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Archive for the 'friendship' Category

Jake and I Go to the Dentist (and Have Fun)

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on November 18, 2009

in Mommy time, being in the moment, chattering mind, friendship, letting go, practice, school, social life, stuck at home with a child, too much to do and work

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On Sunday I climbed the curved ladder to the top of the play structure for the very first time.

Jake beat me to this milestone by several months and four decades. But that didn’t cheapen the fun of climbing, rung by rung, up and then, a little at a time, over until I crouched horizontally over the ground gazing at the mulch beneath me in giddy, defying gravity (sorry, stuck in my head from last week’s episode of Glee) motion.

It was yet another 75-degree November Sunday, surely the last of the year, and I had cheerily left Lily at home napping with Dad while Jake and I headed to the park for what I felt certain would be another morning of Mommy socializing.

Surprisingly, it seemed that all of our friends had something better to do with this glorious day than hang out with us for some impromptu playground partying.

For a while, I followed Jake around, dutifully pushing him in the swing as I scanned the faces of the other adults in attendance for some spark of familiarity. We headed for the play structure, and I settled myself on a nearby bench while Jake headed down the slide by himself.

This was, I thought smugly, far preferable to the days when I was obligated to accompany Jake on the play structure, him being too young to, oh, slide by himself without possibly flipping over the side or failing to stop at the bottom, instead landing in a heap of mulch and tears and possibly a few stitches. How lucky I was, I thought, that my child was old enough to entertain himself. I performed a few quick mental calculations to determine whether Lily would magically be old enough come spring for me to escape the awkward Mommy-on-the-play-structure phase entirely.

Except that my continued hopeful gaze at the faces of strangers — like a puppy at the pound hoping some nice person would take me home and love me — reminded me that I was, frankly, bored. I mean, it was nice and warm and sunny and all. But I was mostly checking my cell phone every few minutes to see if it was late enough to call friends on the west coast to distract me from what I was treating as a chore.

A chore. Hanging out with my beautiful son on a beautiful sunny day. This was, I began to fathom, not desirable behavior.

That’s when I headed for the curved ladder, casting aside habitual vestiges of self-consciousness, fear of falling, and adult-acquired reservation.

It was time to play with my not-quite-three-year-old.

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Everything Grows Faster in the Summer

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Melissa

on September 1, 2009

in being in the moment, change, chattering mind, daycare, expectations, friendship, motion, school, social life, structure, stuck at home with a child, vacation and you can't control everything

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I have acquired yet another in the growing number of items on my list of Things I Know Better Than to Do But Do Anyhow.

I have just finished sorting through Jake and Lily’s outgrown clothes, putting them away in anticipation of the spring kids’ rummage sale at the Jewish Community Center to which I will donate them. This newfound desire to pass my kids’ old clothes on to the JCC as a way of indirectly giving yet more money to my children’s preschool is born, no doubt, of my questionable decision to become a PTO rep for Jake’s new class.

One might logically assume my decision to become a PTO rep for Jake’s new class is what belongs on my list of Things I Know Better Than to Do But Do Anyhow. But it’s not. Or maybe it will be. Whatever pangs of PTO regret and stupidity may ring through my brain shortly, they will have to wait in line.

Because not only did I sort through my kids’ old clothes, I sorted through my kids’ old clothes as soon as I arrived home after dropping Jake off for his first day in his new class, his screams of “I want my Mommy!” still reverberating in my head as they reverberated down the hall when I left him. As I held each precious item up, trying to imagine its owner fitting into it, then remembering just what it was like when he did, I felt the distinct oof of my breath leaving me with the realization that — sniff — my children are growing up.

And not so suddenly, I found myself moistly whimpering, “I want my boy who wore these tiny tees!”

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Is There Such a Thing as a Full Circle and What Does It Look Like?

Published

Melissa

on May 1, 2009

in aging, being in the moment, change, chattering mind, following your heart, friendship, gratitude, motion, opening your heart, practice, sense of self, structure, the bigger picture and work

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I hung up the phone yesterday thinking I had come full circle.

