Better Make It A Double

partly cloudy with a chance of hopeful

Is it just me, or are you also getting caught up on their Bloglines feeds as the posting rate slows down over the holidays? I feel so in touch with y’all, though I have cleaned up my feed list quite a bit. I tend to get a bit sub-happy, and then I go back a few months later, and think, well gee, I’m so glad these guys had such a lovely Thanksgiving, and sorry their dog died back in August, but I can’t for the life of me remember this blogger or why I subbed. I’m glad I’m better about that sort of thing in real life.

We had a really nice Christmas, for the most part. J’s family opens gifts and shares a meal on Christmas Eve. On Christmas Eve morning, I left the boys with J and went over to my IL’s house to do some major cooking. It was very relaxing to spend several hours cooking without interruption, except for the MIL stories, which were mostly nice to listen to save for the part about her concern for the future of my newest niece’s soul. Lately it’s felt like we either have the angel twins or the devil twins living with us, like somebody’s swapping them out on us. Fortunately, J showed up mid afternoon with the angel twins. They were really happy, sociable, and well-behaved. I was glad that they were so sweet and grateful for their gifts, because they’re capable of being brutally honest by now. The other day, N said, “Oh! We read this book at MOPS!” I said, “You did?”, and he answered, “I didn’t like it then either.” Well….

Everyone was in such a happy mood, kids and adults alike, and I think the fact that we kept things simple without a lot of running around really helped with that. The meal was amazing. I made three dishes and everyone else brought something, and there were so many delicious dishes on the table that not everyone even got to try them all. Before dinner, we put together some bags of groceries for the food shelf and J said a prayer for all the folks who don’t have enough when we have so much abundance. The boys sat pretty long and happily to eat, though on opposite ends of a table that was as full of people as it could possible be. After dinner, the boys got quite a pile of gifts, but it didn’t feel too crazy, and all the gifts were thoughtful and useful. Floor puzzles are very popular right now and they now have 4, and they received some nice train set additions and books. J had to go and play piano at church for the candlelight service at 7:30, and I went home to put a couple of very content, very exhausted boys to bed. On the way into the house, the three of us stopped and stood in the front yard to look at the just-past-full moon, which had a beautiful ring around it. It was completely silent except for our breathing, there were Christmas lights on all up and down the block, smoke coming out of the chimneys, everything covered with thick, white snow. After I got their pajamas on, we read three nativity story books before bed, and from what he was saying, I think that O seemed to really kind of get it for the first time – at least that Jesus was the Son of God and that he grew up and did amazing things. He said, “That Baby Jesus is gonna get bigger and growed-up and he’s gonna walk on the water and he’s gonna give everybody bread and fishes!”

The next morning, we had a nice breakfast together, and opened a few gifts. J and I  didn’t get them much, and besides a few books, the biggest hit was a pair of $3 mini Magna Doodles for in the car. J and I both took boys shopping for each other the week before so that the boys wouldn’t think Christmas was only about getting stuff, and that worked surprisingly well. The hard part of that day was losing our black lab in the neighborhood for about 2 hours. She ran off when J was outside, and he didn’t realize it at first. She finally came back from who knows where, but instead of a nice outside walk, it was a stressful time, and I was kind of fried after that. By the end of naptime, the house was still a mess from the Christmas clutter, wrapping, and whatnot, and I had that familiar claustrophobic feeling I get when there’s stuff everywhere and my routine is disrupted. I wish I were better at just relaxing and going with the flow under these circumstances, but the truth is, I’m pretty bad at it. J and I had some words about it all, but we figured it out before we got too terribly upset with one another, and then our good friend D came by and we lit the fire had a nice dinner of shrimp, GF linguini and green beans.

At 7, my SIL and I drove through the snow to see the movie Juno. It was a thoroughly enjoyable movie until the end, which I found utterly offensive and glib. I don’t want to spoil the plot, but lets just say that this movie represents a whole lot of what I object to with both with actual adoption in practice and with the way it’s represented. I doubt it’s ever that neat and easy. Maybe I’ll write more about that at another time, with a spoiler alert so I don’t have to be so obtuse. It was, in any case, a real treat to see a movie with a friend, something I so miss from before having kids (or in my case, getting pregnant). I think J was the one who suggested I go, which made it especially nice.

