I Have a Difficult Child

Nearly every time I talk to other mothers about the difficulties (tortures?) of motherhood, someone says, "But your girls are great! You're doing a great job!" Either they are trying to make me feel better, or they actually believe that I am, in fact, doing a great job.  "Some days." I always answer. "I don't exactly advertise the bad times."  Bad moments like last night, when I was in bed, plotting (gleefully, a little bit, I'll admit it), how I was going to break it to my youngest FIRST THING IN THE MORNING that I was giving her up for adoption because I just could not take her anymore.  More on this later.


I have two daughters who are almost exact polar opposites.  My oldest came out of the womb with a conciliatory smile on her little fat face.  When she was an infant she only cried when she had thrush or just to get my attention if I had forgotten to feed her for too many hours straight.  When she was just a year old, I used to take her to the grocery store in the middle of the day, when the elderly people were likely to be there, so she could walk around, holding their hands, talking to them as they shopped.  When she was three she made up a batch of "business cards" that were supposed to say, "I'm Delaney and I would like to be your friend.  Would you like to have a sleep over at my house?" (they really said squiggle squiggle.  Squiggle squiggle.) which she would carry around in her purse and hand out to people in parking lots.

And then there is my current youngest soon to be middle child.  Who came out of the womb with the figurative two middle fingers flying.  She could care less if the world likes her.  In fact, she seems mind boggled by the fact that her sister would continuously waste her time on something so annoying as friends.  Shudder.  I don't have many memories of my youngest daughter's babyhood.  I'm always surprised when other mothers say that, but now I know it's secret code for "I don't want to remember."  I remember big moments.  Like when we spent $15,000 having her tested at the children's hospital because, as I remember saying, "SOMETHING has to be wrong with her."  Not so much.  Their big diagnosis was that she knew far more words than she was capable of saying.  THAT EXPLAINS IT.  I would be seriously pissed, too, if I knew words I couldn't say.  Except then she did say them, and yet, well, she remained difficult. (I can't so much qualify difficult without this turning into a book length blog post except to say it was something like this:  when she was four I signed her up for soccer camp for three hours a day for a week.  That first day I dropped her off I cried on the way home, I was so grateful, grateful, grateful, to be without her for three hours.  An hour later the camp called and told me to come get her.  She had hit another child (who just so happened to be recovering from brain surgery) in the head with a water bottle.  Why the hell would you send your brain surgery kid to SOCCER CAMP? I asked?  This, as I will get to later, is part of my second daughter's problem.  AKA me).

Next up, I started to do research on the effects of steroids on children.  She had been given steroids off and on since her babyhood for severe allergies and skin conditions.  My GOD, it was the steroids.  What I had on my hands was a toddler with 'roid rage.  NO WONDER SHE WAS SO PISSED ALL THE TIME!  We were lucky she hadn't killed anyone.  Problem solved.  Except she's been off the steroids (except for a few extreme cases) for four years.   And, yet.


So I did what any mother would do, and I signed her up for a child psychologist.  And we spent six months making cookies, playing, and learning to eat goldfish crackers one by one (the doctor was convinced that the choroid plexus cysts my daughter had in her brain in the womb and at birth had likely slowed her development, causing a need for a re-learning of the basic physical tasks of babyhood.  In other words, my daughter was pissed because, well, honestly, I still don't really understand the connections between goldfish crackers and rage, but they're real, friends).  After six months of therapy I was poorer, my daughter wasn't any "better," and I suddenly realized that only a fucking idiot would eat goldfish crackers one by one, and all the fights and "practice" we'd done at home wasn't going to change that very basic fact.  Goldfish crackers are MEANT to be eaten by the fist full, and that therapist was fired.

I decided my daughter was going to be who she was going to be and what was REALLY needed was for ME to go to therapy.  Because, if nothing else, this was an entire hour all to myself.  And it did help.  My therapist reminded me repeatedly that children under five are often best treated simply through treatment of their mothers (yes, it pisses me off, too.  I love how dads just have to SHOW UP and they are fucking heroes.  Not in my house.  There are no heroes in my house.).  Therapy really did make things better.  For me.  I was no longer in despair (yay, antidepressants), and I came to realize that if I had to.  If I REALLY REALLY had to, I could live with my daughter the way she was and not kill either one of us.  And there I left it for two years.  Yes, she often makes me miserable.  But if it makes her happy, I shall pierce myself on the sword of miserable, and there we go.  Motherhood.

But I know I let her get away with murder.  Because I didn't love her enough when she was a baby. Because it's really fucking hard to love someone who won't stop screaming. Turns out that, despite my desire and penchant for toughness, I'm actually a sucker.  When her older sister says, "I'll just clean the whole room by myself" I usually give in.  The older one is working for a cell phone, plus, I know from my own experience, if I have a choice between cleaning while listening to the screaming wails of my youngest OR letting her play on the computer while I clean, well, I'll just clean by myself thank you very much (that's right-- this is it, the moment when I recognize and tell you that I'm probably, OK definitely, her biggest problem).  I will brush her hair, stand in the bathroom while she showers, allow her NOT to brush her hair occasionally, let her get out of chores, homework, basic human cleanliness because IF IT MAKES HER HAPPY BRING ON THE FUCKING SWORD OF MISERABLENESS.

