to make “yogurt” for her babies, spends her allowance on outrageously-priced diapers, and changes her dolls into their pajamas religiously each evening. My own days of diapering and feeding behind me, I drive my kids to the orthodontist, consent to adopting a kitten, and spend my Saturday morning packing the car with sleeping bags and camping supplies. The tasks are different, it is true, but the love behind them is the same.

At one in the morning during our first night camping, Dee Dee wakes me with her flashflight.

“Momma? I need to pee.”’

We stagger out of the tent onto the moist ground, and I help her pull off her pajama bottoms. As soon as we are back inside, Sylvia needs to go, too. When we are all finally settled in our sleeping bags, I’m feeling the same satisfaction I used to feel when the kids were small: dry bottoms, check; everyone in bed, check. But now Sylvia can’t sleep; I can hear her muffled crying through my ear plugs.

“It’s too dark,” she says tearfully. Her flashflight turns itself off automatically, so she has to keep pushing the button every few minutes to ward off the dark. I turn on my headlamp and hang it in the overhead pocket of the tent. I stroke her hair, find Rebecca in the sea of sleeping bags, and lie that it will be morning soon.

It isn’t. I sleep fitfully for the next few hours, and make several more trips outside the tent alone, my middle-aged bladder one more reason sleeping outside isn’t quite as much fun as it used to be. Finally, Clayton wakes up for his own potty break.

“It’s okay, Mom,” he tells me bravely. “You don’t need to come with me.” He is empathy incarnated.

I unzip the tent for him and hold the flashlight; he does his business and then reappears just beyond the screen.

“Actually, I need to poop,” he says apologetically. “But I can go by myself.”

“Oh, no. I’m coming with you.”

On our last camping trip, Clayton had ventured to the bathroom by himself during a rainstorm in the wee hours of the morning. Not wanting to flush the toilet while he was alone because of the scary sound it made, he had waited in the stall for some time until another grown-up happened to come in. Having heard that story, there is no way I’m letting him go by himself this time.

I feel around in the tent for my pants and headlamp. Dee Dee stirs, sees us leaving, and hurries after us, stumbling over Sylvia in her sleeping bag.

“Come on, Syl,” I say. “We’re going to the bathroom. I guess you’d better come, too.”

We walk down the narrow road toward the bathroom. The kids are chatty and cheerful, as if pleased to have survived the night, and I begin to suspect that, despite the dark, morning is not far off. Above us, the trees are black silhouettes against a star-splattered sky.

“It’s so beautiful,” Dee Dee says, awed, and for a moment we all walk with our heads tilted backwards. Clayton and Dee Dee hold my hands; Sylvia holds her baby against her chest. For once I’m not comparing these little splotches of stars to the wide openness of skies out west. I am just grateful to be sharing this moment with my children, walking hand in hand on a rainless September night.

When we arrive at the bathroom, Sylvia hands me Rebecca.

“Do you mind taking care of her for a minute?” she asks.

“Not at all,” I tell her. “I’d love to.

Still a Yittle Boy

“Will I have to get rid of my stuffed animals soon?” Clayton asks as I lean over him at bedtime.

Under the covers, his animals create a topography of hills and valleys; brown glass eyes peer up at me. Two years ago, Clayton slept in a narrow strip of bed, perilously close to the edge, until Don and I installed a “stuffed animal shelf” above his bed. Now it only the beloved bear squad that gets to sleep in bed every night, with the half a dozen others that get rotated in. Sometimes, however, the animals on the shelf take matters into their own paws and dive onto the bed even when it’s not their turn. They like it better, Clayton says.

We are at the cusp of something. In bed, Clayton’s body is impossibly long; his feet are as big as mine. And yet I am reminded of when Clayton was two and well-meaning friends would look at him and say, “You’re such a big boy now, Clayton!”

“No, I’m yittle!” he would protest. “I’m a yittle boy!”

When I dropped off a book at the library the other day, a poster caught my eye: “Stuffed Animal Sleepover at the Library.”  Cool, I thought, immediately hooked. I bet my kids would love to sleep over at the library with a stuffed animal.

But I was wrong. The event was exactly what was advertised: the sleepover was for stuffed animals alone. Also, it was over; pictures of stuffed animals reading books and playing hide-and-go-seek were in a binder by the check-out.