I am still struggling some. I feel better, but I'm still struggling to find a PPI med that won't make me so nauseous, and sometimes I have terrible mornings involving throwing up and other loveliness. I am often feeling edgy and somewhat anxious, and often impatient. I am a bit blue, and wonder if SAD may play a part in that. At least the days are again getting longer. Thanks in no small part to your and my spouse's encouragement, I am going to go back to the Hermitage for a couple of days, hopefully during Lent. If we can coordinate our calendars, my friend A, who deserves it at least as much as I do, and I will drive up together and have supper with the monks and volunteers before retiring to our respective cabins for some serious peace and solitude. For two nights and one entire day. (You with me, A? Let’s talk dates, and soon, so that we know we have it to look forward to.) It will take a fair bit of coordinating, but I really think I have to make it work. I think that having it on the calendar for late February or early March will make the rest of the winter a lot more bearable.

I feel good about this Christmas because I really tried to say no to a few things, keep it simple, not spend a fortune, and enjoy the true purpose of the season. As we wrapped up Thanksgiving and the green and red sprang up everywhere, I got kind of a desperate feeling, and I just couldn’t do it this year, especially after the last couple of months. I resolved not to say yes to anything I didn’t want to do beyond the most basic obligations. We didn’t travel, didn't do Christmas cards, I (gasp!) skipped the annual IL cookie bake in favor of showing up with lunch, and spent more on charity than on people who already have plenty. We are starting to incorporate some traditions that I think may stick. Seeing the Christmas story through the eyes of my children, seeing J enjoy the meal and laugh with his siblings, singing carols in church and in the neighborhood, not (at least mostly not) feeling like the holidays are something to recover from, it was a welcome change from recent years. Perhaps enjoying a bit of peace at Christmas will become a tradition of its own.

for neither reason nor justice

This past Sunday, we were leaving for church, and as I walked around to the driver’s side of our car, I realized that someone had tagged that whole side with bright blue paint. Other cars had been tagged too, with expletives and territorial scrawls. It must’ve happened between midnight and daybreak, because I’d come home late the night before.

I sighed, knowing in my gut that this act was probably part of a recent trend. There is a group of boys in our neighborhood that we’re losing. We’re losing their integration within this community as they grow older and band together by staking their claim in ways that are destructive to their neighbors, in wannabe gangs, threatening body language, and vandalism. Cars and garages tagged, an alley garbage bin set on fire, eggs thrown at front doors in the twilight of days end. A group of boys walking three or four abreast down the sidewalk, swearing loudly, not moving aside for strollers or dog walkers, their big dark coats intended to make them look bigger, like something other than the largely prepubescent kids they really still are. I’m worried about them now, and I’m even more worried about a few years from now.

Three years ago, I knew a couple of these kids by name. A few of them live directly behind us on the other side of the alley with their mom, and they were nice, friendly kids when they moved in. They spent hour after hour playing basketball, laughing and hollering and pretending to be their favorite stars. Last summer, one of them put up a flyer for lawn mowing and raking, and when I called to make arrangements for some Fall raking a few months later, it was clear that his heart wasn’t in it. His cell phone voicemail had loud, obscene rap music, and when I finally got a hold of him, he said, “Maybe Saturday afternoon”. I don’t think he wrote down the address, he didn’t show, and that was that.

I left the flyer on my fridge for a long time, often puzzling over it. It was so earnestly put together, with little illustrations and lots of exclamation points. What happened this summer? What sense of community pulled harder on him than what he already had? By summer’s end, the group of kids playing basketball in the alley behind me as I weeded or played with the boys grew bigger. They often swore, loudly. I called them on it once or twice, trying to find a balance between wanting it to stop and not wanting to give the impression that I considered them the enemy. They did oblige, but they wouldn’t look at me. Now, I see them walking in groups of four or five, making the rounds, knocking over a neighbor's ornamental animals with a swipe of the arm, looking for trouble and for connection that is entirely based on peer group relationships.

As I was driving to church, thinking about all this, the normal, understandable anger that can result from having one’s property vandalized didn’t come. Mostly, I’m just sad. I am a Christian, and for me, that means taking the words of Jesus seriously. Turning the other cheek. Loving your enemies, and pray for those who persecute you. If that doesn’t mean anything in this situation, with kids only a decade older than my own trying on roles that will likely only invite punishment over love, then when does it? What does it mean to love these angry boys?

