The 2011 MOTY Awards were truly an extravaganza as mommies from all across this beautiful country of ours converged upon the Grand Ballroom of the Hilton Garden Suites right here on New York’s City’s West 28th Street. This is an historic first for the MOTYs, which had been held in Abilene, Texas from the moment of their conception.
Yours truly and my two very best mommy friends, Lizzie and Kay, shared a cab from the UES to join in the fun and perhaps see one of our own take home a prize (spoiler alert)! What a rush, whizzing past 72nd Street on our way downtown to the East Village to celebrate the very best in motherhood. Lizzie, Kay and I shed a tear in unison as we contemplated coming together with women from all walks of life --even women whose husbands don’t work in Finance! -- to celebrate our common love and devotion for our children.
Bravely pretending the gays and homeless people loitering at the entrance to the hotel did not exist, this year’s winning mommies walked the red carpet in the latest from Chloe (moi et mes amies) and Ricardo Montalban for Target (everyone else) to collect their prizes for being the Very Best Mommies of 2011!
The ceremonies opened with the Pledge of Allegiance and a special Mother’s Prayer read aloud by Barbara Jean Dean, age 7, from Hialeah, Florida. “Dear Jesus,” she said, “Please help us to hate evil and please watch over all the unborn children and don’t let bad mommies eat them.” Amen, Jean!
Our Mommy Hostess with the Mostest, Elizabeth Hasselbeck, stunning in a cotton-candy pink gown from her eponymous QVC line, took the stage to announce the winner of the prize for the Mommy with the Healthiest Yum Yums. Congratulations Sandra Pancake, an Oregon mother of six whose children have been raised on not only an organic diet, but one 100% grown in Sandra’s backyard garden, which she composts solely with her own dear children’s refuse. Not easy for a woman with no hands, but you won’t hear Sandra complain!
There could have been an awkward moment when Elizabeth tried to hand Sandra her plaque, but Sandra demurely turned her back to the audience, lifted her right leg out of her sandal, and took that plaque in her toes like an absolute monkey. There wasn’t a dry eye in the house as she hopped off the stage!
Next, Elizabeth announced the winner of the Award for the Mommy Who Suffered the Most (Non-Bed-Rest Category). No surprise here – the winner was Caitlyn Snodgrass from Ramsey, New Jersey. Caitlyn, widowed at 40 after her husband Rodney suffered a massive heart attack when the New Jersey Devils missed the playoffs, drove her son Ryan and his best friends Jake and Landry a total of 41,600 weekend miles to attend hockey games and practices. And this after working double-shifts every day as a critical care nurse at Ramsey Memorial Hospital!
Caitlyn accepted her award with a simple “Thank you” before passing out on stage. The crowd erupted into cheers of “USA! USA!” until Caitlyn came to and crawled to the wings, smiling bravely.
Elizabeth then pressed her hand to the tiny silver cross at her neck and the room grew quiet. “This next award really resonates with me,” she said, “because I had prayed for the opportunity to show my unborn children how much I loved them from the moment of conception.”
There was non-stop applause and foot-stomping for the next eight minutes until Elizabeth counted 1-2-3 on her fingers then pointed to her eyes, the universal sign for “1, 2, 3, eyes on me!” At that moment, you couldn’t hear a flag pin drop.
“The winner of the Award for the Mommy Who Suffered the Most (Bed Rest Category) is New York’s very own Lizzie de Lima!” announced Elizabeth. “Lizzie, immediately after coitus with her DH, took to her bed with her head at the foot of the bed and her legs at a forty-five degree angle from the headboard. Lizzie remained in that position for forty-eight hours, after which she stayed in bed, with pillows under her hips and knees, for the next ten months until her beautiful daughter Virginia was born. Right there, in that very bed! Come on up here Lizzie!”
I can tell you, because I was sitting right next to her because I am one of her dearest mommy friends, that Lizzie was shaking like a leaf when she heard her name called. She made her way to the stage and took the microphone.
“I really can’t tell you what this means to me,” Lizzie said. “All I can say is that once I relearned how to walk and recovered from the bedsores, I knew I wanted to spend the rest of my days spreading the word about the benefits of PCBR, post-coitus bed rest, especially for those mommies out there who, like me, are … over 29!”
Wild laughter and cheers for Lizzie!
Finally, we came to the Breastfeeding Resilience Award.
“The winner of this award is truly a heroine,” announced Elizabeth. “An investment banker and a woman, this Mommy was pumping her breast milk while working 25-hour days finalizing a telecom deal in Mexico. She would pump her precious milk and then send it by corporate jet back to Westport, Connecticut to feed her two-week-old son William Harry.”
“Awwwwww,” said the crowd in unison.
Elizabeth held up her hand. “But that’s not all,” she said.
“As this deal was about to close, her breast pump broke!”
Two hundred mommies were perched on the edge of their seats.
“Not to be deterred, she purchased a Mexican breast pump and carried on pumping. Except do you know where that Mexican breast pump was manufactured?”
“China! China!” we cried.
“Exactly,” said Elizabeth. “And it ripped her nipple clean off.”
There were gasps throughout the room.
“So you know what this mommy did next, crouched on top of a toilet in the Mexico City Corporate Suites Hotel? She put that pump on her other breast and carried on pumping until she had six ounces!”
“Hurrah!” we shouted.
“Mary Anne Jones-Davis, come on up here, girl, and claim your prize!”
Mary Anne, snappy in an Anne Taylor double-breasted suit that hid the bandages from her recent nipple transplant, leapt on stage in a single bound.
“My fellow mommies,” she said. “I am humbled to be in your presence. I didn’t do this for the glory. I didn’t do this to win a MOTY. I did it because it was the best thing for my son.”
I can tell you, I still have chills.
Then, when we thought we had really hit the highlight of the evening, you’ll never guess who came on stage next!
Sarah Palin, bless her!
Sarah, bless her, came all the way to New York City to continue her important work lobbying for a constitutional ban on homosexual marriage. And while she was in town, she presented the Constructive Criticism Award (or what Sarah affectionately referred to as “The Turkey”) to the Mommy Most in Need of Improvement (excluding all those truly horrible mommies in news stories too upsetting to read) to … drumroll please …
All Mommies of Vegan Children!!
Accepting the award on their behalf was none other than Alanis Morissette, who also was on hand to accept The Turkey for the Not-Nicest Baby Name (Boys’ Category ) for her son Ever Imre.
“‘Happily Ever After Imre’ would be one thing,” noted my table mate, Kathie Lee Duncan of Des Moines, Iowa, proud mother of four sons, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.
Ms. Morissette had little to say for herself, perhaps because she arrived at the MOTYs in the back of Todd Palin’s snowmobile, bless him, bound by her hands and feet with a paper bag over her head.
“Mmmmf frmmmh hmmmm,” said Ms. Morissette, writhing on the stage.
“I’m pretty sure she just said, ‘God Bless America!’” exclaimed Sarah Palin, bless her, pulling out a pink lipstick from her purse and drawing a big smiley face on the paper sack.
Then, during perhaps the most dramatic moment of the evening, Ms. Morissette jackknifed her feet to her chin, freeing the bag from her head.
“I’m not even an American, you morons!” Ms. Morissette shouted. “I’m from Canada!”
“I can see Canada from my porch!” responded Sarah, bless her, to thunderous applause.
Then Todd, bless him, shot Ms. Morissette in her ample bottom with a moose tranquilizer and tucked her right back into the snowmobile.
What a night!
See you next year folks!
* Mother of the Year
HOME WITH BABY HENRY
Wednesday, May 25, 2011
Monday, April 11, 2011
My Boss Sucks ... On Me
It’s almost the first anniversary of the day I quit my job. I wasn’t entirely sure I was going to quit. I had asked my boss, the CEO of the publishing company for which I worked as the general counsel, to breakfast. Just to talk. And see if maybe I could work part-time. Or full time from home while holding my baby.
I brought Henry with me because he was just a few weeks old, still small enough to evaporate if I left him out of my sight for more than a few seconds.
My boss was already there, sitting in a corner, drinking coffee. My stomach dropped. She was the first boss who ever intimidated me. And that’s saying something.
I have worked for a brilliant federal judge and half the white shoe law firms in this town, for some amazing lawyers and for more than a few who seemed to have escaped from the Reptile House at the Bronx Zoo. And none of them scared me because I knew that under their Brooks Brothers suits (or Armani, in the case of a particular downtown firm), they were the same little boys who once peed their pants in the lunch room and fainted during the fetal pig dissection.
But this CEO, she was different. A non-lawyer, formerly in sales, she had an off-with-their-heads style of management that kept the most senior executives cowed. She sometimes had a salad for lunch, sometimes a vice president. I respected her, and on this particular morning, yes, I feared her.
Still, she had a soft side for babies, and was bouncing Henry gently on her knee, cooing to him.
“Oooh,” she said. “We could set up a little nursery in the office, couldn’t we?”
Henry was a warm little bobble head then with a new gummy smile that could melt tungsten. Even his poop smelled like fresh grass and coconuts.
She was charmed.
Then we had a long conversation about the current demands of the business, an upcoming senior executives’ meeting in Vegas, and the energy we needed to start the Second Quarter with a bang.
I realized that I couldn’t fly to Vegas and leave Henry in New York. Let’s face it -- I hadn’t gone south of 72nd Street since Henry was born. And I had no energy. I wasn’t a lawyer, I was a husk. I saw myself in the office draped across my desk like an empty suit while my CEO spun through the executive suite like a tornado in black pumps.
I had to tell her I wasn’t coming back, but how? She was drawing a pie chart on a napkin, speaking animatedly about a new sales initiative. I had a trick I used when she gave me my monthly reviews. She had a strong British accent, so I just closed my eyes a little, until everything was slightly blurred, and pretended I was in a Monty Python skit. Then whatever she said was funny: “You still haven’t finished that vendor contracts template, have you? The one you promised me last month?” Ha ha!
So I squinted a little and blurted out: “I am either going to be spending all my time with you or Henry. And I can’t help it. I pick Henry!”
She was crestfallen, but understanding. Her reaction was perfect and I didn’t even have to pretend we were talking about a parrot or a cheeseburger to get through the rest of the conversation.
I rolled Henry home in his stroller and spent the rest of the day marveling that I would now be a full-time-mother. A SAHM, as we stay-at-home-mothers like to say. And for months, I doted on my little baby while he gazed at me lovingly.
Then one day, out of the blue, he said, “Get that!” He was pointing to a book. I got it for him and he threw it on the ground in disgust, probably because it had no pictures.
“Up!” he said later, and I picked him up.
“More,” he signed, putting his fingertips together, and I gave him another helping of pureed sweet potatoes. At his next meal, he spit out his macaroni, so I made him cheese toast instead.
“Uh oh,” he said the following day at breakfast, then tossed his sippee cup on the floor. I picked it up. “Uh oh,” he said again, this time throwing a handful of Cheerios at me.
“That!” said Henry, pointing at a ball. I brought him the ball. “Neh, neh, that!” he said, shaking his head at me.
“What?” I asked.
“That!” he shouted.
I brought him his dinosaur puzzle. He shook his head. “Neh, that!” I brought him his stuffed chameleon. His face was turning purple. He threw himself backwards, like an armless gymnast attempting a back handspring.
“That! That!” he cried, writhing on the carpet.
“What? The ducky? The pirate ship? The snorkel?”
He stood and strode to his miniature batting tee and picked up the plastic bat. He walked back to me and whacked me on top of the head. “That,” he said, smiling.
And that’s when it occurred to me. I have a new boss. A supervisor in size 3 Pampers, and he makes my former CEO look like a Twinkie milkshake in comparison.
I do say “No,” to Henry. I say it often and with gusto. But he just says it right back.
“Henry, no, you can’t play with that. That’s Windex.”
“Neh.”
“No.”
“Neh.”
“No!”
“Neh!”
“NO!”
“NEH!”
“NO, NO, NO, NO, NO!”
“NEH, NEH, NEH, NEH, NEH, NEH!”
Okay, so he’s not the first boss to bite me on the nipple.
That’s a joke. Yes he is. But he literally won’t allow me to stop breastfeeding him.
He’s relentless. “Up,” he says, and I pick him up, lest he dive backwards on to the hardwood floor. He walks perfectly well, but he likes me to carry him around the apartment like he’s Emperor Shah Jahan and I’m an elephant. He even gives a dictatorial salute as we parade around the living room – it’s the beauty queen wave without the wrist motion.
Then he says, “Vite!” which is “fast” in French and means that he wants me to run as fast as I can while carrying him, until the wind catches his corn silk cowlick. He smiles a small, satisfied smile. Until I stop.
Tubby time is the worst.
“Henry, time to get out of the tubby.”
“Neh.”
“Yes.”
“Neh.” He kicks his legs violently.
“Yes, Henry, now.”
“Neh!” He bows his head forward and comes up with a bubble beard.
“You can’t fool me,” I tell him. “I know it’s still you, Henry, and it’s time to get out of the tubby!”
And that’s when I lunge to catch his head as he tries to slam it against the side of the tub in protest.
I have had my share of bosses who were full of s*&%, but at least I used the phrase figuratively. Although I had to carry my share of other people’s litigation bags, their underthings were not my problem. Now that Henry eats like a real person, he poops like a manbaby and his diapers smell like a truck stop toilet. And he hates to be changed, so midway through cleaning what should be designated a Superfund site, Henry arches his back and tries to fling himself on to his stomach despite the fact I am holding his legs in a vice-like grip.
Sometimes he is successful.
That’s when I cry a little. Then I hug him ferociously. And then we both laugh hysterically, me because I am now literally, not figuratively, in crap up to my elbows, and Henry because he has a baby sense of humor and thinks poop is hilarious.
And I wonder, what would have happened if I had been given massive doses of oxytocin while working as an associate in a law firm?
I brought Henry with me because he was just a few weeks old, still small enough to evaporate if I left him out of my sight for more than a few seconds.
My boss was already there, sitting in a corner, drinking coffee. My stomach dropped. She was the first boss who ever intimidated me. And that’s saying something.
I have worked for a brilliant federal judge and half the white shoe law firms in this town, for some amazing lawyers and for more than a few who seemed to have escaped from the Reptile House at the Bronx Zoo. And none of them scared me because I knew that under their Brooks Brothers suits (or Armani, in the case of a particular downtown firm), they were the same little boys who once peed their pants in the lunch room and fainted during the fetal pig dissection.
But this CEO, she was different. A non-lawyer, formerly in sales, she had an off-with-their-heads style of management that kept the most senior executives cowed. She sometimes had a salad for lunch, sometimes a vice president. I respected her, and on this particular morning, yes, I feared her.
Still, she had a soft side for babies, and was bouncing Henry gently on her knee, cooing to him.
“Oooh,” she said. “We could set up a little nursery in the office, couldn’t we?”
Henry was a warm little bobble head then with a new gummy smile that could melt tungsten. Even his poop smelled like fresh grass and coconuts.
She was charmed.
Then we had a long conversation about the current demands of the business, an upcoming senior executives’ meeting in Vegas, and the energy we needed to start the Second Quarter with a bang.
I realized that I couldn’t fly to Vegas and leave Henry in New York. Let’s face it -- I hadn’t gone south of 72nd Street since Henry was born. And I had no energy. I wasn’t a lawyer, I was a husk. I saw myself in the office draped across my desk like an empty suit while my CEO spun through the executive suite like a tornado in black pumps.
I had to tell her I wasn’t coming back, but how? She was drawing a pie chart on a napkin, speaking animatedly about a new sales initiative. I had a trick I used when she gave me my monthly reviews. She had a strong British accent, so I just closed my eyes a little, until everything was slightly blurred, and pretended I was in a Monty Python skit. Then whatever she said was funny: “You still haven’t finished that vendor contracts template, have you? The one you promised me last month?” Ha ha!
So I squinted a little and blurted out: “I am either going to be spending all my time with you or Henry. And I can’t help it. I pick Henry!”
She was crestfallen, but understanding. Her reaction was perfect and I didn’t even have to pretend we were talking about a parrot or a cheeseburger to get through the rest of the conversation.
I rolled Henry home in his stroller and spent the rest of the day marveling that I would now be a full-time-mother. A SAHM, as we stay-at-home-mothers like to say. And for months, I doted on my little baby while he gazed at me lovingly.
Then one day, out of the blue, he said, “Get that!” He was pointing to a book. I got it for him and he threw it on the ground in disgust, probably because it had no pictures.
“Up!” he said later, and I picked him up.
“More,” he signed, putting his fingertips together, and I gave him another helping of pureed sweet potatoes. At his next meal, he spit out his macaroni, so I made him cheese toast instead.
“Uh oh,” he said the following day at breakfast, then tossed his sippee cup on the floor. I picked it up. “Uh oh,” he said again, this time throwing a handful of Cheerios at me.
“That!” said Henry, pointing at a ball. I brought him the ball. “Neh, neh, that!” he said, shaking his head at me.
“What?” I asked.
“That!” he shouted.
I brought him his dinosaur puzzle. He shook his head. “Neh, that!” I brought him his stuffed chameleon. His face was turning purple. He threw himself backwards, like an armless gymnast attempting a back handspring.
“That! That!” he cried, writhing on the carpet.
“What? The ducky? The pirate ship? The snorkel?”
He stood and strode to his miniature batting tee and picked up the plastic bat. He walked back to me and whacked me on top of the head. “That,” he said, smiling.
