Coming Clean

Oh caffeine. Light of my life. Source of my strength.

How I despise you.

We are through, you and me. I know, in moments of weakness you will tempt me, taking all sorts of seductive forms. Earl Gray. Dark chocolate. La Columbe. You are omnipresent. In my freezer, in the hand of my dinner companion, on every street corner. I cannot escape you.

I have to change so much inside me me, so much around me, to inhabit this new caffeine free self. I have to recognize the cues, the triggers, resist and avoid. I have to substitute old, faithful and comforting behaviors with new, dissatisfying, untrustworthy ones.

I have to learn how to be without you.

I can. I can. And I will.

I hadn’t even realized I was addicted. I do not use that word lightly. My addiction was a serious thing. But like most addicts, I did not think I had a problem.

It is only clear in retrospect:

When taking a drive with my father, my heart fluttered in my chest. I had to cough to resettle it. And then it happened again. I coughed. And again. Cough.

“Something’s weird with my heart.” I told my dad. He looked alarmed. But I had asked a doctor about it, who said it was palpitations. Completely normal. Nothing to worry about. No link to disease. I assured him of this.

Even though, deep down I felt there was nothing normal about having a butterfly where your heart should be.

I was irritable. Impatient. I snapped at everyone I loved. Misinterpreted too much of what they said. Treated bids for connection as intrusions and demands.

And then there was the erosion of sleep. My bedtime crept back later and later. I would lie in bed, wide awake, feeling panicked for a million no good reasons. Fretting over everything that I had to do the next day. The thought of waking filled me with dread. I could forestall the morning by keeping my eyes open. On some nights, I simply felt as though I had forgotten how to fall asleep.

Maybe I am depressed again, I wondered.

I took medicine to remind my body how to turn off. And the next day, would wake up groggy. Because as far as I could push my bedtime, my wake time was immutable. Held in place by the forces of work and school and an irrepressible four-year-old, who sat in bed with a stack of books waiting for her clock to turn from blue to yellow, the signal that she was finally allowed to wake me and end the interminability of her morning alone.

The dread would hit me full force, a blow to my chest, as soon as I wiped the blear from my eyes. It sucked my breath out of me. How was I going to make it through another day feeling this way, lungs filled with lead.

Coffee was the answer. The aroma alone revived me, gave me as sense of possibility.

How imperceptible the fall had been. It started with one cup. Then a larger mug that I was able to justify as still one cup (two). Then I would refill the larger mug twice. Only two cups (four). Then I started brewing more. I could drink the leftovers iced the next day, I rationalized. But pretty soon there were ten cups in the pot in the morning and none left at night. I drank throughout the morning (six). I needed a cup at lunch to keep me going (eight), one at three to pick me up (ten).

I had a rule never to drink past four, so I never linked my caffeine intake with my inability to sleep.

Then the inevitable happened. My immune system ground to a halt. Went on strike. No sleep, no work. I got sick. Everything was infected--my sinuses, my ears, my eyes. And, as is generally the case when I am sick or pregnant, I suddenly was repulsed by coffee.

I left her that morning. I had no plans to stay away, but something miraculous happened. The sense of dread evaporated. Nothing had changed in my life, but my anxiety, which had felt so paralyzing just days before, had suddenly vanished. The change was dramatic. Remarkable. I felt like the person I wanted to be.

And I started sleeping again.

I must have gone through withdrawal, but I was already so miserable, a crushing headache was just another symptom to endure.

Coincidentally, I was working on a chapter about consciousness at the time and came across some information about the evils of excessive caffeine consumption. It was the nail in my coffee-filled coffin: Physical dependence on caffeine begins with regular use of about 350 mg (about 3.5 cups per day). About 20% of the US adult population are in this club. Withdrawal effects at this level of usage include severe headaches, tiredness and irritably.

But there is addicted and really addicted.

Additional adverse effects of caffeine use can occur when use exceeds 600 mg per day (about 3% of the US adult population). At this point, one may experience chronic sleep problems, enduring anxiety and depression and irregular heart beat.

Oh. That’s was me. I was doing this to myself.

I’ve been 30 days clean. Life with Melissa is a lot less bitter.

Matters of Life and Death

One would think that, having lived through the sudden tragedy of his mother dying from a brain aneurism, my husband would see death lurking behind every corner. The world newly uncertain and unsafe. But Kevin is not that person. He understood it for what it was--a low-incidence (approximately 7 in 100,000 annually) unpredictable event. Awful. Unjust. But not confirmation that we live in a dark and dangerous world.

Kevin maintains we will be alright. When I suffered my third miscarriage, he assured me, we would have a child. When his appendix nearly burst in his body, he didn’t see any reason for me to have to come down to the hospital. When I see a mountain, Kevin smooths it down to a mole hill.

