evolution

“Why do you work?” asked my friend the other day as I did the usual complaining about the challenges of balancing daycare and work and relationships and all that.
I thought about it. Because I want to develop too, I said.
Some days I look at Lukas babbling away before me, gaining new skills every day and I think he is just getting better and me, I am getting worse. While he gets smarter and faster and learns how to talk and move and be in this world, I am getting older and slower and my intellectual ability weakens at every night of interrupted sleep and every day of googling and gaggling and staring at my miraculous son in the solitude of my home. Basically, I am getting dumb while he gets smart. See how eloquent I have become?
No, I know, I am learning a lot about mothering and all that but it’s hard not to feel a strange and twisted sort of jealousy. He (god willing) has so much ahead of him. He is so little and able. His body is so strong as he tumbles and falls and gets up again. I love this for him but sometimes I, with my three leos in my astrological chart, reflect on the fact that I am further down on the mortal chain of ultimate disintegration. I want him to have a full life, but I don’t want to feel that he is taking mine away from me.
So I need to develop too. I need to someday be an intellectual match for my ever evolving child. That is why I want to work.

wonder mommy

I smashed the passenger side rear view mirror off my car last Monday. I was backing out of the garage and didn’t realize how close I was to the side wall. I was rushing because Lukas was strapped into his high chair due to my fear of leaving him mobile and alone in the house. It was one of those slow motion moments where you see the glass shattering and flying off in a million directions and you hear yourself saying “oh shit, the mirror!” But it’s too late. I was just warming up the car to head downtown to buy Jorg a gift voucher for a class at Firehouse gallery for his birthday. I planned to get my mom a present at Spirit Dancer and stop by the library to return books and let Lukas play. I ended up driving to the Toyota dealer to get a quote and make an appointment to have a new mirror installed. It would cost 160.00 dollars. Great. That was one expensive mistake. I drove downtown and Lukas fell asleep. I carried him around in sub zero weather with him crashed out on my arm. The gallery was closed on Mondays. Spirit Dancer wasn’t open until noon and the Library was closed in honor of Martin Luther King Day. Great. I went home to stew and try to find a silver lining. Lukas slept.

On Wednesday I went for my appointment. I made it for 11:15 so Lukas and I could eat lunch there before I took him to day care. As I sat in the waiting area with Lukas I could feel the other people watching and evaluating my parenting. It was understandable. There was really nothing better to do. It was either me and Lukas or Wheel of Fortune which was on T.V. and people seemed to move back and forth between both options depending on commercial breaks and Lukas’s level of cuteness. I was so proud of myself. I brought along a really good lunch, a hummus and cheese sandwich, a jar of organic baby food (I made sure the organic label was facing outwards) and dried fruit with milk to drink. Lukas and I played on the floor and read books. I chased him around as he pulled at bottles of wiper fluid and explained that one was blue liquid and one was orange but we wouldn’t want to drink them. My audience giggled at my witty remarks and heartfelt explanations of the world. I could almost hear them whisper to each other what a wonderful mother I was. Before we left I changed him and put his coat and hat on. I felt like saying goodbye to my spectators but didn’t want to break the fourth wall, so I simply kissed Lukas in a grand finale and headed for the door.
As I was getting in my car I thought about my perfect mommy portrait. I looked at my new mirror. It had smashed so quickly. It only takes a moment of human absent mindedness. I looked at Lukas. It feels good to make myself into wonder mommy. It feels satisfying and it isn’t really that hard. I love it when it all runs smoothly. But it is so easy to forget something or look away when he trips and falls or make the wrong decision. It all happens so fast. If I create a world with a perfect mom that I can be then I also create her shadow self….bad mom….the mom who forgets to bring lunch or doesn’t pack a diaper or is tired or impatient. Hmmmm, I don’t want to be bad mom. I guess that nobody does. But wonder mommy is oh so tempting and the audience is always there…..even when it’s only me and Lukas.

strangers arms

Lukas has gone to day care for the past two days. The first day I dropped him off while he was asleep. It was a bit vicious but oh so much easier for me. So I convinced myself that he liked it better that way too. It is a small in home place. The kids just sort of toddle around the living room and kitchen and play together. It seems sweet and cozy. They all go outside twice a day. They take a two hour nap. They seem like good and happy children. The woman who runs it had great references (that SHE gave me....skeptic susan) But it is so hard to simply trust another person, a total stranger with my child. Sometimes I wish I lived in a country where families stay together. Children stay with aunties and grandparents and older cousins. It feels somehow wrong to pay someone to care for my child. What he needs most is love. How can a stranger love my child for money? Isn't that a sort of prostitution? I guess not. I guess that I am just being dramatic. I know that I have a tighter community than most but our society just isn't set up in a way that kids stay with family. It is the norm for kids to spend hours upon hours with a stranger who may at some point love them....but not like family. I think that it is good for Lukas to be with other kids. I just have trouble not being with him. Partly because I just like the little guy. I don't want to miss any of this time with him. I know it sounds crazy. I complain all the time about how I need space. Somehow I want both things. I want space and I want to be with him. It is a balance. Today I dropped Lukas off and the other kids hugged him upon arrival. "I love Lukas" proclaimed one little girl as she hugged him. He toddled to the toy box and began digging through it until he found a book. He brought the book to his care giver and she began to read it to the children. I had planned to stay to support Lukas in this transition but he appeared not to need me. So I left. It feels odd pulling out of the driveway. I always feel that I have forgotten to tell his care giver something. "rip up the fruit leather before you give it to him." "Give a drink right when he wakes up." "Take off his grippy socks before you put his boots on." I know she will figure it out. I guess that I also want to be the one in control. I better let that go. Well, here it goes, I have years to work on that one.