I’m not convinced that being a parent necessarily makes you a better person, at least in the short term. So many of the people who are truly dedicated to making the world a better place, really devoting their lives to it, are single by choice,  necessity, or both. I do think, though, that mothering my boys has given me a hint of the essence of God’s love for us – a truly unconditional love that we can’t shake no matter what we do, that isn’t based on reason or justice. That is, after all, how most of us love our children. It is an extremely tall order, but I think that Jesus wanted us to share some of that kind of love with everyone we encounter, starting in our hearts, in prayer, but also in action. We are to be a people of mercy; we are to be extending grace to the people whose paths we cross. I believe that in that possibility lies the healing of the world. Mustering the courage to live up to that isn’t easy, and it’s often the details I am unsure about.

I will, of course, follow the standard protocols: file a police report over the phone, talk to my Block Club leader, leave the porch light on at night for a bit. I don’t know exactly who tagged my car—my neighbors and I just have a rough idea of the direction these acts are coming from. But much more than proof or justice, I am still searching for something more both more concrete and more spiritual. These young kids are ultimately responsible for their own actions, as we all pretty much are, but that doesn’t excuse the fact that we’re also failing them as a community. Court dates and juvenile facility sentences are no real answer to that problem—they may make us feel better, but the payoff is low and the cost is tremendous. I’m pretty sure that the kids in the alley behind us come home to an empty house every day. I am aware that their mom works two jobs and takes care of her niece at night so her sister can work the night shift. There is no-one to take these kids to sports leagues and the like, city money is tight, and there’s not much left over for diversion programs anyway. After the elementary grades and sometimes before, schools are often anonymous, overcrowded, and chaotic. I'm pretty sure that none of them have much, if any affiliation with a faith community. The pull of the least savory aspects of popular culture is everywhere for these kids, who often spend hour upon hour playing violent, desensitizing video games. Some of the kids around here show the telltale facial structure of Fetal Alcohol Syndrome. Often, they are not expected to be anything other than thugs, like the good-for-nothings one of my neighbors referred to them as. As a community, we are reaping what we have sown.

On Monday, I took N with me to get the car washed.  I had some anti-graffitti spray that a church member had given me to try, but I wanted to start with a clean car. Since first getting a car seven years ago, I’ve always gone to the same full-service place in the middle of a part of South Minnea*polis often referred to as the ghetto, mostly because the fumes bother me if I do it myself, and they do a good job there. This place has been around since at least the 1960’s, and looks it, with a big, pink flashing sign made of actual light bulbs pointing the way inside. It’s usually pretty quiet, but on Monday, it was full of people wanting a clean car on the first reasonable warm day in weeks. As usual, N and I were the only light-skinned people in the building. From the heated viewing area, N took great delight in watching the car move down the tracks and through the various contraptions. When our car was almost done, the manager summoned us. Shaking his head, he asked what we were going to do about the spray paint. I told him my plan, and he offered to have one of the workers buff it off for $10, saying that the anti-graffiti chemicals would probably eat the paint underneath it. Gratefully I accepted, and N and I watched from the back. Waiting for the next car to towel off, the manager said, “Whoever did that needs a whooppin.” The guy next to him folding towels said “The dude needs him some church.” A third worker, waiting with a bottle of glass cleaner in each hand, said, “He needs a job.”  I laughed, and the manager laughed, and said, “The dude needs him some church, a job, and a whooppin.”  He then made N, who was  squirming in my arms, scared of the noise the machines made now that we were out of the safety of the viewing area, laugh by making funny noises. As we were leaving, I helped N back into the car and saw that the man who’d done such a good job of cleaning up our car had left a sucker on the booster seat for him. Love for my neighbor was easy under these circumstances, even among a community of people who don’t look or talk like me and my family.

At my pastor’s suggestion, I’m going to tell our neighborhood community police liaison that should one of the vandals be caught, I’d be interested in participating in our city’s Restorative Justice Program, a program that allows willing offenders to hear directly what the effect of their infraction was, and make restitution within that same community. It’s a partial answer to some of what’s wrong with our criminal justice system, and I hope that the funding hasn’t dried up for that too. I’m also thinking that it may not be possible to reach out personally to these particular kids at this point, though I’d welcome the opportunity. It is always possible, though, to reach out to kids in the neighborhood in one way or another. As we move closer to the winter solstice, as we close in on more light and longer days, as we wait for the birth of God’s only son, I want to spend more time thinking about what Jesus’s words mean for me in  my life, what it means to be the light of the world in our neighborhood, in our alley, for those of God’s children whom we have failed to effectively embrace. 

