When Good Girls Go Mad

It’s been a while since I’ve written.  (Blame the novel.  Or don’t blame the novel, just read it when it’s finished.)  A lot has happened.  Lily is speaking in three-word sentences — “Jake eat pasta” is a common one; “Man is gone?” a particularly clever way of saying she can’t find the man in the picture; and “Mommy do it” a highly recurrent theme.  Jake is displaying a sense of imagination — largely centered around a superhero he has named “Sportsman” — that blows me away.

But one thing that hasn’t happened, though I’ve been expecting it for a while, is Lily hitting her Daddy Phase.  Until this morning.

Those of us who’ve experienced it know it well.  One moment the baby is all about Mommy, running to her with every fright, scrape, or need for a hug.  The next, we get a taste of empty nest syndrome, except with more hormones and no sleeping-in mornings.

There have been times, I’ll admit, when I hoped for Lily to hit the Daddy Phase.  The shin splints in my left leg from propping a 25-pound toddler on my hip while unloading the dishwasher every morning beg for Lily to prefer her Dad’s arm.  (She surely doesn’t mind him if I am pointedly avoiding her gaze and keeping myself too busy to give her an opening to lunge at me, but that’s really not the same thing.)  When Jake gets all cuddly and Lily intrudes on our moment and it ends up in a “My Mommy!”  “No, MY Mommy!” war I think it would be nice if they were better at choosing Daddy sides.

Still, as Lily hit 20 months and I knew for certain Jake was already on his second Daddy Phase by this age, I couldn’t help taking the kind of satisfaction that comes before a fall.  Plainly, I thought, we have the most special of Mother-Daughter bonds.  We are so deeply connected that no one but me will ever be able to meet her needs.  Blithely ignoring the training-for-adolescence squabbles in which we engage daily, I tell myself that Lily and I will always adore each other.

There was not so much adoration flying around the house this morning.

It started innocently enough, with our morning cuddle in the glider.  Lily was a little picky, answering “No” when I asked if she would like me to remove her sleep sack, “No” when I kissed her forehead, “No” when I asked if I could put her down, and “No” when I asked if she would like me to return to her crib.

“I need to go downstairs,” I finally said firmly, exercising the approach I have chosen to take with Lily’s growing independence.  No putting up with obstreperousness here.  “I will put you down if you don’t tell  me what you want.”

Lily allowed as how “Blanket off” was a worthwhile option and then crumpled on the floor when I tried to put her down.  “No!” she yelled at me.  “Noooo!”

So I went to Jake’s room to do a little morning cuddling with someone who seemed a bit more appreciative of it.  When I returned, Lily was still crumpled on the floor, but smiling at me this time and willing to have her diaper changed, as long as I did it on the fluff-covered red shag rug we now think of as her diaper table.

“Breakfast,” she declared when we were done, and off we headed for the kitchen, her wrapped around me in her frequent Mommy-strength-building position.

I would have preferred to empty the dishwasher without a baby attached to me, but I understand there are certain things you do for the sake of a little morning peace and quiet.  So I made due until the bagel Lily had requested was done toasting, explained in none-too-gentle terms that it is not so very easy to butter a toasted bagel while holding onto 25 pounds of increasingly deadweight (the bagel was so much more interesting than holding onto Mommy), and put Lily in her seat at the dining room table with her breakfast.

“All done!” she cried as soon as I put her down.

“No way,” I responded, still employing that method of not brooking any toddler guff.

“All done!” she insisted.  So I walked away.

Somewhere in the dimness of Willfully Ignoring My Child I heard some fussing.  I heard her and Jake fighting with each other at the table.  I sat down to another “All done!”

“Fine,” I said, tired of this in a way I can explain only by way of noting that this happens all the time, this battle of wills.  “You want down, get down.”  I helped her to the floor.

“Lap,” Lily said.

I ignored her.  And here’s where things got rough.

Daddy, you see, had not been carting Lily around all morning while unloading the dishwasher.  He had not been trapped in a glider with a girl who would say nothing but “No!” for twenty minutes.  And he really just wanted to eat his breakfast and read the paper, for which I honestly don’t blame him.

The smug look Lily gave me from the comfort of his lap was therefore only mildly irksome.

But it was merely a precursor to what came next.

After breakfast, I herded the kids upstairs to get dressed.  For a while all went as smoothly as normal — which is to say, a lot of exasperated, “Jake, pay attention to what you’re doing”s and “Lily, come back here”s.  But I got Lily into an outfit of which she seemed to approve and that I did not discover too late clashed horribly (because, with Lily, once she is dressed there’s no turning back).

Then I put on Lily’s socks.

“NOOOO!” she yelled, arching her back and twisting away as if I were a smelly stranger trying to abduct her.

“Your feet are cold!” I pointed out in one of those useless parenting statements that signals we have gone beyond the edge of reason.  As any experienced parent knows, if your child insists on having cold feet it’s much, much easier to let her feet be cold than to fight with her about it.

Not that I thought I was fighting.  I put on her socks and I walked away as she screamed and wailed and tried desperately to get them off.  Walking away when your child is having a tantrum, I feel, is a very sound thing to do.

What made me slam the door to the bedroom wasn’t Lily yelling and screaming.  It was Lily stopping when her Daddy picked her up.

Abandoned by the mother she had been angrily pushing away, she began calling for her Daddy.  And her Daddy , quite reasonably, did what any daddy summoned by his deeply distressed daughter would do — he came and rescued her.  Next time I caught sight of her she was splayed against his body, looking at me like I was dead to her.

This was more than I could take.  It’s one thing when I am the one to swoop down with arms of comfort when my daughter is distressed.  It’s my job, I think, when I take over a yelling child from a frustrated Mike, even though I know I may be frustrating him more than Lily is.  But turn the tables  — make Daddy the one taking over from Mommy — and I seethe with the unfairness of it, with my own inadequacy.

Even now, looking back, I think there was nothing wrong with slamming the bedroom door.  I needed to be alone, and I was angry.  And I didn’t slam it that hard.  (“Did you slam the door on purpose?” Mike asked a few minutes later, which I take as a good sign that I’m not the type to slam doors as a general habit.)

Expecting ourselves to be patient and serene and yoga-like all the time is expecting too much.  The point of yoga isn’t to achieve a perfect, unflappable Zen state.  Or maybe it is — but it’s not the goal.  In other words, while unwavering patience is a lovely thing to which to aspire, you’re never going to get there.  Especially if you have children.

If there’s one thing our children teach us, it’s what being human is all about.  I defy you to show me one perfect child, even your own.  Even my own.  They are human and therefore they are not perfect.  And yet we think they are.

So why not feel the same way about ourselves?  I needed to slam the door at that moment because I didn’t even know if I could take Lily to school.  I didn’t, in those few minutes, know how I could hug her and tell her I loved her when I was feeling so angry and frustrated.

Now, I’ll be honest.  In addition to slamming the door, I needed to hear Lily giving Mike a hard time a few minutes later.  I can say this because I’m human — Hearing Lily yell at Mike made me feel much, much better.

In fact, because I had given myself permission to be angry with her — even though I knew she was probably cutting a tooth or coming down with a cold or just being 20 months old, which can be pretty frustrating — I was able to be loving with her a little while later.  To speak gently with her and give her the hug she needed when she was ready for it and, yes, to take her to school and tell her I love her and to mean it with all my heart.

Because in the end and with all due respect to the Daddy who was there when I couldn’t be, she still needed her Mommy.