Falsely Accused

Sophie had a friend over for a play date yesterday.  Lola is a sweet girl with whom she has a lot in common—and not just in terms of their interests—though they both enjoy playing pretend, coloring, and dancing.  It’s something more ineffable than that.  There is something secret, almost conspiratorial between them.  They’re always whispering.  Scheming.  Hiding in corners and tittering.  Their relationship reminds me of one of my first friendships.  Thirty-six years after meeting Emily, I can’t say what initially drew us to each other, but I imagine it is the same glue that has kept us together all these years. 

I picture Sophie and Lola being friends for a very long time. 

They had been playing together for several hours—Sophie as the mother, Lola as the baby, when Lola’s father showed up to take her home.  There are a couple of dads at Sophie’s school who I’ve become friendly with. Ones that I see each morning at pick up and drop off, who I’ve coordinated play dates with, and on a couple of occasions, have pulled our whole families together for a cross-generational play date. 

Dave and I got caught up talking, as we often do about this and that.  The unrelenting snow.  His recent trip to Florida.  The looming Broad Street Run, for which we’ve both registered to run.  The girls, realizing that we might be a while, snuck away and stationed themselves behind the large leather chair in the living room.  About 15 minutes into the conversation, we both noticed that it had gotten awfully quiet. 

“I’ll go upstairs to find them,” I told Dave.  As I did, the leather chair snorted. 

“I think I found them,” Dave said.  Peering down from the landing, I saw them too, crouched behind the chair, teetering on their balls of their feet as they giggled. 

“Come on out Lolalee,” Dave said, “it’s time to go.”  But there was no conviction in his voice.  Lola knew it.  And, sure enough, Dave and I drifted back into conversation.  The girls saw their opportunity and seized it.  Neither one of us noticed that they had slipped back upstairs. 

Fifteen minutes later, Dave remarked that he should probably get going.  This time I found the girls hidden behind Sophie’s door, their hands covering their mouths to stifle their glee. 

“Okay, come on you two.  Outta there,” and I waved my hand towards the stairs.  After many protests, dawdling, ardent goodbyes which involved lifting each other off the ground in great bear hugs, and making an appointment to see each other two days later that neither would be able to keep, Lola left.

That night, Sophie and I were eating dinner.  Kevin, who was ill, had his head on the table and was looking like he was trying not to barf. 

“Mom?”

“Yeah?”  Why is it that she always needs confirmation that I am listening before she says anything to me? 

“Did you kiss Dave?”  I nearly spit my grapefruit essence Perrier out all over the table.

“What makes you think I was kissing Dave?”

“We thought we heard you ask him for a kiss.”

“Whose ‘we’?”

“Me and Lola.”

“No, Sophia.  Dave I and were talking.  There was no kissing involved.”  This, my friends, is how rumors begin. 

Kevin, in spite of his nausea, was snickering. 

“I think if I was going to be kissing anyone other that Daddy, I’d be a little more stealthy about it.”

“What does that mean?” Sophie asked.

“Mommy’s just being silly,” Kevin told her. 

“Oh you think?” I asked slyly. 

“Do you love Dave?” Sophie asked suddenly.  Must she do this every time I take a mouthful of something? 

“Well, honey, he’s a friend.  I wouldn’t go so far as to say I love him.  I love you and daddy.”

“So you didn’t tell him you love him?”

“No!”

“I though I heard you say that you did.” 

“I think you need to get your ears checked.  Again.” 

Neither of us said anything more about the subject.  But I was left wondering:  Where was this imagined intimacy coming from?  A strange fantasy of hers that we could merge families, and that she would become Lola’s sister?  Concern that I was throwing over her father for another guy? Or just an unclear understanding of the constraints of monogamy?   A innocent inquiry born out of a more fluid conception of love. 

A Place Safe from Fear

There was a thick volume of Grimm’s fairy tales in my hometown library that I read over and over again.  I would pull it down from the shelf and sit on the floor, knees to chest, swept into another place by stories of beauty and horror.  The library was an old building, made of stone and must.  The rooms were cramped and cozy, so packed with books that there was little room to squeeze by.  It was the perfect place to probe my fear.  Where, safe from the real world, I could grapple with death and betrayal.  Where I learned about loyalty and love.  Grimm’s fairy tales were far more gruesome than anything I encountered in suburban life.  They promised that whatever my experience was, it could be worse.  Somehow, I found this reassuring.

Who wouldn’t want their child to know these morally ambiguous tales? These stories open up a conversation, if not with others, in one’s own mind, about right and wrong, darkness and light, fear and love. 

Sophia was only three when I introduced her to my own abridged crumbling copy of Grimm.  I read her a pre-Disney version of Cinderella.  In which, birds on Cinderella’s mother’s grave dress her in finery for the ball—not a fairy Godmother, and the step sisters hack off parts of their foot so that they might squeeze into Cinderella’s slipper, only to be returned as false brides, when they leave a trail of blood as the prince carries them off.  When I finished, Sophie squealed:

“Read me the part with the blood again!”  She loved its gory truth almost as much as I did. 

