Jake has just discovered the concept of righteous indignation.
As in, “How dare you comb my hair for me!” Only expressed in howls of unhappiness perfectly calibrated to get on my last nerve.
Or, “Don’t you dare fill up that bathtub! Don’t even mention the word ‘tub’ to me! And certainly don’t ask me why I am so upset about the prospect of taking a bath!” Which he says, not in so many words, but by frantically running away from me crying, “No bath! No bath!” even as I try to coax him into a pair of Dora the Explorer swim diapers. (Frankly, I find them no less embarrassing for him — bright pink flowers and all — than the gender-specific Spiderman swim diapers modeled by a boy in the picture on the packaging that I plainly was supposed to purchase instead.)
Then there’s the one that precipitated my final breakdown last night: “What do you mean you’re trying to cook dinner and can’t pick me up?” Very expeditiously communicated by standing at the front door wailing, “DAAAAADY! DAAAAAADY!”
It was at this point that I crumpled into a corner of the bathroom and decided that I have never, ever been capable of making any other human being happy and that I was plainly, sadly wrong when I thought my son was my salvation and that by saturating him with my love I could make up for all the crippled emotions I have picked up over a lifetime that have somehow convinced me I am incapable of making anyone else happy.
Finding Jake staring up at me in shock did not shake me out of it, though one might expect such dramatic effect if I were writing a novel. Since I am writing about true life, however, what it did was make me feel even worse for inflicting this traumatic moment on my child.
Especially when he quietly said, “I’m happy, Mommy.”
I swept him into my arms, leaving the garlic un-minced, and held him to me on the couch. “You are a wonderful person,” I assured him. “You haven’t done anything wrong. It’s not your job to make me happy. You make me very, very, very happy.” And other words designed to reassure me as much as him.
Which they kind of did. Until an hour or so later when he started wailing about the fact that I put aloe cream on his weather-reddened cheeks while getting him ready for bed and I walked out on him and told him we could read books when he was done with his tantrum while trying not to have another one myself.
The Pathetic Way to Ask Whether I Am Capable of Making Another Person Happy
To explain, this steeped-in-a-stew-of-despair questioning came at the convergence of a number of trying circumstances. There’s the fact that I have just six or so weeks before my life officially becomes a blur of sitting in the same spot for approximately 22 hours each day feeding an infant, two-hour snatches of sleep, and dried spit-up in places I haven’t washed for days. Plus, the related lack of time to do everything that needs doing in the remaining six weeks while still finding an occasional hour or two to just be quiet, be alone, not be catering to a two-year-old. And the related-to-that fact that there are STILL workmen in our house. Plus this lovely cold that has descended on me along with the exhaustion and 19-degree weather.
All of which creates just the right stew in which to lose every ounce of cool, parenting patience I might have in the face of the determining factor in my breakdown: a two-year-old who is acting just like a two-year-old.
It’s not just tantrums. We’ve had those before, and I’ve been able to face them with calm and the constant repetition of the phrase, “I know, I know. I understand.”
No, Jake has evolved past the mere fact of an I’m-not-getting-my-way tantrum. He now has the ability to turn every perceived slight into a personal affront so painful that he plainly feels as if he is all alone in the world with no one to comfort him but his Bubbe. Not the kind of Bubbe who is a Yiddish grandmother. The kind of Bubbe that is a soft scrap of blanket lined by satin. Preferably the grubby pink frayed one with the bear head in the middle acquired on an emergency Bubbe-run to Target. Which, clutched in his snot-shiny hand, is a much more pathetic sight than a child in the arms of a human Bubbe.
Seeing your child — or anyone, really — that wrapped up in the twisted pain of alone-ness is bound to stir up some of the same emotion in you. Or at least — if you for whatever reason feel some sense of responsibility for convincing this crying person that he is not all alone in the midst of a wretched world — to feel both personally affronted by the rejection implicit in the fact that you have plainly not so convinced him and personally the cause of it. In other words, you are rendered simultaneously all alone in the world and deserving of this status because of your own failings at basic human interactions.
