Month: October 2014

Pain in the Neck

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I’m standing in the changing room looking like a preschool craft of marshmallows and toothpicks. Stiff around the joints and ensconced in a white fluffy robe that looks comfy enough to eat.

It all started Saturday morning when I made a less than risky turn in my bed and found my neck was ablaze with pain. It began near the top of my spine and shot down to my elbows so that I moved with the grace and flexibility of an uncooked spaghetti noodle. And I kept forgetting.

“Mom, can we-”
“Gah! Sorry, what were you saying?”

“Babe, look at this hilarious-”
“Uh! What. Just, what is it?”

Trying to relax on the porch with a cup of coffee and never finding a comfortable position, I decided to call for a massage. That, my friends, is how I became part S’more, in a locker room, at a spa.

As stiff as my neck, I slid on the sandals they handed me and waited in the common area. It was all dark ambiance and artificial waterfalls and weird teas.
“Can I get you something hot to drink? Our signature recipe is delicious.” said the receptionist.
Yes and please sear it against my hairline. “That’d be great, thank you.”

I held the white ceramic mug between both hands and likely looked ridiculous trying to sit back.

“Brittany?”
Help. Me. “Hi.”

She introduced herself and her oils while I tried to explain the mess going on in my muscles. You know that movie Weekend at Bernie’s? I want to walk out of here like the dead guy.

I let the wave sounds wash over me and the vanilla aromatherapy soothe. She pressed her elbows to my back and I wasn’t sure if I was going to laugh or cry or pee myself. It was gloriously painful. And I was grateful she couldn’t see my face cringe.

Now weekend has weaved into the week, my desperate message to the chiropractor has been returned, and I’ve learned it’s likely a nasty virus I’m fighting. I’m still brittle around the edges and certain moves require a tenacious patience. But the big takeaway here is I will never, ever again, ever take for granted being able to look both ways at a crosswalk or down while I shave my underarms. Like, ever.

White Oak Camp

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There were nights as a kid when camp felt more like home than anywhere I’d ever been. In contrast my cousin would have to call his parents to come get him before the best of the fun started. I could never wrap my mind around why. Camp, with it’s mosquitoes and spiders, it’s silent dark nights, it’s lunchtime round-robin ballads. And we got to leave our parents. I guess all that was too much for him whereas I, thought it was magical.

We’d spend mornings in memorization, graduating to the next station whenever we’d recited our phrases perfectly. To this day I recall the words etched into my heart as I sat at picnic tables etched with Amanda+Sarah=BFF BFFF. (They probably even had the heart necklace that split like a lightening bolt down the middle and became whole only when each half was together. Yay 90’s.)

Down the line we would grab our trays in the Mess Hall, my friends giddy with anticipation that it might be the day they get three letters and have to tell a joke or sing a song. I dreaded the ritual. I just wanted to eat my mashed potatoes in peace, thank you very much.

After lunch we cleaned. I mostly remember the cement shower house where Jolene taught me to shave my toes. I thought, hairless. Yes, this is a good idea. (?) And so I tried the feel of a razor over my feet. But the Pine-Sol, the gloriously woodsy smell as we mopped the floors and gossiped about tightly folded notes from boys we liked.
“I’m going to try to find him at campfire.”
“Eee!”

Oh campfire, the warmth glowing on our faces while guitar strums bounced off the trees back to us. The hope that my sleeve would brush his sleeve, that my hands weren’t too sweaty or my breath too gross as I sang. The hope that I wasn’t off-key (treacherous). That he would have to, just have to ask me to sit by him in chapel for the rest of the week, or quite possibly, for as long as we both shall live.

The last night was always an epic duel of Capture the Flag. Two teams, two flags, one winner. We’d scramble between lightning bugs and army crawl over hills. We’d get caught, then escape, or maybe not if it was him.
I won once, you know. Finally, I can publicly announce my true identity as Capture the Flag victor. Whew, I’ve been holding that in for a while.

And the bunks, where light would ease over our bed posts, where we’d giggle for hours from sickly intoxication of Kit Kats and Mountain Dew (I tended to overdo it because it wasn’t allowed at home.) Where we’d hear our cabin mom’s voice, “Girls. Quiet Down.”

It’s the voice I used last week when my daughter was no longer my daughter but a cluster of heightened pitches that rose and fell with each inside joke. She and her sleepover friend couldn’t breathe through all the hilarity. On it went, even as I turned out my light for bed.

It’s the stuff of childhood. The memories that feel like home. And I’m so glad she has that friend.

 

Why My Daughter Got a Bob Cut

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It was the stack of mail- envelopes, flyers, dreadfully artificial campaign poses for the upcoming election- that made me relax. Because it looked exactly like the three piles I’d stuffed into the corners of my kitchen. I sort of wanted to shout in exuberance, “Your children run around in their underwear with Easter baskets on their heads while they’re supposed to be brushing their teeth and putting on their shoes for school, and this is why you don’t have time to scrub the grease out of your hair let alone open mail or pff, sort it into manila folders for proper bill paying…too?” But if I’d said it out loud she might have taken that horribly uncomfortable look of confusion which says, no, that’s just you. I couldn’t risk such vulnerability.

The three friends ran to us seconds later with princess dresses that needed zipping. “Can you help me?” they asked.
“Yes. I sure can.”
With giggles in their palms they scurried upstairs.