 

finger(lings)

Tonight, we ate potatoes, green beans, and salmon for dinner, and as I loaded up everyone's plates, I mentioned that these were "finge*rling potatoes". N looked up at me with his big blue eyes wide open and a scared look on his face. He said, "These are somebody's fingers?"

I was able to reassure him, but he insisted on picking off the skins, and he looked nervous again when I referred to them as skins. I talked about different vegetables having skins and said "The skins taste good, and they're healthy". N tried them and said, "Actually*, they taste like very fancy paper!"

O said, "They taste like socks."

*his latest favorite turn of phrase, along with "Oh! But I thought....." and "I never seen that before!"

breathing movements

It is 1998, a month into the new year, and am walking in cold February air, past brownstones and wrought iron fences, across stiff snow and hard concrete, air dry as paper, balancing myself across patches of ice. I can see my breath pluming in front of me, the plume separating in two as I walk through it. There is a beast at my throat, constricting my windpipe, every breath out is a huh, huh, a deep push to get the old air out before the new rushes in to fill my needy lungs, also dry as paper. I put one glove in my left hand, my other hand fumbling in my right jacket pocket for my little magic puffer, the one that will cast off the beast at my neck, send him fleeing into the cold bright air, let the air rush back into my grateful lungs, move back into my bloodstream, feed my brain and release the growing sense of panic. I stand in a borrowed doorway to do the puffing—laugh to myself that I’m doing drugs in a doorway—and realize I am dizzy for lack of the proper amount of oxygen. I  sit on the step for minute until I am so cold that my coat is a cloak of stiff, frozen fabric, and resume my walk home, home to my cozy little 1920’s one-bedroom, my two cats, waiting homework and paperwork for my business. By the end of two blocks, the beast is mostly forgotten. By the time I walk up the steps, then the two stories to my door, I am thinking of dinner with my boyfriend that evening, a phone call to return, a checkbook to balance.

In that year, my body seemed to be attacking itself, and actually, it was, with an overly defensive immune system that was, for unknown reasons, on constant, exhausting guard against invisible enemies. The asthma had begun, rather cruelly, when I quit smoking the year before. Endometriosis, as yet undiagnosed, gave me a constant, intimate awareness of the exact outline of my uterus, fallopian tubes, and ovaries. I envisioned little demons with tiny sharp claws, scraping angrily along my insides. Periods left me in a deep fog of alternating sharp and dull pain, a day or two every month of painkillers, heating pads, and bed. I couldn’t breathe well, and had an especially hard time around perfumes and chemicals. My thrice weekly trips to the Y kept my back injury pain mostly under control back then, but I was a bit frightened at how awful I so often felt. As I lay down at night to sleep, I’d be unable to relax into the deep breaths of slumber, realizing that the shallow and quick breaths I’d gotten used to during the day were a barrier to deep sleep. Puff puff, feel the heart race with albuterol jitters, read another chapter or two, try again.

The boyfriend and I married in 2000, and I finally got pregnant and stayed that way in the summer of 2004, with twins.  Though it was a rocky and frightening pregnancy, within a few weeks of our IVF transfer, it felt as if my lungs were also growing, opening up from the inside out along with my belly. Air rushed in and came right back out in the fairly effortless rhythm it ought to be when one is at rest. I was apparently in the lucky minority of women with asthma whose symptoms disappear entirely during pregnancy. And while I could feel my uterus grow and stretch, contort and contract as my front extended further and further out from my center, I could also feel the wounds of endometriosis it contained begin to heal. My boys are almost three now, and the pain is nowhere near where it was. Neither is the asthma. Pregnancy would seem to have been a reset button for my faulty immune system, my body’s insistence that it was being attacked when it was not. My last best hope short of a hysterectomy contained two beautiful healthy boys and my body’s ability to relearn how to heal itself a little, at least for now.