That night, when I told Clayton about it, his eyes grew bright. I watched as he surveyed his host of stuffed animals. Who would like a library sleepover the most?

“We’ll do it next year,” I told him.

But as I kissed him good-night, my heart clenched. Next year. Was it possible? Would Clayton still want to take a stuffed animal to a sleepover next year?

I recently read Wonder by R.J. Palacio. The book is touching on so many levels, but what I liked best about it was that it didn’t shy away from the details of little boyhood. The main characters are all in fifth grade. They change classes and use lockers. They have crushes and “go out” with girls. And yet, August’s mom still lies down next to him at bedtime, and when he’s upset, he covers himself in a mountain of stuffed animals and waits for her to find him.

For me, so much of the poignancy of the book comes from how fragile and fleeting that boyhood seems. In Wonder, August’s coming of age is inseparable from his transition from the protective bubble of home school to the harsher realities of middle school. One wonders, for instance, if he begins to relinquish his attachment to his favorite stuffed animal simply because he is getting older, or because, now in school, he has internalized the judgement of his peers.  

Clayton, too, is not immune to these concerns. Although he still plays with Calico Critters with enthusiasm— “I feel so happy when I play with them!” he told me last week— he will not claim them when others are around. Privately, however, he is unabashed in his loves: fairies and leprechauns, stuffed animals and Sofia the First. In our home, at least, he still gets to be a “yittle” boy.

I think of the Dar William’s song, When I Was A Boy, which resonated with me so much when I first heard it in the early nineties. The female character in the song balks at gender’s dictates and mourns her lost childhood, when she rode her bike topless and climbed anything she could. Now, it is the verse in which her male friend talks about his boyhood that brings tears to my eyes:

When I was a girl, my mom and I, we always talked

And I picked flowers everywhere that I walked

And I could always cry, now even when I'm alone I seldom do

And I have lost some kindness

But I was a girl, too.

Maybe it is the triumph of our times that skinned knees and climbing trees are no longer the markers of just boyhood. It is hard to imagine a girl today being judged harshly for playing sports or getting dirty. And yet the consequences of gender nonconformity are so much stricter for boys than for girls. Perhaps that is why the more feminine aspects of Clayton’s boyhood seem so imperiled by the passing of time. After all, Dee Dee and Sylvia will outgrow Sofia the First and Calico Critters, too. But somehow that certainty doesn’t wring my heart the way it does with Clayton.

When Don grows impatient with Clayton’s tears and sensitivity, and says he has got to toughen up, I want to take Clayton in my arms. It is far too easy to imagine a time when Clayton’s tears won’t come so easily, when his Calico Critters will move to a box in the attic, when I will no longer begin my afternoon workouts to the theme song from Sofia the First: “I was a girl in the village doing all right...”

So when Clayton asks if he’ll have to get rid of his stuffed animals soon, I am emphatic. I tell him no and never. I remind him I still have Cuddly Wuddly, that Uncle Stefan still has Mommy Monkey. But I know what he is getting at; I sense it, too. One day the dinosaur comforter that I pull around him every night will be gone, the bear squad regulated to the shelf above his bed. I can feel that time coming, and there is so little I can do.

I kiss Clayton good-night again and arrange his stuffed animals around him in the bed. This is all that I can do: cherish Clayton, treasure this time. You never know, maybe one of those bears will get to go on the stuffed animal sleepover next year. Still, when I turn off the light, my heart is so full, it hurts.

Take Care

            

Last night Sylvia told me that she wants her leg to break, and that she keeps trying to make it happen. When she is hanging upside down at recess, for example, she tries to let go of the bar, only to find it is impossible to do.
“Why do you want to break a leg?” I asked, although I was pretty sure I already knew.
“So you will care about me,” she said matter-of-factly.
“But we do—” I started to protest.
“Oh, I know you care about about me,” she cut me off. “But you know. Really care.”