And that’s when it occurred to me. I have a new boss. A supervisor in size 3 Pampers, and he makes my former CEO look like a Twinkie milkshake in comparison.
I do say “No,” to Henry. I say it often and with gusto. But he just says it right back.
“Henry, no, you can’t play with that. That’s Windex.”
“Neh.”
“No.”
“Neh.”
“No!”
“Neh!”
“NO!”
“NEH!”
“NO, NO, NO, NO, NO!”
“NEH, NEH, NEH, NEH, NEH, NEH!”
Okay, so he’s not the first boss to bite me on the nipple.
That’s a joke. Yes he is. But he literally won’t allow me to stop breastfeeding him.
He’s relentless. “Up,” he says, and I pick him up, lest he dive backwards on to the hardwood floor. He walks perfectly well, but he likes me to carry him around the apartment like he’s Emperor Shah Jahan and I’m an elephant. He even gives a dictatorial salute as we parade around the living room – it’s the beauty queen wave without the wrist motion.
Then he says, “Vite!” which is “fast” in French and means that he wants me to run as fast as I can while carrying him, until the wind catches his corn silk cowlick. He smiles a small, satisfied smile. Until I stop.
Tubby time is the worst.
“Henry, time to get out of the tubby.”
“Neh.”
“Yes.”
“Neh.” He kicks his legs violently.
“Yes, Henry, now.”
“Neh!” He bows his head forward and comes up with a bubble beard.
“You can’t fool me,” I tell him. “I know it’s still you, Henry, and it’s time to get out of the tubby!”
And that’s when I lunge to catch his head as he tries to slam it against the side of the tub in protest.
I have had my share of bosses who were full of s*&%, but at least I used the phrase figuratively. Although I had to carry my share of other people’s litigation bags, their underthings were not my problem. Now that Henry eats like a real person, he poops like a manbaby and his diapers smell like a truck stop toilet. And he hates to be changed, so midway through cleaning what should be designated a Superfund site, Henry arches his back and tries to fling himself on to his stomach despite the fact I am holding his legs in a vice-like grip.
Sometimes he is successful.
That’s when I cry a little. Then I hug him ferociously. And then we both laugh hysterically, me because I am now literally, not figuratively, in crap up to my elbows, and Henry because he has a baby sense of humor and thinks poop is hilarious.
And I wonder, what would have happened if I had been given massive doses of oxytocin while working as an associate in a law firm?
Sunday, March 27, 2011
Mama Auditions for the Role of "Mom"
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Tuesday, January 4, 2011
Puttin' on the Ritz
Wild horses couldn't drag me away from Henry. But the promise of a New Year's Eve soiree at the Ritz in Paris with Kate and her husband Jeff had me packing my Louboutins and waving "Ta ta!" to my baby boy faster than you can say foie gras.
With Henry entrusted to his uber-competent babysitter Perri, who would be tag-teaming with my parents for the next five days, Scott and I struck out for Newark Airport. He had convinced me to pack light. No electric breast pump, no framed photographs of the children. Just a few dresses, six pairs of shoes, and my skinny jeans.
Kate and I had made the compelling argument that we had to fly Business First since we were only going for a long weekend and wouldn't have time to recover from jet lag. Kate is wise in many ways and has taught me many things. Like this little chestnut from the ad world: If you want your man to spend a lot of money on something he doesn't necessarily want himself, suggest a manly slogan to justify it and allow him to adopt the slogan as his own. This second part is critical.
Thus, to Scott, she said of the Business First ticket: "You're protecting your investment." To her husband, she added: "Go big or go home!"
Using our slogans, we also convinced our men that our only real option for New Year's Eve was the four-figure party at the Ritz. That way we wouldn't have to walk outside and potentially ruin our shoes and the expensive hairdos for which Kate had made us appointments at the hotel's salon -- once again, protecting investments! And hey, go big or go home!
His special slogan now firmly entrenched in his subconscious, Scott gamely convinced himself that not waiting in line to check in at the airport was worth the price of the ticket. Since thousands of flights had just been cancelled because of a blizzard days earlier and the lines were epic, this was almost true. In the lounge, we were served free red wine, rail drinks and all the potato chips we could eat. "This is the life," Scott said, sipping a Popov Vodka and tonic. "Go big or go home," agreed Jeff, toasting us with a plastic glass of Chateau Continental.
Once on the plane, we settled into our double-wide seats. We were torn between trying to get a full 7-hours' sleep and consuming everything our business class seats afforded us. We split the difference, eating the four-course dinner - warm nuts, a salad of mozzarella balls and limp greens, something that tasted like chicken and an ice cream sundae with all available toppings - but forgoing the onflight entertainment to catch a few hours of shut-eye.
We landed in Paris. I had taken an Ambien, and when I stood up to deplane, I felt like I was on a moon walk. But as soon as the four of us piled into a taxi and shouted "Au Ritz!" I was rejuvenated.
"Your rooms are ready," announced the desk clerk, which, at 10:30 a.m. at the Ritz, was a miracle. Kate and I had stayed there before and were always forced to wait for check-in at 3:30 p.m. sharp. We were taken to a hallway I had never seen before, up an elevator that appeared out of the shadows to what may have been a "special unit" of the Ritz, like the locked ward in a hospital. Our room was sparse. White. There was none of the Louis XIV furniture I had come to expect from my favorite hotel in the world.
"Not to be an ingrate," I began, "but this really isn't what we were looking for in a room."
Jeff had already unpacked, but Scott knew from the look on my face we weren't staying. Kate and I arranged with the concierge to have us moved to adjacent rooms done in the more traditional style of the Ritz.
Everything was going perfectly. I went inside our new marble bathroom with the plastic travel breast pump I had brought in lieu of the 10-pound electric version I used at home. I didn't have the instructions with me, so I revved up my new iPad. An Internet connection cost 25 euros, but no matter, I had to pump to avoid the rock-hard leaking disasters that my boobs would become without it. Thus, I was really just protecting our investment in the weekend.
There were 12 steps to putting the pump together, like AA for the lactating. It took me about a half hour to assemble the pump, then another hour of frantic hand pumping to get the job done. I was frustrated, but kept up a positive attitude, thinking about how Scott and I would soon be strolling down the Rue St. Honore.
The next day was New Years Eve. The Ritz soiree started at 8 p.m. Kate and I began our preparations at 4 o'clock with hair appointments while Scott and Jeff had cocktails by the indoor pool.
We were blow-dried and brushed to perfection while champagne and chocolates were passed. Heaven. Then Fred, the Ritz's in-house make-up artist, offered his services. Kate went first. Kate is a knock-out on her worst day, and in Fred's hands, she became a super model. I was so excited for my turn, I was bouncing up and down in my seat and clapping my hands like a trained seal.
But something seemed off about my look. Fred swooped black make-up around my eyes, then decorated the corners with false eyelashes. The base color of my face went from white to a cheddar cheese tone. "Don't worry," said Kate. "This is going to look fabulous in pictures." And wasn't that what really mattered?
Time was ticking - less than two hours before the big party. But I didn't feel rushed. All I had to do was pump and put on my dress. I dallied in the salon, sipping champagne and chatting with other revelers.
"We should get going," said Kate.
Back in the room, Scott was getting dressed. He tried not to look surprised by my appearance. With my hair and make-up done, but still in a t-shirt which was now showing two wet bulls-eyes because my boobs were leaking, I looked off, like a transvestite in full make-up wearing a hairnet and no wig.
I opened my iPad to find the directions for my travel pump and started putting it together. Something was wrong. "The lid doesn't fit anymore!" I complained to Scott.
"That's impossible," he said.
"Look!" I demonstrated, trying to force the top down. Then there was a sickening sound, like a bone breaking. The plastic catch that helped vacuum seal the pump broke off.
There was a moment of total silence.
Then my tears.
"Why did I listen to you when you said not to pack my electric pump?" I yelled at Scott, who had started backing towards the door.
"I'll fix it," he said.
He called the concierge and spoke in hushed tones, then put down the receiver, looking satisfied.
"Someone is coming upstairs to discuss this with you," he said.
"What? I don't need a conversation, I need an electric pump. Now! And it's 7 p.m.! On New Year's Eve! In France!"
I picked up the phone and dialed the concierge, speaking rapid-fire French.
"Hello? Yes, listen, I am a mother. Who feeds her baby. With her breast. But the baby is in New York and so I must discharge the milk. Understand? So I need an apparatus to do that for me."
"Yes, madam. I believe we may have something here in the hotel. A moment, please."
The concierge came back on the line.
"We will send something up to you now."
I had a bad feeling. "Are you talking about a cell phone charger?" I asked.
"Yes, madam."
"Did you understand anything I just said?" I asked.
There was a cough.
"J'ai envie d'un breast pump," I repeated.
"Ah, a breast pump. We can try to rent one for you at the emergency chemists."
"Okay, great, now we're getting somewhere."
"Spend any amount of money you need to get the pump," said Scott. "I'm just protecting my investment."
"Out!" I ordered.
"I'll be in the bar," he said, closing the door behind him.
And within 15 minutes, a bellhop appeared holding a discreet brown valise and a paper sack.
"Will there be anything else?" he asked.
"No, merci. Merci beaucoup!" I handed him a fistful of euros.
Then I opened the valise. I was expecting a pump, but instead, there was what appeared to be a small red toaster oven. In the paper sack was a funnel, a vial and several pieces of tubing. None of which fit on the toaster oven. I looked at the clock. 7:20 p.m. It was like trying to solve a Rubik's cube at gun point.
"Kate!" I went running to her room, pounding on the door. "Help!"
Kate came into the room. "None of this fits!" I wailed. "I'm leaking. I can't go to the party!"
7:25.
"Don't cry!" commanded Kate. "Your eyelashes will fall off. Are there instructions?"
"Yes," I said. "But I don't speak breast pump French. None of these words have any meaning to me."
I called the concierge. "I need a French person. Any French person. To translate some directions for me."
Within a minute, the bellhop was back at the door. He looked sixteen, tops.
"They gave me a demonstration on how to use this," he said, blushing a deep red.
He took off his white gloves and fiddled with the tubing until he had secured it over the "on" switch.
"That's the on switch!" I screamed frantically. "It can't go on there!"
He fumbled while I paced. Then Kate took control. She connected the tubes to the vial and attached the vial to the toaster oven.
"Voila!" said Kate.
The bellhop turned to go.
"Don't let him leave until I try this," I said.
I went into the bathroom while Kate blocked the door to the room.
I put the funnel to my breast and turned on the machine. The machine made a sound, like "grrrrrmmmmmmmmm" and sucked my nipple into the funnel all the way. I didn't know a nipple could stretch like that. The pain was other-worldly, like dropping a frozen turkey on your toe. And the machine wouldn't let go. It was like a pit bull with a new chew toy. I tried using both hands to pry off the funnel, but it wouldn't budge.
I started screaming. Kate ran into the bathroom and turned off the machine. My nipple retracted and was hanging off my chest at an odd angle, like a broken arm.
"I can't do it," I sobbed. "It hurts."
Kate fiddled with the tubing and removed a stopper. "Here," she said. "Put your thumb over this, then remove it." I tried the pump again. With my thumb on the tube, my nipple extended until I screamed, then I released it for a second and took a breath. I did this over and over again for twenty minutes on each side until my boobs had deflated from weather balloons back to A-cups.
Kate went downstairs where the party had started forty minutes earlier.
I looked at the toaster oven. "Methode Francaise," it said on the side.
But of course. Other than their cheeses and scarves, the French made everything harder and more miserable than it had to be.
I knew this because I had spent a semester studying in Paris at the Sorbonne. Instead of normal, written final exams, they had oral exams where you would appear in front of a proctor, other students lined up right behind you. And they would ask just one question.
In my case, the proctor said, "Le Canel de Suez. Expliquez."
I had spent the entire semester in a garret with a musician named Olivier. I was like, "Ummmmm. It's in Egypt? It was nationalized in the 50s? There was a ... crisis?"
I failed the exam to the snickering of the students behind me. But because everyone here knows that the French education system is too hard for Americans, my college "translated" my F into a B. And everyone was happy. Because that's how we do it in the United State of America.
Meanwhile, my eye makeup had run and I looked just like a raccoon. I repaired it as best I could with Q-tips from the medicine cabinet and pulled my dress over my head. The lesser gods of zippers were with me and I was able to zip my dress on my own, which cheered me up considerably.
The bellhop had left his white gloves behind. They were surprisingly small, like something Cinderella might have worn.
Within five minutes, I was in the Ritz Club pouring champagne down my throat. It was an excellent night.
The next day, Scott and Jeff were bedridden with a horrible stomach virus. Kate went to the concierge to get some extra supplies. "I need some extra tissue," she said.
"Tissue, yes, for the nose," said the concierge.
"For the nose and the ..." Kate pointed to her bottom. He didn't blink.
"But of course, madam."
Later, we went back to the concierge to arrange taxis to the airport for the next morning. The bellhop was there.
"Oh," I said. "You left your gloves in my room!"
The bellhop bowed slightly. The concierge was impassive.
Just as our flight took off from Charles de Gaulle, the stomach virus hit me. And then somewhere over Iceland, the pilot announced that due to a drain malfunction, there would be only one toilet operational on the plane. I refused all foods and liquids and hunkered in my seat, occasionally hyperventilating into an airsick bag.
When we landed, a police officer was at the door of our plane looking for a passenger. "No one can exit until Passenger Rutabaga presents herself to me," he said.
I flashed him my passport. "I'm not her," I said, running past him.
I almost fainted going through passport control. My stomach had never hurt so badly. Once outside in the taxi line, I found a large garbage can and threw up until I peed my pants. Kate held my hair, then handed me a tissue. It was a Ritz tissue.
At a dinner party at Kate's house the next weekend, her friends asked about our trip. Kate told them the story of the breast pump.
"I don't understand," said Andre, a Norwegian. "Why didn't you just nurse the bellhop?"
"Because we were in France, not Norway," I retorted. Sicko.
With Henry entrusted to his uber-competent babysitter Perri, who would be tag-teaming with my parents for the next five days, Scott and I struck out for Newark Airport. He had convinced me to pack light. No electric breast pump, no framed photographs of the children. Just a few dresses, six pairs of shoes, and my skinny jeans.
Kate and I had made the compelling argument that we had to fly Business First since we were only going for a long weekend and wouldn't have time to recover from jet lag. Kate is wise in many ways and has taught me many things. Like this little chestnut from the ad world: If you want your man to spend a lot of money on something he doesn't necessarily want himself, suggest a manly slogan to justify it and allow him to adopt the slogan as his own. This second part is critical.
Thus, to Scott, she said of the Business First ticket: "You're protecting your investment." To her husband, she added: "Go big or go home!"
Using our slogans, we also convinced our men that our only real option for New Year's Eve was the four-figure party at the Ritz. That way we wouldn't have to walk outside and potentially ruin our shoes and the expensive hairdos for which Kate had made us appointments at the hotel's salon -- once again, protecting investments! And hey, go big or go home!
His special slogan now firmly entrenched in his subconscious, Scott gamely convinced himself that not waiting in line to check in at the airport was worth the price of the ticket. Since thousands of flights had just been cancelled because of a blizzard days earlier and the lines were epic, this was almost true. In the lounge, we were served free red wine, rail drinks and all the potato chips we could eat. "This is the life," Scott said, sipping a Popov Vodka and tonic. "Go big or go home," agreed Jeff, toasting us with a plastic glass of Chateau Continental.
Once on the plane, we settled into our double-wide seats. We were torn between trying to get a full 7-hours' sleep and consuming everything our business class seats afforded us. We split the difference, eating the four-course dinner - warm nuts, a salad of mozzarella balls and limp greens, something that tasted like chicken and an ice cream sundae with all available toppings - but forgoing the onflight entertainment to catch a few hours of shut-eye.
We landed in Paris. I had taken an Ambien, and when I stood up to deplane, I felt like I was on a moon walk. But as soon as the four of us piled into a taxi and shouted "Au Ritz!" I was rejuvenated.
"Your rooms are ready," announced the desk clerk, which, at 10:30 a.m. at the Ritz, was a miracle. Kate and I had stayed there before and were always forced to wait for check-in at 3:30 p.m. sharp. We were taken to a hallway I had never seen before, up an elevator that appeared out of the shadows to what may have been a "special unit" of the Ritz, like the locked ward in a hospital. Our room was sparse. White. There was none of the Louis XIV furniture I had come to expect from my favorite hotel in the world.
"Not to be an ingrate," I began, "but this really isn't what we were looking for in a room."
Jeff had already unpacked, but Scott knew from the look on my face we weren't staying. Kate and I arranged with the concierge to have us moved to adjacent rooms done in the more traditional style of the Ritz.
Everything was going perfectly. I went inside our new marble bathroom with the plastic travel breast pump I had brought in lieu of the 10-pound electric version I used at home. I didn't have the instructions with me, so I revved up my new iPad. An Internet connection cost 25 euros, but no matter, I had to pump to avoid the rock-hard leaking disasters that my boobs would become without it. Thus, I was really just protecting our investment in the weekend.
There were 12 steps to putting the pump together, like AA for the lactating. It took me about a half hour to assemble the pump, then another hour of frantic hand pumping to get the job done. I was frustrated, but kept up a positive attitude, thinking about how Scott and I would soon be strolling down the Rue St. Honore.