While this might sound a tad hyperbolic, nothing is hyperbolic by the fifth such toddler breakdown in the space of an hour and a half. Put another way, there is only so much patience any human being can possess, and at some point your ability to speak calmly gives way to a need to walk out of the room, which swiftly turns into the need to say sternly, “I can’t help you if you won’t tell me what’s wrong!” which is only a step away from yelling, “YOU NEED TO STOP CRYING ALREADY!”
And, thus, the stage is set for some dramatically todder-like behavior by all parties.
Finding the Bigger Truth in the Fact that We Really Don’t Have the Ability to Make Other People Happy
Most likely a good nap will do more for putting the crying episodes in perspective than anything else right now. And yet I can see the truth, even if it’s not making me feel a whole lot less fragile.
The truth is that we can’t make anyone else truly happy.
We can offer them moments of happiness and joy. We can add immeasurable happiness to their lives. We can add meaning and something to look forward to and more smiles than anyone could ever count.
But we can’t make them happy because we can’t keep other things from making them sad.
So, in the toddler scenario, I could have the patience of a saint (and, honestly, I make it a good eighty percent of the way there on a good day) but I still couldn’t stop the onslaught of Jake’s two-year-old pity parties. Because I’m not the one making him unhappy, even if my demands that he, say, stand in the vicinity of a filled bathtub or put on a clean diaper are the triggers.
What’s making Jake unhappy — and what, in turn, is making me unhappy as well — is not getting his way. Not having things turn out just the way he envisioned.
For example, at many points during our evenings together, Jake decides he needs a hug. This is not an unreasonable desire, nor one that he particularly plans out. It’s just a feeling that comes over him. And, being two years old and not capable of higher reasoning, he figures if he needs a hug all he needs to do is ask for one and he’ll get it. That course of action did, after all, work pretty well during his early language-development months when we were all about positive reinforcement of the use of words. It has only recently given way to the startling specter of his mother saying, “I physically can not hold you and chop onions at the same time.”
So when I say, “I physically can not hold you and chop onions at the same time,” Jake hears that his expectations are not being met and he becomes very, very disappointed. That disappointment wells up a few fat, hot tears. The sensation of those tears rolling down his cheeks reminds Jake just how disappointed he is. So much so, in fact, that he lets out the first of his heart-rending wails. Which opens up space inside for more such heart-rending wails and the outsized sense of injustice that accompanies them. And before you know it, Jake is desperately, desperately unhappy and alone and if you ask him why he can only stop and say, “Uh … uh …” because he doesn’t even know any more.
Knowing this is how it plays out should help me avoid my own tears. Except that I am engaged in exactly the same toddler-like behavior myself. Losing it because my child is wailing in my ear for the fifth time this evening is perfectly understandable. But tears have a way of leading me down the path of old, pathetic thoughts, the kind I know will create even more tears and more self-pity.
Come on. You know you do the same thing yourself. Trot out those bitter old thoughts whenever you’re feeling just a little bit down so you can really settle in and feel sorry for yourself. Or angry at the world, if that’s more your thing.
The point is, we have a way of getting carried away by our own emotions. It looks, at first glance, like we are merely reacting to circumstances — too much crying toddler, too little sleep. But the circumstances can be an excuse to switch into some internal realm where our minds take over and coax us into places we don’t need to go.
Like telling ourselves that it is our own personal failing that we are unable to make our child or anyone else truly happy.
You Know I’m Going to Tell You Yoga Can Lead You Out of this Morass
It’s all well and good to know, intellectually, that there’s no good reason to be bent over my enormous belly as I sit on the toilet seat crying pathetically while my toddler tries to cheer me up. But I’d rather not have it happen too often.