Sylvia’s right again; I do know. Sylvia wants our undivided attention, our un-distracted sympathy. I remember how I daydreamed about getting really sick when the kids were little. Part of it was I wanted nothing more than a reason to stay in bed all day; I was exhausted to the core. But it was more than that. After taking care of others day in and day out, my number one fantasy was for someone— anyone— to take care of me.
When the twins were infants and I felt conflicted about giving up my job, I started looking for ways to expand my world beyond the confines of home and family. Volunteer work seemed an obvious answer, and what simpler way to make a contribution than to finally give in to the Red Cross’ pleas for platelet donations?
Unlike giving blood, donating platelets often takes upwards of two hours. You lie in a chair with needles in both arms, making it impossible to hold, or do, anything at all. It came as no surprise to me, even then, that that was exactly the kind of meaningful “work” I wanted to do.
           I said as much to a technician once, as she adjusted my television screen. I told her that I had three little kids at home, so it was nice to do nothing for a change.
          “That’s just sad,” she said emphatically, shaking her head. “You have to come in here just to get a break?”
I laughed out loud, pleased by her compassion. But I also knew it was more than that. Sure, it was nice to lie back and watch a movie in the middle of the afternoon. But even nicer was the care they took. When I was cold, they brought me heated blankets and tucked them carefully around my legs. When I was thirsty, they held a cup for me, and when my lips began to tingle because of the falling calcium in my blood, they brought me Tums and fed me pretzels one by one.
Was it sad, I wonder? Once, when my blood pressure dropped too low, there was a flurry of activity around my chair. Concerned faces hovered over me, and I began to cry.
“That’s good,” one of the technicians said matter-of-factly. “Crying will help too.”
           Did they think I was crying because I was frightened by the dizziness? No, I cried out of weakness and out of gratitude, and the pure relief of being taken care of.

          It seems a very human need to me, this longing for care. Perhaps in communities in which people are less isolated than in ours, it is easier to come by. If my mom lived downstairs, for example, and I was sick or tired, she’d make me a cup of tea and tell me to go lie down.
          Instead, we struggle on, alone. It does not surprise me that in our busy, isolating world, so many of us are willing to pay handsomely for such care. We can pay for someone to massage our backs, paint our toes, blow dry our hair. But the true care, the kind of love-in-action that Sylvia craves, that kind of care is harder to come by.
           A few years ago, when a good friend turned forty, she told me she had decided to give herself forty days of self-care.  A walk, a bath, a latte, flowers... Every day she would do something nice for herself. At the time, Clayton was four and the girls were two, and while I liked the idea, I couldn’t bring myself to add one more obligation to the daily to-do list. But this year, I remembered what she’d said. Forty-four days of self care? Could I manage it now?
          I told the kids about it.
         “What did you do today?” Clayton wanted to know.
          I told him I’d bought myself a cup of coffee. My husband, overhearing, laughed.
         “I do that all the time anyway,” he said.

          I didn’t make it to forty-four, or even forty. I stopped counting after day six. The demands of work and family asserted themselves; my resolved slackened. But today, bone-weary at only seven thirty, I let myself take a bath instead of cleaning the bathroom. There’s a desk of clutter to be cleared up downstairs, not to mention the never-ending laundry, but instead I made myself listen to my mother’s voice inside my head.
        “Why don’t you go lie down?” she said.
So I did.
         Perhaps one day I’ll make it to forty-four, after all.
     

I Want to Be Amazing!

 

When Sylvia was a toddler and caught her reflection in a mirror, a dark window, even the curvature of a spoon, she used to say, “Dee Dee in der! Dee Dee in der!” Was she too young to understand that it was her own image that she saw? Or was “Dee Dee” a generic name for any little Witsell girl, the way toddlers will call all four-legged animals “dog?” Maybe she and her twin were just so linked in her psyche that when she saw herself, she saw her sister.

Six years later, Sylvia has never stopped loving her own reflection. She often goes to our room to study herself in the full-length mirror there.

“Clayton and Dee Dee think I’m vain when I look in the mirror,” she explained to me seriously a few weeks ago. “But I’m not. I’m just excited.”

Her words elated me. Because isn’t this what we all want for our daughters? For them to look in the mirror and feel good— excited, even— about what they see? That person she sees in the mirror? Sylvia’s in there! How cool is that?

Clayton’s sense of self-worth is much more complicated.

“I don’t want to be just nine-years-old,” he told me last Friday. “I want to be amazing.”