Both of those boys were born a bit early, bird-like in their beauty, still full of intrauterine twitches and reflexes, curled up in defense against a too noisy, too bright, too big world. They nestled up like larva on my flaccid postpartum belly, connected to beeping machines and lights, reminding me of high school science experiments involving electrical wires and russet potatoes. When not in their isollettes or in their beaming father’s arms, they were often curled up on the outside of my belly, their discomforts betraying their longing to be back inside if it, to be swimming in the crowded murk of fluid and cord, their limbs contained, their need to breathe limited only to early practice movements caught on ultrasounds. Those early breathing movements, viewed on ultrasound to our great relief as early as 32 or 33 weeks gestation, may have come partly due to the steroids I received at exactly 24 weeks to speed up the development of their immature lungs in case they came as early as it was feared, even predicted they would.

It was actually N who worried us most after the birth at 35 weeks exactly. He was a half pound smaller at 4 11’, and he looked ever much more the tiny bird preemie, oddly wise and old-mannish, occasionally opening his cobalt eyes wide in seeming disbelief. He had some feeding issues that turned into a sepsis scare, fairly standard stuff in the preemie shuffle, but scary nonetheless. The issues resolved, and he was officially discharged a few days after his brother was. We all went home together with no wires or machines trailing us; nothing but a little bottle of Zantac for N and some car seat bolsters adding to the usual baby detritus.

O had round little cheeks for a preemie, and a fair bit of early chub. By his due date, he was as round as the letter that begins his name, round as an olive, with big rosy cheeks and chubby little leg rolls that delighted me every time I unwrapped him like a present to change a diaper. My body did this, was doing this with my milk flowing into him and transforming, as if by magic, into muscle, bone, and baby fat, smiles, cries, and big lungs full of air.

But it was O who had a meningitis scare five months later, an ear infection that infected the lining of his brain and might have killed him if he hadn’t gotten antibiotics quickly enough. It was O with the croup all last winter, with the wheezing, with the all-too-frequent colds and the cough that would linger for an extra week or two after. It is O who just finished up his third course of prednisone since his birth and who now has a twice daily appointment with the nebulizer. When we agreed to this course of treatment, we hoped that a preventative medication would keep him off the hard drugs and avoid the visits to Urgent Care and future overnight hospital stays.

Since O was about 15 months old, I’ve had a nagging feeling about his gross motor skills. He walked soon enough, but awkwardly, and his balance wasn’t great even for a toddler, though he could scale playground equipment with an agility and determinedness that scares me even now. He didn’t really run until he was over two, and even then, it seemed to be with great effort at actually lifting all the appropriate limbs in the air at once. He was evaluated for a gross motor delay at 22 months, and he passed, but not by much. Quit worrying, said my mom, J’s mom, our pediatrician, J, and me to myself. I am a worrier, and I bristled at the idea of being one of those parents –the kind that needs her kids to be good at everything.  But as I watched O’s uneven skills develop, watched him struggle to run and ask to sit a while as we went for hikes and his brother ran in impatient circles around him, I have continued to worry.

He’s been on the new meds for about a month, and the cough that lingered far too long is gone. A couple of weeks ago, I also started to notice other changes, a lightness in his body that I’ve never seen before. He’s running, and getting real air underneath him as he moves, his face full of the joy of movement for the first time. He’s got more sustained energy, the kind with stamina and not just physical strength. His newly official diagnosis of asthma has been with him more severely and for longer than we’d known. All those things that worried me are sorting themselves out before my eyes, as air rushes in and comes right back out in the fairly effortless rhythm it ought to be.

I looked through my hard drive files the other day, and saw picture after picture of O trying to catch up to his brother, a yard or two behind him. One of his first non-noun words was “wait!” We missed it. We missed this. We did our best, our pediatrician did her best, and we couldn’t even have started him on the Pulm*cort before he was two, but we missed it, something that makes so much sense as I flip through those pictures, and I am filled with a crazy-making mix of sadness and validation. But mostly, I am happy the kid can finally breathe, and still hopeful that he’ll grow out of it yet.

Yet, I can no longer say that while the price to have our children was high, the boys are at least unscathed by the experience. At least one of them is quite likely not, and we may never know for certain how either of them was affected by all the medications they were party to in utero or their prematurity. The rate of asthma is higher in all preemies, even those born only a few weeks early.

