Two Little Girls

When I was in 1st and 2nd grade, there was a little girl in my class named Shonda.  She was little and timid, always speaking with quaver in her voice.  Her skin was that really pale shade that almost makes a person look see-through.  And she smelled.  She smelled stale, like she didn't bathe regularly, or maybe wore the same clothes multiple times before they were washed.  At the time, I thought it must have been a personal choice, like she wanted to be the smelly kid in our class.  I didn't realize then that not every kid went home to loving, attentive parents who made sure hygiene was maintained.  So I avoided her.  I'm not sure how it happened, but suddenly one day, my mom announced that I was going to her house to play.  The details are fuzzy on how my mom even knew who Shonda was; she wasn't a class parent, nor would I have been asking to spend any more time with her than was necessary in a school day.  But she had already arranged it with Shonda's mom, and she didn't seem to understand that I viewed this as a punishment, not a reward.  My mom drove me to Shonda's house on a Saturday, and I spent a few hours checking out her toys and going along with what she wanted to do, but was miserable throughout.  It was such a relief when my mom came back for me.

Sometime later, we were at school with all the kids who were dropped off early by their working parents, and I was sitting in the line of my classmates on the dusty gym floor, when I was approached by the cool girls in our class, Celeste and Felicia.  Celeste actually had pierced ears, and had beautiful, long black hair.  At age 7, she was already a queen bee.  Why was she talking to me?  Because Shonda was in the corner crying.  "So?" I asked, defensively.  "You should go talk to her," Celeste commanded.  "You're her friend."  Okay, this had gone too far, I decided.  Just because my mom had forced me to go to her house, didn't mean we were friends.  And somehow other kids at school knew about it.  I walked over to where Shonda sat crying with her head in her arms, and I told her I didn't want to be her friend.  Which did nothing to alleviate her tears.  I didn't know what else to do, so I walked back to where I had been before.  Celeste was confused.  I explained that I wasn't Shonda's friend, so please not to bother me about her crying.  This was met with appropriate disdain, although I remember thinking at the time, You don't want to be her friend either, you're trying to pass the responsibility off on me.

Needless to say, I did not talk to Shonda again.  I don't remember if she was in my class the next year, but by 6th grade I had moved to Ohio and lost touch with all of my elementary classmates.  I appreciated the clean slate, that I could go to a school where no one knew that I had blown off the friendless girl crying in the gym.  Of course, I knew even at the time that I was doing the wrong thing.  But I didn't have enough maturity or compassion to see any other way to do it.

Flash forward 20 years.  I am a stay at home mommy with a very active 1 year old son and a husband who works long hours and is finishing his degree.  When summer comes, we are outside everyday that it is nice, and my son's love of dogs has us traversing the neighborhood, trying to find pooches that are outside, available to pet.  This leads us to Amanda's house.  Amanda lives on the corner, on the way to the playground.  She has a beagle named Jack who is frequently tethered in the backyard, and his run reaches almost to the street, so we can go see him without really trespassing.  The first time Amanda comes out to talk to us, I am instantly reminded of Shonda.  She is in the first grade, is little with brown hair and freckles on her nose.  She speaks quietly, with a lisp, and as she approaches, I smell her.  In the intervening years, I have learned to identify these smells.  First, there is the unwashed smell.  Then there is the stale cigarette smell.  And finally, the smell that I can only identify as the poor person smell.  I don't know what generates it, but have only ever smelt it in the homes of people who are really down on their luck.  I try to keep my own house just clean enough that it doesn't produce this smell.  Amanda is eager to talk to us, and tell us about her dog, and show me that she can now do a cartwheel.  Again, I recognize something that I didn't know back when I played at Shonda's house:  that children who are desperate to gain the approval of strangers only do so because they don't get it from their family.

This time, I do the right thing.  I talk to Amanda and tell her about my son and his love of dogs.  The next time we are walking to the playground, she materializes as we pass her house and asks to come along.  I agree, and maybe a little begrudgingly try to share the attention I would otherwise have focused entirely on my own child.  The next week, James and I are playing in the front yard when Amanda rides by on her bike.  She turns into our driveway and immediately joins in.  I let her.  This becomes a sort of regular occurrence.  At one point, I meet her dad when we are once again admiring Jack the dog.  He immediately sends up my nose-crinkle dislike dander, which intensifies when he speaks to his daughter.  He is rude and arrogant and belittles her, and what's worse, he does it with an audience.  I want to do something to interrupt him and reverse the words he's spoken, but I don't know how.  Amanda and I spend the rest of the summer in an informal "Big Sister" role, hoping that my kindness will make a difference.  When the school year starts, Amanda is obviously less available, and I become pregnant with my second child and spend the fall asleep on the couch.  I am happy to see her riding bikes in the neighborhood with other girls around her age though.  When the weather becomes nice again, James and I resume our neighborhood dog patrol, but we don't see Jack outside anymore.  Then the high grass in the yard signals that the house, like others in our neighborhood, has been abandoned.  Amanda and her family are gone.

