Psssst! Over Here!

I’m over at the Our Stories Blog today.

[And thanks to Commonplace Book for alerting me to Daniel Menaker's essay in the first place.]

Also, I implore you to go read Kate Hahn’s Godzilla’s Food, Exercise, and Dream Diary at McSweeney’s today. It starts:

12:58 AM: Breakfast: Two schools of fish from Tokyo Bay. Calories: 782,000. How I was feeling when I ate this: confused, irradiated, hating my size.

Good stuff. Good stuff.

Seahorses and those damn Maclaren strollers*

We’re sitting on the couch; Sweet Cheeks is watching our old football team whip our new football team’s ass, and I’ve just finished watching Away We Go on the laptop with earphones.

This has been a really difficult parenting weekend for us. Pitter’s defiance, fussing, and violence towards Patter has us feeling totally incompetent and like we’re chasing our tales. I don’t know why he doesn’t just throw on his leather jacket, grab a pack of smokes, and take off on his hog to go bash some skulls in. Probably because he still needs us to pour milk in his cereal and change his nighttime diaper.

Time outs. Redirection. One-on-one time. Exercise outdoors. Constructive activities. Children’s Museum. And then screaming. And swatting on the butt (I know. I know.) Also, DVDs.

Some of it worked, most of it didn’t. Additionally, if Pitter doesn’t nap, he’s in psychotic meltdown mode by 4 pm, BUT he’s fast asleep by 8. If he does nap, we get a brief break, Patter lives another day, and Sweet Cheeks and I remain married…but the tradeoff is that he’s up till 9 or 10 and manages to wake up his little brother and we have to talk ourselves down from strangling him. Whenever I feel like we can get through it, I look at my sweet Patter and realize he’s going to turn into this monster in a few years and we have to do it all over again. And then I die.

It’s been tough. Seriously, soul-crushing tough.

Away We Go nearly broke my heart with all of its pregnant wishing and dreaming and searching. My God, it’s been so long since I’ve sat on a train in another place, Sweet Cheeks beside me, our future snaking out before us. So long since we’ve had time to sit and hear each other breathe, and reflect and wonder about our place in the world and spin tales of our sweet babies to come.

In the movie, the reality of raising a young family is well-reflected in the stories of the families the main characters visit in their journeys. The couple in Montreal who has adopted children because they can’t keep a pregnancy reminded me of all I take for granted. (And the scene where the wife sadly pole-dances while her husband talks about miscarriages is truly soul crushing.) Later, the brother whose wife has left him and his daughter reminded me of the devastation I would leave behind were I to run away. (Yep. When I feel cornered and tortured for too long, I dream of escape.)

So after watching this film at the end of a long weekend, I say this to the two young childless couples I caught cooing at the Children’s Museum over Pitter and Patter, who looked totally adorable in full dinosaur costumes as they scuttled about dinosaur nests playing with plush eggs:

You are catching a view that is representative of 20% of our world. It is a gorgeous 20%, a 20% so powerful and concentrated in its inspiration that it allows us the courage to get of bed each day and face the other 80%.

Some days you’ll be inventive and sing songs to quell a fussy child, and when there’s insane screaming during clothing and diaper changes, Gandhi-like patience will swell through you and you’ll coo and blow on bellies. Other days, or even hours later, you’ll put your face in your hands and feel like a failure and yearn for silence and a shower and a hug. And then the little one will blow you a kiss and grin a toothy smile and run over for a hug, and the 20% will glitter before you and give you strength.

But I’m not going to lie. There’s no pat ending. 80% is a lot of percentage points. It’s really hard.

*If you haven’t seen the film, this title will make little sense. If you have, may I also add, POUCHES and IT ALSO COMES IN BLUE? Away We Go is also really funny in spots. I’m curious about what you think. If you saw the movie, do you think being or not being a parent contributed to your opinion of it?

Dear Santa

I am writing to tell you that you may need to skip our house this year. Pitter’s regular naughtiness is reaching new heights.

Please note:

He uses Words We Do Not Want To Hear and refuses to follow directions to leave the room and go say them somewhere else to say them (if he must), claiming that he is “afraid” to be alone. Cursing + Loud Whining + Children Who Cry Wolf = Killing Me Slowly.

He repeatedly slams doors open and shut so hard that three rooms in the house now have holes in the wall from the handles hitting them. I look so forward to repairing that drywall in all my spare time! Can’t wait!

He wrestles and kicks his little brother in the head at least six times a day. When anyone cries because he has hurt them, he laughs and says it is funny. Additionally, he has thrown me “in the trash!” for doing or saying things he doesn’t like so many times now, I consider it a second home. In fact, I kind of like it in there. It smells a little and the walls are sticky, but I’ve set up a nice floor pillow and have a stash of wine and books. But don’t tell Pitter about that. He still needs to stop threatening to treat people like garbage.