I wish I shared Kevin’s optimism. But I am the person who loses her voice for two weeks and starts to imagine having to speak through an electronic voice synthesizer. Who watches Sophia fail a hearing test and sees her living a soundless future. Who feels a lump in her breast and is already imagining her funeral, Kevin remarrying, and Sophie having some other woman as her mother. I can cry real tears thinking about how, one day, I will disappear from Sophie’s memory and this woman will be the only mom she’ll ever know. I hate her--Sophie’s hypothetical stepmother.

So reading a book about a young pregnant woman whose husband suddenly dies in a freak accident speaks to my deepest fear: anything can happen at any moment. I wish I could say that this fear holds me in the present, fills me with gratitude, makes me wring the most out of every living second.

But it doesn’t. On a daily basis, I take my loved-ones, my healthy body, my safety and security for granted just as much as the next person. It is my morbid flashes that call forth my appreciation for life. While immersed in Signs of Life, I imagined Kevin dying, perhaps from an aneurism, like his mother had. Having to make that awful decision of pulling him off the respirator. Never quite believing that the doctors performed the EEG correctly. Explaining to Sophie what had happened and facing the question of “When is daddy coming back?” Feeling the emptiness of the house, the unbearable silence that only comes with absence, the space left by sounds that once filled the room. My own loneliness, knowing that I will never again feel the comforting spread of his arms around me. Never again see his dimples crease his face. Never again hear him sing our invented goodnight song to Sophie in his best lounge lizard voice.

And, of course, now I’m crying. At once despondant and grateful.

We will probably both live a long time. The odds are in our favor. Kevin, confident that we will make it through, relatively unscathed, and me, ever vigilant, anticipating the worst. Living in the world differently, appreciating it just the same.

During the fifth month of her pregnancy of her first child Natalie Taylor is devastated by the sudden death of her husband. Her journey with grief is chronicled in the memoir Signs of Life. Join From Left to Write on March 29 as we discuss Signs of Life by Natalie Taylor. As a member of From Left to Write, I received a copy of the book. All opinions are my own.

All Growed Up

We have just had a wonderful time running from “the boyfriends” (Sophie’s twin 4-year-old playmates) who were masquerading as T-Rex’s, and their younger sister, Rachel, who goes by the alias “Super Poodle,” so I was puzzled by the dejected face that was staring back at me in the rearview mirror.

“Soph, what’s wrong?” I asked.

“I’m very sad.” Sophie said, solemnly.

“How come?”

I, for one, was feeling fine. The play date had started off with a volcanic tantrum during which Sophie had ripped off her pants and underwear and stood in the kitchen crying, naked from the waist-down, because I refused to take off my jacket when she did. But the evening had ended on a high note--the kids, with bellies full of hot dogs and chocolate cookies, sat rapt while I read Naughty Parents at the kitchen table.

“I’m thinking about how I’m going to be a grown up soon,” Sophie replied, “ and I’ll have a house of my own and my own child, and I won’t see you every day.”

How is it that our hearts, when deeply touched or in despair, actually feel pain? It’s a clutching. A constriction.

I swallowed to return my heart to the place where it belongs in my chest.

Part of me has the impulse to pull over to the side of the road, gather her up in my arms and exclaim: “Oh Sophie! You don’t have to leave mommy! We can be together for ever and ever!”

But the saner part of me knows that this is not true. That there will come a day when she does not jump around with excitement that it is a “mommy day,” when just the two of us are together. And, though I have difficulty imagining it, I suppose there will come a day when I will be ready for her to seek her fortune in the world. When Kevin and I will return to the city lifestyle of our pre-Sophie days, enjoying the freedom of being able to go where we want and do what we want, when we want.

So this is what I say instead: “Sophie, you still have many years before you become a grown up. FIrst you’ll be a big girl. Then you’ll be a teenager. Then you’ll go off to college. But when you finally become a grown up, you will be ready to have a family and home of your own. You will be ready to leave mommy. But you can come to visit mommy, just like we go to visit grandma. And I will be so happy when you come to see me. And I will visit you in your new home.”

You know you have satisfied a child’s curiosity, or quelled their fears when they settle and there are no more questions. The consternation that had wrinkled her brow, moments before, had disappeared and was replaced with a placid, contented expression.

The pain in my heart from moments before dissipated too, a warm release of calm spread through my body with every beat.

Nesty Tresses

It was a bad hair day.

This typically happens the morning after the bath. Though I try to dry her moppy top before I put her to bed, Sophie experiences my ministrations as battery and assault. I’ve tried to lighten the mood by screaming along with her. We stand together, in front of the bathroom full-length mirror. Sophie, in front, stark naked. Me, behind her, wielding my hand towel of torture. The two of us scream at the top of our lungs as I tousle her sopping locks in brief bursts. It is cathartic for me. I can express some of the pent-up frustration that has been slowly growing throughout the bath. It is distracting for her. If too much of my anger does not leak into my primal cries, she finds me funny. Sometimes, we both wind up laughing.