The next day was New Years Eve. The Ritz soiree started at 8 p.m. Kate and I began our preparations at 4 o'clock with hair appointments while Scott and Jeff had cocktails by the indoor pool.
We were blow-dried and brushed to perfection while champagne and chocolates were passed. Heaven. Then Fred, the Ritz's in-house make-up artist, offered his services. Kate went first. Kate is a knock-out on her worst day, and in Fred's hands, she became a super model. I was so excited for my turn, I was bouncing up and down in my seat and clapping my hands like a trained seal.
But something seemed off about my look. Fred swooped black make-up around my eyes, then decorated the corners with false eyelashes. The base color of my face went from white to a cheddar cheese tone. "Don't worry," said Kate. "This is going to look fabulous in pictures." And wasn't that what really mattered?
Time was ticking - less than two hours before the big party. But I didn't feel rushed. All I had to do was pump and put on my dress. I dallied in the salon, sipping champagne and chatting with other revelers.
"We should get going," said Kate.
Back in the room, Scott was getting dressed. He tried not to look surprised by my appearance. With my hair and make-up done, but still in a t-shirt which was now showing two wet bulls-eyes because my boobs were leaking, I looked off, like a transvestite in full make-up wearing a hairnet and no wig.
I opened my iPad to find the directions for my travel pump and started putting it together. Something was wrong. "The lid doesn't fit anymore!" I complained to Scott.
"That's impossible," he said.
"Look!" I demonstrated, trying to force the top down. Then there was a sickening sound, like a bone breaking. The plastic catch that helped vacuum seal the pump broke off.
There was a moment of total silence.
Then my tears.
"Why did I listen to you when you said not to pack my electric pump?" I yelled at Scott, who had started backing towards the door.
"I'll fix it," he said.
He called the concierge and spoke in hushed tones, then put down the receiver, looking satisfied.
"Someone is coming upstairs to discuss this with you," he said.
"What? I don't need a conversation, I need an electric pump. Now! And it's 7 p.m.! On New Year's Eve! In France!"
I picked up the phone and dialed the concierge, speaking rapid-fire French.
"Hello? Yes, listen, I am a mother. Who feeds her baby. With her breast. But the baby is in New York and so I must discharge the milk. Understand? So I need an apparatus to do that for me."
"Yes, madam. I believe we may have something here in the hotel. A moment, please."
The concierge came back on the line.
"We will send something up to you now."
I had a bad feeling. "Are you talking about a cell phone charger?" I asked.
"Yes, madam."
"Did you understand anything I just said?" I asked.
There was a cough.
"J'ai envie d'un breast pump," I repeated.
"Ah, a breast pump. We can try to rent one for you at the emergency chemists."
"Okay, great, now we're getting somewhere."
"Spend any amount of money you need to get the pump," said Scott. "I'm just protecting my investment."
"Out!" I ordered.
"I'll be in the bar," he said, closing the door behind him.
And within 15 minutes, a bellhop appeared holding a discreet brown valise and a paper sack.
"Will there be anything else?" he asked.
"No, merci. Merci beaucoup!" I handed him a fistful of euros.
Then I opened the valise. I was expecting a pump, but instead, there was what appeared to be a small red toaster oven. In the paper sack was a funnel, a vial and several pieces of tubing. None of which fit on the toaster oven. I looked at the clock. 7:20 p.m. It was like trying to solve a Rubik's cube at gun point.
"Kate!" I went running to her room, pounding on the door. "Help!"
Kate came into the room. "None of this fits!" I wailed. "I'm leaking. I can't go to the party!"
7:25.
"Don't cry!" commanded Kate. "Your eyelashes will fall off. Are there instructions?"
"Yes," I said. "But I don't speak breast pump French. None of these words have any meaning to me."
I called the concierge. "I need a French person. Any French person. To translate some directions for me."
Within a minute, the bellhop was back at the door. He looked sixteen, tops.
"They gave me a demonstration on how to use this," he said, blushing a deep red.
He took off his white gloves and fiddled with the tubing until he had secured it over the "on" switch.
"That's the on switch!" I screamed frantically. "It can't go on there!"
He fumbled while I paced. Then Kate took control. She connected the tubes to the vial and attached the vial to the toaster oven.
"Voila!" said Kate.
The bellhop turned to go.
"Don't let him leave until I try this," I said.
I went into the bathroom while Kate blocked the door to the room.
I put the funnel to my breast and turned on the machine. The machine made a sound, like "grrrrrmmmmmmmmm" and sucked my nipple into the funnel all the way. I didn't know a nipple could stretch like that. The pain was other-worldly, like dropping a frozen turkey on your toe. And the machine wouldn't let go. It was like a pit bull with a new chew toy. I tried using both hands to pry off the funnel, but it wouldn't budge.
I started screaming. Kate ran into the bathroom and turned off the machine. My nipple retracted and was hanging off my chest at an odd angle, like a broken arm.
"I can't do it," I sobbed. "It hurts."
Kate fiddled with the tubing and removed a stopper. "Here," she said. "Put your thumb over this, then remove it." I tried the pump again. With my thumb on the tube, my nipple extended until I screamed, then I released it for a second and took a breath. I did this over and over again for twenty minutes on each side until my boobs had deflated from weather balloons back to A-cups.
Kate went downstairs where the party had started forty minutes earlier.
I looked at the toaster oven. "Methode Francaise," it said on the side.
But of course. Other than their cheeses and scarves, the French made everything harder and more miserable than it had to be.
I knew this because I had spent a semester studying in Paris at the Sorbonne. Instead of normal, written final exams, they had oral exams where you would appear in front of a proctor, other students lined up right behind you. And they would ask just one question.
In my case, the proctor said, "Le Canel de Suez. Expliquez."
I had spent the entire semester in a garret with a musician named Olivier. I was like, "Ummmmm. It's in Egypt? It was nationalized in the 50s? There was a ... crisis?"
I failed the exam to the snickering of the students behind me. But because everyone here knows that the French education system is too hard for Americans, my college "translated" my F into a B. And everyone was happy. Because that's how we do it in the United State of America.
Meanwhile, my eye makeup had run and I looked just like a raccoon. I repaired it as best I could with Q-tips from the medicine cabinet and pulled my dress over my head. The lesser gods of zippers were with me and I was able to zip my dress on my own, which cheered me up considerably.
The bellhop had left his white gloves behind. They were surprisingly small, like something Cinderella might have worn.
Within five minutes, I was in the Ritz Club pouring champagne down my throat. It was an excellent night.
The next day, Scott and Jeff were bedridden with a horrible stomach virus. Kate went to the concierge to get some extra supplies. "I need some extra tissue," she said.
"Tissue, yes, for the nose," said the concierge.
"For the nose and the ..." Kate pointed to her bottom. He didn't blink.
"But of course, madam."
Later, we went back to the concierge to arrange taxis to the airport for the next morning. The bellhop was there.
"Oh," I said. "You left your gloves in my room!"
The bellhop bowed slightly. The concierge was impassive.
Just as our flight took off from Charles de Gaulle, the stomach virus hit me. And then somewhere over Iceland, the pilot announced that due to a drain malfunction, there would be only one toilet operational on the plane. I refused all foods and liquids and hunkered in my seat, occasionally hyperventilating into an airsick bag.
When we landed, a police officer was at the door of our plane looking for a passenger. "No one can exit until Passenger Rutabaga presents herself to me," he said.
I flashed him my passport. "I'm not her," I said, running past him.
I almost fainted going through passport control. My stomach had never hurt so badly. Once outside in the taxi line, I found a large garbage can and threw up until I peed my pants. Kate held my hair, then handed me a tissue. It was a Ritz tissue.
At a dinner party at Kate's house the next weekend, her friends asked about our trip. Kate told them the story of the breast pump.
"I don't understand," said Andre, a Norwegian. "Why didn't you just nurse the bellhop?"
"Because we were in France, not Norway," I retorted. Sicko.
Friday, December 3, 2010
Down, Boy!
The children wanted a dog. I was seven months pregnant and hyper-vulnerable to anything precious. Smelling my weakness as only children who want something can, they took me to a pocket-sized pet store on Lexington Avenue "just to show me" the baby bulldog. It was kismet. The bulldog seemed to recognize me immediately, as if maybe she had been my faithful sidekick in a prior life. Or even a favorite niece. She danced in her cage, yipped playfully, winked. I was melting.
Like a steamship in a cloth coat, I made my way to the end of a narrow aisle where a saleswoman had been watching us.
"Does she shed?" I asked, pointing to the dog, who was making googly eyes at Scott.
"Like a mother you-know-what," said the saleswoman shaking her head.
She wedged herself between me and a row of dog food on my starboard side and leaned into my ear.
"Don't do it," she whispered. "She's cute now, but that's not the right dog for you. Those bulldogs, they slobber like crazy. And I don't know how she'll be with a baby. You got your hands full as it is," she said, looking pointedly at Scott, who at that moment was pretending to be a dog sniffing the children's pockets for treats.
"This isn't the first time you talked a pregnant woman out of a dog, is it," I said knowingly. "Thank you."
"I've had four kids myself," she said, then disappeared behind the fish tanks.
I ushered the children out. Emma began her negotiations: "If we don't get a dog this year, then maybe for my birthday," she began.
"Look, I love dogs. But we are about to have a baby. Can we just wait and see how much fun your baby brother is? If he's not that great and you still feel like you need a dog, we'll re-evaluate."
"Okay," said Emma. "Let's pencil in a discussion for next Halloween."
Henry thankfully has proven highly entertaining to his brother and sister. Not only can he fetch, but he licks their noses, rolls over on command and loves them with abandon. Halloween passed without discussion of a dog, although I was prepared to put Henry in a puppy costume if necessary.
I thought I had dodged the doggie bullet.
And then Scott and I attended a silent auction and cocktail party to benefit Quinny's tony nursery school.
The crowd was glittery, women in double-digit-carat diamond rings sporting a rainbow array of the season's It bags and men in bespoke suits. I was wearing a Betsy Johnson dress several seasons too tight, Aerosole boots and a handbag I got for free with a subscription to W ten years ago. Scott's suit was rumpled from playing with the kids and his tie was cocked at a funny angle because, according to another class father, his knot was too small.
On empty stomachs, we had three quick glasses of wine and perused the auction items. We dutifully bid on Quinny's class project and ribbed the parents of one of Quinny's classmates who were tipsily bidding on a Donnie and Marie Osmond Broadway Christmas show package.
I love a silent auction and I admit that I have had problems in the past with drinking and bidding. I've had good luck - a lovely party at a gym for Quinny and all his classmates, and bad - a portrait of a woman sprouting green wings and standing on Saturn that no one gets but me, which is now in Scott's mother's basement and a giant oil painting hanging in our living room that my mother says looks like snakes crawling through a pillory. (I see a circus.)
Scott was keeping a close eye on me when I saw it: the grand prize of the auction, a Jeff Koons puppy vase donated by the artist himself. The opening bid was a couple thousand dollars under market and no one had bid yet.
Not only do I have a problem with drunk bidding, but I am convinced that one of these days I will strike it rich. Easily. Like, by purchasing some great piece of art that googles in value. Although my mother would disagree, I fancy myself as having an eye for art.
Thus, the Koons Puppy Vase.
"Let's bid," I urged Scott. "Please!"
"You are nuts," he said. "No one else bid on it. What do you know that they don't?"
"I know that the market value is 50 percent higher than the opening bid," I said sagely. (A class mother had told me this.)
We had another glass of wine.
"I can't believe I'm even considering this," Scott said. But he has his own weakness. He has never said No to me. And so in his spidery scrawl, he wrote down our names on the clipboard next to the Puppy Vase.
I danced in place happily. Suddenly, the glittery parents grew silent. The school's crown jewels of parents had arrived, Donald and Melania Trump. They air kissed their way around the auction items until they came to my dog.
The Donald picked up the clip board.
"Don't you dare bid on my dog," I hissed into his cotton candy hair, somewhere where I thought an ear would be.
"Or maybe you're too smart to bid?" I added, suddenly doubting myself. He smiled at me the way you smile at small children or really old people and replaced the clipboard.
"Walk away," I said to Scott. Maybe the dog wasn't such a good idea. It was incredibly expensive. And The Donald didn't seem to think it was such a hot investment.
A young father with a beautiful blond wife walked over to the dog.
I could read her lips. She was either saying, "I want it for Sophie's room," or "This weather is doom and gloom."
He picked up the pen next to the clipboard.
I tugged on Scott's arm. "Look at that guy! He's taking our dog!"
They were probably ten years younger than us. The man was at least a foot taller than Scott and the woman was so thin she seemed vaporish. And they were looking at our dog with what I can only describe as entitlement.
Scott strode purposefully over to the clipboard and outbid him.
The man picked up the pen and outbid Scott.
Scott outbid him.
They went back and forth like this until the lined page was almost full. Finally Scott strode up to him and said in the gravelly tough-guy voice I fell in love with: "I'm not gonna stop."
The tall man scribbled his name again, looking defiant. Scott immediately wrote our names under his.
The man walked up to me. "Enjoy your dog in good health," he sneered.
"You betcha we will!" I answered.
"You beat him!" I said to Scott. "We won the dog!"
"Elise, how are we going to pay for this?" Scott asked, looking suddenly serious. "You do understand that we are easily the poorest people in the room and we bid on one of the most expensive items."
"We'll pay for it out of my retirement account," I answered brightly. After all, I had quit my job so I actually am retired, at least for now. And what better investment than a one-in-3000 dog vase?
"This is what happens when our pathologies collide," Scott said fondly, tousling my hair.
Up until that moment, I had thought about the combination of our pathologies in bleak terms - the dark spells we had, how we could lose one another, or worse, sometimes hate what we saw.
But this puppy vase, excessive and ridiculous as it was for a couple of pikers like us, is evidence that even our pathologies might be able to play nicely together.
It will also be a reminder of what I love in Scott, that scrappy Staten Island kid whose not afraid to play in anyone's sandbox. And who can't say no to me.
"We have a new dog," we told the children when we got home. "And whoever breaks it is going to public school," Scott added.
Like a steamship in a cloth coat, I made my way to the end of a narrow aisle where a saleswoman had been watching us.
"Does she shed?" I asked, pointing to the dog, who was making googly eyes at Scott.
"Like a mother you-know-what," said the saleswoman shaking her head.
She wedged herself between me and a row of dog food on my starboard side and leaned into my ear.
"Don't do it," she whispered. "She's cute now, but that's not the right dog for you. Those bulldogs, they slobber like crazy. And I don't know how she'll be with a baby. You got your hands full as it is," she said, looking pointedly at Scott, who at that moment was pretending to be a dog sniffing the children's pockets for treats.
"This isn't the first time you talked a pregnant woman out of a dog, is it," I said knowingly. "Thank you."
"I've had four kids myself," she said, then disappeared behind the fish tanks.
I ushered the children out. Emma began her negotiations: "If we don't get a dog this year, then maybe for my birthday," she began.
"Look, I love dogs. But we are about to have a baby. Can we just wait and see how much fun your baby brother is? If he's not that great and you still feel like you need a dog, we'll re-evaluate."
"Okay," said Emma. "Let's pencil in a discussion for next Halloween."
Henry thankfully has proven highly entertaining to his brother and sister. Not only can he fetch, but he licks their noses, rolls over on command and loves them with abandon. Halloween passed without discussion of a dog, although I was prepared to put Henry in a puppy costume if necessary.
I thought I had dodged the doggie bullet.
And then Scott and I attended a silent auction and cocktail party to benefit Quinny's tony nursery school.
The crowd was glittery, women in double-digit-carat diamond rings sporting a rainbow array of the season's It bags and men in bespoke suits. I was wearing a Betsy Johnson dress several seasons too tight, Aerosole boots and a handbag I got for free with a subscription to W ten years ago. Scott's suit was rumpled from playing with the kids and his tie was cocked at a funny angle because, according to another class father, his knot was too small.
On empty stomachs, we had three quick glasses of wine and perused the auction items. We dutifully bid on Quinny's class project and ribbed the parents of one of Quinny's classmates who were tipsily bidding on a Donnie and Marie Osmond Broadway Christmas show package.
I love a silent auction and I admit that I have had problems in the past with drinking and bidding. I've had good luck - a lovely party at a gym for Quinny and all his classmates, and bad - a portrait of a woman sprouting green wings and standing on Saturn that no one gets but me, which is now in Scott's mother's basement and a giant oil painting hanging in our living room that my mother says looks like snakes crawling through a pillory. (I see a circus.)
Scott was keeping a close eye on me when I saw it: the grand prize of the auction, a Jeff Koons puppy vase donated by the artist himself. The opening bid was a couple thousand dollars under market and no one had bid yet.
Not only do I have a problem with drunk bidding, but I am convinced that one of these days I will strike it rich. Easily. Like, by purchasing some great piece of art that googles in value. Although my mother would disagree, I fancy myself as having an eye for art.
Thus, the Koons Puppy Vase.
"Let's bid," I urged Scott. "Please!"
"You are nuts," he said. "No one else bid on it. What do you know that they don't?"
"I know that the market value is 50 percent higher than the opening bid," I said sagely. (A class mother had told me this.)
We had another glass of wine.
"I can't believe I'm even considering this," Scott said. But he has his own weakness. He has never said No to me. And so in his spidery scrawl, he wrote down our names on the clipboard next to the Puppy Vase.