Just two weeks ago, I took my three boys down to the playground.  We passed the house that has been empty all these years and saw a moving truck in the yard.  I looked for Amanda, but I didn't see her.  While we were at the playground, she appeared.  She came over to talk to me and meet my baby, although I don't think she recognized me.  I was glad to see her, glad that she has continued to grow up, although disappointed that she still has that uncared for look and smell.  Eventually, she remembered me, when she followed us home and played with the boys in the yard.  She is 10 now, and has begun showing up at our house every day.  I am once again trying to be intentionally nice to her, although she likes to give me advice about how I should decorate my house or get my baby to sleep through the night.  I hope that I can show Amanda what love should be, and I hope that by doing the right thing this time, I can be forgiven for not being a friend to Shonda when she needed one.

Giving it up

For the past five years, my primary job has been a stay-at-home Mommy.  It is something that I actually love doing, and seem to be good at, although there was never an aptitude test in high school that could tell me that.  When I consider everything that I do: keeping up with laundry so everyone has appropriate clothes to wear, washing dishes and preparing meals so we are all nourished, teaching the children how to play basketball and match pictures and clean their room and climb monkey bars and take turns...the term that comes to mind is manager.  I am the boss; I like doing it and I seem to be good at it.  But I am also a person, which means that I am imperfect, I make mistakes, and every day I deal with stuff that is completely out of my control.  So the other side of the coin is that I am a Christian.  Which means that I believe that God, my God, is the ruler of the universe and everything in it.  And since He created and runs the whole show, I can have peace by placing my life under His control and following His will.

That's a scary concept for someone who likes to manage.

Years ago, someone very wise and very caring described it to me like this:
  If your life is a sheet of paper, with all your concerns and loves and fears contained upon it, then becoming a Christian is like handing the paper to God and saying, "Here you go.  Take my life and let it be consecrated unto Thee." (or something like that...)  But sometimes we get scared.  We worry that God isn't big enough or smart enough or present enough to handle everything on that paper.  So we rip off a corner and say, "This is my relationship with my sister.  I think I'll take this back and handle it the way I want."  Or you take another chunk off, and say, "This is how I feel when I see people who are suffering, and I don't like the way you want me to act towards them, so I'll just go back to what I'm comfortable doing."  And pretty soon you have your life back, in pieces, and you are once again trying to figure out how to deal with everything on your own, without the God of the universe guiding you.

Today, I recognize that I can't actually control much beyond my own response to the world around me.  What I need for my life to work is to hand God that whole sheet of paper, intact, and let him carry my burdens for me.  I sat down and listed everything that I care about, what keeps me up at night, my worries and fears and the people and things that I sometimes find myself worshiping instead of the One who gave them to me in the first place. (I showed the list to Chris, and he said, "That's a long list."  Yeah, I'm a control freak!)   I want to give it all to God, and I know that when I do, He'll care for everything on my list better than I can myself.

For the Love of Winston

Three years ago, I gave birth a second time; my second son, my second C-section, my second reminder that I am not in control.  I thought about what another kid would be like, and silly me, I was actually surprised when a whole different child came out that looked and sounded and acted different from the first one.  He came at his own appointed time, not when the doctor wanted or even when I wanted, but a whole two weeks early.  Unlike the first time, my hospital room was not a cocoon for my family for a few days as we got used to each other.  This time, it felt like a cell, keeping me away from my husband who was taking care of the toddler at home, and separating me from the new life that was down the hall in the NICU.  Instead of laying in my bed and cuddling my baby, I was laboriously plodding to my baby's room, getting swollen ankles and passing out in the world's most uncomfortable armchair.  Coming home from the hospital was a relief, but it didn't make life any easier.  Now there were two diapers to change, two different sleep schedules to contend with, and two children of vastly different ages and abilities who wanted me to entertain them, hold them, feed them, and love them.

