Only Love Is Real

It’s breakfast time and Sophie hasn’t quite finished her oatmeal, but she can no longer bear being confined to her seat. 

She is up, wandering, doing a little dance, pulling the magnets off my mother’s refrigerator, I ask her to please sit back down or ask to be excused from the table.

Instead, she crawls into my lap, making her eyes large and round and fingering the locket that hangs off a chain on my neck.  “Please don’t pull on it Sophie.  You’ve broken it once before.” 

“I’m not,” she says, trying to pry the locket open.  “I just want to see it.”

“Here, let me,” I say slipping a fingernail inside the crack.  It pops open and Sophie reads the words inside in a whisper, “Only love is real.”

It gives me the shivers, a little, to hear her say this. 

I bought this necklace for myself, to wear as a reminder of the truth, when I get sucked into believing anything else, which happens often. 

“Mommy, what does that mean?” She is looking at me with those eyes as big as saucers. 

“Um…well…it means that love is the only thing that really matters.” 

“Oh,” she says, her face serious, but unreadable.  It is impossible to tell if this has resonated with her deeply or she has no idea what I’m talking about.  She reads the locket again in whispery, reverent way, before hopping off my lap. 

“Time to get ready for school, mouse,” I tell her. 

“Aw, mom.  I want to read a book first.  Will you read this book to me?”  I sigh.  We’ll be late.   Again.  But what does it matter, really.  Only love is real. 

*

A couple days later we are back in our own home.  I have just awakened Sophie who has the uncanny ability to only sleep late on weekdays when there is somewhere we have to be.  She is grumpy.

“You weren’t supposed to wake me!  I was supposed to get up and go down stairs to see daddy!  Go back to bed mommy.”  

I wish.  This is not a plan I agreed to, but one masterminded by Sophie, probably after bedtime last night when she was reading books by the light of the hallway, instead of going to sleep. 

“Soph, unfortunately you slept late this morning, so I need you to get up and get dressed.”

“No!  I am never getting dressed.  I am staying in my bed forever.”

“I’ll give you a few more minutes to get up, “ I concede, “but then I’m coming back in here, and you are getting dressed.”

She has already disappeared under her fuzzy purple blanket.  An obstinate lump in her loft.  The lump says “hmph!” as I walk out. 

When I come back in a few minutes later, she has not changed position.

“Okay.  It’s time.”   I stand in front of the ladder to her bed.  My voice is even and calm, but firm. 

“I don’t want to go to school.  I want to stay at home and play with daddy.  I want it to be the weekend.” 

I can sympathize with this.  Once again, I imposing my adult schedule and adult needs upon her, thwarting her carefree, live-for-the-present-moment state of being. “I know, honey, but today is Thursday.  Daddy has to go to work, Mommy has to go to work, and you have to go to school.  You’ll get to play with him when he comes home tonight.”

She is quiet.  I take this as an in.

“Come on, honey, let’s pick out something supercool to wear,” I coax.

“No.”

“Soph, I don’t want to have to count….”

“Don’t count!”

“Then come on down.”

She doesn’t move.

“1….”

“Stop mommy!”

“2….” She begins to cry, angry stubborn tears.

“But mommy!  Only love is real!” 

I stop counting.  A smile peeks out of the corner of my mouth.  She has invoked these words in the wrongest and rightest way. 

On the one hand, there is the recognition that we are dancing a familiar dance.  That we do not have to do this.  That it can be interrupted.  She understands that what is happening between us is of our own creation, and just as easily as we conjured it, we can change it.  What is happening between us is not real. 

On the other hand, it appears she is hurdling this as a reminder for me, not herself.  I am the one who needs to stop pressing my agenda.  I am the one who must back down.  She is asking me the question, “How can I possibly be so insistent, so unrelenting, when only love is real?”

(Another possibility, my husband suggests, is that she is simply conning me.)