We chatted about the utterly exhausting nature of a motherhood while I watched her slice apples in a way that made me want one simply for the beauty of it. “Girls!” she yelled. “Come wash up for lunch.”
Hands behind my back, I scanned their pictures like I was putting together a puzzle. Sunshine and smiles, outings and events, the stages of their history as family. “Girls!,” she said again and turned to me. “What are they doing?”
I wasn’t concerned. I mean, three ladies of royalty were likely just having their pre-lunch tea. Right?

“I’m going to put this little one down for nap and tell them to head to the kitchen.”
“OK, sounds good,” I said and took a piece of cheese when she was out of sight. I pondered the flow of her hair, how thick and perfectly brown it looked. Perhaps I should stop searing mine into submission every day.

“What are you doing?!” she screamed.
With bite marks on the edges, I put the cheese on the counter like a guilty puppy. I was about to remind her she had invited us for lunch when I realized she wasn’t talking to me.
“How…why, did you think this was OK!”
Ahh, I thought. Another mom who loses her cool once in a while. Yes. Friends we are to be.
“What were you thinking?!”
OK, this is becoming a bit extreme. How bad could it be? Nail polish on the carpet? Paint on the bedspread? Laundry hanging from the ceiling fan? The girls hanging from the ceiling fan? Maybe she’s not used to having playdates.

I climbed the stairs, Monterey Jack still in the corners of my mouth, and said her name in sweet softness I hoped would mediate the tension. “Is everything all right? Can I help with something?”

She opened the second of her French doors. “No, everything is NOT all right! Look at them,” she said in a panic I wasn’t expecting. I started scanning them for missing limbs, blood spurting in the length of feet, lipstick gone wild across cheeks. There it was, two little tails of hair hanging where the rest of my daughter’s curls used to land. I sucked in air the way I do when I think my husband is about to get into a head-on collision. The gasp he hates. “Oh…honey,” I said touching her head. “What happened?”
“She cut our hair.”
Her other friend kept a finger to her lips like she was going to lose it, so I scooted her into an embrace and tried to give her the freedom it looked like she needed. “You can cry if you want.”
“I don’t want my hair short.”
“I’m sorry, Sweetheart.”

My friend sank to the floor in defeat. “What do you even do in this situation? I cannot believe this. Look, I’m shaking,” she said, fingers covering her eyes. “I’m so embarrassed.”
“It’s OK,” I said. “It’s hair. A real problem is a cut-off ear, someone touching private parts that are too young to be touched. This, will grow back.”

The girls remained silent, except for her daughter who was on repeat saying, “I’m really sorry, Mommy.”

We tried to distract ourselves with lunch and after all that, God knows, we were hungry.

“I just, you guys are so put together, I’m…” she said of the other mother and I.
Hold it right there. “That’s a lie. No one is ‘put together.’ I got a call from the school last year because my son was dared to cut off another girls bangs. And he did it.” Good one. Why didn’t I think of that sooner?
“Yeah, but-”
“Listen, this is going to be the BEST story. You will probably tell it for years and even laugh about it.”
“Can I just say thank you for being you? You’re being so great about this.”
Um, you don’t need my permission for that. “Oh. You got it.”
“Want to see the bathroom floor?” she said with a smile.

We gasped together that time, marveling at how much was strung along the tile, and took pictures because, well, it was unbelievable.

“I guess we should make hair appointments,” she said.
And it’s like she’d turned to me in the deepest pit of parenting, put an arm around my shoulder and asked, “You too?”
“Yep, me too.”

At the Crossroads of Mistakes and Apologies

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Behind all those placid expressions, her eyes betray me to the truth. They are puffy in their corners, bloodshot, and spent. Each vessel webs together like a memoir of our war before dinner. How she snapped a blanket at her brother, stomped the hardwood before me, and eventually collided with her own humanity by crying on her bed. Well, wailing the injustices of the world.

“Come sit by me,” I say gently across the table. Spelling homework, her nemesis, a struggle so overwhelming that at times I see the way she gives up trying, is splayed in front of her. She moves without a fight in an outfit I am surprised to like. This alone tells me she’s growing older. It wasn’t so long ago I was explaining the crime of her tube socks and capris, while now I find that I say, “I really like what you put together this morning,” as she walks a little peppier.

It’s as if I see her for the first time in years. But when I look, I see failure. In me.

My oldest daughter, the one who made me a mother, half-child and half-grown, the girl I’ve let down. Maybe because sometimes parenting is a struggle so overwhelming that at times I see the way I give up trying.

I pull her into me and wrap my arms until she relaxes. “My girl,” I say, turning her shoulders square to mine. “I forget. You somehow get the most expectations, the most responsibility, I guess because you were here first. I forget  you are still my girl.”

Her mouth turns slightly, a smile that hesitates from the lessons of pain cautiously recalling that some things may be too good to be true. I have taught her that her innocent longings might be met with angry, worn out replies like, “Can you please, just, pick up!” That her need for security, her most basic questions of acceptance and worthiness of love could be answered by tense bursts of, “How many times have I told you to brush. Your. TEETH…return your library book…bring your homework?”
That mistakes are an opportunity for me to be exasperated instead of the part of life that teaches us.

She nods at what I’m saying and then a nervous giggle escapes through those adult teeth who are waiting to fit her mouth. My knuckles relax onto my temple and I settle into not hurrying anything. She writes with 4th grade sloppiness I find beautiful just because it’s hers.

We sit in the shadow of our conflicts, meeting at the intersection of mistakes and apologies, and I think that maybe this is the gift I have to offer. My parenting at its best, only when I’ve been at my worst. That like Spelling homework, life is full of disappointment as much as joy and promises pain as much as reward but also, failure as a way to something rich and real.