I can’t remember the last time I went to Target on a Saturday.
As of today, I know why.
It was supposed to be my break, part of the divide-and-conquer strategy Mike and I launched on this Saturday morning of oh-so-cranky toddler.
And, indeed, somehow, I needed a break, despite having spent all of an hour or so with Jake. All of it, mind you, “getting ready” to go to the park. This involved:
1) Three peaceful minutes of saving Daddy from his breakdown as Jake raised my hopes by agreeably taking my hand and walking upstairs to “put on clothes for the park.” As he rarely agreeably puts on clothes these days for any reason whatsoever, even the park, I believed my calm and motherliness had finally prevailed over what I still fervently wish to believe is the myth of the Terrible Two’s.
2) One medium-length crying fit as I objected to Jake’s preference for playing with the obnoxious-in-the-way-only-people-who-don’t-have-to-live-with-the-gift can be (a little driving console with steering wheel, radio, and turn signals that all make different and equally grating noises) over listening to me. Not only am I particularly up in arms about his recent penchant for steadfastedly ignoring me when I talk to him, but my frustration is compounded by the fact that I am usually striving to give him the choices that are supposed to mollify and mature a young child. Really, how much good is it letting him choose his outfit when this scenario consists of me kneeling on the floor with a selection of three shirts draped over my arm like a maitre d’ at a restaurant serving up a selection of Old Navy toddler tops while he hunches over his race car console drowning out my pleas for him to make a choice with the VRR-VRR-VRROOOOOMM of a toy whose battery just won’t die already?
Not much good, if, like me, you end up threatening to and then taking the toy away, provoking the tears that it seems it is my job to provoke these days.
This crying episode, however, ended surprisingly well, as Jake actually heard and understood me saying that if only he’d make a choice I’d give him his toy back. Or maybe it was sheer coincidence. At any rate, he chose a lovely red shirt and I gave him back his toy. All was peaceful. Until –
3) Five minutes of me looking for a pair of tennis shoes to celebrate our 60 degree weather while he insisted on going through my shoe boxes and trying on a pair of heels so high I’m surprised I haven’t broken an ankle in them. He was unhappy when I wrested them away and put them back in a box, but was fortunately distracted by the much safer Ugg slippers my wonderful husband bought for my perennially cold feet at Christmas. Minimal tears were involved.
Perhaps Jake was just saving up for:
4) A good twenty minutes spent in the bathroom as I foolishly tried to change out a load of laundry and put shoes on him. There were three flaws in this plan.
The first was that these days Jake is fascinated with turning on the faucet and wasting as much water as he possibly can. While I fancy myself able to choose my battles, I had the now apparent misfortune of living through a massive California drought at the impressionable age of nine. This means that I am hardwired to freak out at the prospect of wasted water. To the point that my lawn in St. Louis was constantly brown, even as the neighbors explained to me that there’s this little river called the Mississippi from which their abundant water supply came. Of course, we had a small drought a year or two after I moved there, and my brown lawn enjoyed some company, proving my point but at the expense of positively fixing me in a state of water-mania for the rest of my days.
While I might perhaps have been making some headway with Jake on the whole water-conservation thing up until this morning, we then hit flaw number two — while I was putting on shoes in the bedroom, Jake had come across the fishy-face mask of his Nebulizer and was now discovering the great fun to be had placing it under the faucet and letting all the wasted water run through the tube attached to its “mouth.” (For those lucky souls unfamiliar with the Nebulizer, it is a very loud machine with which one administers breathing treatments to their child with viral pneumonia or, in this case, a more mild but threatening respiratory bug. Said child is much more likely to tolerate the Nebulizer mask placed over his mouth and nose if he has viral pneumonia and is too sick and weak to protest.) This Best Activity in the World made it that much more difficult to suggest to him that he turn off the water already. And, no, he was not amused by the substitute game I made up, whereby I turned off the faucet, he made his way off the step stool he uses to reach the sink so he could walk around to turn the water back on and by the time he made his way back up the steps to the sink I had turned off the water again.
Yes, I understand why he was frustrated. But I was too.
And so began more tears. Because, remember, that’s my job.
And we’re not even to the third flaw in my plan: thinking he would actually put on his shoes.
This was not an unreasonable assumption. On weekends Jake gets to wear his beloved pink polka dot boots, banished from the gym at school.
“Do you want to wear your boots?” I asked in that cheery, upbeat voice I can put on even when cheery and upbeat are the last two things I am feeling.
“Nooo!” Jake wailed. “Shoes!”
