Letting Go

Sophia just told me that she wanted to go to the pool, which—in my mind—justifies the fact that I am holding her down and vigorously applying sunscreen to her tender baby flesh. 

New skin is perfect.  Smooth, poreless, incredibly soft.  I would stroke my child all day long if she let me. 

It is my duty to protect this skin!

I am half sitting on her, one hand gripping her arm, the other smearing white sticky goo up and down it, intent on my mission, deaf to her protests. 

Then, from beneath me she cries.  “I AM NOT A TOY.  I AM A PERSON.  STOP TREATING ME LIKE A TOY!”

Is this a ploy?  Is she trying to arouse my guilt for trying to shield her from the searing North Jersey sun?  Or could this be how she feels?  Manipulated, like a doll, as if she is not real.  As if I have no respect for her feelings.  Her humanity. 

I feel sick.  I let go of her. 

She is still livid with the injustice.  Clawing at me.  Hitting me. 

Unfortunately, we are not alone.  I have an audience.  My friend Pam is there, along with some of the other parents and kids who share our cabin at camp. 

Pam says calmly, “What do you usually do?”

“Give her a time out until she calms down, but how do I do that here…?”  Here, at camp where no space is private.  Pam acts swiftly, picking Sophie up and depositing her into an adjacent room full of bunk beds.  It’s where the adult campers with disabilities have been sleeping.  But right now it is empty.  As Pam closes the door I hear the thud of Sophie’s sandal against it.  Pam chuckles. 

This is the second tantrum Pam has witnessed.  The first was in the shower, when I tried to wash Sophia the other night.  As I soaped her up, she squirmed away, as slick and slippery as an eel.  Pam held her and told me, “You know, you’re much too thorough.”

It’s true.  Whether I am washing Sophia’s body, brushing her teeth, wiping her butt, combing her hair, or applying sunscreen, I make sure I get every nook and cranny.  It feels obsessive as I’m doing it, but I can’t bear the thought of missing a spot.  It rises from my gnawing perfectionism.  From the fear that I might be remiss as a mother—any pimple, cavity, snarl or sunburn evidence of my failure. 

But the truth hurts.  I couldn’t hear her.  Not then, in the moment, frustrated and overwrought.  “Can we talk about this later?”  I asked her, not kindly.  In that moment, I just wanted her help, her extra hands.  The patience every mother has for a child that is not her own—not her advice.  Pam got it.  She gave me what I needed.  We got through it.

And now, my daughter is raging in the other room, and I am ready to listen.  I need another pair of eyes.  An objective, unemotional view.  Wisdom from someone who has been there. 

She tells me that she used to fight every battle, until it was killing her.  She tells me how she has learned to let things go.  I’m listening.  I believe her.  I have known her to be every bit as hardcore and unyielding as I am. 

She suggests that I let Sophia do more on her own. 

You mean, give up control?  Let a four-year-old wash herself?  Brush her teeth?  Comb her hair?  I have tried to let Sophia do some of these things, with less than stellar results. 

I would have to be okay with that.  I try it on.  I feel the muscles in my arms and chest tighten with resistance. 

Then I hear a voice inside my head telling me to question anything I hold dear. 

“Okay.”  I tell Pam, “Thank you.”  She hugs me.  We check on Sophia.  She has fallen asleep.  I have not learned the lesson my broken foot was meant to teach me. 

She was exhausted. 

When we get home, I give Sophia a bath.  I hand her a washcloth and tell her that we’re going to try something different.  This time, she’s going wash herself, and I am going to help.  She likes the idea, proudly soaping her chest and legs—letting me get the hard-to-reach places, like her back.  She still dilly-dallies.  She still resists me.  But it’s less combative, more collaborative.

And now, a few weeks later, I realize that Sophia has not asked me—not even once—to wipe her butt after using the toilet. 

More importantly, I haven’t offered. 

The Boss of Me

Sophia, in her nascent yearnings for world domination, enlists me in pretend play where I am the subordinate and she is my superior.

“Let’s pretend I’m the mommy and you’re the baby.”

“Okay.” My voice is a bit wary, as it is likely I am agreeing to a browbeating.

“Today, we have Kick n’ Flips, baby.” Kick n’ Flips is her gymnastics class at school, where, for $400/year, she gets two turns to summersault each week.

“Okay mommy.”

