I Look Like a Boy!

This is a story about two things:

1. The power of everything that comes out of your mouth as a parent.
2. Family photos

 Kevin has been campaigning for us to take a family picture for months now.  His argument makes all the logical sense in the world:  he wants to preserve this period in family history, before Sophie grows and changes.  And though I generally dislike all posed pictures (the tight forced smiles, the artificial arrangements, the staged environment), I am glad that we have several envelopes full of pictures that have frozen Sophia at various points in time.  These images capture her in ways that I cannot conjure on my own.  They provide me with the illusion of memory, something I can attach my narrative to. 

And because these pictures are taken of a child who is genuinely happy to be placed in front of a camera, who is easily coaxed into joy with a series of funny faces and sounds, Sophia beams a big beautiful smile each one. 

But taking a picture of me in this way is an entirely different story.  A camera pointed in my direction makes me tense.  I forget how to smile.  Every muscle in my face says I’m trying.  I look strained and miserable.  My left eye closes more than my right. The effect is wholly unattractive.  This is not merely some poor self-image rant.  In real life, I think I look fine.  In posed pictures, I look like a hostage. 

Needless to say, I was dreading our trip to the Picture Place.  After several months of weekly reminders from Kevin, I had finally made an appointment.  The day snuck up on me.  Though I had an outfit in mind for Sophie, and had strategically napped and bathed her so she’d be her freshest for the photo, I hadn’t put the same amount of time or thought into me.  A half-hour before we were due at the studio, I still hadn’t picked out something to wear. 

I suppose the main reason I wasn’t dressed yet was because, though I had carefully scheduled out the afternoon, I had not built in a cushion for meltdowns.  Apparently Sophie was not pleased with my choice of outfits for the photo shoot.  It had something to do with the fact that the fluffy pink confection I selected was monochromatic and “boring.”  She had jumped into bed pulled her covers tightly around her, and was refusing to get dressed. 

I left the scene to throw some clothes on my body and to allow her some time to cool off, but when I opened my closet I felt completely overwhelmed.  Pants or dress?  Pattern or solid?  Color or black?  I called for backup, and Kevin was completely unhelpful:

“Wear whatever.  You look good in anything.”  In another mood, the vote of confidence might have been touching.  In this instance, the general nature of his feedback was hysteria-inducing. 

“No, I don’t!”  I insisted, throwing on a pair of black palazzo pants and a blue shirt with lots of gathered stitching that I like.  “How about this?”

He studied me for a second, “Well, I don’t know how that shirt will look in the picture….”  Couldn’t he have lied?  I’m sure, in the next moment, he wondered the same thing.

I looked at myself in the mirror and saw my wild eyes surrounded by short spiky hair. 

“I LOOK LIKE A BOY!” I lamented. 

“You do not look like a boy,” Kevin refuted. 

“I do.  I DO!”  I wailed

Kevin was about to beat a hasty retreat.  “Where’s Sophie?”  He asked.

“She’s in her room, refusing to get dressed.  Can you do something about it?” 

Kevin took off for what he thought might be the lesser of two evils.  Two minutes later I hear Kevin trying to coax Sophie out of the covers to put her dress on.

There was a scuffle.  Then I hear Sophie cry out, “I can’t wear this, Daddy.  I LOOK LIKE A BOY!” 

I do not think this is what Kevin had in mind when he suggested preserving this moment forever.

A few more minutes pass and Kevin emerges carrying a struggling, but dressed, Sophia in his arms.  “I’m taking her out to the car.”  He tells me.   This is my cue to hurry my ass up. 

I decide to wear the blue shirt.  “I’m wearing this shirt.”  I tell him. 

“Fine.”  Kevin, at this point, would not care if I had wrapped myself in a sheet.  As long as I put something on and followed him out of the house.

At the Picture Place, we were a miserable bunch.  Sophia, with her face pinched and red from crying, her hair still wet from the bath, and her pink cardigan unbuttoned, displaying the ratty white t-shirt underneath.  Me, my sense of discomfort growing as each minute brought us closer to the photo shoot.  And Kevin, who despite feeling exasperated and had a few raindrops flecking his deep blue oxford, looked ridiculously handsome as usual.  It is not possible for Kevin to look bad in pictures.  He’s just got that kind of a face. 

I bore the experience.  Allowing the teenage photographer to wrangle us into a number of poses we hadn’t asked for.  Sophie basked in the limelight, obliging and obedient as the photographer had her sit, kneel, lean, and climb. Each time the bulb went off, I felt my left eye squeeze half-shut. 

Afterwards, we reviewed the pictures on a widescreen monitor.  I wished they had something smaller, so my lack of photogenicness wouldn’t be broadcast across the entire store.  Each photo was more disappointing than the last.  The photographer, with apparently days and days of experience under her belt, seemed to catch us just before or right after each photo opportunity, as we were slipping in or out of smiles. 

