Minkgirl Muses

1. Two women I know are dying – one fast, the other faster. I smoked cigarettes with one while debating art and culture during 5-minute breaks in grad school. I drink instant coffee with the other while perching on a rickety chair in her peeling yellow kitchen, a carbon copy of my own kitchen minus 50 years of improvements. One woman is around 40. The other is nearly 85. Both are alone in the world and have the kind of tough devil-may-care attitude that stems from this fact. There is very little I can give either of them now, except my prayers and good wishes. I would like to sit by the bedside of the younger one, hold her hand, stroke her head, and make sure she has a window to look out of with a tree outside it. I would like to paint and plaster and fit and fix for the older one, so that her world of two rooms breathes her life back into her. I will do none of these things. But I will continue to think of these women. Often. And imagine myself sitting next to them. Hearing them breathe in. And out. For awhile.

2. Some days you are screwed from the start. Like yesterday. When Gman came into our bedroom at 7:45am, I was nursing his sister. So he reflexively turned to his Dad for water/milk/banana/cornflakes/tv/buttwipe/blanket/story/hug/nosewipe/dream-telling. When I finally rose from my cozy baby-mama cocoon 30 minutes later, it was too late. His face was set, his eyes were steely. Later, after an unreasonable request that I reasonably diverted, he chucked his water cup at my knee – hard! And for the second time, I slapped him. It was just the faintest slap, a brief contact between my hand and his cheek. Didn’t hurt him a bit. But of course it sent him round the bend completely. And nothing – nothing – I did for the rest of the day could make it right again. Of course by the end of the day, I was tired of atoning and getting nowhere. Tired of being completely ignored. Thus, I was rough and impatient with him at bed-time. When we woke this morning, I could see that he is still mad at me. So, I am mooching around the house today feeling like the world’s crappiest parent. What is this anger in me that rises so quickly? What is this instinct for lashing out at my own child? How is it that Gman and I are so different that there are times when nothing I do can affect him except in the negative? In his estimable book The Secrets of Happy Children, Stephen Biddulph notes that when kids act out, it is because they aren’t getting something they need. Of course Gman is behaving rudely, aggressively, crazily, spacily because he needs something he’s not getting – my absolutely undivided attention. But he’s never going to have that again. What is the statute of limitations on adjusting to a new sibling? Probably a kid should get an extension if you throw another twister into the mix like moving to another country. God, what are we masochists? And yet, this is how everybody does it. Having Kid #1 starts you down a path toward Greater Adulthood with its sensible jobs and housing in good school districts. Then comes along Kid #2 (when your transformation into Responsible Parent Person is still only half-complete), and you wind up doing crazy shit like moving house when you are 8 months pregnant, or traveling around the world when your kid is 2-1/2 (not recommended), or adding a new member to the family and then relocating everyone 6 months later. All of a sudden, I really understand what they mean when they say kids like stability. I’m starting to be a fan of it too, because without it, my lovely, intelligent, lively son, is on a constant mission to kick my ass.

3. When I ask my friends what they most want/need/crave, they all say more time. I guess this is probably universal – part of the human condition – to feel like we can’t cram all the living we want to do into the day/week/month/lifetime. I am a chronic sufferer of the same predicament, which is why afternoons spent picnicing in the park in the summer sun are as precious to me as any fistful of coinage. We had such a picnic yesterday, with our closest London friends – another family of four. The picnic was by no means sylvan – there was relocation due to dogshit, kids pelting each other with balls, spills, thorns embedded in barefeet, toddlers running away every 5 seconds, babies crying from being squashed, a general refusal on the part of the smaller picnicers to eat any non-sugar based foods. But despite the sheer bedlam, there was still enough of the feeling of time stopping, enough sunlight filtering through the leafy tree above us, to make me feel that this time right here right now was, for once, enough.

Be well.

Labels: Family Life, time

# posted by Christine Young @ 3:49 AM