I’m not sure why NICU doctors and nurses are so bent on telling parents of “older preemies” that their kids are just like any other kids when a growing body of research contradicts that notion. Perhaps it is because these kids do so well in general, because minor learning difficulties, attention issues, asthma, and the like are nothing compared to what earlier preemies and their families have to contend with. I don’t suppose there’s a whole lot to be gained by a pediatrician telling a parent that her child’s issues may be connected to that child’s prematurity where there’s absolutely nothing that can be done about that and the prematurity itself doesn’t affect the treatment plan.

Last night, after I spent a solid two hours scanning the pictures on my hard drive, I tried to sleep and instead scanned the pictures in my head. I remembered O’s birth, baby B stuck sunny-side-up in the birth canal in a complete split, one leg up by his face and the other trailing behind him. His heart rate was too low for too long, and there was a lot of tension in the final moments before his release from me, a slippery, floppy fish whose eventual cry was an angel chorus of relief to all of us.

I also imagined that silent air-robbing beast flowing out from me with him, released from me and into him, a legacy of my body’s betrayal that would remain silent for many months yet. I know O's asthma didn't happen that way, i know that it isn't anyone's fault including my own, that probably nothing could have prevented it. It isn't guilt I feel so much as a sense that it isn't supposed to happen this way—my own burden being released from me a short time before it descends, unbidden upon my son, for whom I would gladly take it on. I am mourning this now, this unwanted validation, this proof, even as I wait, in this season of advent, for a fuller knowledge of all the types of healing and hope that are possible. Even as I also scan in my mind a picture of a smiling round-faced blond boy running neck-and-neck down the sidewalk with his brother in snow boots on a bitterly cold day, saying “I win, N*ah! We won!”

 

she who cannot control her children

Yesterday, I was running a couple of evening errands and as I was stopped momentarily in traffic, I looked to the right, directly at the duplex where J and I lived for the first year of our marriage. Through the back bedroom window I could see two faces framed in golden silhouette, one person’s head thrown back as if laughing.

That first year of marriage was both terrible and wonderful – wonderful because we were happy to be together in this new way, optimistic, the newness of everything carrying us through the more difficult aspects of our new relationship as husband and wife. There were also challenges that year, partly in the form of my working for a horribly difficult and unethical boss, but worse, at least for me, was probably the stuff going on in my own head. I recall a certain stubbornness, even a hardness within me as our daily interactions dripped with symbolic meaning and potential precedent. We were earnest in our efforts to work things out, but every dropped towel and perceived assumption about marital roles felt loaded with weight and the effort of making the right choice, the right resolution to set us on the right path. We both worked full-time, so it was easy, probably too easy, to measure our individual efforts side-by-side, and then we had to also  consider complicating factors such as just how important various domestic details were exactly, anyway. But J is a fair and honest person, some of our hard work did actually have a positive effect, and my concern over precedent eventually gave way to more trust and flexibility, where it remains today. We have our issues, but sharing the workload fairly is nowhere near the top of the list.

As I watched the laughing forms in the window of our old duplex, I remembered that old stubborn feeling, and recognized its recent familiarity. As my boys move into an age where they and their parents are seen as truly and completely accountable for their public behavior, I am again finding myself to be preoccupied with precedent. Every loud refusal to cooperate, every large and small tantrum, every rudeness and aggressive act sends tiny alarm bells off in my head. They say, “Your kid is acting like a brat. You don’t have control over your children. If you don’t nip this in the bud, you’ll have rude children for as long as they live in your home”. 

Now before you think that I either actually do have complete brats living with me, or perhaps alternately that I am way too concerned with what other people think, let me give you a bit of context. I grew up Dutch, moving to the U.S  at the age of seven, and I spent my whole life after that seeing a dramatic difference in both the behavior of and expectations upon Dutch and American children. Dutch kids, at least the ones I ever had any exposure to, are pretty polite to adults. They can, and are expected to carry on actual conversations with them, even as teenagers. They can look adults in the eye, and are expected acknowledge their presence when they arrive and leave. All my Dutch relatives and our family friends saw it as their job to gently guide us into behaving agreeably, but always through gently worded suggestions and expectations, always kindly. “Here, Emmie. Why don’t you pass the nuts around to the guests. Remember to say excuse me, please when you pass in front of people.” I don’t remember feeling chided and restricted so much as honored, cared for, to be taught in this way by the people who loved me. This kind of teaching was a two-way street: the adults with the expectations also had a genuine interest in how I was doing, what my interests were, and the like. Every single time we went back to the Netherlands to visit, I was surprised that their questions were genuine, that they took a real interest in what mattered to me. Looking back on that part of my upbringing, I can’t help but notice that it’s a lot easier for adults to care about and take an interest in children that also happen to be likable. My mother tells it this way: when my brother and I were seven and three, new to the U.S. the in our New Jersey suburb, people were amazed at how polite we were. I think it faded fast, as I distinctly remember encountering, for the first time, adults who barely said hello to me, didn’t look me in the eye, and expected nothing from me when they met my parents.