Still, we managed to let ourselves be persuaded into buying several sheets of several different family configurations. 

Sometime after the shoot, I told Kevin I regretted my comment about looking like a boy.  Mostly I regretted that I had made a negative comment about my appearance, which Sophie immediately adopted as her own.  After the care I’ve taken never to make a denigrating remark about my body [in her presence]—why, I even went so far as to ask Sophie’s babysitters when she was an INFANT not to say things like, “I feel so fat,” in front of her—I call my femininity into question. 

“Yeah, that kind of took me off guard,” Kevin says.  He didn’t know I felt this way.

I do and I don’t.  I mean, in some ways, I think my short hair is a perfect expression of who I feel like I am on the inside.  A little tomboyish.  A little tough.  A little quirky.  But there are moments when I miss my fluffy curls and coquettishly peeking out from behind my veil of hair, distinctively feminine. 

Do we ever measure up on the outside to the image of ourselves on the inside?  Can a picture ever accurately capture who we think we are?  What does this family photo say about who we are, right now, in this phase of our familial development? 

With a little time and distance from that day, I gaze at the photos we were roped into buying.  I am surprised to find they don’t look all that bad.  Outside of the heat of that moment, the insecurity fades.  What is this thing that grips me in these moments?  My own mother’s voice?  Messages from the media?  I only know that I never, never want Sophie to experience it.  And so, I tell her what I now know to be true: 

The only one who looks like a boy is Kevin. 

Bad Example

It is Wednesday morning, and, like all Wednesday mornings, Sophia and I are in the car, headed two hours North for my mother’s nursery school. Sophia is happily chewing her way through a Dunkin’ Donuts cinnamon raisin bagel, quietly watching the scenery fly by. Something compels me to turn on New Jersey radio, usually so offensive to my ears, to listen to the traffic, which I know comes on at exactly 7:33 AM.

The report is said in one long sentence, full of clauses referring to this highway or that parkway. The ability to take in this information, to single out the roads you depend upon and quickly listen for the state of their alternate routes, should be a subtest on an IQ exam--maybe for processing speed. Or perhaps it is a form of decoding. There is a certain music to the these reports, a language with its own grammar and vocabulary. When I listen to the traffic in other places, it is foreign and impenetrable. PA, with it’s colloquial terms for it’s main arteries took me several months to learn: The Shulkill, The Blue Route--roads never referred to by the numbers that appear on maps. But NJ, I speak fluently.

So I am quickly able to discern that we are going the wrong way. Two exits up (exactly 14 miles away) there is an overturned car and a 10-mile back up that will cost me at least an additional hour. I quickly take the only exit that will spare me this fate.

As I head down the road less traveled, a calmness passes through me. Sure, we will now be plagued with red lights and 40 mph speed limits, but at least I will not be a prisoner, sandwiched between other cars, inching my way mile by mile.

When we finally re-enter the highway, I feel liberated. Sophie is listening to her music, I’m plugged into a Fresh Air podcast, lost in an interview. I steer us into the fast lane, gain speed, pass two cars on my right and--

Oh no. A police car.

I am in the cars-only lanes. The police car is in the truck lanes. A median stands between us, so it is possible that he will stay on his side. I quickly maneuver into the middle lane, hitting the breaks to match the speed of the cars I have just passed.

Oh no. He’s coming over.

I am the kind of person who cries when she gets in trouble. The sting that precedes the tears makes me sneeze.

Red and blue lights flash behind me. I’ve got to give Sophie a heads up. “Sophie,” I say, “I am getting pulled over by a cop. I need you to be very quiet.”

“Why?”

“Because mommy was going too fast.” Why do I speak of myself this way, in the third person? Am I trying to separate myself from her--this person who was breaking the law--or do I do this all the time?

“Why were you going too fast? What is he going to do? Are we going to stop right here? On the road?”

“Yes. Shhh. Please.”

He walks over to the car. I’ve got my hands at ten and two. He bends down and I lower the window. He looks like a teenager. I feel my cheeks flush.

“Do you know why I pulled you over?”

“No, officer.” I don’t know why I am saying this, because I do know why he pulled me over.

“You were going 87 MPH.”

“Really?” I say. I am incredulous. I speed, but I generally try to keep to the flow of traffic. Eighty-seven is completely uncalled for. And with Sophie in the car. I am appalled at my own behavior,

“I’m so sorry,” I stammer, “I must have been zoning.” I should shut up right now.

“License and registration.”

“I need to reach into my glove compartment.”

“Go ahead.”

“Mommy, what are you doing?’

“Shhhh. Sophie. I’ll talk to you in a minute.” I hand him the cards. He studies them for a moment.