Except.  Of course there's an except.  When I took her to her most recent check up and mentioned (in very vague terms) that she's still very unreasonable and seems to struggle maintaining friendships (or, in plain words, even really giving a rat's ass), the doctor had a conversation with my daughter.  And in that conversation my daughter told the doctor that "Sometimes I want to die.  I don't understand, and I don't want to get yelled at, so sometimes I would just rather die."  And of course I cried.  Because of what she said but also because, OF COURSE SHE'S NOT HAPPY you fucking moron.  Throw yourself on the sword just for general amusement.  Because of course she's not happy.  So, we scheduled for a new therapist, and we wait, hoping this one will have a better plan than one fish two fish.

Which leads me to last night, which of course I now feel horribly guilty about (I've somehow convinced myself over the years that mothers even have to feel guilty about how they feel EVEN IF NO ONE ELSE KNOWS).  I was in bed, just asleep.  Pregnancy has brought with it atrocious leg cramps that are only cured through sleep. And my youngest had to take a shower.  The screamingest, most painful, loud, screechingest shower in shower history (for the world.  For her it was normal), and she woke me up.  And as I lay there listening to her scream and her dad threaten and her scream and her dad threaten I got angrier and angrier.  A few weeks ago I said to my sister, apropos of little else, "you think I don't pray to GOD every day that this baby isn't another one?" (which I don't.  OK, I do.  But not every day).  Last night as I listened to my current youngest scream (about nothing.  Sometimes she just likes to scream.  There was no soap in her eyes, nor was there a giant spider attacking her.  She just doesn't like to wash her hair) and got angrier and angrier, the thought popped into my head: "you are ruining my life."  And then I got even ANGRIER and I thought, "that's it.  I've had enough.  I'M GIVING HER UP FOR ADOPTION. And first thing in the morning I am going to TELL HER I'm giving her up for adoption.  TAKE THAT, KID." And then I started to cry because, A. I love her, and I don't really want to give her up for adoption.  B. I'm not sure who would take her.  She's, let's just say, burned some bridges.  The only way I calmed myself down was to do deep breathing and pull a Scarlett O'Hara and vow to think about it in the morning.

And, of course, by morning I had realized you probably shouldn't tell nine and a half, almost ten year olds that they are so bad you are giving them up for adoption.  But what I did tell her was this: You cannot act like that.  You need to be more reasonable.  Being reasonable is not going to be any more difficult, nor is it going to make your life any less fun.  And she was reasonable this morning.  Mostly, I think, from exhaustion.  She had a late night of screaming. I have no illusions any more.  We see the new psychiatrist Saturday.  I'll bring the goldfish crackers.

And I acknowledge that this blog post is not over.  That, in fact, this blog post would only cover it all if it were a book.  Or a few weeks under constant surveillance by psychiatric staff who just kept telling me to talk through the pain.  And if I were to go on I'd point to this: my older daughter ain't no angel.  Let yesterday be evidence, when she spent the three dollars I gave her to pay her library fine on baked goods.  "Accidentally."  I often worry that her desire to be loved will lead her to very, very bad places.  And in those moments I feel relieved because, as many worries as I have about my current youngest, fear that she will be led into anything she doesn't want to do isn't one of them. And I would probably talk about how we're having another one.  Not just another human-- another girl.  Many years of fears and refusals, and somehow I got to a place where I thought it might, just might, be OK.  And maybe it will be.  But somehow I doubt it.

Everything You Need to Know About this Cold

I have entered into the darkness of the worst cold in the history of the world. And, graciously, heroically, I have agreed to send dispatches back until my communication apparatuses fail.  I can tell you this: if you are pregnant and cannot take your usual seven Tylenol Cold and Flu tablets, 3 Mucinex, and a quart of Nyquil, Vicks might make you feel slightly better.  It's best application, however, is as a talisman, warding off all other people.  "Hey, Mar-- what's that smell?  Oh, God, are you SICK?"

Unfortunately, with this cold there is a high risk of betrayal by those around you.  For instance, the child I have raised and loved for nine years, eight months and fourteen days cruelly turned back onto me the words I used last week to offer her solace during her slight-clearly-totally-different-from-this-cold-cold.  "Geez, Mama, it's just a cold. You'll get over it."  For her sake, I hope I do.

This cold is powerful.  So powerful it will take away the senses of humor of those around you.  For instance, if you go to bed at seven and thus wake up at 3am and decide to kill time by moaning and occasionally crying out, "The light! It's so beautiful! I'm coming, Grandma!" your partner may pull the blanket over his head and mumble, "Seriously? What time is it?"

 Time doesn't mean much to me anymore.  I just know it's close.  I'm sneezing again now. Sneezing  a lot.  Before I go, I want you to know I loved a few of you very much.  The rest of you I just tolerated.

Marriage and Other Scaries

I'm not married.  This may come as a shock to some of my friends who assumed I was because the subject just never came up. I'm even guilty of hearing people say that I'm married and not correcting them.  Sometimes I even let people call me Mrs. Foster (or worse, Mrs. Ramsey), and I don't say anything.  It's just easier.  For them, I hope.

Don't get me wrong, I'm totally engaged.  Have been for ten years.  We got engaged when I was two months pregnant, which probably helped with my reluctance to make it official.  People shouldn't get married because they're pregnant.  Nor should they get engaged for that reason, but I really liked the ring. (Eventually I threw it at him so many times it got lost.  Let that be a lesson to you).

