Minkgirl Muses

SLAP

One of the most common questions people have been asking us about life on Planet New Baby is “How is Gman handling having a new sister?” For the first 10 days, I had the pleasure of replying “Oh, he’s doing great! He’s so excited about Miss V, and he’s being so loving and helpful.” But sometime last week Angel Honeychild Gman was replaced by his evil twin Push Mommy’s Buttons Until She Screams Gman. I’ve been screaming a lot lately, as my son has begun refusing to do all rudimentary tasks (ie. get dressed, eat food, brush teeth) and generally responds to any request I make of him with an adolescent-style sneer and a loud and obnoxious “Mama, NO WAY!” Add to this the fact that he is systematically testing every limit we’ve ever set¸ and the fact that he’s been physically and verbally aggressive with both his father and me (thank god none of it has been directed toward Miss V…yet), and you have a sense of the seething context in which my all-time worst parenting moment occurred this past Saturday.

Do I feel you leaning in?…Ready for a good glimpse of some stinky dirty laundry?...A story that will be you feel better about any sub-standard parenting you’ve done this week? On Saturday, I slapped my son across the face. In a really public place. He shrieked and cried like I’d lit him on fire and wouldn’t stop, and so, we had to carry him kicking and screaming (sans shoes, sans coat) from the building out into the cold, and find a public bench on which to collapse, recover, and lick our wounds.

Now as much as I know this will shock my readers, I cannot claim that I’ve never raised a hand to my little bundle of joy before. In fact, there was a dark time during the first few months after we moved to London when it was a good day if I only spanked him once. Although personally, I think anything that we do to our children between the ages of 2 and 3 should be automatically expunged from our permanent parenting record, because let’s face it…they probably deserved it. But I draw the line right above the bum. Hitting a kid in the face…well, that’s pretty fucking low. Talk about conditional love. Displease mom and she’ll give you a good taste of her right hook. Never mind that he hit me first, also in the face, as hard as he could. Never mind that we were completely at our wits’ end after trying for 15 minutes to get him to exit an indoor play area – the kind with a 4-story cage in which a small child could disappear and join a band of Lost Boys, because the apertures of the various slides and inner sanctums are too small for ordinary grown-ups to squeeze through and catch the little buggers. Never mind that we know Gman is experiencing deep emotions about the sea change his family has undergone and that he has no ability to express this except through tantrums and other histrionic displays. It all happened so fast – he hit me, I hit him – and then we were standing in a bog of our own making while literally hundreds of other parents and children looked on. Talk about humiliation.

It took me the rest of the night to recover. We managed to straggle home and feed ourselves. And then I called my friend Dee, who has been riding on the Double-Decker Mama bus for nearly a year now. Besides being a kick-ass parent, Dee has a Ph.D. in Education, and a great sense of humor. She assured me that my slap hadn’t left any permanent scars and that even though it will probably take us months to sort out how to negotiate Gman’s insecurities and anxieties with any grace and how to operate effectively as a family of 4, we are not going to break our children before we get there. David and I were gloating the other night how much easier it is to deal with an infant the second time – you already know how to care for them, I can breast-feed without using 6 pillows, both hands and a special footstool, we’re not so terrified every 10 minutes that we’ve inadvertently killed our baby. But I can now see that compared to people who’ve had multiples for more than 3 weeks, I am a total fucking neophyte. It’s like I’ve been cruising along for ages on level 7 of my favorite video-game, feeling all stud-like ‘cause of how well I can avoid the space invaders and beasties, and suddenly I got bumped up to level 42, where I’m getting blown up or having my spine sucked out my nostrils every few seconds.

I woke up on Sunday and thought “OK, Game on dude!” I think this parenting thing is going to get a lot harder for awhile. And so I need to work out, eat my Wheaties, take my vitamins and be prepared each day for a whole new level of mental, physical and spiritual engagement. I remember during the first year of Gman’s life, I often thought that parenting was a kind of visceral form of Buddhism, because the daily lessons of living with an infant usually encompassed that religion’s core concepts: Live in the moment, Don’t make assumptions, Practice detachment from your own ego and agenda, Everything and Everyone is interconnected. And like so much of life, I find myself back on a familiar street again – Parenting as Buddhist Practice Part 2. I think I’ve still got the course books hidden somewhere in the back of a closet. And I’m pretty sure my Humility Robe still fits. Ah universe, you are wily and cunning in your unwillingness to let us forget what we have learned. I hope I’ll remember a little longer this time.

Be well.

Photo by J Belluch.

Labels: Family Life, Mamahood