I'm the second child myself, so I know how it feels to be Winston.  I was always shorter (still am!), always less mature, always sharing the attention of my parents.  Every so often, I buy Winston a new outfit, just so some of his clothes aren't hand-me-downs.  When James was 3 and Winston was 1, we would take our walks around the neighborhood.  Winston was no longer content to sit in a stroller if his big brother was walking on his own, so he would struggle to keep up on his little legs, and eventually give in that he just couldn't do as much as James.  That was also when James was going through a phase of high-fiving each mailbox that we passed (I really have no idea what that was about, but he stopped doing it after a few months, so...).  Even though there was no discernible purpose to it, Winston just had to do whatever his brother was doing.  So the little guy, at least a foot shorter than his brother, would come along behind him, stretching as high as he could to try to touch the mailboxes.  Some were just too high, despite his jumps and tricks to do it.  Being the ridiculous Mommy that I am, I would give him a boost so we could move on to the next one.  Now James likes to wear his Angry Birds shirt every where, and he points to each bird and says, "Angry Bird...shirt!"  And Winston, again being the follower, points to his own shirt, which might have letters or numbers or surfboards on it, and says, "Angry Bird shirt!"

My mom likes to say that I deserve Winston as my child, and she's right that he bears many of my personality traits, as well as being my doppelganger baby.  He's energetic and talkative and weird.  He loves to read books together, and already recognizes several words.  He is the child who can be asked to go play by himself and actually do it.  I like to stand in the hall and listen sometimes, to hear what play he is coming up with on his own.  He is also the child who will always eat off my plate.  I love that we share a love of Chipotle burritoes, guacamole, Greek yogurt, Almond Joy, cashews and pistachios.  I'm not such a fan of other characteristics that he possesses; I don't like when he is bossy or aggressive.  I don't like when he talks back or makes a mess on purpose.  But I also understand that he does these things to stand out and get noticed.  I'm realizing more and more that my role in Winston's life will be to nudge him in the right direction and hope I don't mess up the unique person he is. 

This year, I think we found the perfect way to celebrate Winston's birthday.  We don't have much money to do extra things or give extravagant gifts.  So we let him choose.  We let him decide to go as a family to the zoo.  We let him eat chocolate ice cream cones and cupcakes.  We let him watch Blue's Clues and play Angry Birds Space.  And we gave him attention.  I took him to see a movie at the dollar theater; thank goodness it was cheap, because he fell asleep after about 20 minutes, so I got the treat of seeing a movie and cuddling my boy who is starting to be a little too old for that.  We sat and read books together, we went for walks and picked flowers and wore our sunglasses.  I think we made him feel special.  I think we let him know that he is a valued member of our family.  And now that his birthday is over, we are back to calling the shots and telling him that all he can choose is his attitude.  He is totally his own person, and a completely different challenge for me to parent.  He is my sweetheart.