“You have a clean record?”

“Spotless.” I say, hopeful. I was going more than 20 miles over the speed limit in a 65 MPH zone, which means the fine is doubled. I’m looking at 4 points on my record and--I don’t know--400, 500 hundred dollars.

Why was I doing 87? Why? It would be one thing to have been doing this alone, with no one’s life at stake but my own. But I had Sophie in the car. What kind of an example am I setting for her?

“I’ll be right back.” He leaves me with Sophie.

“Mommy? What is he doing?”

“Mommy is in trouble because she broke the law.” Still in the third person. I can’t own it. “I was going too fast. Now he’s writing me a ticket to punish me. I’m sorry Sophie. I shouldn’t have been going so fast with you in the car. I’m sorry.” Tears are running down my face.

“It’s okay mommy. It’s going to be alright.” Sophie coos. I smile at her in the mirror and wipe away my tears.

The cop comes back. He looks uncomfortable. “Because you have a clean record, I’ve knocked it down to careless driving.” He hands me the ticket. “A lesser fine. Fewer points.”

“I really appreciate that,” I tell him sincerely. “Thank you, officer.”

And then, worse than any fine he could have slapped me with, he says. “Now, c’mon. Slow down. You’ve got a little girl in the car.”

I nod, humiliated. Wanting him to go away so I can cry the tears of shame that are welling. He pulls onto the road first, so that I can pull ahead of him.

And then the dam breaks.

“Don’t cry, Mommy. It’s okay.”

“No! It’s not okay!” I sob. “I did a bad thing. Mommy shouldn’t have been speeding.”

Slow down.

Suddenly, the words sound like a revelation. Like a directive that comes not from a cop, but from deep within. What am I speeding for? Is saving a few minutes worth risking our lives? Why do I rush from thing to thing to thing--always in such a hurry?

What if I did slow down? Could I change this deeply-ingrained way of being--not just for my own sake, but for Sophie’s as well?

I decide in this moment: It’s worth a try.

(Too) Great Expectations

I am watching the dress rehearsal for the end-of-the-year show at Grandma’s nursery school. Sophie is a pink pig, along with one of her classmates (we’ll call her Laura). The children are shouting the words to “Down on Grandpa’s Farm”

WE’RE ON THE WAY, WE’RE ON THE WAY, ON THE WAY TO GRANDPA’S FARM
WE’RE ON THE WAY, WE’RE ON THE WAY, ON THE WAY TO GRANDPA’S FARM
DOWN ON GRANDPA’S FARM THERE ARE SOME LITTLE PINK PIGS
DOWN ON GRANDPA’S FARM THERE ARE SOME LITTLE PINK PIGS
THE PIGS, THEY MAKE A SOUND LIKE THIS:

Sophie and Laura stand up, put their heads together and coyly say, “Oink, oink.” Think Marylin Monroe, as a three- year old, portraying a pig.

No one told them to do it this way. Laura, who is innately shy, naturally tilted her head, tucked her chin in, and whispered “oink” into her chest. Sophie, who found the gesture amusing, aped her. The two made eye contact as they did it and smiled faintly, aware of the drama playing out between them.

Cute as hell.

So, given this performance, and that Sophie announces, every evening prior to dinner, “Show tonight!” And that after dinner she drags a stool out onto the kitchen floor, perches on top of it and proceeds to recite angry poetry (“No. I. Don’t. Want. To! You. Go. A-way!”), or act out scenes from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (“Daddy, you be Willy Wonka, and I’ll be Charlie Bucket.), or sing songs from her nursery school repertoire (“For it’s one, two, three strikes you’re out to the old ball game!”), I had great expectations for her stage performance.

That morning, I dressed her in a hot-pink eyelet dress my sister had sent to her weeks before. When we got to school, Sophie quickly noted that Laura was dressed in the same shade of pink. “We’re twins!” she shrieked excitedly. Laura smiled and said nothing.

Grandpa’s Farm was the opening act. First the cows went, blowing the audience of smiling parents away with their thunderous moo’s. Next, the ducks, who looked discombobulated and had to be reminded to stand up, and then reminded to quack. Finally, it was time for the pigs. Laura looked terrified as she stood and sucked her dress into her mouth. Sophie, not to be outdone, picked up the hem of her dress, exposing her cutie-saurus underwear to the world, and sucked HER dress into her mouth. Neither oinked.

“Sophie!” I said in a stage-mother, stage whisper, “PUT YOUR DRESS DOWN.” She smiled and continued to suck. So, more adamant, I pantomimed taking her dress out of her mouth and pointing down sharply at the ground, “PUT IT DOWN NOW!” Sophie removed her dress and, in a near perfect imitation of my angry face and gestures, mouthed my words back at me.