“Really?” I asked, untucking his pants from his socks. “Okay, shoes.”
I got one on. Then, “Noooo!”
“What do you want?” I asked. At this moment Mike came up the stairs.
“Daddddyyyy!” Jake howled. I did not like this answer. “Daddy isn’t going to hold you until you have your shoes on,” I said grimly as he squirmed in my lap. Anyone who has had a strong, howling two-year-old squirm in her lap will appreciate how much more joyous the sensation is when you are eight months pregnant and don’t have a whole lot of lap to accommodate such squirming.
And so we entered into a match of Who Is More Determined. I was fixated on getting that second shoe on Jake’s foot at all costs — it velcros closed I reasoned, it can’t be that hard! — and he was equally determined not to let me. You know who won.
“BOOTS!” he finally howled. “I want BOOOTS!”
“Then let me put your boots on!” I yelled, sounding — I cringe to admit it here — like my own mother. I was embarrassed to have even my husband hear me talking to my child like that. Even though there is a reason that all parents yell at their kids from time to time, and it isn’t that they’re bad parents.
The thing about me yelling is — whether I am yelling at my own parents or my husband or, in my past, roommates or boyfriends — it can end only one way.
I cry.
And I cry even more when my son is clinging to his father for dear life. The same father who had used the very same tone of voice with him a mere forty-five minutes earlier. Which only proved that I had blown it forever, provoked one too many tantrums, wasted all that good will built up over nine months of in-utero care and twenty-five months of hugs and outbursts of great love.
So I sat in the bathroom for a while, crying and wondering where, exactly I am supposed to draw the line. What battles am I supposed to pick when every single thing in Jake’s life seems to be a battle these days? How, in short, do I know when to say no?
Saying No to Target on a Saturday
And so I found myself driving to Target on this beautiful Saturday while Mike got the prize of taking Jake to the park.
I tried not to think of him mingling with the other happy parents as I sat inside my car driving down I-240. I blasted the crap radio stations, smiling at the memories they provoked. Does it give me joy to hear tacky ’80’s songs because they remind me of happier days? Can’t be, because those days weren’t so very happy. Exhilaration at how far I’ve come? I’d like to think so, but how far have I come in a face smudged with the make-up that remained after my tears, a stretched out maternity shirt, and maternity jeans that have somehow become so small that I actually ripped them pulling them up for the five hundredth time before noon?
Let me repeat that. I ripped a pair of jeans because I am so very, very big right now. I was not, in short, feeling my best.
Besides, by the time I pulled into the Target parking lot, Hall and Oates was playing. And Hall and Oates, while good for a second or two of jolting nostalgia, just can’t sustain the pleasure through a whole three minutes of “Kiss on My List.”
I navigated the flourscent-lit aisles of Target with a long list and great purpose, but a longing sense that I deserved to be playing outside in the park as well. I was momentarily cheered by the sight of the couple with the tiny infant in an Ergo and the toddler in the shopping cart pitching a fit over not being alloweed to roam the toy aisle. If that couple could do it, I reasoned, then maybe we can too. Besides, I wasn’t doing it at the moment. I was carrying my baby the easy way — in my uterus — and Mike was dealing with the toddler tantrums.
But the joy of seeing another couple’s suffering was fleeting, and my usual stuck-inside-a-box-store panic set in. Would I make it out in time to join them at the park? Not likely, I thought, my heart falling as I backtracked for vacuum cleaner bags.
The nice woman at the check out didn’t help much. “Are you enjoying this beautiful day?” she asked as she handed me my five dollar gift card for buying two boxes of Pampers. I suspect I can look forward to many, many more such promotions.
“It makes me wonder what I’m doing in Target,” I said jokingly.
She seemed to take it personally. A shadow passed over her face. Apparently I can ruin the mood of someone besides my own son.
Then she noticed my belly and turned cheerful again. “When are you due?” she asked. “Are you excited?”
You’d think I’d just have said, “Yes,” and left it at that. But my morning of being the Mommy Who Says No had clearly worn on me. “Well,” I admitted, “we’ve got another at home, so it’s hard.”
This was not the answer she wanted. Nor I.
But it did weirdly reinforce my desire to be with my boys as they played in the park. Because, regardless of how many crying fits I provoke and no matter how many times I cry over the impossibility of making all the right choices as a parent, the bottom line is that I love spending time with my family.
Even when the alternative is something more appealing than a Saturday inside Target.