First of all, I need to tell myself, it’s okay that it does happen. Life is just a practice. We don’t get everything right, we don’t always find a way to stop crying or stop feeling sorry for ourselves or stop making things into something much bigger than they are. Sometimes even the most experienced yogi falls over in headstand. It happens. We forgive ourselves and move on.
But what can I add to my life’s practice so that I don’t keep breaking down and then forgiving myself? What can I learn from my two-year-old? How can I strengthen my headstand?
I can learn not to feed the self-pity, the thoughts that I know are untrue and yet wallow in just the same.
This doesn’t mean I can stop thinking them. It just means I endeavor to recognize when they are coming on and to learn how to ward them off.
That’s learn how to ward them off. Sometimes it won’t happen. Especially when I’m tired and pregnant and experiencing a two-year-old for the first time. But, then, I’m not exactly a natural-born athlete who masters challenging yoga poses the first time I approach them either. Like, never.
Yoga poses are sort of a safe way of reminding ourselves that all of life is a practice. Because, really, no matter how much our egos may get involved, we can all take a step back and realize that not being able to practice headstand in the middle of the room is not a personal failing. It is not going to change a single thing of substance in our lives. Nor is being able to do so going to solve our problems.
The trick is translating what happens in an asana practice into real life. Seeing the connection between practicing physical poses that have no literal application outside of yoga class — Quick! Assume Virabhadrasna II right here while pumping gas! — and the real challenges that we live with.
Here is what I learned when I started practicing yoga: To approach things slowly and mindfully. To back off when I’m expecting too much from myself. To let go of the fear of going more deeply than I have before. And to recognize when to back off and when to go deeper.
That’s a lot to hold onto when your two-year-old is melting down and you’re melting down with him. Or when a person you love has said something truly unkind to you. Or when your superviser at work has criticized your performance.
At these moments, the first thing you will succumb to is pure emotion. It’s in the acceptance of that emotion that we learn — slowly, as with any practice — to let that emotion be what it is and nothing more. To avoid, in other words, the toddler tantrum that Jake, at a mere 25 months of life experience, is unable to resist.
Sometimes, we will find, a little adult experience, a little practice, a little mindfulness, will lead us away from turmoil and let us remain calm. And, yes, sometimes, the tantrum will prove irresistible.
How Could It Not Be Headstand?
It should come as no surprise that I offer sirsasana, or headstand, here.
It proved such a good analogy for good reason. For one thing, to do it, you have to turn upside down. That means everything looks different, feels different, has been disrupted. For another, it takes a certain combination of strength and calm that is utterly unlike, say, standing upright. And, finally, it takes courage, lots of courage.
So does facing a two-year-old who is afraid of the bathtub.
If you are still fearful of headstand in any form — try going to a wall and approaching the pose calmly and slowly. Often, I’ve seen teachers tell people new to the pose to kick up into sirsasana, likely to get them upside down and used to the feeling. I would instead suggest taking it a step at a time so you can stop wherever you’d like. It could be just the sensation of putting your head on the floor while your feet remain there as well. Or stepping your feet in and drawing your knees into your chest so you are balancing on your head but in a safe little ball. Or, eventually, feeling the strength and calm that help your feet rise toward the ceiling. When you’re ready.
If you are comfortable in sirsasana but only against a wall, try setting up for it a couple of feet from the wall. Ideally, you can measure the distance by sitting on the floor and placing your feet flat against the wall. Then place your knuckles where your knees are and set up the pose here. Come up into it with control, knowing the wall is just the length of your shin bone away. Once you are up, you can bend one knee and place a foot against the wall for balance, while working on keeping your other leg straight and working toward balance without a wall. Again, take as long as you need and go only where you’re ready to go.
If you are comfortable doing sirsasana without a wall, experiment with different ways of moving into the pose, different leg combinations, different amounts of time in the pose. Challenge your calm and find your inner strength.
And, in any stage of the pose, don’t forget to learn from your intentions and let go of your expectations.