Category: Parenting

Origin Story

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Who, PhD

This is the piece that began my writing life. It started as a Facebook Note, written in the wee hours during the first week of my daughter’s life.

I submitted the piece to Scary Mommy (polished version here). Some readers shellacked me online because, when it first ran, I wrote “Dr. Who” instead of “Doctor Who” and, mortifyingly, “pass times” instead of “pastimes.”

Totally fair, I was wrong. Fortunately, the editors jumped in and fixed it. I love editors.

I also gave (and give) myself grace. I was caring for a newborn and twin toddlers, recovering from a C-section, writing random thoughts while running on approximately four minutes of sleep. Besides, making dumb mistakes is my brand. May I make smarter ones someday.

The piece below is the original Facebook Note (with the two errors above corrected). Some lines I’d rework or remove completely now, but it’s a good snapshot of that moment.

The baby in question is now in middle school. She’s remarkable, as are her brothers. I won’t say the worry was for nothing. Honestly, a lot of my worry is well-placed — or at least well-aimed. (See: the world.)

Notes To My Daughter

I worry. I worry about the low expectations, the frilly expectations, the just-so-far-and-that’s-fine expectations for you.

“Smile!” will be begged of you by strangers on the street and friends alike. I give you permission to scowl, growl, reflect, cry, muse, sing, smile, wince all you want. It’s your face showing your heart. You do not owe the world a phony grin because we only want our girls to be happy.

Learning you were a girl brought on sighs of shopping for pink frills by well-wishers. I was assured of being thrilled. You were, according to some, a balance for your brothers. According to others, “girls rule, boys drool.” I cringe, as you might if you have sons someday…or daughters.

I hope you mix your Hermione Granger with some Judy Blume and a whole lot of Kurt Vonnegut. I hope you watch Doctor Who and Star Wars and Murphy Brown. Please cast a wary eye at the Kardashians and Twilight books and Real Housewives of Where Ever.

Women are funny. You can be more than the nurse, the wife, the exotic dancer in your scenes, if you want. You can even be more than that mythical “Brilliant Hooker.” Be the surgeon, be the husband, be the strip club owner, be the President.

You can be the ingénue, you can be the side kick, you can be Tree Number Seven.

There’s a lot to be said for being an alto. There’s a lot to be said for a cappella. Don’t be afraid of a solo.

I hope you learn to spike, field, kick, bat, dribble, run, if you want.

Pink isn’t bad, but pink isn’t all. Pink softens and dazzles. Pink is fine. Sequins are usually not.

Shout Holy Yeses as much as you can. The scary things teach and (if you’re lucky) inspire awe.

Don’t be afraid not to be liked. Be afraid of those who excuse rudeness.

Jump. Jump high.

From the moment you were born, the usual comments have been about your looks. Yes, you are beautiful, especially to your mama and daddy. Aspire to receive feedback about talents you honed, earned, and sweated for. Be dazzling. Be brilliant. Work hard. It’s not enough for you to be pretty. May being pretty matter less and less as life presents you with more interesting pastimes. Strive for brilliance, curiosity, devotion, passion, truth, humor, skill. There will still be room for pretty. The beautiful package (and it is beautiful) will be that much more precious if it’s filled with many unique gifts.

Have energy. Know when to stop.

Math isn’t hard. Math takes time for some people. Invest that time. It’s ok that there are right and wrong answers in math. There are right and wrong answers in the world sometimes.

Learn languages. Learn public transit. Learn to say no, thank you.

Be careful about using the word “bitch,” and please avoid the c-word. Other women are not your default enemy.

Learning to be concise is a gift to you and others. Listening is a greater gift.

The word “cute” really stops being a compliment after a certain age.

Worry about your health and feeling good. Indulge sometimes.

Savor.

Laugh.

Apologize.

Forgive.

Raise an eyebrow or two.

Stay my baby for a little longer and know that I would keep you wrapped up in my arms forever if I thought that would make you a better person…it wouldn’t, but it would sure feel good.

Whoever you turn out to be, whatever advice you do or don’t take…

I love you.

— Mama, on the occasion of your first week.

In Attendance

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Also, a Coat

The coat is brown, puffy, and goes to my ankles. Add a messy bun and I look like the poo emoji.