I'm not anti-marriage.  I think it's fine.  I sometimes wish I had some noble reason to not be married, like those who profess they won't marry until everyone who wants to marry legally can. I'd like to jump on that bandwagon, because it's certainly nobler than my reasons, but it feels too fake since it's only a last minute jump.

The truth is probably that I knew he needed to be tested, I just didn't know the tests would take this long.  I had a baby daughter when we met.  Would he love her like his own?  No, I mean like his own.  That test takes time.  I can remember getting hysterical because his mother threatened to spank his brother's biological child and making the accusation that his mother would never spank MY CHILD because she didn't consider her family.  Closer to the truth is probably that my child never did much to deserve spanking, and if she did, his mother probably wasn't around to see it, or she was too busy spanking one of her other dozens of grandchildren.

What if I get pregnant?  Will you stay? Well, what if the baby's sick? What if she NEVER STOPS CRYING, and nine years later things haven't much improved?  Hmmmm?  OK, you win that round.  But what if I get depressed. No, I don't mean sad, I mean the clinical kind, where I'm convinced every grimace you make is really a judgment of my clothes, parenting, cooking, cleaning, living, breathing? What if I decide to stay in school for EIGHT YEARS?! Ha ha! No? OK, well what if I force you to leave your hometown and your children from your first marriage to follow me to a writing program that I proclaim my dream.  OK, you win that round, too.  But, on the other hand, what if you lose your job?  What if YOU suffer from clinical depression? What if your family gets on my nerves, your kids piss me off, and I occasionally follow you around like a stalker, insisting I must always know where you are.  OK, well you've passed that section, but the test ain't over.  This, it turns out, is a very, very long test. It's like the GRE and the LSAT all in one.  No retakes.  Bring ID and several sharpened pencils. 

Sometimes, mostly when my kids got old enough to ask why we're not married, I make half hearted wedding planning attempts.  But the truth is, I don't like parties.  I don't like being the center of attention.  I look like an idiot in white, I can't dance at all, and I can't stand wearing dresses.  What's the point?  I never dreamed of getting married when I was a girl, at least not that I can remember.  I dreamed of having daughters, and I think it's just awesome that he decided to stick around and help me do it.

Sometimes I think we could get married if we snuck into it.  Like, hey, what's going on this Friday? Nothing? Well, shit, we should get married! But then my heart starts palpitating and my eyes go dry and I know the test's not over.  It's closer, sure, but it's not over.

Recently he came upon me while I was doing dishes and suggested, just suggested, mind you, that his father had mentioned, just mentioned, please, that because my mom is sick it might be better to do it sooner rather than later.  "I am NOT going to talk about this." That is all.  Of course I want my mom there.  But, as a friend recently pointed out, that's not really a good reason to get married.  But when I asked that friend what WAS a good reason to get married, the conversation turned to other things.  I read somewhere that people should only get married because they can't imagine any other choice, but my friend, recently and happily married, didn't seem terribly convinced by that, either.  I know people do it. I mean, people get married all the time.  I'm sure they must think long and hard about it.  But why?  I mean, why do it over NOT doing it?  Sure, I could think of reasons to do it.  Lots of them.  But most really have nothing to do with marriage the institution and have much more to do with family the institution, which we seemingly have managed just fine for ten years without marriage, so, wait, why do it again?

I could point out the many many people I know who plan excitedly (loudly, constantly) for a year or more for a wedding leading to a marriage that seems to me utterly destined for failure.  I could point out that my first thought after "let's get married!" is generally, "but, fuck, divorce is expensive."  I watched my parents' long, drawn out, painful (particularly painful for people who truly had little to argue over) divorce which ended with the utter indignity of the judge giving my mother the five children and my dad the vacuum cleaner.  Without a judge, I imagine, if the two of us ever decided to just throw in the towel, we'd have to work out such important details ourselves.  For the record, I'm getting the vacuum cleaner.

Differences

It's been a long time since I've posted on this blog.  I took a break while I was finishing my thesis for the MFA program at OSU.  I know you can't "run out" of words to write, but I was having a little too much fun writing this blog and sometimes neglecting the much less fun work of editing stories, some of which refused to do what they were told.

Since I'm pretty sure all of my followers are also my Facebook friends, it will come as no surprise that I am pregnant. It's weird being pregnant after many years of, well, not being so. What's weirdest is that it's not so bad. When I was in my early 20s (before therapy and antidepressants), it was pretty bad.  I was still living in a lot of fear, fear of the type that I believed every pain meant death was imminent and, as convinced as I was that I was going to be a different kind of parent than mine had been, I was equally convinced by the "cycle of abuse" literature that assured me that, no matter what, abused kids grow up to be abusive parents nomatterwhatnomatterwhat.

Although I've heard a lot can happen during those crucial teenage years, so far so good. Not to say it hasn't been a struggle.  Those aforementioned anti depressants and therapy came in real handy when I discovered that "the cycle" (I hope you can imagine the voice I'm using when I say this) CAN be broken, but old habits of thought and self abuse die hard.