We hadn’t spoken in nearly twenty years, and I wonder how long it’s been since I’ve heard the laugh that brought me right back in a joyful slide to the summer I turned seventeen. That laugh, I now remember, made me feel like I’d found a new and happy part of life.

I was at that awkward age where you want to be more grown up than you are, which maybe accounts for how I’ve more or less rejected the idea that there is anything serious about myself that I’d like to hold onto from those days. My narrative of that summer has always been about a girl filled with more naivete than a Los Angeles teenager probably should be, a dreamer who hadn’t yet bumped up against the realities that ultimately flattened her dreams and propelled her to law school and decades of searching for the feeling of that laugh.

And now, in one of those rare instances where Facebook lives up to its potential, I had a fresh perspective on a set of memories I’ve pored over a million times. Maybe, I considered from the vantage of this YogaMamaMe place I’ve made for myself, I wasn’t as naive as I’ve assumed. Maybe the dreams weren’t born of youthful stupidity. Maybe, just maybe, they simply became obscured by a life in which I stepped tenderly and then forcefully away from my heart. And now that I am back where my heart wants me to be, I have, I concluded, come full circle.

It’s an appealing picture, one in which an old friend becomes a new friend and our friendship a bookend-ish symbol of the insignificance of the journey between the two points of his laughter.

The picture is also, of course, just plain wrong. Because I haven’t really come full circle at all.

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My First Purim Carnival! (and Jake’s too)

Published

Melissa

on March 10, 2009

in balance, being connected to everything, change, expectations, friendship, inner beauty, letting instead of making, school, social life, structure, surrender, trust and you can't control everything

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It is, perhaps, the most remarkable change that motherhood has wrought: I looked forward to the Purim Carnival for weeks before it was upon us.

This is remarkable because — although this was my first Purim Carnival — it was certainly not my first opportunity to attend one.

Purim — for those who have not had and/or rejected the opportunities to participate that I have — is a Jewish celebration of spring. I’m not sure exactly what the story behind it is, although I’ve picked up at Jake’s school that it has something to do with heroes. My impression is that, as Christmas is designed to perk up those cold winter months, Purim is a chance to celebrate the onset of the warm ones. Mostly by getting dressed up in hero costumes and having carnivals in synagogue parking lots.

My only previous brush with a Purim celebration occurred my sophomore year in high school. My friend Brenda and I scored some cool 60’s dresses my mother had buried in a closet (since disappeared, to my periodic chagrin) and headed out to a party for the teenagers of a congregation to which Brenda may or may not have belonged. I certainly didn’t, and I know for a fact that she is the only one of the two of us who would have heard about and expressed interest in a party at a synagogue, even one at which boys might be met. While nominally Jewish myself, my entire exposure to what this meant consisted of: 1) attending a number of Bat Mitzvah’s at the Sportsmen’s Lodge in Tarzana during eighth grade; 2) having my parents tell me a whole lot how important it is to marry Jewish (that one plainly never sunk in); and 3) during the fall of my sophomore year of high school informing my mother that I would be taking Yom Kippur off from school to attend services with my friends and having her respond, “Take the day off if you want, but don’t waste your time in services!”

So, as little as I recall of that spring’s Purim party, I can say with assurance that Brenda set the whole thing up. And that it was enough to push me over the edge and away from any synagogue-sponsored activity for, well, ever, since this last carnival was sponsored by the local Jewish Community Center (not a synagogue), where Jake attends preschool. Because it’s the best program in town, not because I felt the need to enroll my child in Jewish daycare.

But I’m getting ahead of myself.

The reason that spring of ‘82 Purim party so turned me off to the joys of Purim remains rooted in memory, even if all the other details of the evening have faded. Brenda and I arrived just in time for a stand-up routine by some kid consisting entirely of racist jokes. I was so horrified that, to this day, I have steadfastedly ignored Purim. Plus, I generally don’t have any idea when it is, being only nominally Jewish and all.