I danced in place happily. Suddenly, the glittery parents grew silent. The school's crown jewels of parents had arrived, Donald and Melania Trump. They air kissed their way around the auction items until they came to my dog.
The Donald picked up the clip board.
"Don't you dare bid on my dog," I hissed into his cotton candy hair, somewhere where I thought an ear would be.
"Or maybe you're too smart to bid?" I added, suddenly doubting myself. He smiled at me the way you smile at small children or really old people and replaced the clipboard.
"Walk away," I said to Scott. Maybe the dog wasn't such a good idea. It was incredibly expensive. And The Donald didn't seem to think it was such a hot investment.
A young father with a beautiful blond wife walked over to the dog.
I could read her lips. She was either saying, "I want it for Sophie's room," or "This weather is doom and gloom."
He picked up the pen next to the clipboard.
I tugged on Scott's arm. "Look at that guy! He's taking our dog!"
They were probably ten years younger than us. The man was at least a foot taller than Scott and the woman was so thin she seemed vaporish. And they were looking at our dog with what I can only describe as entitlement.
Scott strode purposefully over to the clipboard and outbid him.
The man picked up the pen and outbid Scott.
Scott outbid him.
They went back and forth like this until the lined page was almost full. Finally Scott strode up to him and said in the gravelly tough-guy voice I fell in love with: "I'm not gonna stop."
The tall man scribbled his name again, looking defiant. Scott immediately wrote our names under his.
The man walked up to me. "Enjoy your dog in good health," he sneered.
"You betcha we will!" I answered.
"You beat him!" I said to Scott. "We won the dog!"
"Elise, how are we going to pay for this?" Scott asked, looking suddenly serious. "You do understand that we are easily the poorest people in the room and we bid on one of the most expensive items."
"We'll pay for it out of my retirement account," I answered brightly. After all, I had quit my job so I actually am retired, at least for now. And what better investment than a one-in-3000 dog vase?
"This is what happens when our pathologies collide," Scott said fondly, tousling my hair.
Up until that moment, I had thought about the combination of our pathologies in bleak terms - the dark spells we had, how we could lose one another, or worse, sometimes hate what we saw.
But this puppy vase, excessive and ridiculous as it was for a couple of pikers like us, is evidence that even our pathologies might be able to play nicely together.
It will also be a reminder of what I love in Scott, that scrappy Staten Island kid whose not afraid to play in anyone's sandbox. And who can't say no to me.
"We have a new dog," we told the children when we got home. "And whoever breaks it is going to public school," Scott added.
Monday, October 11, 2010
Reality Bites
There was a day not so long ago when I was holding a gallon of milk in the middle of my kitchen, unsure what to do with it.
I didn't recognize it as milk qua milk. I just knew that it something that went somewhere, usually in the morning. I touched it. It was cold. I looked at the refrigerator. I may have said aloud: "Aha, cold things are kept there," and that's how the milk wound up in the fridge instead of Scott's sock drawer.
The State Department regularly includes sleep deprivation among methods of torture in its reports on human rights abuses. Ninety-six hours straight is pretty much the standard minimum for torture, although lots of people start hallucinating after forty-eight. It had been about ten months since the last time I had more than three straight hours of sleep when I forgot what milk was.
I knew I needed help. Henry woke every two to three hours to nurse long after friends with babies the same age were starting to enjoy twelve baby-free hours at night. Getting Henry to nap required at least an hour of cycling through rocking, singing, jiggling him, holding my breath while he at last fell asleep in my arms, placing him in his crib, having his eyes flutter open the minute his back hit the mattress, and back to rocking, etc., until he finally passed out. Then he would nap for twenty minutes and wake screaming and exhausted. I would pour him into the stroller and stagger around the neighborhood hoping he'd close his eyes for even a few minutes.
That's when the Baby Whisperer magically entered my life.
Imagine mixing former Texas Governor Ann Richards with a baby nurse and a liberal shot of hot sauce and wrapping it all up in petit four pastels and you'll get Linda.
Linda caught the eye of some clever television executives after working her magic on one of their own babies. They decided to make a presentation tape to shop around the networks. I met Linda after a casting agent determined that I looked the part of a desperate housewife in need of some serious baby whispering.
Linda doesn't walk into a room, she blows in like a strong gust of wind. We got down to business right away. I was jiggling Henry on my hip and apologizing as he climbed up my shoulder on to my head like a little monkey and started tearing out my hair from the roots.
"He's tired," I explained.
"Honey, it's like he's been on a hamster wheel all night," Linda answered. "Put him down," she ordered gently.
"Down? On the floor?"
"Let me him play. Let him crawl, wear himself out. You've got your house baby-proofed. Give him some space."
I put Henry on the ground gingerly. He crawled over to the coffee table, which I had ringed with thick plastic foam, and pulled himself up to stand, smiling his wide, gummy grin.
"He's not gonna get hurt on that. There's more padding in here than a mental hospital. Let him go," Linda said.
That was my first revelation - that Henry needed more time knocking himself out physically before I tried to put him to bed. I spent hours upon hours playing with Henry, rocking him, cuddling him, reading to him -- but what I didn't do enough of was just leaving him alone (but supervised) and allowing him to explore.
"You have a dysfunctional relationship with your baby," Linda said frankly. "You are co-dependent."
I couldn't argue. Henry and I were literally joined at the hip and I had been unable to stomach allowing him to cry himself to sleep. But I was keeping him from learning how to soothe himself.
Linda was firm, but reassuring -- I was sure she made the sharpest hospital corners and the softest biscuits in Texas. With her by my side, we put Henry down for a nap and let him cry and wail for almost three hours before he finally fell asleep.
That night, he slept through the night with barely a whimper before bed. Linda arrived the next day for more "baby boot camp." Henry gave her a hard look. His eyes seemed to say, "You are so damn lucky I can't talk yet."
Naps were to be our greatest challenge. No nursing Henry before bed, no rocking him to sleep. I could develop a sleep-time routine, and then he was to be put down awake and allowed to cry himself to sleep -- or, as was the case with Henry, to stand rigid against the bars of his crib shouting "Mama" at the top of his lungs for two hours until it was time for his next feeding.
Linda returned to Texas, but stayed in touch by phone. She left reassuring messages for me when I was afraid I might crack. I had to put Henry down, then go into my shower, the only place in the apartment where I couldn't hear his screams.
I'm not sure who cried more during sleep-training, me or Henry. Leaving him to cry in his crib took every ounce of strength I had. I couldn't sleep at night because I was waking up every couple hours to listen for him. When I did finally sleep, I had nightmares.
Eventually I resurrected Henry's pacifier and allowed him to have it when I put him to bed. And I rocked him while I read and sang to him. But our entire routine was down to about 15 minutes and I always put him down in his crib awake.
For two weeks, I stood by my routine and Henry stood by his. I put him to bed, he stood at his crib railing and screamed. But each day, he screamed a little less. Then there came a day when Henry flatly refused to nap. He howled like an animal. All day. That night, he was still up at 11 p.m.
I was an emotional shipwreck a mile from safe harbor. We were so close, and now everything was lost. Mother overboard. I searched the house frantically for Linda's number and couldn't find it. I sent manic texts to her business manager.
In desperation, I called my mother. "It's always darkest before the dawn," she said.
That day in the Post, there was a story about David Tarloff, a man who is claiming insanity after he brutally stabbed a psychologist to death. He was carrying adult diapers at the time, and later said he was planning to free his sick mother from her nursing home and take her to Hawaii. Turns out David and his mother slept in the same bed in Queens until he was about 40.
I didn't want to raise a David Tarloff. I wanted an Olympic champion, a future president, or at least a man who could sleep through the night without his mother.
The next day Henry and I were up with the sun.
After his breakfast, I took him into his nursery, rocked him for a few minutes, read him a story, and forced myself to say brightly "Nap time!" in the same voice I usually reserve for "Cocktails!"
I closed the door and waited for the verbal assault. Nothing. Not a peep.
He woke two hours later, calm and smiling. I fell on him like I was Michael Phelps' mother. "I am so proud of you!" I gushed. We did a victory lap around the apartment.
Four hours later, I did the same thing - a little rocking, a story and some singing. I laid him down in his crib with his "softie," a cross between a stuffed animal and a plush handkerchief.
He blinked a few times after I announced "Nap time!" I shut the door. Silence.
Since then, Henry usually goes to bed without a fight. Henry sleeping is a wondrous thing. He is less agitated, more cuddly. He has been eating almost twice as much and his time between naps is filled with happy play.
Sometimes a dose of harsh reality is exactly what we need.
I didn't recognize it as milk qua milk. I just knew that it something that went somewhere, usually in the morning. I touched it. It was cold. I looked at the refrigerator. I may have said aloud: "Aha, cold things are kept there," and that's how the milk wound up in the fridge instead of Scott's sock drawer.
The State Department regularly includes sleep deprivation among methods of torture in its reports on human rights abuses. Ninety-six hours straight is pretty much the standard minimum for torture, although lots of people start hallucinating after forty-eight. It had been about ten months since the last time I had more than three straight hours of sleep when I forgot what milk was.
I knew I needed help. Henry woke every two to three hours to nurse long after friends with babies the same age were starting to enjoy twelve baby-free hours at night. Getting Henry to nap required at least an hour of cycling through rocking, singing, jiggling him, holding my breath while he at last fell asleep in my arms, placing him in his crib, having his eyes flutter open the minute his back hit the mattress, and back to rocking, etc., until he finally passed out. Then he would nap for twenty minutes and wake screaming and exhausted. I would pour him into the stroller and stagger around the neighborhood hoping he'd close his eyes for even a few minutes.
That's when the Baby Whisperer magically entered my life.
Imagine mixing former Texas Governor Ann Richards with a baby nurse and a liberal shot of hot sauce and wrapping it all up in petit four pastels and you'll get Linda.
Linda caught the eye of some clever television executives after working her magic on one of their own babies. They decided to make a presentation tape to shop around the networks. I met Linda after a casting agent determined that I looked the part of a desperate housewife in need of some serious baby whispering.
Linda doesn't walk into a room, she blows in like a strong gust of wind. We got down to business right away. I was jiggling Henry on my hip and apologizing as he climbed up my shoulder on to my head like a little monkey and started tearing out my hair from the roots.
"He's tired," I explained.
"Honey, it's like he's been on a hamster wheel all night," Linda answered. "Put him down," she ordered gently.
"Down? On the floor?"
"Let me him play. Let him crawl, wear himself out. You've got your house baby-proofed. Give him some space."
I put Henry on the ground gingerly. He crawled over to the coffee table, which I had ringed with thick plastic foam, and pulled himself up to stand, smiling his wide, gummy grin.
"He's not gonna get hurt on that. There's more padding in here than a mental hospital. Let him go," Linda said.
That was my first revelation - that Henry needed more time knocking himself out physically before I tried to put him to bed. I spent hours upon hours playing with Henry, rocking him, cuddling him, reading to him -- but what I didn't do enough of was just leaving him alone (but supervised) and allowing him to explore.
"You have a dysfunctional relationship with your baby," Linda said frankly. "You are co-dependent."
I couldn't argue. Henry and I were literally joined at the hip and I had been unable to stomach allowing him to cry himself to sleep. But I was keeping him from learning how to soothe himself.
Linda was firm, but reassuring -- I was sure she made the sharpest hospital corners and the softest biscuits in Texas. With her by my side, we put Henry down for a nap and let him cry and wail for almost three hours before he finally fell asleep.
That night, he slept through the night with barely a whimper before bed. Linda arrived the next day for more "baby boot camp." Henry gave her a hard look. His eyes seemed to say, "You are so damn lucky I can't talk yet."
Naps were to be our greatest challenge. No nursing Henry before bed, no rocking him to sleep. I could develop a sleep-time routine, and then he was to be put down awake and allowed to cry himself to sleep -- or, as was the case with Henry, to stand rigid against the bars of his crib shouting "Mama" at the top of his lungs for two hours until it was time for his next feeding.
Linda returned to Texas, but stayed in touch by phone. She left reassuring messages for me when I was afraid I might crack. I had to put Henry down, then go into my shower, the only place in the apartment where I couldn't hear his screams.
I'm not sure who cried more during sleep-training, me or Henry. Leaving him to cry in his crib took every ounce of strength I had. I couldn't sleep at night because I was waking up every couple hours to listen for him. When I did finally sleep, I had nightmares.
Eventually I resurrected Henry's pacifier and allowed him to have it when I put him to bed. And I rocked him while I read and sang to him. But our entire routine was down to about 15 minutes and I always put him down in his crib awake.
For two weeks, I stood by my routine and Henry stood by his. I put him to bed, he stood at his crib railing and screamed. But each day, he screamed a little less. Then there came a day when Henry flatly refused to nap. He howled like an animal. All day. That night, he was still up at 11 p.m.
I was an emotional shipwreck a mile from safe harbor. We were so close, and now everything was lost. Mother overboard. I searched the house frantically for Linda's number and couldn't find it. I sent manic texts to her business manager.
In desperation, I called my mother. "It's always darkest before the dawn," she said.
That day in the Post, there was a story about David Tarloff, a man who is claiming insanity after he brutally stabbed a psychologist to death. He was carrying adult diapers at the time, and later said he was planning to free his sick mother from her nursing home and take her to Hawaii. Turns out David and his mother slept in the same bed in Queens until he was about 40.
I didn't want to raise a David Tarloff. I wanted an Olympic champion, a future president, or at least a man who could sleep through the night without his mother.
The next day Henry and I were up with the sun.
After his breakfast, I took him into his nursery, rocked him for a few minutes, read him a story, and forced myself to say brightly "Nap time!" in the same voice I usually reserve for "Cocktails!"
I closed the door and waited for the verbal assault. Nothing. Not a peep.
He woke two hours later, calm and smiling. I fell on him like I was Michael Phelps' mother. "I am so proud of you!" I gushed. We did a victory lap around the apartment.
Four hours later, I did the same thing - a little rocking, a story and some singing. I laid him down in his crib with his "softie," a cross between a stuffed animal and a plush handkerchief.
He blinked a few times after I announced "Nap time!" I shut the door. Silence.
Since then, Henry usually goes to bed without a fight. Henry sleeping is a wondrous thing. He is less agitated, more cuddly. He has been eating almost twice as much and his time between naps is filled with happy play.
Sometimes a dose of harsh reality is exactly what we need.
Wednesday, September 1, 2010
Togetherness
We took the children to Atlantis, a Caribbean children's paradise with miles of swimming pools and umpteen water slides.
As most families do when they relocate, we quickly settled into a routine:
In the mornings, we had a big family buffet breakfast. Every day we coaxed eggs into Quinny with promises of a chocolate munchkin. Emma discovered the joys of chocolate syrup on chocolate chip pancakes, served up with a side of bacon. Henry enjoyed the local homemade yogurt after almost choking on a piece of egg white. I drank a pot of the good, strong coffee and Scott presided over the table with a big smile, waving away offers of more food - "You have it" - just happy to be there with his brood.
After breakfast, Scott took the children swimming in the sea while I put Henry to sleep in a nest I made him, encircling him, once he was safely unconscious, with oversized pillows that I prayed were bed bug-free. He staunchly refused the hotel crib, and I couldn't blame him. It looked like a baby jail cell on wheels with plastic sheets and a bumper that smelled of wet diapers.
While Henry slept, I tidied our room and then sat on our balcony watching Scott with Emma and Quinny. Like a familiar constellation in the night sky, I could always spot them immediately: Three brown heads close together near the shoreline, Scott holding Quinny close, Emma circling them, swimming out a few feet to look at a fish, then quickly coming back.
Scott loves nothing more than having all of us within arm's reach. But I need time alone as much as I need oxygen. I felt claustrophobic with the five of us packed into a single hotel room. The complete lack of privacy set my teeth on edge and made my bones ache, like an arthritic before a storm.
Yet on my perch above the sea, with Henry gently snoring on the other side of the open door, I buzzed with love for all of them. How happy I knew Scott to be in that moment, his shoulder blades turning boiled-lobster-red, Quinny balanced on his knee, Emma bringing shells like small offerings to her beloved Papa.
It was so easy to love them from that distance. Depending on where they were below me, I calculated how long it would take me to reach them if I were to see a dorsal fin or if one brown head suddenly disappeared underwater. My love shone down on them like the sun.
But by noon, Henry would be awake and the children and Scott would be ambling back into the room, shedding wet bathing suits on beds, tracking sand across the carpet.
On the day the maid failed to clean while we were out at lunch and I walked into a hotel room that looked like the scene of a playdate gone wild, I announced that I had to leave. Imemdiately.
"Can I come?" asked Emma hopefully.
"No," I said. "I just need to be alone."
I ran to the adults only swimming pool like an escapee being tracked by dogs and dove in as if to hide my scent. I stayed underwater for a long time, hearing nothing, being nothing. I walked to the beach and into the warm, clear water. I floated on my back.
I must have beeen gone 20 minutes before I urgently wanted to see Emma. The disappointment in her eyes was haunting me. I walked, dripping, back to our room. There was a neat stack of towels in the bathroom and the beds were made, but Scott and the children were gone. A thunderstorm struck suddenly and I sat on the balcony scanning the resort for a sign of them. I was just starting to get frantic - thinking about the metal in Henry's stroller, wondering if the children had drank enough water - when Scott called.