When I was in my early twenties, on top of believing every last pain meant imminent death, I also couldn't stand to be touched.  I didn't think this applied to babies until I had them.  Sometimes it was ok-- I could sit with them.  But, for the most part, having a tiny baby on my lap felt like suffocation.  Like if I didn't get up at once I wouldn't be able to breathe again. I somehow found a way through this.  Don't tell anyone, but I  don't fear being touched anymore.  In fact, sometimes I ask my kids for a hug and they refuse, because they're too cool for me now, and that's the best part about babies.  They're not too cool for their mamas.

So how is being pregnant different now? Well, for one, I haven't thrown up once.  What the hell, self? I ask said self.  But I'm also not worried about it.  I'm tired, but when I'm tired I take a nap.  And then I wake up and move on with my life.  In my 20s this nap taking led to deep despair. Clearly, people who take naps are bipolar, will soon be addicted to prescription pills, and the only next step is lying in the basement, terrorizing your children, screaming hourly for 3/4 of a glass of milk. In summation, I feel pretty good.  I feel a little nervous about certain things (like where's the baby going to fit on the motorcycle I don't have? Will he or she be lonely because he or she is so much younger?  Will he or she suffer from the illnesses and allergies my youngest daughter does? Will he or she be sickly?), I'm more just curious.  What will this baby be? Whatever it is, we'll deal with it.  We're experts in damn near every kind of childhood illness I had never heard of before babies at this point, and, most importantly, I know how to remove plastic hearts from noses, rocks from ears, what to do with facial wounds, and the warning signs of concussion.  I feel pretty all set.

Of course, being pregnant in your thirties is different than in your early 20s.  For instance, I find that when I cross my legs for more than five minutes I can't walk right without holding my hip.  Our first ultrasound picture is pinned up on the fridge next to my daily insulin regime. I go to bed at 9.  OK, I did that before I got pregnant.  I'm just old.

Another Set of Expert Reviews

It takes me a long time to build up the nerve to write these reviews, because I'm terrified somehow one of these authors is going to stumble upon this and hate me. But then I'll just find a gun, teach myself to load it, and shoot myself, so it'll be all good.

Hiroshima in the Morning (Reiko Rizzuto): somehow I was under the impression that this was a book about a woman who leaves her family in order to follow her creative yearnings.  It's really not.  I finished it, but barely.  The story itself is very patchy, while the writing is sometimey.  And, in case you're wondering, she never leaves her family during the book.  Boo. Leave your family, woman.

Townie (Dubus, III): I got two thirds of the way through before I realized that I only have one life.  Splashes of interesting scenes separated by many pages of "then I lifted more weights, then I kicked this dude's ass. Then I felt bad.  Then I lifted more weights, then I kicked this dude's ass, then I felt real, real bad."

A Mercy (Morrison): I love her so much I finished it.  But if it was any other writer, I wouldn't have had the patience for the 45 pages it took to even begin to understand what was going on (the whole book is only 124 pages).  Not worth it.  It's like a Tylenol PM dream-- the writing is wonderful, but there's just not much there in terms of story.  I still love you, Toni.

Behind the Palace Doors (Farquhar): False advertising.  This was not a fun look behind the scenes of royalty.  It was cliffs notes for royal history.  Finishable only if you have no money to buy a different ebook.

History of a Suicide (Bialosky): I so should have loved this book.  Trying to understand tragedy through literature-- that's totally my thing! It turns out I only like it when I do it.  Unfinishable, but I feel really bad about it. Not bad enough to finish it, but still.

The Source of All Things (Ross): OH MY GOD OH MY GOD READ IT RIGHT NOW. So good. She needs to write many many more books so I'm not forced to read outdoorsy magazines to spend time with her again. (Weird note-- when I first looked at this title I had no memory of reading this book whatsoever, even though it was only a few weeks ago.  Yeah, weird, right?)

The Emperor of All Maladies (Mukherjee): Got to page 90 of 680.  It got great reviews, so maybe it's just me, but I couldn't do it.  By page 25 I just didn't care about cancer any more.

The Lost City of Z (Grann): A book about a man's obsession with other men's obsessions with a man's obsession? Sign me up! This book surprised me-- the topic itself (Fawcett's disappearance in S. America) wasn't terribly interesting to me, but the obsession was.  The narrative itself has a lot of problems (it's clear this was written by a journalist, I'll just say that).  When you get to the end, call me, because I want to laugh at you. And then you can laugh at me.  Then I'll laugh at you again.

That's all I've got. Go ahead, argue with me.  I dare you.  But also tell me if you've read something amazing lately.  It seems I have no taste when I pick on my own.  I need guidance.  Right now I'm reading Tina Fey's Bossypants, and I have to say I'm digging it.  Turns out she's pretty funny.  Who knew?

Speaking of which (totally not), did you see the article in the NYT that a scientist found connections between the African click language and all other languages, thereby solidifying the evidence for the theory that all language comes from one source and that the evolution of language is a story of short cuts and making things easier?  I FUCKING TOLD YOU (someone who I don't know once argued this point with me.  Wherever you are, stranger, SUCK IT. I win.).

Yet Another Rant About Columbus Public Schools

Today's rant is brought to you by a news report about parents in Florida who are protesting (with signs and everything) the safety precautions (washing hands and faces twice a day) put into place at the school because one of the kids has a severe allergy to peanuts.  These parents should all catch a horrible, incurable disease, preferably of the venereal variety.