And yet, a few weeks ago, when the announcements went up at Jake’s school, I was thrilled. Not only because I knew without a doubt that there would be no racist fourteen-year-old comedians at the JCC’s Purim Carnival. But because I truly was looking forward to taking Jake to the celebration.

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Am I Completely LOST or Would Any Mother Choose the Husband She Thought Was Dead over the Three-Year-Old Child She Knows Is Not?

Published

Melissa

on February 12, 2009

in compassion, expectations, friendship, gratitude, inner peace, intentions versus goals, letting go, letting instead of making, partners, surrender, trust and you can't control everything

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Is it just me? Am I the only one who’s still in a state of disbelief over what the writers had Sun do?

Maybe it’s the pregnancy.

Normally, I don’t get too wrapped up in the motivations of television characters (unless they appeared on The Wire — oh, Randy, I still mourn for you). I mean, I love my stories and all, especially in the past few days when I find myself in downward facing dog staring in horror at the lumpen scary looking things that are supposed to be my ankles. I’m told the best thing to do to coax them back to something approaching normal is to lie on my left side and relax. And TiVo is the perfect companion for doing so.

So there I was, lying on my side last night, watching LOST in practically real time. This alone was quite a treat, as I’m generally reduced to closing the blinds and guiltily watching in the middle of a weekday afternoon when the other members of the household, who do not appreciate LOST’s finer points, are not at home. From the banging and yelling drifting my way from upstairs, it became apparent that Jake was not settling down to sleep on time and that I might actually steal a whole hour while Mike was upstairs with him. Normally this would concern me no end … Do I let Jake sleep late to make up for the late bedtime and risk having him get into the habit of not going to bed until 10:30 every night? Do I wake him up at his usual time and rightly blame myself for the increased intensity of ensuing toddler tantrums?

Last night I simply blissfully thanked him for choosing Daddy to do the bedtime honors, lay on my left side, and watched my story.

It was just before I heard Jake at the top of the stairs yelling, “Downstairs! Downstairs!” that, for the first time, I bothered to be bothered by a LOST plot twist. So read on only if you saw last night’s episode or don’t care or don’t watch (in which case I still think there might be something ahead you might find worth reading, but that’s your decision to make).

Continue reading ‘Am I Completely LOST or Would Any Mother Choose the Husband She Thought Was Dead over the Three-Year-Old Child She Knows Is Not?’

Trusting the Nostalgia (Even When You Should Be Embarrassed by the Songs You Are Listening to on the Radio)

Published

Melissa

on January 14, 2009

in aging, awareness, being in the moment, change, chattering mind, expectations, following your heart, friendship, gratitude, inner peace, intentions versus goals, motion, partners, practice, sense of self, stillness, trust and yoga class

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I am awash in nostalgia these days.

Certainly it has something to do with the impending transformation of my status into “mother of two.” One child, Mike and I agree, is an accessory. Two children is an adult family. Who can approach such a spectre without a slightly longing glance back at the days when I was a member of the target audience for romantic comedies?

But in large part I blame the demographics of Asheville. There must be an awful lot of early-40’s, dreaming of their youth types like me here. How else to explain the fact that the radio station I used to not be embarrassed to listen to emerged from several weeks of annoying Christmas music into a playlist of catchy, roll-up-the-windows-so-no-one-hears-you-singing songs of the 70’s, 80’s, and 90’s? Every single one of them is guaranteed to jerk me immediately to some indelible moment of my youth — speeding down Olympic Boulevard at 2 a.m. in the Dodge Omni I drove through high school even though it stalled out every time I stopped for a light (”Girls Just Want to Have Fun”); dancing on the porch of Sigma Chi during Spring Weekend (”Mony Mony”); making my way down the unremittingly sad sweep of road to my townhouse in Williamsburg (”Long December”).