They had gone to the aquarium, then stopped in a lounge for a drink. Scott sounded pleased with himself. They were all dry, and each child had a new stuffed dolphin. I pined for them ... Until they blew back into the room like a tropical storm, needing showers and teeth brushed, rifling through drawers to find the exact outfit they had to wear to dinner, jumping exuberantly on the freshly-made beds.
On the chartered bus back to the airport, Scott let out a sigh. "That was so relaxing," he said. I stared at him, dumbfounded. I hadn't slept more than a few hours each night and my arms were aching from holding Henry and throwing the big kids around in the pool. We were about to take an international flight with three kids and an obscene amount of luggage, made all the heavier because most of the contents were wet. The unpacking! The laundry! My head was spinning while Scott started gently snoring beside me, a small, contented smile on his face.
Back in New York the next day, we took the kids to the playground. I tweaked my wrist taking Henry out of the baby swing. It started throbbing.
"You have to go to the hospital," Scott said. "I think you broke your wrist."
"I don't think so," I said. But it hurt. A lot.
My mother called, her momdar sensing that there was an injury.
"Go to the hospital," she said.
"I can't leave the kids," I answered.
"Of course you can. Scott can handle them."
She was right, of course. I put Henry and Quinny down for a nap. Scott and Emma were embroiled in a tense game of Star Wars Lego Wii.
"I'm going to the E.R.," I called out.
"Good," said Scott. "We're fine."
On the way to the hospital, I got an ice cream cone. I signed myself in and sat in the waiting room, licking my cone. A Jets game was playing in the corner. The only only other person in the room was a homeless man who had procured a cheesburger for himself and was rapaciously eating it.
"Bon Appetit," I said, cheering him with my cone. For the first time in a week, I felt my shoulders drop from where they were hunched next to my ears. I smiled. He smiled. For different reasons, we were both just happy to be there.
As most families do when they relocate, we quickly settled into a routine:
In the mornings, we had a big family buffet breakfast. Every day we coaxed eggs into Quinny with promises of a chocolate munchkin. Emma discovered the joys of chocolate syrup on chocolate chip pancakes, served up with a side of bacon. Henry enjoyed the local homemade yogurt after almost choking on a piece of egg white. I drank a pot of the good, strong coffee and Scott presided over the table with a big smile, waving away offers of more food - "You have it" - just happy to be there with his brood.
After breakfast, Scott took the children swimming in the sea while I put Henry to sleep in a nest I made him, encircling him, once he was safely unconscious, with oversized pillows that I prayed were bed bug-free. He staunchly refused the hotel crib, and I couldn't blame him. It looked like a baby jail cell on wheels with plastic sheets and a bumper that smelled of wet diapers.
While Henry slept, I tidied our room and then sat on our balcony watching Scott with Emma and Quinny. Like a familiar constellation in the night sky, I could always spot them immediately: Three brown heads close together near the shoreline, Scott holding Quinny close, Emma circling them, swimming out a few feet to look at a fish, then quickly coming back.
Scott loves nothing more than having all of us within arm's reach. But I need time alone as much as I need oxygen. I felt claustrophobic with the five of us packed into a single hotel room. The complete lack of privacy set my teeth on edge and made my bones ache, like an arthritic before a storm.
Yet on my perch above the sea, with Henry gently snoring on the other side of the open door, I buzzed with love for all of them. How happy I knew Scott to be in that moment, his shoulder blades turning boiled-lobster-red, Quinny balanced on his knee, Emma bringing shells like small offerings to her beloved Papa.
It was so easy to love them from that distance. Depending on where they were below me, I calculated how long it would take me to reach them if I were to see a dorsal fin or if one brown head suddenly disappeared underwater. My love shone down on them like the sun.
But by noon, Henry would be awake and the children and Scott would be ambling back into the room, shedding wet bathing suits on beds, tracking sand across the carpet.
On the day the maid failed to clean while we were out at lunch and I walked into a hotel room that looked like the scene of a playdate gone wild, I announced that I had to leave. Imemdiately.
"Can I come?" asked Emma hopefully.
"No," I said. "I just need to be alone."
I ran to the adults only swimming pool like an escapee being tracked by dogs and dove in as if to hide my scent. I stayed underwater for a long time, hearing nothing, being nothing. I walked to the beach and into the warm, clear water. I floated on my back.
I must have beeen gone 20 minutes before I urgently wanted to see Emma. The disappointment in her eyes was haunting me. I walked, dripping, back to our room. There was a neat stack of towels in the bathroom and the beds were made, but Scott and the children were gone. A thunderstorm struck suddenly and I sat on the balcony scanning the resort for a sign of them. I was just starting to get frantic - thinking about the metal in Henry's stroller, wondering if the children had drank enough water - when Scott called.
They had gone to the aquarium, then stopped in a lounge for a drink. Scott sounded pleased with himself. They were all dry, and each child had a new stuffed dolphin. I pined for them ... Until they blew back into the room like a tropical storm, needing showers and teeth brushed, rifling through drawers to find the exact outfit they had to wear to dinner, jumping exuberantly on the freshly-made beds.
On the chartered bus back to the airport, Scott let out a sigh. "That was so relaxing," he said. I stared at him, dumbfounded. I hadn't slept more than a few hours each night and my arms were aching from holding Henry and throwing the big kids around in the pool. We were about to take an international flight with three kids and an obscene amount of luggage, made all the heavier because most of the contents were wet. The unpacking! The laundry! My head was spinning while Scott started gently snoring beside me, a small, contented smile on his face.
Back in New York the next day, we took the kids to the playground. I tweaked my wrist taking Henry out of the baby swing. It started throbbing.
"You have to go to the hospital," Scott said. "I think you broke your wrist."
"I don't think so," I said. But it hurt. A lot.
My mother called, her momdar sensing that there was an injury.
"Go to the hospital," she said.
"I can't leave the kids," I answered.
"Of course you can. Scott can handle them."
She was right, of course. I put Henry and Quinny down for a nap. Scott and Emma were embroiled in a tense game of Star Wars Lego Wii.
"I'm going to the E.R.," I called out.
"Good," said Scott. "We're fine."
On the way to the hospital, I got an ice cream cone. I signed myself in and sat in the waiting room, licking my cone. A Jets game was playing in the corner. The only only other person in the room was a homeless man who had procured a cheesburger for himself and was rapaciously eating it.
"Bon Appetit," I said, cheering him with my cone. For the first time in a week, I felt my shoulders drop from where they were hunched next to my ears. I smiled. He smiled. For different reasons, we were both just happy to be there.
Monday, August 9, 2010
You Can Go Home Again
Ah, the family vacation - a rite of summer. Memories that become as much a part of us as our tissue, blood and bones.
Our summer vacations always entailed the family station wagon breaking down on the way to see our grandparents and our father trying to fix the car with whatever was at hand. When our windshield wiper inexplicably broke during a thunderstorm, my father stopped at a farm stand to buy a potato. He bit the potato in half and smeared the windshield with the potato on the theory that potatoes were somehow water-repellent.
When that didn't work, and with the windshield now completely obscured by rain and potato, he tied one of my brother's shoelaces to the end of the wiper, rolled down the window, and drove with his left hand outside, manually operating the wiper using the shoelace. Where was my mother in all of this? She was reaching around behind her, swatting her hairbrush in the general direction of the backseat to quiet the chorus of protests by my brothers and me.
Given this, you may wonder why I chose to visit these people this summer, and to subject my own children to them.
It was Henry's first trip to Cumberland, my hometown. We stayed at Rocky Gap, a lovely lakeside resort that I have been visiting for more than 30 years, the kind of place where kids under 10 still eat for free and the service is slower than an upside-down box turtle.
Several of my best friends from elementary and middle school still live in Cumberland and almost all of them have daughters. Sherri brought 5-year-old Elle and her toddler brother Ben Ben down from New York. Julie was visiting from Florida with Cameron. Kerry came with 7-year-old Ila. Samantha brought Grace. And Emma and the girls, who last saw each other a year ago at Rocky Gap, immediately reconnected and formed a girl gang. Shawn, who is an adoring auntie, and Heather, who had the sense to let her kids stay on their bedtime schedule, joined the rest of us for drinks lakeside while Scott and Samantha's husband watched the girls swim and my parents stayed with the boys in our room.
We got caught up on each other's lives over shots and homemade birthday cake. I love these women. They oxygenate my blood. Heather has her mother's hilarious sense of humor and could win a prize for sexiest preacher's wife. Julie, who still loves a good time, just like high school, was the prettiest homecoming queen in our history and is still clueless about how gorgeous she is. Kerry is one of the most passionate people I've ever met, especially after a few beers. Samantha is mother to everyone, loving our children as if they were her own and raising Grace to be a little lady worthy of her name. Shawn is a glamour girl on the outside, but on the inside, she's a country girl more loyal than a St. Bernard. And Sherri is the closest thing I have to a sister, and I'm not convinced an actual sister could be better.
We have been there for each other through the deaths of parents, the births of children, the ends of marriages, the beginnings of new relationships. I don't think I could live without them. And to see our daughters playing together, bonding, having an impromptu sleep-over in Sherri's room and sneaking potato chips in bed, almost blew my heart out of my chest.
It was worth the fifteen hours spent in the car with a crying six-month-old, Emma throwing up into a grocery bag and Quinny having to go potty during a traffic jam on I-95. It was even worth the fight Scott and I had over a headrest that was obscuring the back windshield, which ended in me giving him the finger in front of the children. (In my defense, I gave him the finger so that I wouldn't curse him out loud.)
Close on the heels of this trip to Cumberland was Scott's family reunion in Westchester. The Balber reunions were started 40 years ago by ten Balber cousins who grew up in the same building in Brooklyn. There is a dysfunctional structure to these reunions, with a regular family meeting presided over by Balber Board Chairman Cousin Michael. Cousin Petey, whose real name is Stuart, is the family CFO, who reported a zero balance in the family's coffers. (Not surprising, since the sole family asset is a forty-year-old hard salami.) Cousin Marty gave a stirring presentation on Balber family origins, discovered by him at a genealogy booth at a Renaissance Fair: "You thought we were Russian, but we're Swiss, you dummies," he said, unveiling a computer-generated Balber family crest. In the center was a large palm tree, possibly foretelling the ultimate migration of an important contingent of Balbers to Miami.
Along with being chairman, Cousin Michael is also the only Balber who can discern whether a new Balber has the Balber Thumb. Cheers erupted during the Friday night buffet when he declared that Henry does, indeed, have the Balber thumb. And with that, Henry was pressed, literally and figuratively, into the bosom of the Balber family, in the form of the ample cleavage of Cousin Irene.
As Henry exulted in being passed from Balber to Balber, falling asleep in Cousin Dara's arms, snuggling into Cousin Dossie's neck, it dawned on me that my boy is part of this tribe. He belongs to them every bit as much as he belongs to me, a fact made starkly clear when the family's matriarch, Great Aunt Joy, wept when she saw that Henry had the same birthmark as her beloved brother Genie, Henry's grandfather, now dead more than twenty years.
When we arrived home on Sunday, I picked up the Sunday Times and read an article in the Business section about happiness. The one thing the happiness experts agree upon is that stuff doesn't make you happy, strong relationships do.
And I thought about Scott and me, imperfect parents, sometimes struggling partners, who accidentally gave our children the one thing this summer that may truly make them happy: membership in a clan. And then I thought about how we knew to do this. For me, it began with a station wagon and a potato.
This entry is dedicated to Chaney Dakota Spring, who gave 16 years of faithful service as Zealand Family Dog. She is catching sticks for the angels now. Rest in peace. Good girl.
Our summer vacations always entailed the family station wagon breaking down on the way to see our grandparents and our father trying to fix the car with whatever was at hand. When our windshield wiper inexplicably broke during a thunderstorm, my father stopped at a farm stand to buy a potato. He bit the potato in half and smeared the windshield with the potato on the theory that potatoes were somehow water-repellent.
When that didn't work, and with the windshield now completely obscured by rain and potato, he tied one of my brother's shoelaces to the end of the wiper, rolled down the window, and drove with his left hand outside, manually operating the wiper using the shoelace. Where was my mother in all of this? She was reaching around behind her, swatting her hairbrush in the general direction of the backseat to quiet the chorus of protests by my brothers and me.
Given this, you may wonder why I chose to visit these people this summer, and to subject my own children to them.
It was Henry's first trip to Cumberland, my hometown. We stayed at Rocky Gap, a lovely lakeside resort that I have been visiting for more than 30 years, the kind of place where kids under 10 still eat for free and the service is slower than an upside-down box turtle.
Several of my best friends from elementary and middle school still live in Cumberland and almost all of them have daughters. Sherri brought 5-year-old Elle and her toddler brother Ben Ben down from New York. Julie was visiting from Florida with Cameron. Kerry came with 7-year-old Ila. Samantha brought Grace. And Emma and the girls, who last saw each other a year ago at Rocky Gap, immediately reconnected and formed a girl gang. Shawn, who is an adoring auntie, and Heather, who had the sense to let her kids stay on their bedtime schedule, joined the rest of us for drinks lakeside while Scott and Samantha's husband watched the girls swim and my parents stayed with the boys in our room.
We got caught up on each other's lives over shots and homemade birthday cake. I love these women. They oxygenate my blood. Heather has her mother's hilarious sense of humor and could win a prize for sexiest preacher's wife. Julie, who still loves a good time, just like high school, was the prettiest homecoming queen in our history and is still clueless about how gorgeous she is. Kerry is one of the most passionate people I've ever met, especially after a few beers. Samantha is mother to everyone, loving our children as if they were her own and raising Grace to be a little lady worthy of her name. Shawn is a glamour girl on the outside, but on the inside, she's a country girl more loyal than a St. Bernard. And Sherri is the closest thing I have to a sister, and I'm not convinced an actual sister could be better.
We have been there for each other through the deaths of parents, the births of children, the ends of marriages, the beginnings of new relationships. I don't think I could live without them. And to see our daughters playing together, bonding, having an impromptu sleep-over in Sherri's room and sneaking potato chips in bed, almost blew my heart out of my chest.
It was worth the fifteen hours spent in the car with a crying six-month-old, Emma throwing up into a grocery bag and Quinny having to go potty during a traffic jam on I-95. It was even worth the fight Scott and I had over a headrest that was obscuring the back windshield, which ended in me giving him the finger in front of the children. (In my defense, I gave him the finger so that I wouldn't curse him out loud.)
Close on the heels of this trip to Cumberland was Scott's family reunion in Westchester. The Balber reunions were started 40 years ago by ten Balber cousins who grew up in the same building in Brooklyn. There is a dysfunctional structure to these reunions, with a regular family meeting presided over by Balber Board Chairman Cousin Michael. Cousin Petey, whose real name is Stuart, is the family CFO, who reported a zero balance in the family's coffers. (Not surprising, since the sole family asset is a forty-year-old hard salami.) Cousin Marty gave a stirring presentation on Balber family origins, discovered by him at a genealogy booth at a Renaissance Fair: "You thought we were Russian, but we're Swiss, you dummies," he said, unveiling a computer-generated Balber family crest. In the center was a large palm tree, possibly foretelling the ultimate migration of an important contingent of Balbers to Miami.
Along with being chairman, Cousin Michael is also the only Balber who can discern whether a new Balber has the Balber Thumb. Cheers erupted during the Friday night buffet when he declared that Henry does, indeed, have the Balber thumb. And with that, Henry was pressed, literally and figuratively, into the bosom of the Balber family, in the form of the ample cleavage of Cousin Irene.
As Henry exulted in being passed from Balber to Balber, falling asleep in Cousin Dara's arms, snuggling into Cousin Dossie's neck, it dawned on me that my boy is part of this tribe. He belongs to them every bit as much as he belongs to me, a fact made starkly clear when the family's matriarch, Great Aunt Joy, wept when she saw that Henry had the same birthmark as her beloved brother Genie, Henry's grandfather, now dead more than twenty years.
When we arrived home on Sunday, I picked up the Sunday Times and read an article in the Business section about happiness. The one thing the happiness experts agree upon is that stuff doesn't make you happy, strong relationships do.
And I thought about Scott and me, imperfect parents, sometimes struggling partners, who accidentally gave our children the one thing this summer that may truly make them happy: membership in a clan. And then I thought about how we knew to do this. For me, it began with a station wagon and a potato.
This entry is dedicated to Chaney Dakota Spring, who gave 16 years of faithful service as Zealand Family Dog. She is catching sticks for the angels now. Rest in peace. Good girl.
Thursday, July 8, 2010
More Gaga, Less Goo Goo
It was 103 degrees in the shade and I was happily traipsing through the concrete canyons of Tribeca on my way to meet a friend for lunch. These were the stiletto sidewalks of my singlehood, and after spending the Fourth of July weekend with Scott and the children at the beach, I was overcome with nostalgia for my life as a unit of one.
My friend and I had agreed to meet at the Odeon and I arrived early. I reveled in opening the door with my hand instead of kicking it karate-style so that I could jam a stroller through it. I sat down, ordered a club soda, and just breathed.
My friend arrived, looking damp, but dapper. In the middle of a successful law career, he had taken a turn at home with his two children and I was hungry for some empathy.
"So," I began, reaching for the bread basket. "About staying home and raising children..."
"It's horrible," he said with a big smile.
That moment captured for me the dichotomy of parenting. We spent the rest of lunch discussing the boundless joy of watching your children grow and the paralyzing fear that something could somehow go terribly wrong.