There is nothing that makes me angrier than fighting with my daughter's school about her allergies. I've heard such pearls of wisdom as "I totally understand.  My daughter is allergic to milk." No, you don't "totally understand." Your daughters farts don't compare to the nights my daughter spent in the hospital, including one where they couldn't let her go home because the air is our neighborhood was too toxic because of the flowering of the nut trees planted everywhere on our block. Or the image of her little four year old face when she turned to me crying, her eyes swollen shut, her cheeks the size of baseballs because someone touched a nut, then touched her. "I told Caidyn that she needs to start taking responsibility for her own illness." First, of all, it's not an illness.  It's a disability.  Secondly, she's a SECOND GRADER.  If you, her teacher, and the other parents are too fucking stupid to avoid tree nuts and peanuts, how do you expect her to?

And trust me, she's taken responsibility.  She's the first one to ask "Does that have peanuts or tree nuts in it?" She took responsibility the night she ended up in Children's Hospital, unable to breath, and because the doctors assumed it was an asthma attack, and not anyphylactic shock, she passed out on the table and left me screaming for help. She's taken responsibility when she couldn't walk because her legs got infected (three times) because her skin broke open from her allergies.

People who believe there's such a thing as a "mild" nut allergy are just plain wrong. When Caidyn was four, this happened:
"It happened to Catrina Vonder Meulen 18 months ago, when she lost her 13-year-old daughter, Emily, to a peanut allergy while on a shopping expedition. 'The day that Emily passed away, we were at a mall in Cincinnati, buying her a graduation dress for a friend,” Vonder Meulen told TODAY’s Hoda Kotb on Thursday. “We stopped in the food court, stopped at a national chain restaurant, buying a sandwich that she had eaten probably 50 times before. There was nothing at the time that alerted us.”

Vonder Meulen and her husband, Paul, who have two other children, had known since Emily was a toddler that she had an allergy to peanuts, and Emily was constantly vigilant about staying away from them.

But, her mother said, no one in the family had ever imagined that it could be fatal."

They didn't have her epi-pen, because every attack she'd ever had was "mild." Every time the school takes my child's life in their hands (allowing parents to bring cookies, cakes, candy bars without bothering to check the ingredients) I remember Catrina Vonder Meulen. No one knows when an allergy attack will be deadly.  No one knows what can happen.  Why is it too much to ask for the school and other parents to make SMALL changes in order to accommodate a (DEADLY) disability that affects 3 out of every 100 students? And, most importantly, why do they have to be such douche bags about it?

You Know What Really Irritates Me?

Yes, of course I'm going to tell you.  Fifth grade is the year of research.  Supposedly.  My oldest daughter, fifth grader extraordinaire, has done innumerable research reports this year.  Countries, books, cities, states, stars.  We are now on stars.  And what really pisses me off, pisses me off enough that I'm writing this blog about it, is that IT'S NOT RESEARCH.  It's a passel of kids let loose on Wikipedia at school to find a bunch of random facts.  They are then sent home with those facts and instructions to write a one page paper, create a power point AND a poster.  Based on ONE PAGE of research, and that's being generous.  I found out the criteria way too late to change it (as has become my wont).  What I discovered will make you cover your eyes in terror.

First, my darling's paper is entirely plagiarized.  Not just a little bit, I mean her name is the only thing NOT plagiarized.  When I asked her what plagiarism was, she told me that her teacher explained that, when she writes publishable papers, she will need to learn about citation. Seriously.  No wonder I hear so many college level instructors lamenting the amount of plagiarism they see and the fact that students don't understand what plagiarism is.

It's quite simple.  We don't take other people's things.  We don't take their stereos, we don't take their words, and we don't take their ideas.  We can borrow their stereos, we can borrow their words, but we can't then pretend those words are our own. We have to acknowledge that they are someone else's. And we don't create a research paper out of willy-nilly borrowing.  There is work to be done here! Actual thinking (oh, the horror).

The argument my daughter made (from her teacher) is that citation is too difficult.  My daughter figured out how to make videos, upload them to youtube, and create a website on her own. Citation is not too difficult. I'm not even asking for citation-- just a simple acknowledgment, somewhere in the world, that these words don't belong to my child.  She has words-- weird, wild, wonderful words.  But her school does not require her to use them.

So I assume, like many students, she will someday lose her ability to create her own ideas based on the work she has read, her own analysis,thinking, and synthesis.  Because none of this is part of the process.  The process isn't even research. It's hanging out online for a few minutes, then producing, producing, producing. I read my students' research papers every term and vow to make yet another committed effort to teaching them research (or, more correctly, unteaching them research).  I wonder why some seem to have none of the excitement I feel when I start to research a new project-- passion for a topic, the basic ideas, the desire to know, the willingness to learn through the process, to maybe (oh my god say it ain't so) change because of what I learn.  Maybe that excitement has been beaten out of them by an educational system that only cares about the product, not the process.

Day Two

This morning, driving to teach (driving is when I do my best work, which is why the world never sees it.  Because by the time I get some place where I can write, I've forgotten it), coming down off the high of realizing that I don't have to do anything I don't want to do, I realized something. 