Here is the great irony:  I go to great lengths to protect Sophia from violent imagery on television—from the news, adult dramas, and cartoons that either horrify or numb one to death and destruction.   These potent images leave nothing to the imagination.  They are what they are.  And they either get stamped on one’s brain (I will never forget the scene in Carrie where the other girls threw sanitary napkins at her in the shower, which, by the way, I found much more frightening than the knives flying into her mother, the blood being poured over her head at the prom, or the hand that reached through the earth at the end.) Or, they are easily forgotten among heaps of expendable bodies. 

But I will let her read these stories.  Stories of which she must conjure the images out of her own dark self.  Stories that take on her fantasy of what is most fearsome.  Or not.  She has control over what she sees.  She becomes its mistress.  Her fear conforms to what she can handle. 

And in turn it makes the world more tolerable.  A place safe from fear. 

“Mommy!  Come look at what I read in the newspaper!” She is excited.  Just a week ago she said, hopefully, “Maybe next year I will read a newspaper!”  Apparently, she has discovered she can. 

“Just a minute Sophie.”  I have just stepped out of the shower.  My hair is dripping down my neck.  My body is still too damp to put on my clothes.  “I have to get dressed.”

It is 7:30.  Sophie is dressed, but she has her polka dot robe knotted tightly over her tutu, “to be cozy.” 

I come into the kitchen, where Sophie is kneeling on a chair, pen in hand.  She has been doodling on the paper.  There are hearts all along the top and a dark underline scribbled beneath one article. 

“Listen to this:  ‘Dr. Kermit Gosnell is charged with killing seven babies born alive.” 

I am horrified.

Sophie, however, is exhilarated.  Her eyes are shining with delight.  “I can read it by myself mom!” 

“Sophie, what do you think about what you just read?”

“I don’t know.”

“Well, how does it make you feel?”

She thought for a minute.  “Sad.” 

I nodded.  “Me too.” 

“Why did he kill those babies, mom?” 

“I don’t know.  Some people do terrible things. “  She was still listening.  “But you know, it’s my job to protect you.  It’s my job and daddy’s job to do whatever we can to keep you safe.”

“I know,” Sophie replied.  “And grandma.  And grandpa too.  And my teachers.” 

“That’s right. All those people keep you safe.”  She looked content.  Unperturbed. 

Of course, I was the one who has already seen too many terrible things.  Who could see those babies.  Who wanted to sob at the thought.  For Sophie it was a witch.  A wolf.  A bad guy.    Read about in a safe place to probe her fear.    

The Shared Madness of Two

Once again, we are driving, making our two-hour commute to (or from, for the trips bleed together) my mother’s nursery school. Sophia is clinging to her beloved Snakey-Pie, who appeared in my closet one day before she was born (A county fair win? An abandoned toy? A misguided gift?) and somehow insinuated himself in our lives. He is an unlikely choice of transitional object—made of cheap velour (I’ve already repaired him twice), reptilian (What’s cuddly about a snake?) and of dubious background. But Sophia lovingly strokes his fluorescent orange fuzz as she sucks insistently at her left thumb, eyes blissful and content. I, of course, named him for all the ironic reasons that are self-evident. Which is completely lost on Sophie, because his name is adequately captures his dearness to her.

I am singing Snake-a-licious, or what I deem Snakey-Pie’s rap:

He’s snake-a-licious.
He does the dishes.
He likes your kisses.
He’s snake-a-licious.

Sophie pops her thumb out of her mouth long enough to shout, “again!”

He’s snake-a-licious.
He swims with fishes.
He grants your wishes.
He’s snake-a-licious.

Anyone, with perhaps the exception of my husband, who has come to accept that I personify most inanimate objects and occasionally pay homage to them with rap songs, would probably think I’m a tad embarrassing. And maybe a little strange to boot. But Sophia (at least for now) thinks I’m wonderful.

Together, we don our “boa” boas, do “like maniac,” to explicit Gwen Stefani lyrics, and run through sixteen dramatic permutations of uttering the words, “I’m in BIG trouble.” (Say it angry, Mom moms, now say it sad, now say it to the sky…). We act out scenes of pettiness and jealousy with her dress-able wooden dolls, practice toileting her babies (giving them baths when they fall in), and paint her two-year-old toenails gold.

There is a disorder still on the books of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders known as Folie a Deux or "the shared madness of two":

1. A delusion develops in an individual in the context of a close relationship with another person or persons who have an already established delusion.
2. The delusion is similar in content to that of the person who already has an established delusion.
3. The disturbance is not better accounted for by another psychotic disorder, mood disorder with psychotic features, effects of a substance or general medical condition.

I don’t mean to make light of a psychological disorder (which is reportedly so rare that there is no prevalence or incidence data available on it), but I think it’s a terribly accurate description of what the joy of parenting is about for me. Because of Sophia, I am once again able to inhabit worlds of fancy and enjoy her as my companion in these worlds.

She transforms me into a whole barnyard of animals with the touch of her fairy wand. I can look at the sky and ask Sophia if it’s cloudy with a chance of meatballs, and she will answer gravely, “No, it’s cloudy with a chance of tomatoes.” We can call each other on banana phones in the produce section of Wegmans. Anything can and does happen.

This is the stuff real life is made of.