I am not quite sure how to talk to her about this paradox.  That sometimes we just have to do what we have to do, despite the fact that ultimately it’s not really important.  We have to live our lives. 

I look her in the eye.  “Thank you for that reminder, Sophie.  I don’t want to fight with you.” 

She is crying now, “then please stop counting, Mommy.”

“Okay.  Shhhh.  Calm down,” my voice losing its edge.  She leans over the side of her bed towards me, and I hold her for a moment. 

“Here, let me help you pick something out.” I whisper into her hair, “And once you get dressed you can come down and see daddy while I make breakfast, okay?” 

“Okay.”  She begins her decent as I disappear into her closet. 

There was no avoiding this fight.  The rubs are inevitable as we come together with conflicting perspectives, conflicting needs.  But with each moment of recognition, with each repair, the sinew that bonds us gets stronger. 

Now We Are Five

Kevin and Sophia were locked in mortal combat.  I was eavesdropping in the next room:

“Different socks CHANGE LIVES!  I will NEVER wear that shoe.  If you get off me, I’ll calm down.  If you don’t get off me, I’LL HIT YOU.  I’m trying to calm down, but you never give me a chance.  LEAVE ME ALONE!  I want to be ALONE!”

(Actual tantrum monologue.  I am not clever enough to make this s*** up.)

That was Sophia a couple of months ago.  When she was four.  All fire and fight.

This is her now:

Sophie just fell out of her chair because, despite my constant warnings, she had been precariously perched on the edge, hanging on by its black shaker spindles.  In the first minute after she hit the floor, I watched her decide whether to cry.  Perhaps she was considering whether the tears would garner her some sympathy and spare her a lecture about sitting properly.  I narrowed my gaze and stared at her intently, my eyes full of disappointment, my mouth tightly drawn and silent.  

Someone must have once looked at me this way; it comes so naturally, occurs so unconsciously, I am barely aware of it.  

Sophia immediately implodes—wailing and dripping tears. 

“No!  Mommy, don’t look at me that way.  I’m SORRY!  Don’t be mean mommy.  Bring back real mommy.  Be the nice mommy.”  

It is heart wrenching.  And even I, hardcore behaviorist who has no time for ploys, manipulations or histrionics, am moved by this display. 

“Come here,” I beckon to her.  She crawls onto my lap and sobs as uncontrollably as she used to rail against me, not so very long ago.  “You don’t love me.  You will never love me again.”  I pet her soft head and run my finger along her even softer cheek.  “Shhhhhhh,” I tell her.  “Shhhhhh.” 

I know her tears run the risk of becoming a habit with too much attention.  At the same time, she appears truly injured.  Deeply sorry.

I am moved.  And a little bit afraid. 

She finally cares about what I think.  She is finally contrite.  I finally have the power my parents once did, to wound with a withering look.  Not that I want to wound her, but I do want my words to have some weight.  I want her to listen.

Of course, I still want her to challenge authority, to question what she is told—just not MY authority.  At least not all the time. 

I had heard or read somewhere that five is the year of mellowing.  The year when rules become important pillars to abide by.  When dualism, in it’s most concrete forms—good and bad, right and wrong, black and white take hold.  It is the age of obedience.  The advent of tattling.  The first blush of guilt and remorse.   

With it comes the desire to please.  Fear of disappointment.  Pride in doing well. 

Please let this be so. 

Sophie calms in my arms.  Heaves become whimpers.  Whimpers become giggles. 

“Mommy?  What’s that word again?  What you called that weird lego?”

“Doohickey.” I say. 

“Doohickey!” she squeaks.  Giggles turn into laughter.   She is suddenly my silly girl again.  Talking nonsense, dimples breaking through her tears.  I can feel her urgency to fix this.  Her desire to make me smile too. 

She gives me a quick peck on the lips, slides off my lap and climbs back into her chair.

“Look, Mom.  I’m sitting in my seat and eating.  Just like I am supposed to.”

And indeed, she is.  