"You do realize, self," I thought, "That this means you DO have to figure out what you want to do, right? I mean, you can't just sit around refusing to do things for the rest of your life." Crap. This question is the bane of my existence.  My psychiatrist used to say, "We know who we are by what we love to do." I've come to realize this is the mark of a great psychiatrist.  They have like five insights that they keep on rotation, and the rest of the time they just let you ramble on until it's time to insert insight. "I don't know what I love to do," I used to always say.  Clearly, I still haven't figured this out three years later.

So, still driving down High Street, I started to try to figure out what I love to do.  I love to go to the beach (except the sand.  I didn't used to mind sand until I had daughters.  Spend an hour driving home with a little girl screaming "I have sand in my virginia, Mama!" and you will learn to take a pitcher to the showers with you). I love the water (but I hate getting wet). I like to sit outside and read (except for the bugs.  And the sun). I like to hang out with my kids, but only when we're doing something everyone enjoys (think no COSI, yes art museum).  I like to travel (but not really to big cities). By the time I parked my car I knew I was in trouble.

Last fall I took a break from writing for two months.  I didn't write anything. I had somehow gotten it in my head that I had decided to become a writer because that's what I'd always done, because that was my role.  My sister's the lawyer, I'm the writer.  It's something I'd always been good at. So, I decided not to be a writer.  It didn't work. Instead, I realized that I didn't love teaching as much as I once had.  I LOVE teaching, but I didn't like the teaching I was doing.

So, I'm no longer in the car and I haven't gotten anywhere.  I don't know what I love to do.  It's not even clear to me what I like to do.  I do things because I am supposed to do them. As someone who grew up in a dysfunctional (hate that word) family, I spent all of my twenties just trying to figure out what people are supposed to do.  What do mothers do? What do daughters do? What do friends do? What do good students do? How? How? How? I thought once I figured all that out, I'd be happy.  Wrong. Now that I have a pretty good handle on what people are supposed to do (in case you're wondering, the average times women vaccuum their house each week depends on if they have kids (and carpeting, of course).  Kids=once a day (on average). The answers from men are the funniest.  "Once or twice a week or a month or so" is my favorite) I've discovered that most of what people are supposed to do makes me wildly unhappy.

What do I like to do? I like puppies and babies, as long as they aren't mine. I like warm weather, but not too warm. I like to ride my bike, but only on the way there.  On the way home I realize what a stupid decision it was not to drive. I like to drink a glass of wine next to the outside fire in the evening in the summer.  There, that's what I'll spend the rest of life doing.  Now I have a plan.

I know lots of women in their forties, or more often fifties, who are living the exact lives I want to live.  Maybe that's the ticket? At some point you get enough age and wisdom that you stand up and say "Eff this! I'm going to figure out what I love, and screw the rest of it as much as possible!"

This is my ongoing quest.  What do I like to do? What do I love?

Expert Book Reviews

Since I read faster than most people I know (and I'm counting babies and puppies here), I thought I'd do us all a favor and provide quick reviews of some books I've read in the last month (for pleasure-- I won't bore you with the ones I read for research).

Drinking; A Love Story: Life changing.  Amazing.

Water For Elephants: Sucked (but it had its moments.  OK, moment).

Roseannearchy: Unfinishable (that woman is fucking insane, and not in a good way).

The Seven Daughters of Eve: Sucked, but readable if you're into anthropology

Another Bullshit Night in Suck City: Great. Not as great as I'd heard, but pretty great.

The Memory Palace: Sucked.  Aspects of it were interesting, but honest to God, I never thought I'd say this, but can I get a straight forward story here?

The King's Speech: unfinishable. I'll wait til the movie comes to Netflix, thanks.

Privilege and Scandal: Semi interesting if you're into British Royal history.  I happen to be, so I found it ok.

Duchess: See above (I was on a week long British history thing, ok?)

Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother: if you've ever had a kid, wished you could smack a kid, loved kids, or all of the above, read this book right now.

The Last Station: read it twice.  Watched the movie.  Twice. Amazing.

The Warmth of Other Suns: Toni Morrison recommended it.  Toni Morrison is smoking crack. Unfinishable.

The Other Wes Moore: I finished it, but barely.  I never thought I'd say this about a book detailing poverty and crime and their effect on society, but this book sucked. It sucked real bad.

Right now I'm on Hiroshima in the Morning.  I'll reserve my opinion until I'm finished, but so far it's not terribly impressive.

That is all for now. If you disagree with me, by all means post your opinions to your own blog (which I don't read anyway).

You Don't Have To Do Anything You Don't Want To Do

Someone said something truly astonishing to me this morning.  He said, "You don't have to do anything you don't want to do."  My first thought was, well, sir, that simply cannot be true. It is entirely impossible for that to be true.  But what if it is? Well, that would be life changing.  So, I've been testing this theory of his.  You don't have to do anything you don't want to do. 

Before I even made it home I thought, I'm tired of fighting with my eight year old every day about her hair.  She refuses to wash it herself, comb it herself or even to acknowledge that there might be a problem with rats the size of New England. Her hair is the bane of my existence.  She has expressed the desire to cut it numerous times, but I've held off, because I thought she'd change her mind.  I don't want to fight with her anymore.  So, when I see her I'm going to say, "You have two choices.  Either you learn to wash and comb your own hair, or we're getting it cut into any style you like, as long as it's short and manageable." Cuz guess what? I don't have to comb your hair three times a day.  I don't have to listen to you scream.  My friend, I don't have to do anything I don't want to do.