Clayton is writing a book. At six thousand words and counting, it’s a real, book-length book, easily as long as any Magic Tree House or Junie B. Jones. Typing a six-thousand word story, hunting and pecking each letter at a time— even that much is an accomplishment. But Clayton wants no qualifiers. He doesn’t want his book to be “pretty good for a nine-year-old.” He wants it to be J.K. Rowling amazing, Rick Riordan amazing.

Clayton dreams of publishing. He wants the five star icons by his title on amazon, “National Bestseller” on the front cover, “Based on the novel by Clayton Witsell” on the big screen. Every day he asks me, “Do you think I’ll really publish my book?”

With my own e-stack of rejection letters mounting, it is not an easy question.

“You can always self-publish,” I hedge. I tell him about The Martian and Still Alice, both best-sellers that were originally self-published.

He nods, not entirely convinced. Like me, he wants the validation of traditional publishing.

“I think I’ll still try to send it to real publishers first,” he says. “Do you think there’s a chance someone will publish it?”

Last weekend, I saw a friend I hadn’t seen in nine years. In the interim, she’s earned her Ph.D., gotten a coveted professorship in Australia, completed “a couple” of Half Ironman triathlons, and become a competitive tennis player. And what have I done, I wondered? No Ph.D., no publishing credits, certainly no Half Ironmans or tennis tournaments. Instead, I have three kids and an elliptical machine in the basement, where I squeeze in workouts before leaving the house for a job that offers minimal pay and only minutely more status.

I don’t want to be just forty-three years old, I can almost hear myself thinking. I want to be amazing!

Here, Clayton is the mirror I can hold up to myself. Because what was the first thing I thought when he said those words? Clayton, you are amazing! Of course I think it’s pretty awesome that he’s writing his first book at the age of nine (and, in my biased opinion, a pretty wonderful book at that), but that’s not why he’s amazing. Book or no book, published or not, he’d still be amazing.

At the bar where my friend and I are having a drink, the bartender searches for our tab. She can’t find my friend’s name in the computer, neither first nor last.

“Here it is!” she says finally. “It was under Doctor.” She arches her eyebrows playfully. “Aren’t you fancy?”

We all laugh good-naturedly, because my friend is anything but pretentious. But still I find myself wondering what it must be like to go through life like that, when even the person who rings up your tab knows something of your accomplishments.

It reminds me of an experience I had in graduate school, when, as a student volunteer, I had the opportunity to go to lunch with a visiting poet. I went through the meal in a state of nervous awe, determined not to say much lest I say something stupid, until finally it was over and we sat back, our empty dishes spread before us. That moment is still vivid in my mind, because just then the acclaimed poet reached into her empty water glass, snaking her fingers among the ice-cubes to reach the wedge of lemon at the bottom. It was exactly the kind of uncouth gesture I would have made had I not been on my best behavior for the poet, and it has stayed with me as a lesson on humanity: that even the most amazing people are human, are ordinary.

When it comes to my own life, though, I have been much more hesitant to accept that the inverse can also be true: that the ordinary can be amazing. Catching up with my friend, I worry that by her international, high-academia standards, my own life must seem boringly conventional. But when I admit this, she shakes her head emphatically. She tells me that, without children, she is constantly striving to find ways to truly make a difference in the lives of others. To her, the fact that I have children who bare their hearts to me is amazing.

Recently Clayton seems to have tempered his ambitions a little. He now says things like, “Do you think I can be as good as J.K. Rowling when I grow up?” Or, “Even books that not many people know about can be good, right?”

“Yes! Yes! Yes!” I say, to both of us.

Meanwhile I have found some of Sylvia’s school writing crumpled in her backpack:

It is hard not to smile at her unabashed self-love, unfiltered by any pretense of modesty. But, as in so many of the things my children say or do, I think there might be a lesson for me in all of this. For if his little sister teaches me about unconditional self-love, the question Clayton has raised is quite a bit more complicated: How do we strive to reach our dreams without our self-worth becoming impossibly tangled up with our successes... or the lack of them?

I think, for me, the answer is in both of my children. From Clayton, that the pursuit of our dreams is vitalizing and worthwhile, regardless of the outcome. From Sylvia, that it’s okay to love yourself for exactly who you are.