After running through the rain with Mommy

After its over

Today I took the boys to the library.  They love it there, love playing with the trains and dollhouse, love the books and the stools that look like mushrooms.  Its always a relaxing way to spend an hour, they are so calm in that environment and I can actually sit down and even read a book myself while they play in a confined area.  But when I walked in, I saw someone I knew.  The youngest brother of my ex-best friend, and he was there with her kids, who I haven't seen in the five years since I ended our friendship.  I am such a coward and hate conflict, and I can never just be myself when I see her family because I think someone is going to say something rude or bring up our falling out, so I felt suffocated as soon as I realized who was there.  I let the kids go play and skulked down the dvd aisles so they wouldn't see me.  I was so relieved when I heard them checking out their books, hoping it meant they were leaving, but then the brother said, "Do you guys want to stay and keep playing?" and apparently they did, so they parked it on a couch across the room from where the boys like to play.  Still skulking, I sat down with my kids in a seat that I hoped the dollhouse would obscure enough to avoid detection.  And then her daughter, this little girl that I knew from birth and then suddenly stopped seeing, came over to where my son was playing with the trains and began to play with him.  I sat and watched them without saying a word.  She is quite big now, almost 8 years old if my memory is correct, and while she retains that same look that she had as a toddler, she has changed enough that she looks more like her mother.  I met my friend when she was just 11, a few years older than her daughter is today, and the similarity took me back to those first innocent years of friendship.  Back when we bonded over everything we had in common, when our mutual dark humor kept us laughing while the beautiful people at our school just flipped their hair and called us weird.  It was such a good friendship back then, and it lasted so long that I couldn't imagine my life without her. 
Then we got older.  We went to college and had different interests and different plans.  And sometimes she seemed a little snippy and critical of me.  Then we got married, and she became really obviously critical of my husband and sometimes my family.  Then she had a baby, a sweet little girl who seemed to soften and distract her for a while so that we could be friends again and have this point of mutual love that kept our friendship hanging on.  Then I got pregnant.  And she became someone different, someone who was always critical, giving me bad advice and making the increasingly brief time we spent together miserable.  It was harder to ignore the other people in my life who questioned why I was holding on to a relationship that had become toxic and wasn't making me happy, but I could still remember the wonderful times we had had together, and kept the hope that they would come back.  I made a last-ditch effort to save our friendship by telling her exactly how I was feeling and imploring her to stop being so mean.  Things were okay for a few months, although strained.  Finally, I had my baby.  She came to see me in the hospital and brought me her child's baby clothes.  I thought things might get better, until the day she called my 3 month old son fat.  My mama bear emerged from her cave and I vowed that the friendship was over.  I didn't answer the next time she called, and she seemed to understand why, because that was the last time.  I felt like I had a gangrenous limb amputated; I missed the functional times, but was glad to be rid of the diseased appendage that was threatening to take over the rest of me. 
My husband asked why I had ended things after she was critical of my child, since she'd been critical of my husband for years, and I could only say that picking on an adult who could defend himself (and he did) was completely different from her behavior towards my son, who didn't even know what she was saying, much less how to come back from it.  So its been over for five years, and I can honestly say I don't miss her.  I never backslid and called her trying to patch things up.  I don't feel like I owe her anything.  But watching our kids play together with no orchestration from either of us made me wistful.  I miss having a friend close by who knows me so well that I can just show up at her house when I'm stressed or bored, and we will have fun no matter what we end up doing.  I miss our shared history, because without her I don't remember things as well.  I miss having someone that has known me for most of my life and likes the cumulation of who I am.

The 90's

This past Friday, I had the immense pleasure of going out by myself for a little bit.  The best part of getting out by myself (no matter what I'm doing) is playing my own music in the car.  Not Sunday School Songs, not The Lion King soundtrack, not even sports talk radio.  Just the station I like, which is mostly pop music.  So on Friday, I get in the car and immediately switch over to my radio station, only to be even more pleasantly surprised that they are doing a 90's music weekend.  Playing all the hits from the decade when I started listening to popular music and deciding for myself what I liked.  It was wonderful.  I drove along in a rainstorm listening to Chumbawumba and Backstreet Boys and Dave Matthews Band.  And every song reminded me of my friends and my experiences from the 90's; its amazing how music becomes linked to memories in such a powerful way.  I wistfully thought of high school and marching band and uncertainty and crushes.  And as the rain continued to beat down on the windshield, I remembered this Kathleen Turner movie that my sister and I liked to watch when we were growing up, called "Peggy Sue Got Married."  Its about a woman who suffers a head injury at her high school reunion and wakes up 20 years in the past, reliving high school.  Even though everyone else is exactly as she remembers them, she still retains the memories of the life she lived after graduation, getting married and having kids and the Vietnam War.  And then I imagined, what if this storm somehow transported me back to the 90's just as I am while everyone else remained the same?  What would it be like to go through high school with an actual idea about what life would be like after?  Would I be as hardworking in school, knowing that I really didn't need those math classes, or would I try harder to understand?  Would I confidently approach a boy that I liked, or would I try to find the teenage boy who would one day become my husband so that we didn't waste any time?  I guess the question boils down to, would I try to better prepare for the life I'm currently living, or would I try to change the future?  Kathleen Turner tried to do things differently, yet still ended up with Nicolas Cage at the end of the movie, because it was her destiny.  I like to think that my life has so few regrets that the only things I would change is managing my money better when I was single, so that there wouldn't be such a struggle now.  Then I thought of all the things I enjoyed about the 90's: meeting Melissa at Tinseltown and going to the movies together with no other obligations inhibiting us from being together; riding in the back of the Micciche's Camry while they played Jay-Z or Third Eye Blind; living in a house that I wasn't responsible for, where I could sleep in on weekends because I had no other obligations.  Riding bikes with my sister in the middle of a summer night; my sophomore lunch table that threw each other birthday parties (and tried very hard to impress the table of senior boys that we sat next to); spending a week with all of my best friends at Band Camp every year.  I even miss my French teacher that I had each year and who seemed to genuinely want me to succeed in the future.  I have all of these wonderful memories of my teenage years, but at the end of the evening, I was glad to return home and find my husband and children exactly as I left them.