Tiny Teeny Bopper

“Wait, Mom!  Keep that!  It’s Katie Perry.”  I’m flipping through the dial, trying to find some holiday music on the radio.

Or at least anything that has nothing to do with guns.  This hasn’t been easy the past couple weeks.

“Cause baby, you’re a fiah-work!” Sophie warbles from the back seat.  “Come on let your col-ors burn,”

“It’s “come on let your colors burst,’” I say.  Just trying to be helpful, of course. 

“Nuh-huh.  I’m right and you’re wrong!” Sophie says in a drawly, sing-songy mean girl voice. 

Does puberty start at five now?  But I’ve been feeding her hormone free milk!

Another day she comes home from school singing,

“We are NEVER EVER EVER GETTING BACK TOGETHER,” with all the angst and indignation of a jilted teenager. 

“What is up with that?”  I ask. 

“Oh, it’s just something my friends and I were singing on the playground.”  She proceeds to repeats the refrain about 316 times. 

Much to my surprise, we later hear this song on the radio.  It’s Taylor Swift, and—no offense to Ms. Swift, but it is awful, particularly the spoken parts of the song: 

Huh, he calls me up and he’s like, I still love you.  And I’m like, I’m just, I mean this is exhausting.  You know?  We are never getting back together, like ever.

Is this even English?  I mean, I recognize each individual word, but what happened to the syntax?  Maybe if Taylor was being ironic, I could stand it. 

But something tells me Ms. Swift is dead serious. 

And Sophie LOVES it, with all the fervor of a tiny teeny bopper.  This new passion is hard to fathom.  She made the switch from Baby Beluga to Lady Gaga so suddenly.   One week my 6 CD changer was full of Music Together, the next week Sophie told me, “I don’t want to listen to that.  Turn on some traffic music.” 

“Traffic music” is Sophie’s term for “radio.”  I haven’t had the heart to correct her.  It’s a sign that she’s still my little girl.  I know I don’t have much longer before she drops this like she dropped Raffi. 

 “Turn on some traffic music, please.”  There is only so much adolescent behavior one can take from a five-year-old.

“Turn on some traffic music, please,” she replies in my intonation.  Mocking me?  “I want to hear “Call Me Maybe.’”

Sophie gets frustrated with me when I can’t immediately locate her favorite songs.  She doesn’t seem to get that I do not control the traffic music.  That somewhere, in a station far far away, a computer is carefully selecting, playing, and replaying songs with the aim of cultivating her addiction—playing the song just often enough to prevent her from touching that dial, while ensuring that the lyrics take up 40% of her brain space. 

DJs are cultivating her taste.  Which, in my humble opinion, leaves something to be desired.  Not that Sophie doesn’t have her preferences.  She does.  After all there has to be some innate inclinations, something inscribed upon her genes that the environment coaxes out into the open.  Like me, she seems to have an affinity for mellifluous chick music.  But my chicks are Susanna McCorkle, Helen Merrill, and Billie Holiday, and hers have dollar signs instead of letters in their names. 

That’s right.  Still not out of her princess dresses, Sophia quotes Ke$ha while playing Legos…

“stockings ripped all up the side….”

The next line, if one is keeping current, is “looking sick and sexified.  I jump in, “looking slick and Sophified!”  I shout. 

“Stop it mom.” Sophie says, “that’s not how it goes!”  But she doesn’t sing the next line.  I have successfully diverted her.  This time. 

Am I going to have to resort to Kidz Bop?  I had always been somewhat put off by the genre—a bunch of kids singing sanitized versions of the latest pop songs.  I remember my sister telling me a story that before her son could speak, he would run up to the television and point at the stars of Kidz Bop and grunt, preverbally expressing his desire to rock out to his very own Kidz Bop album.  I figured it must have some strange juju to do that, hypnotizing toddlers through the screen and convincing them they want to live La Vida Loca  (Kidz Bop 1, Circa 2002). 