I imagined my seventeen year old self.  Self, I wanted to say, you don't have to do anything you don't want to do. I can't even imagine how different my life would have been between the ages of 14 and 21 if someone had said to me, Kid, guess what.  You don't have to do anything you don't want to do.  I'm dead serious.  Try it out. You don't want to drink? No problem.  You don't want to skip school? Awesome.  No drugs? Fine and dandy.  No sex? Well, if you insist, young friend.

Clearly, I thought, this is a dangerous little piece of knowledge. I have a house recovering from guests, floors that need sweeping, dishes that need washing.  Self, I said as I drank an extra latte, totally up to you. Wash the dishes, don't wash the dishes.  I washed the dishes.  But I realized that perhaps I didn't want to, but I certainly didn't actively not want to.  So, OK, self, we will wash the dishes.

The only fights I have with my partner are about what I'm doing and what he's not doing.  I take care of the kids.  I make the decisions.  I pay the bills.  I clean the house.  What if, during one of these bi-annual arguments, he had simply said, You don't have to do anything you don't want to do. Well, I probably would have punched him.  But I'm telling myself.  You don't have to do anything you don't want to do.  I feel like I've lost a thousand pounds.  I feel like I'm standing up straighter. A whole life of possibilities just opened up. I don't have to do anything I don't want to do.  So I won't.

My Wonder Dog

Yesterday we found out that, after a long medical ordeal, our dog is probably not going to recover.  There's still some hope, but it's limited, and if we choose to keep him alive, it will not be a good life for him, or for us.  One person said to me, "You know who loved that dog the most? You." and another "This is going to be hardest for you." And I realized that these things are probably true.

When you're the mom, and your family makes a decision to get a dog, there is at least one secret part of you that thinks, "Great! A fucking dog! One more thing for me to keep alive.  I'm glad you all are happy." But somewhere in the day to day (Come on, let's go out.  Come on, let's go in.  Come on, let's go out.  Come on, let's go in.  Walkies? Ready to eat? Where's your toy? Who needs treats?) I fell in love.  He is my constant companion. Because I am so isolated (for many reasons), with Ali is sometimes the only adult conversation I have in a day. I talk to my students, I talk to my kids, but Ali is my only grown up friend.  I tell him about what's happening.  I ask him questions.  When I'm gleeful, the days I dance in the kitchen and sing along to Dirty Diana, he's the only one who knows. He's the only one who has ever danced with me. To him and me, a good dance in the kitchen before you mop the floor makes perfect sense. When I sing, he doesn't roll his eyes or request silence.  He wags his tail and follows me around, waiting for me to pat my chest and say "Up! Dance!"

Ali is now and has always been a terrible, terrible dog. The day we got him was early spring.  I was still an undergraduate student with four kids to entertain and less than no money.  So, I got the brilliant idea to take the kids to visit the dogs at the animal shelter.  "We're not getting a dog," I said over and over. "We're visiting the dogs." Rookie mistake.  As soon as I saw the little room, five black and brown puppies stumbling around, I knew. "We're getting a dog." I called my partner and told him to meet us at the shelter after work.  It was shockingly easy.  I filled out some paperwork, handed over a check.  The kids chose him.  He wasn't even the one I wanted.  I wanted the girl puppy with the sad eyes.  Instead, they picked the trouble maker. The people at the shelter told us he was a lab boxer mix, and he'd grow to be about 70 lbs.  This was a lie. We each chose a name and put them on scraps of paper in a hat. I wrote Jack.  The kids picked "Ali," The world's greatest boxer (I repeat-- he's not a boxer.   Animal shelter people lie.  I don't know what he is, but strangers find great joy in guessing).

We took him home, and almost immediately Ali began his reign of terror.  He pooped every where, he bit the kids so much they refused to be around him ("He's MEAN! We want a different dog.") he found so many ingenious ways to run away I started yelling "We've got a runner!" seven times a day. He terrorized the neighbors with little dogs by running after them, trying to "play." He stuck his head through the fence and bloodied his eye, he scraped his hair off trying to crawl under the fence.  He jumped, he licked everything and everyone obsessively. He ate shoes and every toy the kids left on the floor or anywhere near it.  He got into the garbage. He ate every scrap of food the kids dropped on the floor, and many they hadn't even had the opportunity to drop yet.  If we don't push the dining room chairs in, he climbs up on them, cleaning the table after dinner. I tried taking him to the park, but as long as I kept him leashed he would take up the most horrifying caterwauling I've ever heard the entire time we were there. It's embarrassing. His idea of fetch is for you to throw the toy, and for him to either take off and hide it, or insist that you play tug of war with the nasty, spitty piece of a rag. He tears up his toys, he refuses to learn any skill except "Sit," and then only when the treat is clearly visible.  And, worst of all, he KNOWS he's not allowed on the furniture.  Yet every time we return home, I find fur on the love seat. Yesterday, when the doctor finished describing the surgery he said, "Oh, and by the way, we found a foreign object in this stomach that we had to remove." The damn dog ate his bandages. He's a terrible, terrible dog.