I told him about the weekend we had just spent at our good friends' beautiful new beach house. On the one hand, I relished our big barbecued meals outside, our post-bedtime, adults-only wine talks and my delicious swim with Emma and Quinny while my friend held Henry in the shade and loved up on him. But where I once adored water in any form, now, with three children, it became another hazard and source of anxiety. Our friends' pool sparkled, but it also menaced. Jerry Bruckheimer has nothing on me in dreaming up disaster scenarios and this little flagstone oasis became the backdrop for my worst fears played out in the technicolor 3-D of my overactive imagination.
My friend told me about the day he took his daughter on the Cyclone roller coaster at Coney Island. As the car crept up the rickety tracks toward the first drop, he was at once both utterly proud of her bravery and completely convinced the tracks would collapse and their bodies would be thrown into Astroland.
"How can you bear the anxiety?" I asked.
"Because I want them to be brave and adventurous," he said. "I want them to be bold."
"Damn," I thought. "I do too."
Because I was, and can still be, bold. I just need to be reminded that inside this Upper East Side mother is a cocktail-swilling, purse-slinging daredevil who once grabbed Manhattan by the horns and rode it like a mechanical bull.
My mother always says that when you're paying attention, the universe will guide you.
As luck would have it, the next night, I had tickets to a Lady Gaga concert with my dear friends Kate and Anne and my new friend Cristina. They are three badass blonds who love a good time and somehow have refused to allow their family lives to swallow them whole.
I knew I could learn from them.
So I pureed carrots for Henry and pumped a bottle of milk, threw a roast chicken on the table for the big kids, stuffed my bra with breast pads, shook my hair out of its bun a la Linda Carter turning into Wonder Woman, bid Scott a fond farewell, grabbed his credit card and hailed a taxi.
After some pre-Gaga libations at a bar down the street from Madison Square Garden, we strode to the box seats that Kate had wrangled for us. We were sharing the box with the usual panoply of bankers and lawyers.
Lady Gaga made her entrance and I was captivated. She appeared on a giant screen in silhouette, several stories tall, in what looked like a set of bat wings, but turned out to be giant disco ball shoulder pads.
We danced and shimmied while the bankers and lawyers emptied the chafing dishes of their fried chicken strips and hot dogs. The mix of free vodka and Gaga left us dizzy. "Jump!" shouted Gaga, and we jumped.
On my second trip to the private restroom - a close runner-up to the open bar for my favorite feature of the corporate box - a woman hissed in my ear: "Going to the restroom again? I'd like to be doing what you're doing."
I looked at her, confused. All of that jumping was a bit much for my post-baby bladder and I had slightly peed myself. Just a little, but enough to require a couple trips to the Ladies' to, um, mop the floor, so to speak. She wished she had wet herself....?
Then it dawned on me. She thought I was doing cocaine.
I went back to my Gaga gaggle and told them what happened. It is rather telling of our current station in life that everyone was outraged by the suggestion. "Can't we just be high on life?" Kate asked in a snit, until Anne reminded her that we were also high on a bottle of champagne, a round of pre-concert Gaga-tinis and the deadly Cape Cods Kate had been liberally mixing at the open bar.
We jumped higher and harder as flames shot out from Lady Gaga's leather bikini. I didn't even think about Quinny's bathroom nightlight setting the hand towels on fire and burning down our building, or whether I had left some carrot chunks in Henry's food.
"You can be whoever you want to be," exulted Lady Gaga, who had changed into a transparent nun's habit. We cheered wildly.
As the show ended, I got a carefully-worded email from Scott asking when I might be on my way home. I slipped into a cab and sped back to my life.
I opened the door and a battle-weary Scott was holding a non-sleeping Henry. The big kids were asleep, but Henry was just getting the party started.
"From Goo Goo to Gaga," said Scott.
"And back again," I thought scooping up Henry.
I put the baby to bed, then woke up two hours later to feed him. At 3 a.m., a wet Quinny crawled into our bed dragging his urine-soaked blanket with him. An hour later, Henry was hungry again. When the sun rose, so did Henry, and I saw that one of his eyes was swollen shut with mucus. It was about this time that Quinny used his Yoda underpants as his own personal toilet for a number two. I began collecting soiled bedding.
My hang-over, which had just been flirting with the corners of my eyes, smacked me upside the head. There would be hell to pay for the fun I'd had. And laundry - yes, there would be laundry. Lots of it.
But I had been to Gaga. I was a Gaga-loving mama. And if Lady Gaga was right and I could be whoever I wanted to be, I would choose exactly this: a woman facing three loads, one in Quinny's underpants, and a vodka death spiral that would take two days to overcome. I vowed then to keep that Gaga flame alive.
Before I left the Garden, I bought the concert t-shirt, the one with the oversized banana and two disco balls on it. And yes, I will be rocking it at the Citarella fish counter.
My friend and I had agreed to meet at the Odeon and I arrived early. I reveled in opening the door with my hand instead of kicking it karate-style so that I could jam a stroller through it. I sat down, ordered a club soda, and just breathed.
My friend arrived, looking damp, but dapper. In the middle of a successful law career, he had taken a turn at home with his two children and I was hungry for some empathy.
"So," I began, reaching for the bread basket. "About staying home and raising children..."
"It's horrible," he said with a big smile.
That moment captured for me the dichotomy of parenting. We spent the rest of lunch discussing the boundless joy of watching your children grow and the paralyzing fear that something could somehow go terribly wrong.
I told him about the weekend we had just spent at our good friends' beautiful new beach house. On the one hand, I relished our big barbecued meals outside, our post-bedtime, adults-only wine talks and my delicious swim with Emma and Quinny while my friend held Henry in the shade and loved up on him. But where I once adored water in any form, now, with three children, it became another hazard and source of anxiety. Our friends' pool sparkled, but it also menaced. Jerry Bruckheimer has nothing on me in dreaming up disaster scenarios and this little flagstone oasis became the backdrop for my worst fears played out in the technicolor 3-D of my overactive imagination.
My friend told me about the day he took his daughter on the Cyclone roller coaster at Coney Island. As the car crept up the rickety tracks toward the first drop, he was at once both utterly proud of her bravery and completely convinced the tracks would collapse and their bodies would be thrown into Astroland.
"How can you bear the anxiety?" I asked.
"Because I want them to be brave and adventurous," he said. "I want them to be bold."
"Damn," I thought. "I do too."
Because I was, and can still be, bold. I just need to be reminded that inside this Upper East Side mother is a cocktail-swilling, purse-slinging daredevil who once grabbed Manhattan by the horns and rode it like a mechanical bull.
My mother always says that when you're paying attention, the universe will guide you.
As luck would have it, the next night, I had tickets to a Lady Gaga concert with my dear friends Kate and Anne and my new friend Cristina. They are three badass blonds who love a good time and somehow have refused to allow their family lives to swallow them whole.
I knew I could learn from them.
So I pureed carrots for Henry and pumped a bottle of milk, threw a roast chicken on the table for the big kids, stuffed my bra with breast pads, shook my hair out of its bun a la Linda Carter turning into Wonder Woman, bid Scott a fond farewell, grabbed his credit card and hailed a taxi.
After some pre-Gaga libations at a bar down the street from Madison Square Garden, we strode to the box seats that Kate had wrangled for us. We were sharing the box with the usual panoply of bankers and lawyers.
Lady Gaga made her entrance and I was captivated. She appeared on a giant screen in silhouette, several stories tall, in what looked like a set of bat wings, but turned out to be giant disco ball shoulder pads.
We danced and shimmied while the bankers and lawyers emptied the chafing dishes of their fried chicken strips and hot dogs. The mix of free vodka and Gaga left us dizzy. "Jump!" shouted Gaga, and we jumped.
On my second trip to the private restroom - a close runner-up to the open bar for my favorite feature of the corporate box - a woman hissed in my ear: "Going to the restroom again? I'd like to be doing what you're doing."
I looked at her, confused. All of that jumping was a bit much for my post-baby bladder and I had slightly peed myself. Just a little, but enough to require a couple trips to the Ladies' to, um, mop the floor, so to speak. She wished she had wet herself....?
Then it dawned on me. She thought I was doing cocaine.
I went back to my Gaga gaggle and told them what happened. It is rather telling of our current station in life that everyone was outraged by the suggestion. "Can't we just be high on life?" Kate asked in a snit, until Anne reminded her that we were also high on a bottle of champagne, a round of pre-concert Gaga-tinis and the deadly Cape Cods Kate had been liberally mixing at the open bar.
We jumped higher and harder as flames shot out from Lady Gaga's leather bikini. I didn't even think about Quinny's bathroom nightlight setting the hand towels on fire and burning down our building, or whether I had left some carrot chunks in Henry's food.
"You can be whoever you want to be," exulted Lady Gaga, who had changed into a transparent nun's habit. We cheered wildly.
As the show ended, I got a carefully-worded email from Scott asking when I might be on my way home. I slipped into a cab and sped back to my life.
I opened the door and a battle-weary Scott was holding a non-sleeping Henry. The big kids were asleep, but Henry was just getting the party started.
"From Goo Goo to Gaga," said Scott.
"And back again," I thought scooping up Henry.
I put the baby to bed, then woke up two hours later to feed him. At 3 a.m., a wet Quinny crawled into our bed dragging his urine-soaked blanket with him. An hour later, Henry was hungry again. When the sun rose, so did Henry, and I saw that one of his eyes was swollen shut with mucus. It was about this time that Quinny used his Yoda underpants as his own personal toilet for a number two. I began collecting soiled bedding.
My hang-over, which had just been flirting with the corners of my eyes, smacked me upside the head. There would be hell to pay for the fun I'd had. And laundry - yes, there would be laundry. Lots of it.
But I had been to Gaga. I was a Gaga-loving mama. And if Lady Gaga was right and I could be whoever I wanted to be, I would choose exactly this: a woman facing three loads, one in Quinny's underpants, and a vodka death spiral that would take two days to overcome. I vowed then to keep that Gaga flame alive.
Before I left the Garden, I bought the concert t-shirt, the one with the oversized banana and two disco balls on it. And yes, I will be rocking it at the Citarella fish counter.
Monday, June 28, 2010
Black Is the New Black
The other mothers were obviously wondering why I was wearing black nail polish to the Fancy Nancy-themed birthday party.
"It's called 'Nocturnelle,'" I whispered to one woman who was staring in alarm at my hands. "By MAC."
She was immaculate in a white linen suit and wearing something eggshell-pinky on her perfectly-manicured fingers.
"It's not really black," I tried again. "It's deep grey."
Truth was, it was the black nail polish I had bought for Emma and me for Halloween when we dressed as vampires. And the reason I was wearing it in mid-summer at a party where little girls were parading in matching pastel tutus and twirling chiffon parasols goes back to my desire to impress Quinny.
Quinny is a tough customer. While Emma seems to have just accepted me as this woman who landed in her life like a friendly alien one day, Quinny has always been a little skeptical.
I am a third wheel to Quinny. He has a mama whom he adores. If you ask him his favorite ice cream flavor, he'll say "Mama." He loves to go to "Mama's Bank," which he apparently believes Mama owns and keeps stocked with lollipops just for him. And of course, he has Papa, too, who carries him around on his head and tickles him just right. So with lollipops, tickles and all that love, who needs this other lady with her incessant hand washing and rules against lightsabers in the living room?
Quinny understands that I carried his beloved brother Henry in my belly and that I am therefore Henry's Mama. So he begrudgingly accepts that I have to be in the house, sort of like the late party guest who brings a case of beer after the liquor store is closed. No matter how you feel about him, you have to let him in.
Of course, for my part, I am wild about Quinny. I haven't known this kind of unrequited love since my freshman year of high school when the basketball player I had a mad crush on wanted nothing to do with me. He worked in the mall and I spent hours teasing my bangs into an irresistible hedgerow before gracing his counter with my presence, only to be ignored. My only solace is that he still works at the Chick-Fil-A.
But back to Quinny. I decided that we would make Star Wars cookies. Taking my cue from McDonalds, I thought I could endear myself to Quinny by aligning myself with his favorite franchise.
We bought Star Wars cookie cutters and new baking sheets so they wouldn't burn. Quinny and I made the dough together and pressed it into Darth Vader and Yoda shapes. Giddy with success and Quinny's smile, I announced that we would now make Darth Vader icing.
Having slept maybe three hours, I took the container of black food coloring, popped off the lid and then shook it vigorously. Quinny watch wide-eyed as I sprayed the kitchen with what looked like squid ink. The floor, counter tops and appliances all had leopard spots. Somehow, Quinny was spared, but I looked like a chimney sweep.
"Papa! We had an accident!" Quinny shouted. I put my hand over his mouth, instantly covering his face with black fingerprints.
"Ha ha ha!" I said. "Isn't this fun? This is how you're supposed to make Darth Vader icing."
"Papa!" screamed Quinny.
It took a roll of paper towels and an entire container of wet Swiffers to clean the kitchen. By the time I was finished, Quinny had lost interest in decorating the cookies. And I had about 5 minutes to get ready for the birthday party. So I loofaed myself until my face, neck and chest were covered in pale green rather than black blotches, but my fingernails still looked like I had been making mud pies. So I quickly coated them with black nail polish.
Emma eyed me critically.
"Black nail polish really isn't in style anymore," she informed me.
"I know," I said.
"Grey is in," she offered.
"I know."
"Mama wears grey," Emma continued. "It looks really pretty. It's called 'Chinchilla.'"
"It's called 'Nocturnelle,'" I whispered to one woman who was staring in alarm at my hands. "By MAC."
She was immaculate in a white linen suit and wearing something eggshell-pinky on her perfectly-manicured fingers.
"It's not really black," I tried again. "It's deep grey."
Truth was, it was the black nail polish I had bought for Emma and me for Halloween when we dressed as vampires. And the reason I was wearing it in mid-summer at a party where little girls were parading in matching pastel tutus and twirling chiffon parasols goes back to my desire to impress Quinny.
Quinny is a tough customer. While Emma seems to have just accepted me as this woman who landed in her life like a friendly alien one day, Quinny has always been a little skeptical.
I am a third wheel to Quinny. He has a mama whom he adores. If you ask him his favorite ice cream flavor, he'll say "Mama." He loves to go to "Mama's Bank," which he apparently believes Mama owns and keeps stocked with lollipops just for him. And of course, he has Papa, too, who carries him around on his head and tickles him just right. So with lollipops, tickles and all that love, who needs this other lady with her incessant hand washing and rules against lightsabers in the living room?
Quinny understands that I carried his beloved brother Henry in my belly and that I am therefore Henry's Mama. So he begrudgingly accepts that I have to be in the house, sort of like the late party guest who brings a case of beer after the liquor store is closed. No matter how you feel about him, you have to let him in.
Of course, for my part, I am wild about Quinny. I haven't known this kind of unrequited love since my freshman year of high school when the basketball player I had a mad crush on wanted nothing to do with me. He worked in the mall and I spent hours teasing my bangs into an irresistible hedgerow before gracing his counter with my presence, only to be ignored. My only solace is that he still works at the Chick-Fil-A.
But back to Quinny. I decided that we would make Star Wars cookies. Taking my cue from McDonalds, I thought I could endear myself to Quinny by aligning myself with his favorite franchise.
We bought Star Wars cookie cutters and new baking sheets so they wouldn't burn. Quinny and I made the dough together and pressed it into Darth Vader and Yoda shapes. Giddy with success and Quinny's smile, I announced that we would now make Darth Vader icing.
Having slept maybe three hours, I took the container of black food coloring, popped off the lid and then shook it vigorously. Quinny watch wide-eyed as I sprayed the kitchen with what looked like squid ink. The floor, counter tops and appliances all had leopard spots. Somehow, Quinny was spared, but I looked like a chimney sweep.
"Papa! We had an accident!" Quinny shouted. I put my hand over his mouth, instantly covering his face with black fingerprints.
"Ha ha ha!" I said. "Isn't this fun? This is how you're supposed to make Darth Vader icing."
"Papa!" screamed Quinny.
It took a roll of paper towels and an entire container of wet Swiffers to clean the kitchen. By the time I was finished, Quinny had lost interest in decorating the cookies. And I had about 5 minutes to get ready for the birthday party. So I loofaed myself until my face, neck and chest were covered in pale green rather than black blotches, but my fingernails still looked like I had been making mud pies. So I quickly coated them with black nail polish.
Emma eyed me critically.
"Black nail polish really isn't in style anymore," she informed me.
"I know," I said.
"Grey is in," she offered.
"I know."
"Mama wears grey," Emma continued. "It looks really pretty. It's called 'Chinchilla.'"
Tuesday, June 15, 2010
DEGAGNE
I've always been a late bloomer. I drove myself to the mall to buy my first training bra. I didn't start law school until age 26. The only thing I did before most of my friends was to marry and divorce.
When I was a little girl, I assumed I'd start having children around the same time my mom did, well-timed to coincide with the legal drinking age. But my twenties came and went, then I found myself separated from my husband at age 32. Although I had high anxiety about whether or not I would ever have children, I was able to distract myself with my law career and a string of relationships, some good, some not so good, while time marched on and my ovaries began their steady decline.
Then I met Scott. And he came with two of the best little bundles in the world, Emma and Quinny. And so it was that in my late 30s, I was introduced to the wonders and perils of true love, love for a man and his children, the kind that suddenly leaves you vulnerable to the vagaries of the universe in a way you never thought possible. One minute I was blithely jay-walking in high heels through Tribeca traffic, the next I was clutching two beloved little hands in an Upper East Side crosswalk, saying a little prayer that we'd make it to the other side.