I cringe at the thought of having to listen to it.  Their saccharine, overly exuberant voices transforming the barely tolerable into the detestable.  I’ve spent too many years paying my dues, listening to Music Together.  It’s high time this girl gets some exposure to what’s out there. 

So, when I come to something that I like.  I make her listen.   Or I play my own albums, despite her protests.  Last week, she sat through four tracks of the Police.  After dinner one night, Kevin and I force fed her Graceland for dessert.  And recently, I instituted a rule that when cruising the dial we always stop for the Beatles. 

Though she puts up a fight, I find that the same principle Top 40 stations operate on, works for other stuff too:  repetition breeds appreciation. 

The proof is in the singing.  Soon after we began the mandatory taste-making sessions, Sophie sprang from her bath and dripping, she danced around in front of the full length bathroom singing a line from one of my favorite Police songs (about, ahem, a student-teacher romance), “Don’t stand!  Don’t stand so!  Don’t stand so close to me!” 

Yes, perhaps still inappropriate.  But the influence is purely mine.  

Kid Fears

1

I sat on the train, coming home from a beautiful and moving morning of therapy.  I would now head home, write up a report, and pick Sophia up at school.  I gazed out the window, feeling mildly euphoric, watching the landscape change from urban streets, to the broad expanse of the Delaware, to the darkness of tunnels.   A young woman with bright-red, raggedy ann hair sat down in front of me, and I was reminded of how I longed for midnight blue hair when I was a teenager.  How strange that seemed now—I had felt so invisible then.  I wanted a mark, something that expressed my sense of otherness.  Of uniqueness. 

We emerged from the bowels of Camden, and I pulled out my phone to check my email.  Then the news.

Twenty children shot dead!  In their elementary school! 

2

I did and did not want to read on.  There was something inside of me that craved the story.  The facts.  That wanted to make sense of the senseless. 

I was still in graduate school when Columbine happened.  Columbine.  A word that connotes an event, not a place or a thing.  I was surprised to read in a Maurice Sendak book that a columbine is actually a flower.  A meaning that will forever be obscured by the horror of that day.  The word now conjures images of violence and anguish, not of a delicate perennial, named for its cluster of petals that resembles five doves huddled together.

I lived with another student at the time; we were both in a school psychology program.  My roommate obsessively watched the news while I actively avoided it, sequestering myself in my room, waiting for the media frenzy to pass.  To this day, I have still not seen any of the footage.  I did not want those pictures burned into my brain.   Grainy images from the school video cameras.  The awful suffering of the survivors.  Like the others in my program, I struggled to understand what had happened, how we might out into the world and try to prevent these horrors from happening again.  We spent hours analyzing it—shouldn’t someone have seen it coming (someone like us in a position we would one day hold), thinking about school emergency response (how do you react when it’s happening and in the aftermath).  Thus, as painful as it was, I was able to hold the incident at a cool intellectual distance. 

3

This time, during this school shooting I am a parent and the pain is visceral.  Again, I have no need for images.  There are all immediately available to me, in my dark imagination.  I can picture one of those children being my own.  I can see the fear on her face. I can envision myself doing whatever I could to shelter, to protect and to rescue.  I can feel the pain, the deep, irreparable pain tearing through everyone around me. 

Like every parent I know, all I wanted when I heard the news was my child.  I wanted to put my arms around her.  To feel her body push me away (Mom! Stop!) and smell her hair in the brief seconds that I could hold her.  I wanted her joy.  Her carefreeness.  Her utter lack of awareness that terrible things happen in this world every day. 

4

Since I read through that first article, I have so many reactions—as a parent, a psychologist, a person—but fear is not one of them.  I am no more worried for the safety of my child than I was before last Friday.  Perhaps it is because life always seems precarious to me.  As Sophie dangles herself from a banister, as a truck comes careening towards me in my rearview window, as I am pulled wordlessly by a Chinese family from the Natahala river, just before the current tugs me, boatless, down Class VI rapids, I know that I am not special. 