“You have to wear pants.” Usually, my directive.

“NO! I don’t want to wear pants! I want to wear a dress.” Usually, her response.

Sophie replies, her voice sinister, a near-perfect imitation of me, “You have to wear pants. You can’t do gymnastics in a dress. Now, I don’t want to hear another word.”

Or she’s the teacher and I’m the student.

“Sit down, Melissa, and do your workbook.” I sit down, and she plops a book of crossword puzzles in my lap. This is a happy turn of events. I get to do a crossword puzzle while playing with her? I set to work. I just start to get into it when she rips it out of my hands.

“That’s enough!” She announces. Sophia is not a warm-and-fuzzy teacher. She’s the kind that doesn’t smile until Christmas.

“But I just started it!” I protest.

“I said you’re done,” she shrieks, mad, with the self-bestowed right to shriek at me under the guise of “educating” me.

“All right,” I sigh, defeated, and hand over the puzzle.

“Its nap time. Lie down.” Again, I feel hopeful. Any game where I get to lie down is welcome. I spread out across the couch, she tucks a stuffed raccoon in the crook of my arm and turns out the light. But no, just seconds after I lie down she flicks the lights back on.

“Okay! Nap time is over! Get up!” And then I am obliged to participate in a whirlwind of other preschool activities, as if she’s pressed the fast-forward button on our time together. Only this frenetic play goes on for hours and hours.

I guess I go to the School for Short Attention Spans.

When we are engaged in these scenarios, I sense that she needs them. Standing over her in the morning, issuing directive after directive: “Sophia, you have to stop playing now and put on your clothes. When you’re finished, go downstairs for breakfast. Please hold still while I brush your hair, etc., etc.” I feel the heat of her resentment as she staunchly refuses to do what I say. She yearns for autonomy, the ability to do what she wants, when she wants to. Play, I suppose, is a safe way of getting to wrestle back some of the control she sees me as hogging. She’s trying to assert her will over mine. To dominate me as I have dominated her.

I can relate. Certainly, as a child I had my own acute sense of powerlessness. My own resentments. But I was far more compliant, seething quietly in my journals or sneaking off elsewhere to do the things I wasn’t allowed to do. Like read Judy Blume’s Forever at my friend Christine’s house. Or eat Frosted Flakes.

Perhaps it’s healthier for her to be so openly combative? Maybe it means that she’s not swallowing down her angry feelings, only to resurface in her adolescent years as a full-scale rebellion. Sinking grades. Experimental drug use. An affair with a man twice her age.

I also wonder what role I play in all of this. If there isn’t a little retribution in dictatorial play. Tit for tat. A bit of glee in “getting me back.” Am I too harsh? Am I too insistent? Are my demands somehow turning her into a bully? Is this how she will treat other children, as she perceives she is being treated?

And then, there is a moment that sets me straight. I wake up with my eye sealed shut. Sophia finds me standing over the bathroom sink at my pink eye. “What’s wrong, Mommy?” she asks.

“I have germs in my eye that makes it really itchy.” I tell her. And without another word, she balls up toilet paper, turns on the faucet, moistens the paper and holds it out to me, “Here, mommy. Put this on your eye. It will make you feel better.” She pats my leg, gently as I do it.

Sure, she’s still taking control--she’s mothering me--but with tenderness and empathy. She’s emulating my other mother face. The mother I strive to be, as much as I possibly can. Patient. Interested. Engaged. Attune.

My boss rarely acknowledges when I’m doing a good job, but she rewards me in unexpected ways.

Make Room for Daddy

I am a parenting hog. I want all the control. I want to make all the decisions. And I want my husband to do exactly what I do. I would hate being married to me.

Fortunately, I unwittingly picked a guy who is pretty much willing to go with this program. Despite the fact that I have more masculine traits than he does, (we once took a test that we found in a paperback book in a used book store, the quasi-scientific equivalent of a Cosmo Quiz—I came out leaning towards the masculine side, and Kevin the feminine) we have settled into very traditional gender roles. Kevin takes the morning train. He works from 9-5 and then, he takes another home again to find me waiting for him. (Lines totally stolen from Sheena Easton, but, alas, true. Please don’t sue me, Sheena.) Meanwhile, I take care of all things Sophie—from baths to doctor’s appointments, from laundry to preschool drop-off. This is not to say that Kevin doesn’t pitch in. He does. We do her bedtime routine together almost every night. He plays with her while I cook dinner. And in the mornings, whenever possible, he’ll help with her shoes or brush her teeth or make sure she eats.