The watershed moment when it really hit me that the footloose, champagne-fueled single girl I had been was gone for good came when I was about five months pregnant and Quinny had the stomach flu. Scott and I took turns carrying him into the bathroom, watching him cry and wretch into the toilet while we sat on the ledge of the bath tub and surreptitiously wiped our own tears. Exhausted, Quinny finally begged not to go into the bathroom again. So I held him over my shoulder and I just let him throw up all over me, again and again.
The sun came up and an exuberant Emma woke. She was nonplussed by her brother's stomach troubles - she'd recently had her own vomit-a-thon after getting over-excited about a trip to Disneyland - and insisted that I help her with a Halloween word search.
"Emma," I chided, with Quinny slung limp over my shoulder and both of us stinking and covered in vomit, "I'm a little busy. Can't you see that your brother is sick?"
"But I can't find 'DRACULA' anywhere," she pleaded.
I looked down and studied the puzzle. "Some of the words are written backwards," I told her. "Which really isn't fair. That's too hard."
So while Quinny rested his big, vomity head on my soiled neck and Scott changed our bed linens for the fifth time since midnight, Emma and I finished the puzzle. And I realized that I had completely capitulated to this family.
Nothing about my romance with Scott has followed the typical boy-meets-girl trajectory. It's more like one of Emma's word search puzzles than a narrative. Here's "LOVE," here's "CHILDREN," here's "FAITH." And just recently, over Memorial Day weekend, Scott and I, after "CHILDBIRTH," became "ENGAGED." Almost simultaneously, to Scott's delight, we also added a "CAR." And I suppose, once we get Henry sleep-trained and Quinny settled in nursery school and we find an apartment big enough to accommodate this growing menagerie, we will have a "WEDDING."
But for now, I am going to enjoy being a fiance. Because even though we've cared for children together, had a baby together, even bought an SUV together, Scott was still romantic enough to buy me a ring that, to this country girl, looks big enough to fry an egg on. There are moments in the midst of the chaos of our household when the light catches the diamond just right so that a little fire burns on my ring finger. And I remember that what came first was a girl who loved a boy and a boy who loved her back.
When I was a little girl, I assumed I'd start having children around the same time my mom did, well-timed to coincide with the legal drinking age. But my twenties came and went, then I found myself separated from my husband at age 32. Although I had high anxiety about whether or not I would ever have children, I was able to distract myself with my law career and a string of relationships, some good, some not so good, while time marched on and my ovaries began their steady decline.
Then I met Scott. And he came with two of the best little bundles in the world, Emma and Quinny. And so it was that in my late 30s, I was introduced to the wonders and perils of true love, love for a man and his children, the kind that suddenly leaves you vulnerable to the vagaries of the universe in a way you never thought possible. One minute I was blithely jay-walking in high heels through Tribeca traffic, the next I was clutching two beloved little hands in an Upper East Side crosswalk, saying a little prayer that we'd make it to the other side.
The watershed moment when it really hit me that the footloose, champagne-fueled single girl I had been was gone for good came when I was about five months pregnant and Quinny had the stomach flu. Scott and I took turns carrying him into the bathroom, watching him cry and wretch into the toilet while we sat on the ledge of the bath tub and surreptitiously wiped our own tears. Exhausted, Quinny finally begged not to go into the bathroom again. So I held him over my shoulder and I just let him throw up all over me, again and again.
The sun came up and an exuberant Emma woke. She was nonplussed by her brother's stomach troubles - she'd recently had her own vomit-a-thon after getting over-excited about a trip to Disneyland - and insisted that I help her with a Halloween word search.
"Emma," I chided, with Quinny slung limp over my shoulder and both of us stinking and covered in vomit, "I'm a little busy. Can't you see that your brother is sick?"
"But I can't find 'DRACULA' anywhere," she pleaded.
I looked down and studied the puzzle. "Some of the words are written backwards," I told her. "Which really isn't fair. That's too hard."
So while Quinny rested his big, vomity head on my soiled neck and Scott changed our bed linens for the fifth time since midnight, Emma and I finished the puzzle. And I realized that I had completely capitulated to this family.
Nothing about my romance with Scott has followed the typical boy-meets-girl trajectory. It's more like one of Emma's word search puzzles than a narrative. Here's "LOVE," here's "CHILDREN," here's "FAITH." And just recently, over Memorial Day weekend, Scott and I, after "CHILDBIRTH," became "ENGAGED." Almost simultaneously, to Scott's delight, we also added a "CAR." And I suppose, once we get Henry sleep-trained and Quinny settled in nursery school and we find an apartment big enough to accommodate this growing menagerie, we will have a "WEDDING."
But for now, I am going to enjoy being a fiance. Because even though we've cared for children together, had a baby together, even bought an SUV together, Scott was still romantic enough to buy me a ring that, to this country girl, looks big enough to fry an egg on. There are moments in the midst of the chaos of our household when the light catches the diamond just right so that a little fire burns on my ring finger. And I remember that what came first was a girl who loved a boy and a boy who loved her back.
Monday, May 31, 2010
It Sells Itself
Scott and I tried to buy a car last weekend, the Acura MDX, which got the highest safety rating in Consumer Reports and has room for three car seats, bless it. We wanted this car bad. And we were well prepared to go head-to-head with the dealer. We looked up the inventory price. I trolled car fanatic chat rooms to get a sense of the going rate for a base model and researched car dealer lingo so I could translate what the salesman was saying when he "talked to his manager." Scott and I practiced our good cop/bad cop routine, with me in the role of bad cop.
As we walked into the show room, I got an excited little flutter in my stomach. When I was a kid, my parents would take us to a used car lot on Memorial Day and tell us it was an amusement park. We totally bought it because there really was a carnival atmosphere: There were giant blow-up clowns waving their empty windsock arms on the roof of the dealership, free popcorn and balloons for the kids, plastic flags in red, white and blue, and men sweating through their polyester three-piece suits as they demonstrated the incredible features of the 1979 Datsun 510 station wagon, replete with wood panels and a carpeted trunk with fresh vacuum lines running across it.
I still love the smell of fresh paint on a tire. And there I was, in a show room on Memorial Day, ready to make a deal and drive that car home today, ladies and gentlemen.
But something was off. There was a noticeable absence of confetti. There weren't even any giant SALE signs painted in fluorescent bubble letters on the dealership windows. And inside, it was as quiet as a museum. We had to ask to see a salesman and when one finally approached us, he did so reticently, as if he thought maybe we were armed.
"Hi," he said. "I'm Don*." (*Not his real name. His real name was Darnell.)
"Hello," Scott said brightly, already playing good cop. "I'm Scott and this is Elise."
"Ffft." I said, dropping a pretend cigarette on the floor and putting it out with my toe.
"Can I help you?" Don asked.
"We'd like to buy an SUV," Scott said.
"Well, we'd like to look at an SUV," I interjected, elbowing Scott in the ribs. "Let's not make this too easy," I muttered under my breath.
"Did you want a new car? Or a used car? We have several 2007s." Don made a lackluster sweep of the showroom with one arm, then dropped his hand to his leg as if he were suddenly very tired.
"Let's look at the 2010s," Scott said. Don pointed to a gleaming black SUV several yards away. "There you go," he said. "Over there."
"Did you want us to know anything about the car?" Scott asked. "Could we look inside?"
Don opened the back door and stood silently next to us.
"How's the trunk space?" I asked.
Don opened the back door.
"Do the seats fold down?" I asked. Don folded down one seat.
"Not a lot of room back here," I frowned.
Don shook his head. "You're right," he said. "You could fit a few suitcases, but you might struggle to fit a stroller too."
"Ummm," said Scott. Clearly, he was having trouble remembering his lines.
"Maybe we should take another look at the Infinity," I prodded. This was part of the act we'd rehearsed just that morning over bagels.
Don's face brightened. "I used to sell Infinities," he said, and whistled. "They're beautiful cars. If you were going to travel any kind of distance, you might be more comfortable in an Infinity."
"Well, maybe we can test drive the Acura?" Scott asked helpfully.
"Is it a problem that we had a few drinks at lunch?" I asked Don, hoping to snap him out of his malaise. Scott struggled to keep a straight face.
"I won't tell if you don't," Don said, shrugging his shoulders. Then he pressed a button on his walkie talkie and asked that the car to be brought to the curb.
He led us to the test drive vehicle, a reddish-brown model. "What do you think of the color?" Don asked.
"I think it looks like someone had a perforated bowel and..." Scott put his hand over my mouth.
"I don't like it either," said Don.
While Scott and I took turns driving and arguing over the radio station, Don sat silently in the back seat. "Handles great!" Scott enthused. "Bad blind spot," I replied. Don said nothing.
When we returned to the show room, Scott bounded out of the car, took Don's hand and said: "Let's make a deal!"
Don led us to a table in the window. He named a price and I showed him an add from an Acura dealer in Brooklyn. "I'm sure we'll match that," said Don.
Don then looked over his shoulder and pushed a document toward me, pointing to the inventory price on a schedule. "You can probably get the car for this," he said.
"We checked the inventory price," I said triumphantly. "I was $800 less than this."
"Well, we recently had an increase in the transfer fees," Don explained. He pulled out a memo stamped "Confidential" to dealers from Acura, advising of an $800 increase in transfer fees.
"Let me leave you two alone to think about it," Don said.
"Let's try to get $1,000 off the inventory price," Scott said.
"I truly think he is already offering us the car at almost no profit to the dealership," I responded. "This guy isn't playing hardball. In fact, I think he wants us to leave."
When Don returned, Scott smiled and seemed to search around his mouth for his tongue. I leaned forward, removed my sunglasses and said dramatically, "We'll take the car today if you can take another thousand off the price."
"Hell, no," Don said. "They won't do that."
"Why don't you ask your manager?" Scott said affably.
Don left and came back a few minutes later. "We can take another $200 off. But that's it."
"We'll have to think about it," Scott said.
Don stood and offered his hand.
"Wait!" I said. "It's May 31st. Aren't you worried about losing your spiff if you don't hit your mark?" I didn't want to leave without showing off the fruits of my research. A spiff is an end-of-month bonus if a car salesman hits his mark or quota.
Don looked at me sadly and shook his head. He didn't even see us out the door.
"Way to go," I said to Scott through gritted teeth. "You had to try to get below invoice. Now Don thinks we're grinders."
"Shut your clam," Scott said. "I know how this works. Don will call us tomorrow and we'll get our car at our price."
I called Scott at his office the next afternoon. "Did Don call? I asked.
"No," said Scott. "But he probably starts his shift at 4."
"I can't believe it," I said. "We are such losers. We were practically begging Don to sell us a car. And now we've blown it. I really wanted that car!" I felt a big whine coming on.
"If he doesn't call tomorrow, we'll go back and offer him another $500," Scott soothed.
"Okay," I said.
"But I'm going to demand that they detail the car first and bring the paperwork to my office by messenger."
"Okay, tough guy," I answered. "And if they won't messenger over the paperwork?"
"If I have to go in there, I'm going to make sure I get a free cup of coffee."
As we walked into the show room, I got an excited little flutter in my stomach. When I was a kid, my parents would take us to a used car lot on Memorial Day and tell us it was an amusement park. We totally bought it because there really was a carnival atmosphere: There were giant blow-up clowns waving their empty windsock arms on the roof of the dealership, free popcorn and balloons for the kids, plastic flags in red, white and blue, and men sweating through their polyester three-piece suits as they demonstrated the incredible features of the 1979 Datsun 510 station wagon, replete with wood panels and a carpeted trunk with fresh vacuum lines running across it.
I still love the smell of fresh paint on a tire. And there I was, in a show room on Memorial Day, ready to make a deal and drive that car home today, ladies and gentlemen.
But something was off. There was a noticeable absence of confetti. There weren't even any giant SALE signs painted in fluorescent bubble letters on the dealership windows. And inside, it was as quiet as a museum. We had to ask to see a salesman and when one finally approached us, he did so reticently, as if he thought maybe we were armed.
"Hi," he said. "I'm Don*." (*Not his real name. His real name was Darnell.)
"Hello," Scott said brightly, already playing good cop. "I'm Scott and this is Elise."
"Ffft." I said, dropping a pretend cigarette on the floor and putting it out with my toe.
"Can I help you?" Don asked.
"We'd like to buy an SUV," Scott said.
"Well, we'd like to look at an SUV," I interjected, elbowing Scott in the ribs. "Let's not make this too easy," I muttered under my breath.
"Did you want a new car? Or a used car? We have several 2007s." Don made a lackluster sweep of the showroom with one arm, then dropped his hand to his leg as if he were suddenly very tired.
"Let's look at the 2010s," Scott said. Don pointed to a gleaming black SUV several yards away. "There you go," he said. "Over there."
"Did you want us to know anything about the car?" Scott asked. "Could we look inside?"
Don opened the back door and stood silently next to us.
"How's the trunk space?" I asked.
Don opened the back door.
"Do the seats fold down?" I asked. Don folded down one seat.
"Not a lot of room back here," I frowned.
Don shook his head. "You're right," he said. "You could fit a few suitcases, but you might struggle to fit a stroller too."
"Ummm," said Scott. Clearly, he was having trouble remembering his lines.
"Maybe we should take another look at the Infinity," I prodded. This was part of the act we'd rehearsed just that morning over bagels.
Don's face brightened. "I used to sell Infinities," he said, and whistled. "They're beautiful cars. If you were going to travel any kind of distance, you might be more comfortable in an Infinity."
"Well, maybe we can test drive the Acura?" Scott asked helpfully.
"Is it a problem that we had a few drinks at lunch?" I asked Don, hoping to snap him out of his malaise. Scott struggled to keep a straight face.
"I won't tell if you don't," Don said, shrugging his shoulders. Then he pressed a button on his walkie talkie and asked that the car to be brought to the curb.
He led us to the test drive vehicle, a reddish-brown model. "What do you think of the color?" Don asked.
"I think it looks like someone had a perforated bowel and..." Scott put his hand over my mouth.
"I don't like it either," said Don.
While Scott and I took turns driving and arguing over the radio station, Don sat silently in the back seat. "Handles great!" Scott enthused. "Bad blind spot," I replied. Don said nothing.
When we returned to the show room, Scott bounded out of the car, took Don's hand and said: "Let's make a deal!"
Don led us to a table in the window. He named a price and I showed him an add from an Acura dealer in Brooklyn. "I'm sure we'll match that," said Don.
Don then looked over his shoulder and pushed a document toward me, pointing to the inventory price on a schedule. "You can probably get the car for this," he said.
"We checked the inventory price," I said triumphantly. "I was $800 less than this."
"Well, we recently had an increase in the transfer fees," Don explained. He pulled out a memo stamped "Confidential" to dealers from Acura, advising of an $800 increase in transfer fees.
"Let me leave you two alone to think about it," Don said.
"Let's try to get $1,000 off the inventory price," Scott said.
"I truly think he is already offering us the car at almost no profit to the dealership," I responded. "This guy isn't playing hardball. In fact, I think he wants us to leave."
When Don returned, Scott smiled and seemed to search around his mouth for his tongue. I leaned forward, removed my sunglasses and said dramatically, "We'll take the car today if you can take another thousand off the price."
"Hell, no," Don said. "They won't do that."
"Why don't you ask your manager?" Scott said affably.
Don left and came back a few minutes later. "We can take another $200 off. But that's it."
"We'll have to think about it," Scott said.
Don stood and offered his hand.
"Wait!" I said. "It's May 31st. Aren't you worried about losing your spiff if you don't hit your mark?" I didn't want to leave without showing off the fruits of my research. A spiff is an end-of-month bonus if a car salesman hits his mark or quota.
Don looked at me sadly and shook his head. He didn't even see us out the door.
"Way to go," I said to Scott through gritted teeth. "You had to try to get below invoice. Now Don thinks we're grinders."
"Shut your clam," Scott said. "I know how this works. Don will call us tomorrow and we'll get our car at our price."
I called Scott at his office the next afternoon. "Did Don call? I asked.
"No," said Scott. "But he probably starts his shift at 4."
"I can't believe it," I said. "We are such losers. We were practically begging Don to sell us a car. And now we've blown it. I really wanted that car!" I felt a big whine coming on.
"If he doesn't call tomorrow, we'll go back and offer him another $500," Scott soothed.
"Okay," I said.
"But I'm going to demand that they detail the car first and bring the paperwork to my office by messenger."
"Okay, tough guy," I answered. "And if they won't messenger over the paperwork?"
"If I have to go in there, I'm going to make sure I get a free cup of coffee."
Monday, May 24, 2010
Laundry Fairy, C'est Moi
Scott has been talking about his socks.
First it was: "I'm low on socks."
Then: "Every pair of socks I pull on has a hole in the toe."
And, in a more frantic pitch: "I am running out of socks!"
I have a color-coded rating system modeled after the Homeland Security Threat Level color scheme to help me determine my response level to Scott. This helps me maintain my busy inner life calculating how many pilates classes it takes to counteract the impact of a large serving of Sedutto's Birthday Cake Ice Cream while still maintaining critical communications. Blue means no response is necessary, for things like "what's this thing on the bottom of my foot?" or "we really need to put together a household budget." Yellow requires an elevated response, for things like "does this match?" or "where should we order dinner from?" Orange requires my immediate but brief attention -- things such as "what do you want for your birthday?" or "is the baby too young for Ambesol?" Red should be only used in the extreme case when I absolutely can't miss a word, questions like "will you marry me?" or "is that cab driver texting with the kids in the car?"