And it doesn’t stop with my dreamy driving moments of remembering what it felt like to believe I was on a trajectory toward something. There’s the Facebook fever that causes me to search for long lost (boy)friends and to scroll through my high school classmates without ever once contacting one because, well, that would suggest that I’m still interested in being the person I was in high school when I emphatically — for reasons obvious to anyone who knew me then — am not. I remember old friends, I get in touch with some of them, and I feel a blast of energy and satisfaction at how far I’ve come and how much I’ve come through in shaking some of the craziness of the days when I first knew them.

But even if I’m happy to have moved beyond the girl who had an anxiety attack if her every moment wasn’t filled with activity, who felt always a little short of where and who she thought she should be, and who frankly didn’t know how to love herself, I still miss being young. Not just the unlined face (though the amount of money I spend trying to slow down the inexorable track of crows feet would probably go a long way toward economic recovery). Not just the body parts that did not yet have a beef with gravity.

No, what I miss is the sense of possibility.

Remember when you dreamed of something big for yourself? I’m not saying it isn’t far, far healthier to enjoy where and who you are now than to keep trying to attain something that exists only in your mind. I’m just saying that it’s fun to dream. It’s fun to imagine what life might bring you — who you might end up married to, what you might end up doing when you grow up, where you will live and how cool you will be.

Now I know all these things. And it’s all good. But, still. I know.

More to the point, I have a kid. I’m about to have another. I find it hard to believe my life is moving anywhere unexpected any time soon. And where’s the fun in that?

Continue reading ‘Trusting the Nostalgia (Even When You Should Be Embarrassed by the Songs You Are Listening to on the Radio)’

When Families Happen

Published

Melissa

on September 10, 2008

in being connected to everything, change, expectations, following your heart, friendship, inner beauty, inner peace, partners, stuck at home with a child, traveling with toddler and vacation

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The remarkable thing about my taking Jake to visit my sister-in-law Maureen last weekend was that it seemed so very unremarkable to me.

Mike, you see, had brilliantly realized that even if three of us couldn’t travel to Napa for three days to attend a wedding I had, quite frankly, been dying to attend, he could go without me and Jake. The bride, after all, was the sister of one of his closest friends, and Mike knew his support would be appreciated.

Never mind that this same friend had been the officiant at our wedding, imbuing me, I felt, with a legitimate claim to lend my support to him as he gave away his sister in this one. Never mind that I quite love his sister myself and am truly, deeply thrilled for her. Never mind that I love a wedding in the same unabashed way I love a good romantic comedy — getting dressed up, feeling pretty, dancing with my husband, ending up all teary and thankful when the couple says their vows. And never mind that — to twist the knife a little deeper – the wedding was at the Culinary Institute at Greystone, for crying out loud, and the bride knows how to put on a party.

Never mind all that. I’m a mother, and one who knows better than to believe a 20-month-old would willingly travel a total of 5,000 miles in the space of three days to be left in a strange hotel room with a strange sitter while his parents yuck it up at a big, once-in-a-lifetime party. My job, plainly, was to stay home with him.

My first thought — if you start counting after the many less than charitable thoughts that went through my head as I sweetly agreed with Mike that he should go on his own — was where I could go with Jake that would feel like a getaway and not like three times as much work as staying at home. It’s not that I was scared to stay home for a weekend alone with my child, really. It’s just that the thought seemed so … exhausting. And if Mike was having fun, shouldn’t we as well?

And so I thought of Maureen. She and her family live about a four-hour drive away in West Virginia. Managable, especially if I could count on a two-plus-hour nap from Jake along the way. We haven’t been to see her since October. And, best of all, she has an eleven-year-old daughter who both adores Jake and is itching to start babysitting. Suddenly, Lewisburg, West Virginia, was looking as relaxing and resort-like as Cabo San Lucas.

Truly, it didn’t once cross my mind that going to see Maureen without Mike would make him jealous. I didn’t even think about, say, sticking it to him like he was sticking it to me by going to a fabulous wedding in Napa without me. And, perhaps most to the point, I didn’t think I needed him along to visit myself.