Expect an update on this soon, Mr. Claus. Two lumps of coal may be in order.

xo

+++++++++++++++++++

Tonight, as I spent approx. 85 seconds putting a diaper and pajamas on Patter, Pitter poured a gallon of water out of the bathtub after I explicitly told him to not splash. And while I diapered and pajamad Pitter, Patter dumped a box of toys all over the room and littered three rooms with diapers. And this was after a day chock-full of the aforementioned activities.

Am I asking too much? I don’t know. But at this point in parenthood, I am quite certain the Santa/Coal myth was created to terrify the crap out of 3.5 year olds.

So when I threatened to send the above letter to Santa, it most certainly did make Pitter cry. Oh yes it did. And do I feel bad about that? Only a little.

[And before you pity Pitter for having a mean Mommy, I will share that ten minutes after his tears dried, he announced that he would erase any such letter I sent to Santa. "Mommy: It says in my story, 'Pitter will press the NO button and Santa will not get that letter.'" Do you see what I am dealing with?]

this year I remember

her name was Fiona.

Reading Update. Because There’s Nothing More Interesting to You Than What I Am Currently Reading.

I am the Queen of All Genres, the Indecisive Persnickity Reader, and I seem to Require a Book for All of Life’s Moments.

I don’t think I’ve had my grubby little hands in this many books at once since I was in college. I have reading ADD or something:

War Journal by Richard Engel

This is about his time in Iraq from 2003-2007, and is much more political/factual than the previous Fist in the Hornet’s Nest, which read much like a memoir. Journal is informative but pretty heavy reading. I’ve been hitting 5-10 page of this a night as I nurse Patter to drowsiness/sleep.

The Best Short Stories 2007, Edited by Salmon Rushdie

God, I’ve been reading this collection for months now. At first I whipped through a few stories and felt inspired to write short fiction again. This plot is ripped from the headlines~I can do that! This one is utterly fantastic and dreamlike~I could do that! And then some time passed, and I picked it up again, and I got depressed. I’ll never write like this. And I would have a terrible time falling asleep, feeling inadequate and trying to come up with a new goal in life. So, yeah. It’s taking a while to get through this. But the stories are great. Really.

The Man Who Invented Christmas: How Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol Rescued His Career and Revived Our Holiday Spirits, by Lee Standiford

My father gave this to me for Christmas last year, and I figure, t’is the season. So far I’ve used it as Emergency Children are Napping the Car Far from Home reading, and when I use the pumping room at work. So I’m 50 pages in and no where near Dickens creating Scrooge McDuck.

I’m learning all kinds of interesting things about early publishing houses and author/house relationships, and am reminded that the college class I took titled something like, Dickens and Suffering in Victorian England was taught by an instructor who was way too sentimental about debtors’ prisoners and unclaimed corpses and the poverty of people who are long dead. I donno. Maybe I thought people in Africa currently dying of AIDS deserved more of our tears. This is probably why I only got a B+.

Anyway. I bet you didn’t know that Dickens  and his wife visited America for the first time in 1842, a mere four years after the first steamship trip across the Atlantic. (Imagine flying in a commercial plane only four years after the first flight. Eeek.) And, Catherine Dickens left her children behind in England with her sister. Her FOUR children, including a SEVEN month old baby. The travel + the American tour was five and half months long. Clearly there was a wet nurse involved here. Bye, kids! C-Ya! Mommy will blow you a first birthday kiss from across the ocean! 

I can’t decide if Catherine was totally crazy and negligent, or if her decision to take a near-six month vacay with Charlie was a stroke of brilliance. Hey Sweet Cheeks, want to run off to Hawaii and leave the kids with my mom till May? Not an entirely awful proposition, is it?

Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ’s Childhood Pal, by Christopher Moore

Hadn’t heard of it until a book club pal handed it to me. Clearly missed out on a pop culture moment several years ago when this one became the talk of the town. I’m 40 pages in and really enjoying the writing, creativity, humor, and the poignant moments. I’m reading this when I nurse Patter for his afternoon nap. Vs. bedtime reading. See? Entirely different purpose/book.

And finally, some memoir about a guy who relates all of his childhood stories to movies.
I started this one in August, the weekend of the triathlon. Brought it home with me from Chicago and haven’t opened it since. It may sit a while longer.

In the next few weeks, I’ll start The House on Fortune Street, by my former graduate school prof, Margot Livesey, for my book club.

Clearly, I need to STOP THE MADNESS. Or at least not watch TV until 2010.

What’s on your night stand? Do you read one or two books at a time like most sane people, or are you on the path to insanity like me? See you there!