But when I say, "Wanna fight?" he stands on his hind legs and waves his front legs at me as I wave my hands at him.  When I come home from the store he gets super excited, because he knows I always bring him something, and when I don't I have to say, "I'm so sorry, I'm so sorry. Not this time, bud." When I'm trying to ignore him he stuffs his wet nose into my hand and holds it there, blowing hot air until I give in and pet him. When I work in the kitchen he sits in the doorway, watching my every move.  When I vacuum he tries to get between me and the vacuum, barking to protect me.  He does the same thing with the broom. Or garbage bags. Wind. Silence.

When my daughter woke up this morning, she told me she'd had a nightmare. There were ghosts.  We had to escape the house. Leave the state. "And we had to leave Ali behind!" she kept saying. "We would never do that," I said.  Then I realized that we would.  "I'm sorry you had such a bad dream," I said instead. "That sounds like a terrible dream."

Secrets

I haven't written on this blog in two and a half months. I told myself that it was because writing the blog was fulfilling my need to write, thereby taking away from the time I should be spending working on my short story collection.  This is, of course, a bunch of bullshit, since writing doesn't work that way.  There isn't a reserve, and once it's empty there's no more. The truth is that I've made myself more and more isolated this year.  I didn't even know this was what I was doing, or at least didn't admit it, until I started reading Drinking; A Love Story.  More on this later.

I have good reasons for my isolation.  My mom was being treated for cancer, my dog got sick, my kids keep me busy, I'm working.  But I've come to see that there were times I could have had lunch with friends, had coffee with a colleague, and I chose not to. 

So, here's the truth, or at least as much of it as I'm willing to tell you. I have pica.  It's a disorder in which people chew on or eat things that are not food.  I've had it since I can remember.  It started when I was very little (a toddler) with me licking ashtrays, eating dirt, chewing the tops off matches if I could find some.  At one point a doctor said this was caused by low iron, but that wasn't true, because iron supplements didn't make it go away. 

When I started reading, I began chewing on paper.  I realize how horrifying this is to people who love books, but it's true. I'm a carnal lover of books.  I can't draw the line between my love of reading and my love of ripping off the bottom of the page, putting it into my mouth, and folding the paper into perfect squares with my tongue. No other paper works the same as the book you are reading at that time. In my family, this is called "Why are you eating books?!?"  I'm not eating them.  I'm chewing on the paper. And swallowing it.

Very, very few people know this secret.  My family. Two or three friends. More people probably knew when I was younger and not so good at keeping secrets.

I don't eat paper any more.  Very much.  I've moved to cloth and wool.  I remember when my daughter was a baby and I had to wash her clothes in Dreft.  When I opened the washer and the smell hit me, I was overcome with the urge to chew on her clothes (I didn't).  For many months now it's been one scarf.  It's white, and it used to have big chunks of string clumped together hanging off the end.  It doesn't any more.  I started to get scared when I had to have a pair of scissors nearby constantly to cut pieces off the actual scarf itself.  At some point I had told myself that as long as it was just the string, not the wool itself, it wasn't that big of a deal. Now I've given up making rules about it, and every day the scarf hangs right there in the closet, on the door, and every day it gets a little bit shorter. What am I going to do when it's summer and it doesn't make sense to have a scarf in the closet?

I tell my counselor that I'm not interested in learning to stop having pica.  It's not damaging me.  I can control it. It's not like I do it in public.  Except that I do.  I'm doing it right now.  I can't leave the house without cutting several pieces and putting them in my pocket.  In the fall, I started having terrible stomach pain. I've broken my front teeth four times on various items (plastic mostly), and now my dentist tells me that my back teeth are so grinded down they may have to be removed. I can't go anywhere without a bottle of water, because I choke on things, even if it's actual food. I'm terrified that I'm going to end up with an esophageal blockage like my dog and people will not believe the irony.

I'm the weird kid in the third grade who sits in the corner and rocks.  That's what it feels like.  It's like if I can't chew on something all the time, the anxiety will be too much to handle.  I could describe exactly how it feels, why it works, but I won't, because no matter how familiar the need for comfort might sound, a part of your brain will still be thinking, but, dude, you're eating paper. That's fucking weird.

But I've ignored all of this for as long as possible.  I'm not an alcoholic. Having pica is not like having a problem with alcohol.  But it is an addiction.  And reading Drinking; A Love Story, sometimes I have to reread a page like the information is going to be on a test because it's so true.  I have other addictions.  I'm just too weird for them to be alcohol and drugs.  I have to pick the odd ones. Pica is one of them.  I'm starting to realize how much my addictions control my every day life.  Some things I can still do. I can teach without anxiety, because it's not really me teaching.  It's this persona I put on when I get in the front of the classroom.  This person says the same things every term, makes the same jokes, writes the same notes on the board. But lately I've begun to see cracks-- even when I'm teaching I begin to feel anxious.  Tired.  I don't want to do this any more.  I just want to go home and hide. I can go to my girls' functions, because that's the public mom me.  I avoid other parents-- I carry a book and disdain conversation.

I believe people think of me as someone who's not scared to tell the truth, who is honest.  And I am, about those things I allow people to know.  But there are secrets I keep-- some I will always keep.  At some point in this last year, the secrets got too heavy or something.  Because now I feel nailed in place. I have to be alone. I am tired. And at some point I have to unload some of these secrets. I have to at least acknowledge to myself that my behavior has become a problem.  You are what you do, not who you think you are or who you want to be. My secrets have, in most of the ways that count, taken over my life.