Which means it didn’t seem at all remarkable that I was going to visit my sister-in-law without her brother. Which, as I mentioned, is actually quite remarkable.

Continue reading ‘When Families Happen’

Twice Bitten: More of the Wisdom of Toddlers

Published

Melissa

on September 4, 2008

in being in the moment, change, chattering mind, compassion, following your heart, friendship, gratitude, inner peace, parents/being the child, partners, sense of self, sleep, the bigger picture, trust and work

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Not long ago, I arrived to pick Jake up from school to find not one but two incident reports awaiting me.

“He got bitten,” one of Jake’s teachers said apologetically. “Twice.”

From the deliberately pared-down details they provided — perpetrators’ names and identifying characteristics are omitted from incident reports to protect those too young to deserve the wrath of their friends’ mothers — I gathered a general idea of what had happened. Jake demonstrated, as he does quite a bit lately, his desire to possess a toy already in the possession of The Biter. And The Biter bit him.

So far, so good. Maybe it’s a tad Lord of the Flies of me, but I kind of like knowing that when he tries to steal a toy from one of his friends he may get bitten. It’s a valuable lesson, and one I can’t teach him myself.

The second bite, however — occurring a mere half hour later — happened under far murkier circumstances. The way Jake’s teacher described it, Jake was merely in the other child’s space and got bitten for nothing more than his willingness to let first bite bygones be bygones.

My initial reaction was, naturally, to try to figure out who The Biter was.

One of the other kids had bitten Jake before. And his mother cheerfully admits he’s a biter. So, of course, Mike and I spent the evening teaching Jake to say, “No, [name withheld to protect innocence]! Don’t bite me!”

I asked him to demonstrate his new trick the next day at school.

A teacher looked at me sadly. “It wasn’t [name withheld to protect innocence],” she said.

Oh, my. What happened to three years of law school when you’re supposed to remember (because they never really spend time teaching it to you in any substance) that one is innocent until proven guilty?

My suspicions next fell on a friend of Jake’s we’ve actually played with outside of school. Since I like his parents so much, I didn’t feel animosity toward him for being The Biter, so much as amusement. Despite being three months younger and several inches shorter, he had easily pushed Jake over on the playground where we met for a date one day. And, more damningly, he had an incident report of his own taped to his cubby at school. Since perpetrators receive incident reports just like victims, I felt I was on to something.

Until his mother and I arrived at the same time to pick up our children from school. And I found out that her son, too, had been a victim of The Biter.

So I never did find out who The Biter was. I have my ideas, but Jake has managed to remain bite-free for some time, so I can let it go.

But with the passage of time, I’ve been left to ponder the more significant question the double-biting incident raises: Why would Jake have gone up to this child who had just brutally bitten him and allow himself to be bitten again?

Think about it. If it were you, wouldn’t you spend the next hour or so fuming about what an [expletive deleted] that person who bit you was? Wouldn’t you work furiously at justifying your own actions in trying to steal his toy? Wouldn’t you steer clear of him, refusing any gestures of friendship, for at least the rest of the day?

So why did my child shrug it all off in the time it took him to stop crying and buddy up to The Biter a second time?

The answer, I think, lies somewhere in my own condition. Because I — despite having had so much trouble regaining my equilibrium after giving birth to Jake that I started this website — am pregnant with my second child. Twice bitten, indeed.

Continue reading ‘Twice Bitten: More of the Wisdom of Toddlers’

A New Olympic Event — Caring for a Toddler While You Have the Stomach Flu

Published

Melissa

on August 22, 2008

in Mommy time, balance, compassion, discomfort verus pain, expectations, friendship, illness, inner beauty, inner peace, nonharming, partners, practice, respecting your body, social life and stuck at home with a child

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How about that Michael Phelps, huh? Single-minded determination, laser-like focus, conquering his body’s limitations. The ultimate competitor.

I’d like to see him take care of a toddler while suffering from a good bout of stomach flu. (Dara Torres has probably done it, but then she’s a goddess, being over 40 and an Olympic athlete and all.)