There is a price to pay for this—for the control. For one, if I want it done in a particular way (say, I want her to sit in her chair while she eats and she wants to sit in daddy’s lap, stroke his beard, and chew each bite with glacial slowness) I need to either 1) leave the room and what will be will be or 2) do it myself. If I stay and watch, the tension builds up inside my body and becomes so great that I say something I regret, or I have to take over.

I wish this wasn’t true. I wish I could let it go. Parenting together is the hardest thing.

The other morning, we were all sitting around the breakfast table and Sophie told us about a negative interaction she had with a peer at school. The other child had told her she didn’t want to be her friend anymore—she wanted another girl to be her friend. Sophie tilted her chin to her neck and looking downtrodden, said, “I felt left out.” It is a phrase I taught her in an attempt to give words to her emotions during a similar incident. Though I believe her feelings were hurt in this instance, there was also something melodramatic about the presentation. It seemed to me that she was trying to evoke a particular response from Kevin and me.

So, I tried to treat this admission with lightness. Sophie has a tendency to get locked into routines. I could see this becoming a daily drama. I took a very problem-focused approach: “Well, if she says something like that, just go find someone else to play with. She gets moody sometimes. So do you. It will blow over.” I saw a look in Kevin’s eye that led me to believe he didn’t agree with my approach.

Then, Kevin, who is very attuned and takes great care to ensure that Sophie’s feelings are acknowledged, leaned in and said, empathically, “it really hurts your feelings when a friend says something like that to you.” Sophie nodded.

I felt that twinge, the discomfort that arises from disagreement. A tightness in my chest. But then, I overrode it. It was almost as though I had stepped out of my body and was watching the three of us having this complex interaction. I saw Kevin’s intent, his sweet parenting style, his very different way of conceptualizing this moment, and I stopped judging it.

I let it go.

And, since that conversation, she hasn’t said another word about it. Maybe all that she needed was a father’s feminine touch.

Mean Mommy

We are late for nursery school. Again. Sophia is refusing to put on her sweater. Since I have already told her that she needs to put on the sweater, even though whether or not she wears the sweater is really not a big deal to me, I feel I can’t back down.

Kevin and I had a parenting discussion the other night. He noted that I have been some bargaining with Sophia: setting a boundary and then letting her negotiate me down from it. It’s true, I do this, particularly in front of others because I don’t like appearing like such a hard-ass all the time.

But when I’m alone, and there is no one I feel I need to appear sweet and understanding in front of, I turn into Mean Mommy.

Thus, when Sophia tells me, “I am NOT putting on that sweater.” I say, “Oh yes you are,” stick her in the depression formed by my crossed legs and thrust each of her arms into a sleeve. As I reach in front of her to fasten a button, she gets an arm free and hits me.

Yes. My daughter hits me.

I see red. “YOU DO NOT HIT,” I yell, remembering with shame that I used to say I couldn’t imagine ever yelling at Sophia. “YOU NEED TO GO CALM DOWN!” Why am I still yelling?

Because I need calm-down time.

I pick her up. She’s kicking and bucking in my arms as I carry her to the bedroom, drop her in her toddler bed, and tell her, “Take a few minutes to calm down.”

“I need Snakey-Pie to calm down!” she sobs.

I give her Snakey-Pie, turn out the light, close the door and go to the living room to take a few deep breaths.

I lost it that time. I am deeply disturbed by the fact that, sometimes, more and more frequently, I don’t enjoy parenting. Maybe because I’m constantly feeling like I’m the heavy. Setting boundary after boundary. Making her bathe, dress, comb her hair, eat, go places—do thing after thing that, in the moment, she just doesn’t feel like doing. The deep breaths aren’t working. I start to cry.

What is happening?

It’s true that for the past three years most conflict between Sophie and me was preventable. I made sure she was well-rested, adequately-fed, appropriately dressed…and she went with the flow.

But now, suddenly she is getting her Own Ideas. She wants to do what she wants to do.
For example, it’s hard for Sophia to conceive of a future that is better than the present. She’d rather stay right here and read books than go through the trouble of donning her sweater, boots, coat, hat and gloves to get in the car and drive half-an-hour to nursery school. Even if they are acting out Goldilocks and the Three Bears today, one of her most favorite stories.

