First [Bad] Words

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

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. 

Kicking and Screaming

No, not Sophia. I have yet to see her kick and scream. I mean me.

I imagine most mothers would be thrilled to watch their child careen through her developmental milestones. And don’t get me wrong. I am one of them. I feel enormous pride as I watch her, at six months, breakdance over to her toy box, pull up to a standing position, lean over the edge and grab a talking plush head (who gave us THAT?). She grins toothlessly, triumphantly, and whips it around mercilessly as it protests (Whee! Achoo! Faceplant!).

I kneel behind her, spotting. I am amazed at her strength. But at the same time I am achingly sad, cognizant of the breakneck speed with which she is growing up. Other mothers with older babies pick her up and exclaim over how tiny and light she is. But she feels pretty heavy to me. One mother sniffed her head and sighed, "she still smells like a baby. My baby lost that smell." I sniffed her child and indeed, the baby smelled grown up. Now, I sniff Sophie’s head, paranoid that her powdery newness will have worn off and all that will be left is hair.

You see, I know Sophie is like me. Or, rather, the way I was. Not content to be a child. Frustrated with the lack of power. Anxious to join the mysterious world of adults: To walk like them, talk like them, be like them. I wished my childhood away. At the time, it seemed to drag on forever. I felt imprisoned. And then suddenly it was over. Now I want to slow down time. No. I want it to stand still. I want to live in this moment forever. Me and my baby.

To make myself feel worse, I put on the Putumayo Dreamland album that we played over and over again during the first days that we had her home. I am transported back to that time, when there was no division between night and day—and time was measured in feeding intervals. When I was in too much pain to sit. Too much pain to stand. When Sophia was either sleeping or clinging to me, uncoordinated and near blind. When we had to take her clothes off, wipe her with a wet washcloth, and finally move her little limbs through a series of calisthenics as my mother chanted, ex-er-cise,ex-er-cise, babies need their ex-er-cise and she still wouldn’t wake for a feeding.

I weep, longing for the most difficult days of my life