I’d heard the horror stories before: Entire family succumbs to a nasty virus that has them battling each other for the bathroom, pits parent against parent in the fight over who has to drag her or his aching body out of bed to change the kids’ vomit-covered sheets, reduces the parents to shivering skeletons sleeping in puddles of sweat while their fully recovered and now ravenous child chirps, “Pasta? Pasta?” How does anyone survive?

Honestly, I didn’t have it that bad. In fact, I had the good fortune to get hit on a Sunday, when I could lie moaning in bed and Mike could, with only a tiny bit of reluctance, take Jake to a work party. (His only complaint upon returning was that he was so busy chasing Jake around that he never got to eat any of the food.) I did, however, have the bad fortune of getting hit on the Sunday before the Monday and Tuesday when Jake’s school was closed for summer break.

In other words, like an Olympic athlete, I found myself pushing my body beyond what is probably healthy (standing dizzily in the heat of a toddler playground while Jake ran an endless loop on the slide). I kept going by tapping into that voice in my head telling me I could work through the pain (or, perhaps, Jake’s pain, as when I found my way to a shady bench to rest I refused to leave it when Jake fell and starting crying, instead calling out, “Did you fall, Mister?” and prompting a woman at the next bench to stand up and bellow, “Is that anyone’s child?” She seemed only slightly embarrassed when I assured her that — my heartless response to him falling down notwithstanding — he was, in fact, mine.) I made it through the school-less-stomach-flu day, in other words, with the utter commitment of an Olympic athlete going for the gold. (Okay, maybe I had no choice, but neither do a whole bunch of the Chinese athletes, and it doesn’t make them any less committed.)

There is one big difference between me and the Olympic athletes, though. (Okay, two, if you count, oh, what great physical shape they’re in.) A gold medal, however awesome and life-changing it might be, surely can’t compare to the feeling of sitting with my neighbors at the end of the day watching 20-month-old Jake walk, grinning, single-file along the fence in front of our house between the four-year-olds who live on either side of us.

In that single moment bathed in late-afternoon sunshine, my toddler grew into a little boy and my heart grew with him.

Continue reading ‘A New Olympic Event — Caring for a Toddler While You Have the Stomach Flu’

Careful What You Google For

Published

Melissa

on August 14, 2008

in being in the moment, change, compassion, expectations, following your heart, friendship, gratitude, inner beauty, inner peace, letting go, motion, nonharming, partners, practice, sense of self, social life, trust and work

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About a week ago I googled an old boyfriend. The one I thought I’d marry but didn’t.

It wasn’t a stalker sort of thing. It wasn’t, amazingly, a raging case of misplaced nostalgia brought about by panic over finding myself a work-at-home mom living on a neighborly street in Asheville, North Carolina. I wasn’t feeling the least bit dissatisfied with the choices I’ve made. Quite the opposite in fact. Today is my and Mike’s wedding anniversary (can it be just four years?), and the very fact that it seems fitting to write about googling an old boyfriend on my wedding anniversary points up just how much the search told me about the wisdom and rightness of my choices in life.

The reason for my search was really just a warm and contented feeling of wondering what someone who truly is a good and kind person was up to. It was, I suspect, a symptom of how comfortably I’m settling into my life right now — slower, more self-contained, but so much more peaceful than what it was eighteen years ago when Sam and I met. (That gurgling sound you hear is me choking on the phrase “eighteen years.”)

What I discovered about Sam wasn’t so very surprising. It’s what I discovered about myself that tickled and thrilled and made me smile.

Continue reading ‘Careful What You Google For’

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Archive for the 'friendship' Category

Is There Such a Thing as a Full Circle and What Does It Look Like?

Am I Completely LOST or Would Any Mother Choose the Husband She Thought Was Dead over the Three-Year-Old Child She Knows Is Not?

Trusting the Nostalgia (Even When You Should Be Embarrassed by the Songs You Are Listening to on the Radio)

When Families Happen

Twice Bitten: More of the Wisdom of Toddlers

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