If anything, the fear is of fear itself.  That Sophie will be exposed to the ubiquitous media coverage of this event and her innocence will be shattered.  I will have to have that difficult conversation that so many parents are having with their children across the country right now.  I will have to let her know that I am doing everything in my power to keep her safe. 

But my powers are limited. 

The only thing I can do is turn off the noise and tune in to what is. 

More in the Family

I think Sophia is finally coming to terms with the fact that the shop is closed.  For good.

“Look!” I said pointing out my car window to the right.  “It’s a store just for exotic fish.”  The tanks are glowing with cobalt light. 

“Oooh. Cool.” Her head swivels as we pass the store, trying to keep it in view. 

I stop at a light and she says, “Mommy?”

“Yes?”

“Can I get a pet fish?” 

“You want a pet fish?”

“Yes.”

“Why do you want a pet fish?” I ask, rather than just shoot the request down.  She delivers the answer, which tears off a tiny corner of my heart:

“So there can be more in our family.”

She’s stopped asking for a sibling.  I haven’t heard the request in weeks.  She’s lowered the bar hoping that something small and scaley, or short and furry will wend it’s way into our lives.  

I have mixed feelings about this resolution.  On the one hand, I’m glad that she has heard what I’ve had to say on the subject, gets it, and appears to be fairly unscathed.  On the other, I feel a great deal of sympathy for her desire to have a live-in pal.  My heart aches every time she brings up the subject.  I wish I could give her what she wants, without it coming into conflict with what Kevin and I have decided.

A couple days later, at dinner Sophie suddenly announced, “I think I’m finally mature enough to have a cat.”

“Oh really?” I say, raising an eyebrow.  Well, actually both of them.  I can’t raise just one, but I wish I could. 

Kevin, across the table, raised one eyebrow.

“Yeah.  I take care of grandma’s cats.  I feed them all the time.”  It’s true.  She is very good about feeding them.  She loves to do it, and, in fact, often remembers when my mother doesn’t.  But feeding them is a once-a-week treat, not daily drudgery. 

“There’s more to taking care of a cat than feeding them,” I inform her. “What about their poops?”

Her eyes get wide.

“You have to scoop their poops and clean their litter box.”  She had not considered this.  Sophie has an aversion to anything with a strong smell.  She can’t make it through the cheese department at Wegman’s without holding her nose. 

“Could you help me with that, Mom?”

“That,” I say, “is a slippery slope.  I would….support you in it.”

“Does that mean you would scoop their poops?” 

“No, honey, I’ve scooped enough cat poop in my time.  Until you are ready to do that, I don’t think you’re ready to accept the full responsibility of caring for a cat.”

I was five when I got my first cat.  I swore up and down I would care for it.  But it was my mother who, day in and day out, cleaned the litter box, filled their bowls, and picked cat hair off of everything.  I know how this works.  I’ve sat in Sophie’s seat.  And I know, for sure, that, as the mother of a five-year-old, I am not ready to accept the full responsibility of caring for a cat. 

Sophie gasps.  “I just thought of something!”  (She has learned this from me, a habit of gasping when she has a sudden epiphany, though mine are usually around forgetting appointments or losing my keys).

“What?”

“Well, if we had a cat and you and daddy went to work all day and I went to school, the cat would be lonely.”  It was a lovely, sympathetic sentiment, but was she doing what we often do when we can’t have something we previously thought we wanted? We devalue it.  We find rationales for why it would be no good for us.  Was she already trying to let go of this wish?

“Mmmm.  True.  I guess that’s why grandma and grandpa have two cats.”  Did I just say that out loud?  Where can I buy myself a filter?

“Oh!  Right!  We could get two cats.”  She looks at our faces.  “When I’m older.  Like seven or nine.” 

“Yes, maybe by seven or nine,” I agree. 

One day, when we are all ready, she shall have more.