How to Be Patient with the Choices You Make
While I didn’t catch the boys at the park, I did get to join them for lunch at Buddha Bagels, the unfortunately named but friendly and convenient place around the corner.
As I stepped in the door, Jake came running at me, his grin all a mother needs to sustain her through another day of dealing.
He sat in my lap babbling happily and smearing cream cheese all over pretty much everything as Mike and I had a lovely Saturday afternoon talk. He showed me the text message from his nephew saying he had just been accepted to Mike’s high school, and I saw the teenage version of my husband and fell in love with him, jail bait though the image might have been.
Jake even consented happily to joining Mike in the bathroom for a diaper change. I sat in the quiet, feeling peaceful and happy.
Then I heard the howl — growing in volume as Mike opened the door to exit the bathroom.
“What did he want to do that you wouldn’t let him?” I asked as Mike rushed the screaming Jake outside and away from the other customers.
“Play with the water in the sink,” he replied over his shoulder. And I was reminded all over again of the choices that we make.
In fact, I tried awkwardly to explain to Mike on the walk home just why the water thing bothers me so much. He didn’t say much, probably because it just doesn’t matter.
And, really, does it? We have all kinds of reasons for the rules we make, and, frankly, it’s unlikely our kids will understand any of them.
I do strongly believe in giving Jake as free a rein as possible. For example, I decided the other day that if he refuses to put on his coat to leave school in the cold winter evenings then I should just let him be cold rather than spend fifteen minutes in the lobby trying to coax him into it (“Look at all the big kids wearing their coats!”) before finally forcing it on him as he yells and contorts himself and generally creates the appearance that I am causing him bodily harm while other parents provide the world’s most sympathetic audience — one that still shames me.
But I also know that boundaries are important. Being boss is important. And, yes, making decisions is important. Not just as a parent, but as a human being.
The problem, I believe, comes when the choosing becomes a matter of internal debate, when we look for justifications, reasons, a pattern. In other words, when we think about it too much.
At first glance, I question my reasoning. Can we really make all of our decisions from our hearts? Won’t we end up being full of inconsistencies? Won’t we merely confuse our children? How are they supposed to understand us if we can’t frame a coherent understanding of ourselves?
But, as I said, they’re not going to understand us anyhow. No one really is, all the time. Including ourselves. Really. Think back over some of the big choices you’ve made — whether they turned out fantastically or horrifically. Can you really explain every one of them?
In fact, I realized, I’ve been much more in mind mode this week, and I think my uncertainty over the choices I’ve made for Jake reflect that. I’ve got just four weeks, more or less, before my life disappears into the simulcrum of infant care. And I’ve got a lot of very non-yoga things to accomplish before then. In particular, this week has been packed with two legal projects, the intensity and speed of which occur only in litigation — that is, with quick, hard, and fast deadlines. You’ve got to get into your head and stay there, get the arguments down, get them sharp, and get them out.
This does not leave a whole lot of time for, say, coaxing a toddler who is testing his limits out of his pajamas in the morning.
In other words, the rigidity with which I approach my work life spilled over to my parenting. And I began sticking with battles that maybe didn’t have to be fought.
Or maybe they did. Maybe the point is that we’re human, and where our heart is changes as our lives change. That means our choices may change. And, as I contemplate that concept, I find something really beautiful in it.
And releasing. Because if I just give myself permission to make a choice — and to choose to change it — I can better enjoy the interaction between me and my beautiful boy. And I can even see how beautiful he is when his face is swollen with tears, flushed with despair, and shiny with snot.
Because he’s teaching me how to embrace the choices I make, whatever my reasons for making them.
Uttanasana — The Simplest Sort of Release
Sometimes you just need something simple and quick to let it all out. You know you’re being unnecessarily impatient with yourself or with your child or with someone else. You can see how stressed out you’re becoming and how stress begets stress. You don’t like the choices you’re making. But you can’t seem to let it go.
Uttanasana, a simple, standing forward fold, is a quick and easy antidote. It’s a lovely lower back release — the site of much of our stress — as well as a chance to release shoulders, neck — you know, those other places where we hold stress. Plus, you get the satisfaction of flinging yourself forward just when you can’t really stand yourself any more. (Or, if you’re kinder to yourself than I have a tendency to be at times, you can fold forward gracefully, dipping like a flower bending to the weight of its blooming petals.)
Try this pose with different hand variations — draping toward the floor, resting on your legs, clasped behind your back as you draw your knuckles along the ceiling to open your heart, or with fingers interlaced just at the base of your skull. Ahhhh.
Let it go and let your body inspire your heart to take charge again.