I needed the coat a few weeks ago because it was freezing and my daughter had a regional middle school choir concert at a high school gym.

Middle school choir concerts are my favorite form of civic optimism. Kids collaborate to make something beautiful despite puberty actively sabotaging their vocal cords, all so an audience can briefly believe we belong to one another. This is where hope lives, even if the venue smells like feet.

Parental love has historically forced humanity into far worse circumstances than this, even on a cold Thursday evening.

So into the coat I went, looking and feeling like a baked potato.

My husband, daughter, and I arrived at the high school to find the gym entrance guarded by a teenage usher who held back the restless audience with all the authority of a traffic cone. The kids went to warm up while families packed the lobby. Everyone talked about how busy and tired they were. The tiredest people who have ever busied. As if to illustrate the point, an exhausted toddler lay starfished on the floor, wailing in the Hall of Interminable Waiting.

Five minutes before the show, the poor usher stepped aside and the crowd surged. Someone behind me decided I was an obstacle to their getting exactly as bad a seat as everyone else, and they shoved me. Mercifully my enormous coat absorbed the blow.

Anyway, we easily found seats, as did literally everyone else. My coat’s protective puffiness had been deployed for naught.

A few parents from our kid’s school came over to chat (“Hi! How are you?” “Tired and busy.” “Same.”) and then disappeared into bleachers on one of the three designated walls.

I folded my coat behind me, exhaled, and assumed that for the rest of the evening, the worst thing that could happen was that 50-100% of my butt cheeks might fall asleep.

Along the fourth wall were the rows of choir kids in school shirts and venue-appropriate shoes, clutching folders and ready to be taken seriously while delighting us.

The program started. The choirs took us on a world tour: “Tottoyo” from the Caribbean. The Russian folk song “Kalinka.” An arrangement of “Dies Irae” to liven up the joint.

When not singing, the kids sat attentive and appreciative of the other groups.

And for three glorious minutes, I thought maybe humanity has a chance.

However, another performance unfolded behind us, where a delegation of moms and dads sat. No idea who they were, but they clearly knew each other well enough to narrate the entire concert. Before, after, and during the songs. They declared “winners,” opined on which song “lost them,” and critiqued soloists. They laughed out of delight, but sometimes they laughed in that other way, too. One mom casually sang along to the songs she knew, and she knew quite a few of them. Then she complained about the audience’s bad etiquette when they clapped for soloists in the middle of a piece.

(Reminder: the universe will always choose to deploy irony in a high school gym.)

The singers were too far away to hear the chatter. My husband and I were too close not to.

But no one else seemed bothered – except possibly the person on the other side of my husband, who sat up straighter and straighter as the evening wore on, like her sense of decency was trying to escape through the top of her head before she did something regrettable.

Maybe the talking was the kind of thing you’re supposed to let slide. I reminded myself that no one had crowned me Queen of the Gym Bleachers, Sovereign of Decorum.

My shoulders crept toward my ears with familiar fury. Oh, hello, lifelong training to quell my irritation rather than risk being socially punished for noticing poor behavior.

I tried to listen to the kids, but the conversations behind me kept pulling my focus.

And then, my notably easygoing and also deaf in one ear husband shushed them.

He shushed them. Again and again.

I mean, they ignored him, BUT STILL.

After the final song, my husband and I performed a traditional Midwestern Passive Aggressive Two-Step.

1. Stare down Sing-Along Mom and her friends and say, “These kids deserved a better audience.”

2. Flee.

We found our daughter near the doors, eager to tell us all the behind-the-scenes details.

I nodded along, overheating in my coat, listening to her version of the night where everyone made space for one another.

We told her we were glad we were there.

Face-Planting and Whatnot

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Yes, I Want Fries With That

A small note:

Things are horrifying right now. This isn’t an attempt to pretend otherwise. In the past, I’ve written about what’s happening in the world, In the past, I’ve written about what’s happening in the world, which got some…responses. I’ll write about that soon, because it’s important. Today, I’m choosing a tiny thing that makes my brain unclench for ten seconds.

Many of us are fighting on a lot of fronts, and (regrettably) that sometimes involves me deploying dumb humor. Or something dumb-humor adjacent. (*mutters something about containing multitudes, then clicks out of italics*)

I don’t like fishing. I don’t like wearing damp pants and pretending it’s relaxing to stare at water while someone argues the relative merits of lures and crankbaits.