And then she resumed sucking her dress.

For the rest of the show, it was Sophie’s goal to try to catch my eye and mimic me. My mother, who saw everything whispered, “Ignore her,” in between bars of The Wheels on the Bus.

I tried, but it was hard. I was disappointed. Afterwards, I said so to my mother.

“Melissa,” my mother said, “she’s THREE.”

It is a fact I easily forget. I expect her to sit nicely in her chair for all of dinner without getting out once. I expect her to bathe, get dressed and brush her teeth without a fuss. I expect her to say thank you and please without being prompted. It frustrates me to no end when she acts like a three year old. Squirming. Tantrumming. Forgetting her manners.

This is very unfair of me. I know. Not that I should allow her to stand on her chair, or to pinch me when I’m trying to work the toothbrush in her mouth, but it’s all part of the path to maturity. It’s what three-year-olds do.

High expectations are good. When you hold the bar just out of reach, children invariably rise to meet it. It’s what Vygotsky, the brilliant Russian developmental psychologist called the Zone of Proximal Development—the difference between what a child can do independently and what he/she can do with assistance. By giving children experiences that are within their Zones of Proximal Development, providing a model and appropriate supports and then fading back those supports, a child learns novel skills.

It is only when my expectations are too great, trying to coax adult behaviors out of a small child that I am setting myself up for frustration, conflict, and disappointment.

But still, would it have killed her to say “oink, oink”?

In Training

Neither of my parents followed sports, nor were they particularly athletic themselves. My father had played handball as a boy in the upper west side projects; my mother had a passion for Jackie Sorensen aerobics, which she did with other leotard-clad middle-aged women in a stinky Catholic school gym on Tuesday and Thursday nights. And both of them had a mean side-stroke, which they could do for hours on end along the perimeter of our town’s man-made lake. But, in my household, intellect, art and culture were valued over blood, sweat and tears. My mother took me to piano and ballet lessons. My father took me to jazz clubs and foreign films. As a family we went to galleries, museums, and festivals.

Not surprisingly, I grew up a wimp. A cultured wimp, but a wimp just the same. While playing bombardment, I hid behind every other player until I was the only one left, a slight, but easy target for the sadistic, ball wielding maniacs on the opposing team. In the outfield, I linked dandelions to form golden chains, which I used to adorn myself. In gym, I was picked last (or nearly last) for every team…from elementary school straight up through high school. And when, in a gesture of cruel generosity, my friend Stephan, who was athletic, picked me to be on his all-star volleyball team senior year, I single-handedly destroyed the team’s hope of being number one. I can still hear Stephan yelling at me, frustrated as I, once again, dropped the ball, “Use two hands, Melissa. TWO HANDS.”

I began running in spite of physical education. In spite of my parents. I began running by accident.

It was my 16th summer. My parents were fighting. Again. I can’t remember the specifics. (Was it over how much my mother had paid for a grapefruit? Whether or not she had placed a fork next to my father’s plate?) Somehow, I was brought in. (Was I trying to restore peace? Was it me who set the table?) I hit a breaking point and sprinted from the house. I ran without destination. My legs carried me across the street and into the woods. I ran until my lungs burned. I probably went a mile…or less…but it was enough to generate a sense of freedom. Of release. Of escape.

After that one night, I was hooked. I kept on running. After my freshman year of college, I ran through my first real break up, exhaling anger, pounding out despair. From there, I ran through dysfunctional relationships, job stress, writing a dissertation. I ran through wedding planning, my isolation in Asheville, and one very bitchy boss. I ran away from stress and anxiety…and ultimately towards health and strength.

And now that I have a daughter of my own, I want to be a model of this strength. I want her to experience the self-confidence that comes with athleticism. I want her to be proud of her body and what it can do.

There is a fine line between encouraging your children to pursue the options open to them and living out your own dreams through them. The latter requires a lot of money tossed into the therapy jar. I don’t want push Sophia into running…or any other sport, but I want her to know that she can. That it doesn’t have to be brains or brawn, art or athletics. I’m still trying to figure out how that works.

Yesterday, when I woke at 6:00, it was pouring rain. I snuck up to the attic to knock out 12 miles on the treadmill before Sophie woke up. She roused at about 7:30, and Kevin took her up to see me. Sophia, who had never witnessed me run on the treadmill before, stared, wide-eyed and intrigued. “Mommy’s running,” Kevin explained. I finished up, showered, and joined them in the kitchen. “Upstairs.” Sophia told me. I followed her first to the second floor, and then up to the attic. The room was still cool from the air-conditioning I had cranked during my run. She made a gleeful beeline for my treadmill, and climbed aboard. Hopping from one foot to another on its stationary belt she said proudly, “Sophie running!”

Off and running, indeed.