Category Archives: parenting

May 22, 2014 · 5:26 am

Musically Transported

Broken_CDs_by_Mikkaa87

It was always music, and not the sense of smell, that brought her memories closest to the surface of her conscious mind. Her playlists acted as time machines as she felt herself transported back through her memories and experiences to those moments when her inner soundtrack played. One song could stir-up the past in an explosion of emotion and a visceral recollection of a singular event in her life, or it could bring back the thoughts, sensations and perceptions of a period of time, a string of individual events that were all intricately tied together through the temporal tapestry of music.

She sat in a quiet alcove, earbuds carelessly pushing into her sense of the present, and was suddenly slapped across the face with the past, whipping her attention from the here and now and dragging her back 5 years in fractions of seconds. The library before her faded from her mind and was replaced by an image of a crumpled heap of desperation practically prone on the polished pine-wood floor of an empty room—the largest of the house—no indication of the furniture that used to be present excepting the tumbleweeds of dust and cat hair that had long collected where the vacuum hose could never quite reach. Beside her lay a dustbin, caught mid-sweep and half full of the remains of the life that had once been lived in this room.

Her stomach summersaulted within as she sat up, absorbing the scene before her eyes: an empty house occupied solely by ghosts of past conversations and the soft plaintive voice sounding through the stereo speakers. She wiped the tears—both shed and unshed—from her eyes with the back of one dirty hand and reminded herself that to live was to move on, to get past this moment in time, to never be conquered by the actions and attacks of others.

Unaware how much time had passed since the moving truck had pulled away, she knew only that time seemed to extend out interminably in the darkness before her causing waves of panic to ebb and flow through her mind. Swallowing back pride and nausea in equal measures, the woman got to her knees and then her feet, walking out of the room to locate the last remaining clock in the house, the electric blue light glowing from the kitchen stove.

One hour. She had one hour before she needed to collect the children from their grandparents’ house and bring them to a newly father-free dwelling. The baby would understand nothing but the raw emotion dripping from his mother’s heart; the child, however, she would know. She would realize and the mother needed to clean the room that had once held father’s computers, TVs and gaming equipment so she could encourage her daughter to create a new space designed just for the children, a playroom in which all of their joys could obscure the memories of past tension.

Walking back into the empty room, the woman picked up the broom and swept the remnants of the past into piles to be collected and thrown out.

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May 12, 2014 · 1:07 pm

The Choice

love belly

image by Adam Selwood

 

Fingers splayed wide and palm protectively pressed to her belly, she stood, shocked into silence, staring at the stranger before her, a stranger who, until moments before, had been her husband. Her eyes were wide and surely her jaw was dropped—that’s what people said happened in moments of utter disbelief—as the cyclone whirled inside her head, bouncing thoughts around haphazardly, collecting unrelated debris and shattering existing intellectual structures in its path of mental deconstruction.

Surely she must have felt this storm rising; nothing comes from nothing, there must have been warning signs that she ignored. But while the tempest swirled across her mental landscape, outwardly she made no movement, no sound, perhaps not even a blink of her eye as she stood riveted to the spot where she stood, looking at the man she thought she knew.

Regaining awareness of her physical body, she groped blindly behind her, right hand still protectively shielding her belly, and found a dining room chair with her outstretched left fingertips. She sank gratefully into its stability and closed her eyes momentarily, taking a few deep breaths. He too seemed compelled to sit, as if, perhaps, shocked and, to a certain extent, relieved by his own proclamation.

The argument between them had bounced back and forth over the course of multiple hours; it was approaching midnight and the first iron had been struck shortly before she had tucked her three year old daughter in bed. Neither party was innocent in this battle, both had grievances to air, complaints that had been festering for quite some time—years, she had just been informed.

Exhausted, she needed the battle to halt, not forever—she knew that was an impossibility—but long enough for her mind to readjust to the latest thrust.

She did not reopen her eyes until she could feel some of the color coming back into her cheeks, until she could again sense the steady heartbeat that thumped beneath her breast, until she felt that words—not screams—would come from her mouth. When she did finally peel back the curtain shielding her from the reality sitting before her, she took in the scene in an objective way.

The house was dim, only one reading lamp illuminated the family room behind her and countertop light shone from the kitchen to her left, the rest was engulfed in a quiet but now peaceful gloom. The yelling was over. There would be no need for more.