And though that makes sense to me, it’s not acceptable.

So I push through her resistance, physically making her do what I want her to do, feeling a mix of sorrow and resentment: How long do I have to keep doing this? When will it be fun again?

I have to remind myself: feeling utterly powerless, children crave power. But once they have it, they don’t know what to do with it. It feels all wrong, terrifying. If I want her to feel in control of herself, I have to be in control of myself. Of her. Of us.

Right now, I don’t feel in control.

As her will grows more formidable, her ideas more expansive, as she begins to assert herself in the world, I , who was her primary playmate have become her primary combatant. This is hard to come to terms with. I’m still the same; why does she have to change?

I try to reframe it in terms of what she needs. I can remember how much happier my students were when I held the boundaries, stood firm, gave them something they could push back on, but not push over. I need to reach deeper, to find something stronger, to stop taking this so damn personally. I need to act from what I know to be true and not what I want to be true.

I retrieve her from her room. She is contrite and compliant. At nursery school, she gets to be Goldilocks. At the end of the day, she is happy and spent. We are driving home when Sophie suddenly says, “I could also be your mommy.”

“Oh?” I say, glancing into the rear view mirror, “What would you do if you were my mommy?”

“Take care of you,” she says, simply.



.

No Control

One morning, over coffee, my mother related a dream she had the night before:

You were shot to death and bleeding on the streets of New York. If that
wasn’t upsetting enough, after you were dead, Kevin moved back to his hometown
and took Sophia with him. I realized that he could just make this decision
without me. I had no right to her, and I lost both of you at once.

Sweet, in gruesome kind of way. But she got me wondering: What if I died tomorrow? What would happen? Would Kevin take our baby back to the Midwest to be near his family? Or would he stay here, continuing to live the life that we had begun to build together? It was a timely question, as Kevin and I had decided to do some estate planning and were about to meet with a lawyer to discuss the what-ifs.

Like my mother, I have a very morbid, over-active imagination. I often play deadly dramas in my head—if I see a car start to drift into my lane, I don’t simply worry about Sophia and I being in a car accident. I see our car spin out of control from the impact; I watch us plough into a truck; I feel the impact; I hear myself scream and Sophia’s awful cries. But I am unable to imagine what happens next: life beyond me.

Not to worry. The lawyer delighted in presenting us with worst case scenarios:

Consider this: you and your husband spend a night out on the town in
Atlantic City (already, implausible). Heading back home, you’re in a
terrible car accident and both of you die. When you don’t come home, your
babysitter doesn’t know who to contact and she calls the police. Sophia is
taken into custody by DFYS (I start to cry at this point. Silent tears so
the lawyer can’t hear.) You have a long-term guardian in place, but
he/she’s too far away to swoop down and get her immediately. So Sophia
languishes in a group home until the paperwork goes through and your long term
guardian can finally get her.

(Sold on the document for assigning short-term guardianship.) Okay. That’s if both of us, god-forbid, should be struck down at once. But what if it’s just me?

I ventured to ask the lawyer a question, “Kevin, don’t get offended when I ask Sam* this, but, what if it’s just me who dies…can I leave any directives that Kevin has to follow. Like, that he has to take my daughter to see my mother a certain number of times each year. Or he has to make sure she eats her vegetables every day.”

The lawyer paused (trying to determine whether I was serious) while Kevin had a field day with this, “So you don’t trust me, huh? Well maybe I’ll take her to Mexico! Or no, maybe I’ll force her into child labor!”

“Kevin, STOP it. I’m serious. I want to hear what he has to say.”

The lawyer, I think, thought I was a little nuts. “You can put whatever you want into writing…but, you won’t be able to enforce it.”

Kevin danced around, gleefully. And that’s when it hit me: I have no control after my death. I get no say.

This was a lot for a control freak like myself to digest.

All the things that I believe in, that I do…no tv, meals from scratch, books since birth, Spanish, staying at home, my mother’s nursery school…they might still happen, or they might not. Kevin might stay, or he might go. He might remain single, or he might remarry. Sophia could have another mother, one who, over time, she’d come to know better than me (audible gasp).

This is a very good reason not to die. I suppose there are others. But this one is up there.

I will eat right. I will exercise. I will drive cautiously. And I will parent every day as if it was my last.