here we go again

I’ve been feeling a bit resentful these days. It’s hard to watch my non baby artist friend’s lives spiral off into wild and exciting paths of adventure. While here I am fumbling with childcare, trying to plan classes while Lukas naps, begging friends and family to watch or pick up Lukas, always asking and asking for favors and help. I’m sick of it. Today I want it to be less complicated. Today Jorg announced his next trip to Germany. Well, he didn’t exactly announce it. He presented it as a possibility….a possibility that would be good for his career as well as being good for his German relationships. I don’t really have a choice. I feel so overwhelmed by it. 17 days. He will be gone for 3 weekends. And they are the three weekends right before my play opens. I feel cranky about it. I feel stressed about it. I feel like I better be earning some serious martyr points. When have I had one weekend just for me? He said that we could hire a babysitter but that is a whole different organizational nightmare. Sigh. I know that I just need to grow up, see this as an opportunity. I can experience what so many single moms go through. I can show myself how strong I am. I can get some space. But right now I just want a personal organizer. I don’t really know how to balance it all…..but I know that I will. Somehow it all works out. I just wish that my hands didn’t perpetually smell like diaper cream.

bunny wars

So, we have a new member of our family. No, don’t worry, I am not pregnant again. This is a much more docile addition. Her name is Rosa. She is a little silky, soft, yellow bunny blanket. She is not entirely new. Those of you who know Lukas know that he never travels alone. Since he was 4 months old he has been deeply bonded to Rosie his little yellow bunny blanket. I first realized his love of Rosie when I forgot to take her to my mothers last winter. Lukas would not nap. He continually reached for her and no other stuffed animal or blanket would do. But Rosie and Lukas really bonded on our trip to Germany when Rosie made the leap from the crib out into Lukas’ every day life. She ate with him and was slimed with sticky yogurt fingers. She had brotchen crumbs smeared into her once soft and fuzzy ears. She had saft (juice) dribbled on her silky soft front. She was dragged on the floor of the train to Poland as Lukas giggled and was jolted about. She was dropped in a puddle outside the train station in Koln. She has been cuddled and nuzzled so hard that she lost her once Rosy cheeks that first inspired her name. We returned from Germany and the bond was so strong that Lukas could not be parted from her. He calls her mama and wants to be cuddled with her before sleep instead of nursing. He puts his thumb in his mouth at the sight of her. Needless to say with Rosie’s growing importance my anxiety also grew. What if something happened to Rosie?!! So we bought him another one.
Now I was a lover of the Velveteen Rabbit. I know that giving Lukas a Rosie number two after she sacrificed her beauty and plushness to comfort and soothe my son is practically criminal. But what could I do? I was scared. What if Rosie fell apart? What if we lost her and we had no back up? Lukas can’t manage without her for the time that it would take to wash and dry her and so she smells like pee. (Lukas likes to rub her on his penis when I am trying to change his diaper…the bond is slightly pornographic.)
So today Rosa came in the mail. I tore open the box. There she was, soft and silky. Her cheeks were so Rosie. Her ears were pink. She had flowers all down the front of her.
Had Rosie ever been this beautiful? When Lukas woke from his nap I brought him downstairs where Rosa was sitting on the table. He noticed her right away. So I handed her over. I had prepared him for this since we ordered the bunny weeks ago. I said “Lukas Rosie is going to have a sister, a younger sister. She won’t replace Rosie. She’ll just be back up. I hope you will like her.” I doubt that any of that registered but he grabbed the new bunny without an inch of hesitance and stumbled off to the living room dragging her by the ear. His thumb was jammed in his mouth. I was shocked. I was almost annoyed with him. Where was his loyalty? How could he love this imposter as much as he loved his sacred companion? But then after about 5 minutes I noticed him standing at the coffee table. He looked serious. He was inspecting Rosa. He pulled on her ears. He looked at her pink cheeks suspiciously and poked at her perfect little eyes. He looked up at me. I thought oh no, here it comes, my first betrayal. Next I’ll lie about Santa and then it’s down hill until puberty. Years of therapy I’m sure. But instead he pulled Rosa into his enormous cheek, shoved his thumb in his mouth and shot me a knowing look as if to say “If you don’t say anything than I won’t.” And off he went, humming towards the kitchen. I can’t say that I don’t still feel guilty. As I packed him in the car today with the soft new Rosa in his lap I thought of Rosie upstairs in the crib, all alone, her dirty grey face peering out from a blanket. “How could you?” She would say. “After all that I did for you.”
Jorg and I have decided to keep the bunnies separated so that Lukas will not see that there are two. Really, I think we have to keep them apart so that Rosie doesn’t eat Rosa alive…ah sibling rivalry.