My boys are not brats. They are two, they are probably rather on the active side even for boys, and they could definitely use a bit more respect for other people’s property, but they do pretty much say hello and goodbye when asked to, as well as please and thank you. They ask to be excused before they leave the table, mostly unprompted. They have an awfully hard time sitting still, and they whine a fair bit despite our consistent efforts to make them repeat every single thing they whine about in a normal voice, but they are starting to self-correct, and will always correct themselves if asked. Our efforts are paying off somewhat, even without a culture that really backs us up. But there is another voice arguing with me when I ask my boys to behave themselves in one way or another. I am starting to realize that kids, at least some and probably most kids, will whine and throw fits a fair bit in inconvenient places no matter how hard you try to prevent it and no matter how consistent you are. I’m starting to realize something that’s even more of a fundamental revelation: that fact that you can’t actually control your children. You can guide them, you can lead them, you can mold them, you can control a whole lot about their environment, you can be consistent, and empathetic, and firm, and all these things affect the outcome, but you cannot, no matter how much you try, no matter how you are expected to, control them. I cannot control how they feel, what their exact motivations will be, what their preferences, opinions and beliefs will be, or even many of their actions. I’m sure there are many things I could be doing better, more effectively, but they still have their own minds, their own wills, their own desires and temperaments.

Perhaps this is more obvious to you than it has been to me, but the desire to control my children runs deeper than I am comfortable admitting. I confess that learning this is a slow, somewhat painful process, especially with my Dutch upbringing as context, especially raising my children in a culture that both seems to want me to be able to control my kids’ behavior, yet leaves me pretty much on my own to even try. And now what I struggle with is this: How does one let go of this idea? How can I, with no prior experience in childrearing, have faith that my best efforts are good enough, and that my kids will be basically likeable to and respectful of people of all ages?

I think that a lot of social conventions, at least the ones based on courtesy and respect, actually make sense. Every culture has its norms, its traditions, for better or for worse. Some traditions are definitely worth nixing, some assumptions badly in need of revising, but resistance to popular culture isn’t the same thing as not valuing culture at all. Manners, common courtesies, basic expectations of our children, these bind one generation to another, they allow some connection between people that don’t know each other, and they make one feel at home in one’s own culture in a way that isn’t dependent on television or other media. In the U.S., we live in a culture of hating OPK’s*, t-shirts that proudly declare our kids to be the hellions we expect them to be, outward signs splashed across t-shirts bought at any mainstream big-box store or tacked onto the backs of cars that basically say a big f*ck you to anyone you might happen to encounter. We live in a culture where it’s considered entirely normal that many teenagers descend by middle school into a state so antisocial that they often cannot so much a hold a basic conversation of a couple of sentences with an adult. We also live in a culture that thinks not, “I wonder what I could do to help” or “That must be tough” when kids throw a tantrum in the grocery store aisle, but “wow, that mother has lost control of that child!” What an interesting mix, this combination of judgment and low standards. It’s all about the individual. All about that mother who cannot control her kids, because it’s all her job to try, and the only way the rest of society is going to help out there is to let her know it with glares and open-mouthed stares. Not that I’d know anything about that….

I’m trying very hard to remain true to my own standards while remembering that J and I can’t do it all by ourselves, and that even if it doesn’t feel like it, our best efforts will have to do. I’m trying to be more forgiving of both myself and my children, to enjoy them and empathize with them more on difficult days. I’m trying to sort all this out a bit more consciously so that I don’t load them down with all the baggage of my own cultural background and upbringing.