I don’t even like aquariums that much. I like dolphins. Dolphins are not fish. They shouldn’t be in aquariums, though, because if a creature is smart enough to understand captivity, you are officially running a prison.

This is all just to say that I am not fishing for compliments. I’m telling a moderately funny story about questions.

SO.

The other week, I went into a beauty store with my daughter. We went in because we like to sniff perfumes and sample the lotions. We also went in because Mother Nature had turned winter up to “hostile.” This was at one of those outdoor malls, and the architect must have gone through life without ever personally experiencing wind chill. We went in to be somewhere with flattering lighting and tubes of coconut-scented things that soothe chapped lips.

I walked in cosmetically questionable. My hair was auditioning for Gorgon! The Musical!

Sidenote: my hair doesn’t usually behave. It’s fine. I work from home. My dog doesn’t care. My husband loves me for my inner beauty and because I’m fricking hilarious, which means my ‘do is free to express itself.

Beauty stores do not operate on this value system, FYI.

ANYWAY, there were roughly fifty employees and two other customers in the joint. The folks who work there are extremely kind, ridiculously attractive, and really attentive. If you even cast a glance at something that may or may not make you look like some sort of elvish tart in a middling fantasy series, a sales associate will apparate and ask if you’ve considered a serum.

Let’s set the scene more clearly. I had attempted “natural makeup,” which takes twice as long and still makes you look like you forgot to finish getting ready. Also, please recall that it was cold and windy, therefore, whatever makeup I had on was cried off.

SO.

I am not a natural beauty. It’s fine. I’m more concerned with being curious, kind, fricking hilarious, and/or not-so-vaguely terrifying. I mean, let’s not get carried away – I don’t want to be the model for a Netflix monster series as either monster or hero. Could I be cast in a Netflix monster series? Sure, probably as the neighbor who opens the door, says, “I heard screaming,” and then dies immediately in an unintentionally hilarious way.

ALSO, I take a certain pride in my lack of vanity, which is a sentence one says only if they are about to get humbled in a beauty store.

We encountered a gorgeous salesperson in her late-fifties, I would guess. She did the usual thing first and asked if we were aware of the sales. We were. Several times over. Then she looked at us and asked, “Are you related?”

Another sidenote, as long as we’re here: My kid and I look a lot alike, but I think about families who don’t and how that question might land.

“Yes.” I didn’t say more because I assumed that was the entire exchange. She stood there, visibly recalculating, starting and stopping her next sentence.

My brain caught up. Ohhh. She was trying to figure out if I was the mother or the grandmother.

Honestly, that’s fair. I had my daughter at what doctors call “advanced maternal age.” Not, like, “Weird Human-Interest-Story” advanced maternal age,” just regular “I Don’t Kneel On The Floor Without An Exit Plan” maternal age. It’s fine.

She continued stumbling.

“Oh, don’t worry, you look good.” (Mercifully, she did not add “for your age.”)

Reader, it’s entirely possible I’m not as lacking in vanity as I thought.

I don’t think she meant anything by it. Her mouth simply activated before the rest of her system had completed its startup sequence, which is a malfunction I also struggle with.

She is a midlife person surrounded by 20-somethings who can expertly wing their eyeliner in a hurricane using only one hand. She’s standing in a store that worships youth, and she’s trying not to step on a conversational landmine.

I liked her.

She asked us to let her know if we had any questions, and I asked her to point me to products that would make my hair look less like something that required filing an incident report. My daughter, once again victim of Mom Doing Bits In Public, went over to the Sol de Janeiro section for what I can only imagine was plausible deniability.

I purchased some sort of hair potion, then we left and got burgers. The man taking our order (age indeterminate) asked if we wanted fries.

THAT is the best question to ask me. No fishing required.

And you shouldn’t have to fish for your best question either, no matter your age, your face, or your current relationship status with moisturizer.

Wow. That’s preachy and doesn’t exactly make sense. Okay. Sorry. Let’s maybe end with the slightly less cringy “This was probably about understanding that we’re all just trying to get through the day without face-planting,” and then run credits.

Bonus post-credits scene: (*stares at camera*) Is anyone interested in doing a Netflix series called Gorgon! The Musical!?