She looked down at her hands, resting one inside the other in her lap, curled under where soon her belly would expand to make room for the new life growing within. She imagined those hands holding her baby, caressing a cheek, running them through soft hair, holding a tiny hand in her own—and she bit back on her tears. She was done crying. She was done fighting. She was done trying to change his mind. The choice was now with her and she knew there was no real choice to be made.

She looked up at his face, weary, worn, exhausted—unhappy. How long had he looked this way and she had just not noticed? How long had he been silently telling her he needed to leave? How long had his resentment seethed beneath the surface before it bubbled forth and erupted on her consciousness as it had this night?

“I’m sorry,” she whispered, certain of the truth behind her words, but not entirely sure what that sorrow actually expressed.

He looked at her through red-rimmed eyes—although no tears had fallen it was clear that the emotional turmoil of the night had taken its toll on him as well. “I can’t do this again. I just can’t.” His eyes pleaded with her to understand the feelings he could not find the words to express: exhaustion, desperation, imprisonment, resentment, animosity, indifference, detachment. Her anger of moments earlier dissipated looking into his eyes and was replaced with sorrow tinged with compassion.

He’d offered her a choice, but the choice he had voiced was not truly what he wanted; it was what he felt was the only option he could decently express.

It sounded simple enough, but when she looked in his eyes and saw no trace of love, when she thought back to the things he had said—yes, people say what they regret during the course of an argument, but the rarely say what they don’t mean—when they fought earlier that evening, the choice he voiced was not truly the one he was offering.

His mouth said, “It’s me or the baby. You choose.” But his eyes could not lie, “I don’t want either of you. Let me go,” they pleaded. She could not ignore the testimony of those eyes.

“You offer me no real choice here. It’s not the baby you don’t want. It’s this…” right hand sweeping across the landscape of the house, encompassing the life they had created over the past 10 years. “I understand that. I know you think I don’t, but I do. You offer me no real choice when you tell me that you haven’t loved me for years or that you resent me for being pregnant with our child.” She returned her palm possessively to the baby growing within her. “Even if I were willing to consider your choice, what guarantee do I have that you wouldn’t decide this life isn’t what you want anyway? Then I would have sacrificed this life I have wanted for so long on the alter of your confusion. You want your freedom? You can have it. I’m keeping my child.”

His voice cracked slightly as he spoke, “I never meant to hurt you.”

“I’m sure you didn’t—but you have. I’d like to say that I won’t harbor anger towards you for this, but I will. I’d like to say that I forgive you for this, but I can’t—not yet. Someday I will, but not for a long time.” She looked back down to her hands, wiping the moisture from her palms onto her skirt, engrossed in the action.

Silently he pushed back the chair from the table and stood. “I’m the world’s worst father. You don’t need me anyway.” With that her turned from the room, grabbed his jacket and walked out the front door, closing it gently behind him.

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May 5, 2014 · 6:14 am

Water Wings

swim-ring

His little body buoyed in the water by the two green translucent balloons wrapped around each arm, the boy happy, but still nervous, groped his way around the edge of the pool, clinging to the wall like a life support system, shouting at the other children to wait for him. His fair hair was sheared down to the nubs, advertising a scalp shade lighter than his shoulders and arms, suggesting a newly shaved head in preparation for summer and below the surface of the pool blue, black and white designs swirled by the movements of the water hinted at hawaiian floral patterned swimming trunks. Target locked. He reached the island of floating blowup boats and boogie boards on which the other children were playing, nearly. He wold have to let go of the wall and swim to the middle of the pool if he wanted to join the game. The conflict was written on the set of his mouth and the frown of his brow and he determined if joining in the fun was a great enough incentive to run the gauntlet of his fear of swimming. The mental countdown commenced, his little lips moving as the numbers silently went through his head. As he counted down from ten to five, a look of fierce determination formed in his eyes. At five he began to prep for his launch by bounding his knees, feet propped on the wall’s edge, as if to gain momentum. At three the countdown burst loudly from his lips, “Twee, two, one, bwast off!”

Launching himself into space, the boy reached with outstretch fingertips, pumping his little legs as hard as he could, stretching his body as if to make up for the missing inches between himself and his objective. His confidence, so sharp at the start of his flight began to fade as the yawning gap before his safe haven did not seem to be closing. One last hard kick, one last reach of his fingertips. Target acquired! The pride and success beamed from his face but was tempered by a sense of disillusionment as he turned to the child next to him, his senior by at least four years, “They’re called water wings, but you weally can’t fwy in the water.”