We are starting, on occasion, to see glimpses of a new maturity from them, a desire to please us that wasn’t there a couple of months ago. Some of what I most hope for is there too – boys remembering once in a great while to talk respectfully to an adult, and receiving genuine affection and interest from an adult in return for their efforts. There are many parenting problems that cannot be solved so swiftly as nipping anything in the bud; behavior based on values will almost always be taught and measured over the long haul, just as anyone's parenting ought to be measured over a longer span than a moment, a tantrum, or even days. In realizing that setting expectations and limits with my kids is not the same as actually being able to control them, in trying to let go of the desire to control them, I am slowly  learning, in these first years of motherhood, to have faith in myself, my children and my family.

You could call me a slow learner, because some days that is wholly easier than others.

*"Other People's Children"

thank you

I only have a minute to post before falling asleep, but I want to say thank you so very much for the incredibly kind e-mails and comments. They've made me feel so much less discouraged and alone. I know this will pass, and I think I need to focus on using my support system better and getting more respite rather than trying to "fix" the situation itself. More on that later, but meanwhile, thank you from the bottom of my heart.

it's a long, long, gray, gray winter

I hope you'll forgive me for being completely honest here. I've been feeling the sincere desire to post and get it all out on the page screen, but I've been avoiding it for fear of sounding like a whiner, and frankly, even I am tired of listening to my frustrations. But I need to get it out of my system, and I hope you'll consider listening even if I don't have anything hopeful to offer right now.

I am in a serious funk. The events of the last 6 or so weeks have caught up with me, and I have no reserves left. I am utterly exhausted from restless, uncomfortable sleep (from needing to sleep at an incline due to GE*RD), and I feel better, but not well, and I now have to plow merrily through with extremely limited amounts of caffeine and chocolate. O received an official asthma diagnosis last week, and is now on Pulm*cort 2 daily, and while this is of course not the end of the world, I still feel as if I have somehow let him down, even if only by my genes. And speaking of offspring, this better the f*ck be the worst of the terrible 2's because I can't take much more. Blatant, saucy defiance. Epic tantrums from N, now occasionally in public. I hate this - really, really hate it. I love them dearly,and there are many, many enjoyable moments throughout the day, but overall, I am just utterly overwhelmed, and every damn thing, every drain clog, ice damn, car accident (I hit a car that blew a stop sign yesterday - all cars and people are OK), just add to my funk.

I am searching for hope that days with my boys will again be less difficult, that they will not be like this forever, but I need to stop reading about that, because all I ever seem to hear is that age three will be worse. This age just leaves me constantly rushing, constantly putting out fires and thinking about how to keep them busy and out of trouble and get them the unbelievable amount of exercise they seem to need to be happy, or at least not tear apart the house. Work has been really busy too, and for several days in a row, I've been rushing from pretty much the moment I get up until the moment the boys go to bed, and by then I'm just shot, behind on everything, sitting in the middle of it all feeling helpless. Naps are unreliable, or short. There are no breaks, and there is no room for error, nothing left to cut out, except writing and connecting with friends, or any of the things that used to keep me sane.

I've been upset and worried and stressed by various family dynamics lately, and also angry, and a bit let down. We have no back-up system right now - I am utterly envious of parents who can just call in a sitter or swap babysitting with a friend, but my and my little twinado don't have that option and the entire family is pretty much too busy to help for any length of time and with any consistency outside of very serious emergencies. That's not really anybody's fault, but damned if I don't need the break now as much as I ever have.

It is winter. Long, gray, cold as hell, Minn*sota winter, and we're not even halfway through. I know all I can really do is ride this out, even if I spend much of my day on the verge of tears, as I have lately. I feel so bad for J, who has many stresses of his own and who spends too much time trying to make me feel better, not to mention taking care of the boys every morning himself. I constantly feel like I'm letting him down by now being more cheerful. more resilient. Ugh.

I just need a break. All I do when I'm not rushing is fantasize about a couple of days away from here. I need two whole nights away - enough time to really get some sleep and breathe a little, to get that whole day in between, but I have no idea how to make that happen. J seems to think it's possible, but I don't want to go and have it all be on him. I don't want to cobble together some rickety arrangement and worry the whole time. I'm sorry for the generally un-chipper tone this blog has taken on over the last couple of months, but it's all I've got. Not the end of the world, nothing that won't pass, but not much fun either.