Socks are always blue, or so I had thought. Because, truly, why is he bothering me with this? And yet, he persisted, finally bellowing: "I need socks!" with the same urgency as another man might say "He's got a gun!"
"Then get some," I answered calmly. Scott looked at me as if I had just suggested he gather moon rocks. That's when it dawned on me. Scott doesn't know where socks come from.
He had never procured a pair of socks on his own. His mother, Roberta, still brought him socks for special occasions, socks with tiny dreidels on them for Hanukkah or bedecked with little candy canes in a nod to my insistence we celebrate Christmas. Scott still has socks from college with the days of the week on them in faded marker written by his mother.
Then he had his ex-wife, who spun casseroles into socks, or performed whatever alchemy it was that filled the sock drawer.
And now here he was, looking to me to fill the void and go sock-picking.
I looked at him with new eyes. This law firm partner who runs a global litigation department soon won't be able to put on his shoes in the morning absent my intervention. And despite the fact that I had just given up my own fairly lucrative career in the law to stay at home and raise Henry, I had to wonder: How does it feel to be that vulnerable?
You may be asking yourself why Scott doesn't just google "socks" and buy some over the Internet like his three-year-old son would. It's because Scott has never performed a single transaction on the web. He once tried to order movie tickets on line and couldn't follow the prompts unassisted. He can convert zlotys to dollars in his head, but he can't fill out an address screen. He will sprout wings before he has an Amazon password.
Scott is the opposite of an idiot savant. He is brilliant in all ways, except when it comes to the pedestrian things in life, like loading the dishwasher, purchasing socks or googling driving directions. But I have come to realize that these deficits are critical to our relationship, especially as I recreate myself from General Counsel to Domestic Diva. It helps keep us in balance, the yin/yang of our relationship depends upon it. We need each other. I need him to support us financially and rub my feet and he needs me for everything else.
This extends to the children. At eight, Emma is so precocious that if we didn't have a Wii, I think she might seek emancipation and lease herself a studio apartment. I am here to remind her that because she's not allowed to touch the stove or cross the street without holding an adult's hand, she probably wouldn't fare all that well on her own. Quinny is ridiculously handsome. Unlike his father, he knows his way around a computer and I once caught him googling "agent." But as I told him, until he's 100 percent potty-trained, Gap Kids is not going to want him modeling their pants, no matter how cute he looks in them.
And in this way, like Sisyphus, I find meaning in my loading and unloading the dishwasher, meal after meal, day after day, night after night.
Last week, we were going away for the weekend. After I had held the baby football style and rushed like a wide receiver across the length of our apartment gathering snacks and googling driving directions, I found Scott and the children sitting on our bed in their underwear.
"What are you doing?" I asked. "Why aren't you packing?"
"We're waiting for the laundry fairy," Emma said sweetly.
And you know what? They really were.
First it was: "I'm low on socks."
Then: "Every pair of socks I pull on has a hole in the toe."
And, in a more frantic pitch: "I am running out of socks!"
I have a color-coded rating system modeled after the Homeland Security Threat Level color scheme to help me determine my response level to Scott. This helps me maintain my busy inner life calculating how many pilates classes it takes to counteract the impact of a large serving of Sedutto's Birthday Cake Ice Cream while still maintaining critical communications. Blue means no response is necessary, for things like "what's this thing on the bottom of my foot?" or "we really need to put together a household budget." Yellow requires an elevated response, for things like "does this match?" or "where should we order dinner from?" Orange requires my immediate but brief attention -- things such as "what do you want for your birthday?" or "is the baby too young for Ambesol?" Red should be only used in the extreme case when I absolutely can't miss a word, questions like "will you marry me?" or "is that cab driver texting with the kids in the car?"
Socks are always blue, or so I had thought. Because, truly, why is he bothering me with this? And yet, he persisted, finally bellowing: "I need socks!" with the same urgency as another man might say "He's got a gun!"
"Then get some," I answered calmly. Scott looked at me as if I had just suggested he gather moon rocks. That's when it dawned on me. Scott doesn't know where socks come from.
He had never procured a pair of socks on his own. His mother, Roberta, still brought him socks for special occasions, socks with tiny dreidels on them for Hanukkah or bedecked with little candy canes in a nod to my insistence we celebrate Christmas. Scott still has socks from college with the days of the week on them in faded marker written by his mother.
Then he had his ex-wife, who spun casseroles into socks, or performed whatever alchemy it was that filled the sock drawer.
And now here he was, looking to me to fill the void and go sock-picking.
I looked at him with new eyes. This law firm partner who runs a global litigation department soon won't be able to put on his shoes in the morning absent my intervention. And despite the fact that I had just given up my own fairly lucrative career in the law to stay at home and raise Henry, I had to wonder: How does it feel to be that vulnerable?
You may be asking yourself why Scott doesn't just google "socks" and buy some over the Internet like his three-year-old son would. It's because Scott has never performed a single transaction on the web. He once tried to order movie tickets on line and couldn't follow the prompts unassisted. He can convert zlotys to dollars in his head, but he can't fill out an address screen. He will sprout wings before he has an Amazon password.
Scott is the opposite of an idiot savant. He is brilliant in all ways, except when it comes to the pedestrian things in life, like loading the dishwasher, purchasing socks or googling driving directions. But I have come to realize that these deficits are critical to our relationship, especially as I recreate myself from General Counsel to Domestic Diva. It helps keep us in balance, the yin/yang of our relationship depends upon it. We need each other. I need him to support us financially and rub my feet and he needs me for everything else.
This extends to the children. At eight, Emma is so precocious that if we didn't have a Wii, I think she might seek emancipation and lease herself a studio apartment. I am here to remind her that because she's not allowed to touch the stove or cross the street without holding an adult's hand, she probably wouldn't fare all that well on her own. Quinny is ridiculously handsome. Unlike his father, he knows his way around a computer and I once caught him googling "agent." But as I told him, until he's 100 percent potty-trained, Gap Kids is not going to want him modeling their pants, no matter how cute he looks in them.
And in this way, like Sisyphus, I find meaning in my loading and unloading the dishwasher, meal after meal, day after day, night after night.
Last week, we were going away for the weekend. After I had held the baby football style and rushed like a wide receiver across the length of our apartment gathering snacks and googling driving directions, I found Scott and the children sitting on our bed in their underwear.
"What are you doing?" I asked. "Why aren't you packing?"
"We're waiting for the laundry fairy," Emma said sweetly.
And you know what? They really were.
Thursday, May 13, 2010
Rough Justice
Henry has a brother and sister - the progeny of Scott's first marriage - whom he loves with all of his strawberry-sized infant heart. When Scott told Henry that his beloved Emma and Quinny had strep throat, Henry worked his lower lip a few times, then burst into a wail.
"This is incredible!" said Scott, gazing at Henry as if he were a lab specimen. (And truth be told, he kinda was at the beginning. But that's a story for another day.)
"Of course he's upset!" I cried, running to Henry's aid. "There was this article in the Times Magazine about babies - they have real empathy. Quick, you have to make him feel better. Tickle him. Tell him they are going to be fine. He's so sad! Tickee, tickee, tickee!!" I shouted, making Henry cry harder.
"Emma and Quinny are going to be just fine," Scott said calmly, chucking Henry under the chin. Soon, Henry was reassured and back to his happy cooing while Scott did a nose dive into the article, telling me what I had just read for myself: Not only are children less than a year old empathetic, but they have a rudimentary sense of right and wrong. So much so, in fact, that one little baby in an experiment not only punished a mean puppet by taking away his ball, but also whacked him upside the head.
None of this was news to me. Three out of the four of children in my family have a stubborn streak of justice that persists despite all evidence that life just isn't fair. The fourth child is what scientists call an "outlier" for reasons I explain below.
As the eldest of the four, things went fairly smoothly for me until my first brother Christopher arrived on the scene eighteen months after my birth. I never felt particularly competitive with him for my parents' affection, probably because they were in their early twenties and too preoccupied with grad school and playing coed volleyball to pay either one of us much attention.
But then my brother was diagnosed with a rare, stupid disease and had to be in the hospital all the time. That was our first clue that life might not share our fundamental notion of justice.
Our second clue came after Justin was born. Justin was so skinny as a toddler that my mother had to feed him milkshakes for breakfast. While Justin was enjoying a thick, creamy milkshake every morning, Christopher and I were trying to survive on powdered milk and government cheese. When we protested, my mother just said, "Life's not fair. The sooner you learn it, the better."
But our sense of justice persisted, even in the face of our parents' totally unfair treatment. For example, until age 11, I was fine with the fact that all my clothes came from one of two places, the hospital consignment shop where my grandmother volunteered or Sears. After all, my BFF Shawn also wore Toughskins and the occasional plaid leisure suit to school. But then Shawn's father got a gig working construction in Saudi Arabia and suddenly there was money for Calvin Klein jeans. Shawn became an instant celebrity and my first frenemy.
I pleaded with my mother for designer jeans. "Designer jeans are an oxymoron," she said. And, more crushingly: "I am not going to spend $36 on a pair of jeans."
"It's not fair!" I cried. "I am the only girl in the whole sixth grade with knee patches sewn inside her jeans!" My father's response was to write "Jordache" on a piece of duct tape and slap it over my back pocket.
Despite the fact that I had to earn my first pair of Jordache with 36 hours of babysitting, I still clung to the idea that life should be fair. I even became a lawyer. And despite the fact that he spent his childhood outwitting a rare disease and getting blasted with mega doses of chemotherapy and steroids, Christopher also became a lawyer, convinced that justice is out there somewhere.
Then there's Justin, whose very name means "righteous" or "just one." Things slid sharply downhill for Justin after he gained the appropriate amount of milkshake weight. Matthew, the baby, was born, and Justin fell from star-baby to lower-middle-child status.
I called Justin "Justin Martyr" after his forebear (a second century moralist who was ultimately beheaded by the Romans) because Justin never stopped his campaign for "Justice for Justin." Justin always had to sit in the very back of the station wagon over the spare tire, he never got second helpings, and he was the only one of us who had to wear glasses in elementary school. Yet he never succumbed to the idea that life wasn't fair. When things got to be too much for him, he would just pack a jelly and cheese sandwich and a spare pair of underpants in a brown sack and run away to the public library. Once there, he would beg the pretty librarian to adopt him. She would return him to our family and the cycle would continue.
Justin's sense of righteousness persists to this day. Like 99% of the world, he works in an office and like 98% of those people, he would rather be at home. But unlike everyone else, Justin actually did something about it. He complained. So now he gets to work from home when he feels like it. And when he didn't like an overbearing manager sitting next to him, he kvetched until the company relocated the manager to another cubicle farm. Now he won't work weekends because his super-hot girlfriend just moved in with him. With these accommodations, work now seems more fair to Justin.
The rest of us just shake our heads and say, "He must be one hell of a programmer."
Now Matthew, the outlier: Whether Matthew was born with an innate sense of fairness has never been tested because Matthew literally has never had a bad day. Despite the fact - or maybe because - he was the only one of us not breast-fed, Matthew has never been sick. From the time he was born, he was not permitted to cry. One little hiccup from his Cupid's bow lips and the three of us were running to his crib, elbowing one another out of the way to be the first to pick him up.
Today, Matthew is six feet tall, a natural athlete with bright green eyes and blond hair. Taking a break from graduate work in linguistics, he works nine months of the year as a teacher in a cushy private school and spends his summers in Europe. Matthew will send around emails that say things like: "Geez, guys, instead of working this quarter, they want me to go to surf camp in Malibu with a few of the seniors." Matthew is engaged to Anna, a ridiculously beautiful Spanish woman who has a Ph.D. and a family vineyard in the south of Spain. "If we ever get tired of academia," Matthew has said, "maybe we'll just make wine."
I hope that little Henry was born under the same lucky star as his Uncle Matt. Certainly, his brother and sister spoil him with affection, almost knocking each other out to get closest to him. And in his wide-eyed, innocent way, he just seems to expect it.
"This is incredible!" said Scott, gazing at Henry as if he were a lab specimen. (And truth be told, he kinda was at the beginning. But that's a story for another day.)
"Of course he's upset!" I cried, running to Henry's aid. "There was this article in the Times Magazine about babies - they have real empathy. Quick, you have to make him feel better. Tickle him. Tell him they are going to be fine. He's so sad! Tickee, tickee, tickee!!" I shouted, making Henry cry harder.
"Emma and Quinny are going to be just fine," Scott said calmly, chucking Henry under the chin. Soon, Henry was reassured and back to his happy cooing while Scott did a nose dive into the article, telling me what I had just read for myself: Not only are children less than a year old empathetic, but they have a rudimentary sense of right and wrong. So much so, in fact, that one little baby in an experiment not only punished a mean puppet by taking away his ball, but also whacked him upside the head.
None of this was news to me. Three out of the four of children in my family have a stubborn streak of justice that persists despite all evidence that life just isn't fair. The fourth child is what scientists call an "outlier" for reasons I explain below.
As the eldest of the four, things went fairly smoothly for me until my first brother Christopher arrived on the scene eighteen months after my birth. I never felt particularly competitive with him for my parents' affection, probably because they were in their early twenties and too preoccupied with grad school and playing coed volleyball to pay either one of us much attention.
But then my brother was diagnosed with a rare, stupid disease and had to be in the hospital all the time. That was our first clue that life might not share our fundamental notion of justice.
Our second clue came after Justin was born. Justin was so skinny as a toddler that my mother had to feed him milkshakes for breakfast. While Justin was enjoying a thick, creamy milkshake every morning, Christopher and I were trying to survive on powdered milk and government cheese. When we protested, my mother just said, "Life's not fair. The sooner you learn it, the better."
But our sense of justice persisted, even in the face of our parents' totally unfair treatment. For example, until age 11, I was fine with the fact that all my clothes came from one of two places, the hospital consignment shop where my grandmother volunteered or Sears. After all, my BFF Shawn also wore Toughskins and the occasional plaid leisure suit to school. But then Shawn's father got a gig working construction in Saudi Arabia and suddenly there was money for Calvin Klein jeans. Shawn became an instant celebrity and my first frenemy.
I pleaded with my mother for designer jeans. "Designer jeans are an oxymoron," she said. And, more crushingly: "I am not going to spend $36 on a pair of jeans."
"It's not fair!" I cried. "I am the only girl in the whole sixth grade with knee patches sewn inside her jeans!" My father's response was to write "Jordache" on a piece of duct tape and slap it over my back pocket.
Despite the fact that I had to earn my first pair of Jordache with 36 hours of babysitting, I still clung to the idea that life should be fair. I even became a lawyer. And despite the fact that he spent his childhood outwitting a rare disease and getting blasted with mega doses of chemotherapy and steroids, Christopher also became a lawyer, convinced that justice is out there somewhere.
Then there's Justin, whose very name means "righteous" or "just one." Things slid sharply downhill for Justin after he gained the appropriate amount of milkshake weight. Matthew, the baby, was born, and Justin fell from star-baby to lower-middle-child status.
I called Justin "Justin Martyr" after his forebear (a second century moralist who was ultimately beheaded by the Romans) because Justin never stopped his campaign for "Justice for Justin." Justin always had to sit in the very back of the station wagon over the spare tire, he never got second helpings, and he was the only one of us who had to wear glasses in elementary school. Yet he never succumbed to the idea that life wasn't fair. When things got to be too much for him, he would just pack a jelly and cheese sandwich and a spare pair of underpants in a brown sack and run away to the public library. Once there, he would beg the pretty librarian to adopt him. She would return him to our family and the cycle would continue.
Justin's sense of righteousness persists to this day. Like 99% of the world, he works in an office and like 98% of those people, he would rather be at home. But unlike everyone else, Justin actually did something about it. He complained. So now he gets to work from home when he feels like it. And when he didn't like an overbearing manager sitting next to him, he kvetched until the company relocated the manager to another cubicle farm. Now he won't work weekends because his super-hot girlfriend just moved in with him. With these accommodations, work now seems more fair to Justin.
The rest of us just shake our heads and say, "He must be one hell of a programmer."
Now Matthew, the outlier: Whether Matthew was born with an innate sense of fairness has never been tested because Matthew literally has never had a bad day. Despite the fact - or maybe because - he was the only one of us not breast-fed, Matthew has never been sick. From the time he was born, he was not permitted to cry. One little hiccup from his Cupid's bow lips and the three of us were running to his crib, elbowing one another out of the way to be the first to pick him up.
Today, Matthew is six feet tall, a natural athlete with bright green eyes and blond hair. Taking a break from graduate work in linguistics, he works nine months of the year as a teacher in a cushy private school and spends his summers in Europe. Matthew will send around emails that say things like: "Geez, guys, instead of working this quarter, they want me to go to surf camp in Malibu with a few of the seniors." Matthew is engaged to Anna, a ridiculously beautiful Spanish woman who has a Ph.D. and a family vineyard in the south of Spain. "If we ever get tired of academia," Matthew has said, "maybe we'll just make wine."
I hope that little Henry was born under the same lucky star as his Uncle Matt. Certainly, his brother and sister spoil him with affection, almost knocking each other out to get closest to him. And in his wide-eyed, innocent way, he just seems to expect it.
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