The older child patted his fuzzy head and said, “No. But you flew from through space. Come aboard the space ship. I’m going to get the treasure.”

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January 14, 2014 · 5:02 pm

A Tale of Childhood Body-Dysmorphia

BodyDysmorphia

“I have fat thighs!”

My jaw dropped and I could feel my heart crack open as I heard those words come from the mouth of my 6-year-old daughter strapped into her booster seat on our way home from school. I must have misheard her.

“What was that, baby?”

“My thighs are fat! Look. When I’m sitting down they mush all together. It’s just gross.” I turned in my seat and looked at my beautiful girl staring forlornly at the relaxed muscles of her thighs, sure that it was fat she saw.

I wanted to cry. Right then and there, stopped at the red light, I wanted to cry. I almost did but realized that I had to take my emotions out of the equation and reach out to my daughter in a meaningful way.

I was a chunky child; there are pictures of me around the age of four or five in a pink ballet leotard and tights, which spawned a lifetime of Miss Piggy jokes.

I liked to read. I did not like to sweat. As I got older I began to appreciate sports more and I grew out of the chunky phase but I was never thin. I could never share clothes with my friends; they were always at least a size smaller than I.

In college when I put on the obligatory freshman 15 I was always told how lucky I was to be tall because people really couldn’t tell when I gained the pounds. Perhaps it was meant to be a compliment, but that chunky child from my past only heard, “You’ve gained weight again.”

It was this child who wanted to cry when I heard those awful words spring from the mouth of my beautiful and otherwise self-confident daughter.

My instant reaction was to tell her that she was most certainly not fat.

In fact, this little girl of mine is, in my opinion, verging on too thin. She is tall for her age and clothing supposedly in her size is either too short in the legs, causing her ankles to poke out, or too baggy around the waist, so she must constantly pull up her pants.

But her statement wasn’t about the reality of her situation or size. It was about perspective. Somehow or other my baby came to believe she was fat and that, I feel, is worse. Far worse.

But from where does this belief emanate? We don’t watch much television in our house, not out of any overarching philosophy about children and television. We simply don’t have cable because cable costs are high and most shows worth watching can be streamed over the internet. I know she didn’t get these ideas from watching television because when we watch, we watch together.

Her friends! My mind latched onto the idea that she must be getting these ideas from her school friends. And, yes, I suppose that is possible, but I think that by placing the blame on the words of other children I would have shifted the focus of the discussion irreparably.

Truth be told, it isn’t the television. It isn’t other children.

This sickness, this obsession with being thin, or more accurately, with not being fat, is an epidemic that permeates nearly every aspect of our society:  magazines, TV, movies, toys, everything.

Go to the supermarket and peruse the shelves; there is a non-fat or low-fat version of nearly every product. Calorie counts are on display on restaurant menus.  Every magazine on the rack has a dieting tip or and article about how to burn fat. Ten minutes spent on any social media site will inevitably bring a viewer to at least one comment about being fat or how to lose weight.

We have become a nation obsessed with weight. Sadly, we are obsessed with the wrong thing.

This conversation should not be about weight—it should be about health.

So, that’s how I answered her.

We talked about how different people come in different shapes just like they come in different colors and how the shape of a person’s body has no bearing on who they are or how we should receive them.

We talked about the importance of eating foods that are good for us, like the veggies we cultivate in our backyard garden, and how making healthy choices aids our bodies’ ability to create the energy and enthusiasm we want when we play.

We talked about how we should exercise to keep our hearts, minds and bodies functioning at full capacity; how the fact that she loves to run, climb, tumble, and practice Ju Jitsu is not only good for her but also a sign that she is eating well and maintaining her body as it needs to be.

We talked about how there is nothing wrong with eating desserts as long as we find balance and how the word “diet” should be stricken from the language. Food choices are food choices and as soon as we see ourselves imprisoned by the strict regulations of caloric intake we’ve lost the joy in the diversity of flavors available to us.

We talked about how taking care of ourselves and accepting ourselves is what is most important in this life.

Our dialogue has continued in this vein for months now.

She is only seven and may not quite understand it all right now, but we will continue to shift the focus from weight to health and maybe, someday, she will understand and be able to love herself more freely, regardless of body shape.

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