What must the neighbors think?

But we never get it quite dry. She wriggles away long before the job is done. So, by morning, her bob has magically transformed into a bird’s nest. Most mornings I can tame it with a wide-toothed comb, a glass of water, and a book. But on the mornings we are headed North, I forgo the combing, knowing it will “hang out” with a little sweat and time.

But on this morning, I make a fatal error. As we were making our ablutions in the bathroom, we both catch a glimpse of Sophie’s head in the mirror. “Take a look a your head!” I exclaim, “what decided to take up residence in there last night?”

Sophie stands still for a moment, “Mommy, my hair looks crazy.”

“Yes,” I agree. “It does.”

“We need to comb it, Mom. I don’t want the kids to think I look funny.”

It is a first. An awareness of judgement of her peers. A concern about her appearance. Self-consciousness.

Sure, in recent months, she has become clothes-conscious, insisting that she be the one to pick out her outfits each morning. But this stems less from a desire to achieve some social standard of beauty than to have creative control over her wardrobe. She mixes reds with hot pinks, florals with stripes, dresses with pants. All that matters is whether it appeals to her.

I can remember, before Sophia was born, admiring the invented outfits of other people’s willful four-year-olds. Secretly wishing that one day I would have a child who had her own sense of style. Who wore her zaniness on her sleeves.

And then, once I was gifted this child, I actually found myself saying, “but, Sophie, that doesn’t MATCH.” Or “Honey, that dress and those tights don’t go together.” I started getting into battles over what she wore. Much to my horror, I realized I was the one who was the one who was concerned about what others would think.

(Look at how she let’s that child out of the house.)

My old self was in there, I really got a kick of her crazy combos. I had to fight this other self. This mother self who worries excessively about whether other people think her daughter

Is polite enough

Is calm enough

Is obedient enough

Is clean enough

Plays nicely enough

and

dresses appropriately.

Ultimately, it was the battles themselves, so unpleasant and so unnecessary, that finally set me straight. Let her wear what she wants. Let her express herself in this small important way. Who cares?

Back in the bathroom, I pocketed the comb. “Soph, I’ll take the comb with me. When we get to school, I’ll brush it before we go inside.”

“Okay,” she replies brightly, happy to delay the brushing.

By the time we get to school, she has forgotten all about her nesty tresses. I consider for a moment, pulling out the comb, but then decide against it. Why reinforce it, this notion that she has to appear a certain way to avoid the ridicule of others?

When we got to her class. Sophie ran in and, blowing a kiss in my direction, joined her miss-matched, messy-haired friends.

And no one said a word.

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.

Mother Culture

Lately, we’re hearing a lot about how French parents parent and how Chinese parents parent, which got me thinking: Is there such a thing as American Parenting? And, if so, how do American Parents parent?

I am an American Parent, but I frequently feel like I’m parenting upstream, against a current that is flowing in a different direction, as opposed to being part of a larger unified, perhaps unspoken, parenting philosophy.

Then I have to wonder if that is how everyone feels—if that is American Parenting—a salad bowl of styles. A New World phenomenon of having people from so many different cultures living side-by-side. A patchwork of mothers and fathers parenting in response to their individual cultural norms, their inner voices, and the demands of their environment.

And, let’s face it. The US is just so much noisier than other countries. As parents we are inundated with a cacophony of “expert” voices coming everywhere from Hollywood to Harvard, omnipresent blather from Madison Avenue, and the audible pendulum swings of parenting zeitgeist (from “children should be seen and not heard” to “helicopter parents in the workplace”).

When I look at American literature/blogs on parenting today, there appears to be a trend towards a laissez-faire, more laid-back style of parenting: Parenting from the Couch, Free Range Parenting, Slow Parenting, The Idle Parent, The Three Martini Playdate, Confessions of a Slacker Mom. But how representative of the population at large is this?

Not very, I suspect.

We lack a mother culture. We are diffuse, diverse and sometimes divisive group. Sure there are trends in American youth, which, by proxy, point to trends in parenting—such as the fact that childhood obesity has more than tripled in the last 30 years or that, on average, children ages 2-5 spend 32 hours a week in front of the TV. But we can hardly generate a profile of the American parent based solely on this data.

Can we generalize region by region? (Southern parent, Northeast parent, Midwest parent) State by state? (California parent, Jersey parent, Texas parent) City by city? (Livingston parent, Newark parent, Point Pleasant parent) Or does this always reduce us to stereotypes, obscuring our true values and practices?

This week, in a rare breech of the imaginary wall that stands between us, I’m reaching out to you, dear readers. What do you think characterizes American parenting? I’d love to hear your thoughts.

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.