Faulted, Flailing, Failing, and Forgiveness (at Forty)

How's that for an alliterative title?

Last night, something, or should I say, someone happened to me. But I have to say something first before I actually write about what that was and who it was. (Okay, it was Eight).

I've never had great confidence in myself, but over the years I've come to accept the things I will never be and the things I probably won't ever have. But, I have also finally decided that there's something that I actually like about myself: I am comfortable with my outgoing personality, my ability to be silly and have fun, and sometimes even my verbosity. I highly believe in the powers of the written and spoken word and encourage people to communicate whenever and however they can, be it by letter, email, face-to-face - whatever.

I noticed from the time Eight was a mere One and A-Half that she was a talker. Her vocabulary was astounding for her age and she amazed her pre-school teachers when, at barely Two, they said she could probably run their class. (Swear to Thirteen Billion, they said that.) And yes, I wrote only days ago how her chatterbox ways were grating on me and yes, I still mean it (although not as emphatically). Over the years, though, it has been becoming my happy realization that Eight is like me in the one way in which it's okay with me that she is: she, like me, is silly and fun, but mostly I'm thrilled that she uses her words. And last night, I found out just how articulately and thoroughly she knows how to express her small self with those words.

We sat together until midnight, the two of us holding hands, the two of us crying. First, she stared at me with her huge, blue eyes and cried while she spewed her innermost feelings about her troubles with school and how she's already worried that she's not smart enough for third grade and will never be smart enough for college because she's struggling with math (for the record, she is quite bright). She confessed to using a calculator when she was struggling. She told me about the mean children at school and her feelings about not having a younger sibling (because as she told me, she would know just how to be the perfect older sister and take wonderful, loving care of a brother or sister); she explained how it makes her feel sad when I am on the phone and how I shoo her away; how she hates herself because she annoys everyone and how nobody calls her first for play-dates and how she's always the one asking. Suddenly her age-appropriate clothing is now ugly, she feels incapable of everything and anything, and she thinks I don't want to spend time with her. She doesn't understand why I do things that she can't do with me and why I get upset with her when she asks me where the ice cream is. She wanted to know why I yell at her all the time.

I looked at my Eight in disbelief.

In my own defense, she gets a disproportionate amount of attention in comparison to Twelve and I most certainly do spend time with her and I have gone above and beyond for her as a class parent and even when I wasn't the class parent. And because she's a child, she seems to need me most when 1) the phone rings (it's always the best time to tell me that she has a hole in her sock or that she can't find her Polly Pockets), 2) we are watching a movie we've seen 18 times and after only getting three hours sleep the night before, I doze a bit, 3) she is fully involved in a movie or a game and I decide to write or check my email because, well... I fucking enjoy doing it , or 4) I go out once every two months and she can't bear to be without me even though she's going to sleep anyway.

Anyone that's a parent can relate to these things, I'm sure. It's quite frustrating to never be able to close the bathroom door to pee without someone trying to break in or tell you a really loooong dream she had through the door. We all know it's impossible to have an uninterrupted adult conversation because even when we walk into another room for privacy, there are always footsteps not far behind. I've tried to talk to Eight about how I need grown-up time and privacy, just like she needs her private time with her little friends. I've tried to let her know that sometimes I need to be able to think a complete thought without it being interrupted. It's not mean, it's just... true. I've also tried to explain to her that she needs to be respectful of me and the very few things I ask of her (and her brother) and to be a good listener. Shit, my kids really have it easy here - too easy. So when I ask either of then to brush their teeth at least once a fucking day, they can comply to the request without an argument. Right?

But she was right on some levels and man, to see my faults and possible misguidances through the eyes and mouth of my Mini-Articulate-Me threw me. Maybe all these years that I thought I had my parenting skills down pretty pat, I didn't. I had always thought since the time my kids were able to move around as infants that it was best to speak to them as small people rather than speaking to them all goofy and babyish all the time, as they would learn better communication skills that way. I was right, too, since my kids both were exceptional speakers and were always able to communicate clearly as soon as they learned their first words. But maybe I went too far. Maybe by trying to reason with them all the time and by me trying to be honest and explain things to them was the wrong way to go. Maybe although bright and communicative, Eight just still wasn't understanding my explanations. How could she not understand that it's rude to interrupt a conversation just because she feels the need to tell people she saw a caterpillar or the dog farted? How could she not understand that if after the tenth, "please brush your teeth" they still weren't brushed, that my yelling isn't because I'm mean, but because I'm frustrated?

But those aren't the real questions. They're: How the hell don't I - Ol'Forty - understand that she is just eight; my Eight? How is it that even though it all sounds reasonable to me, a supposedly reasonable, intelligent adult, that it might be completely unreasonable gibberish to her? How is it that she sat there, so maturely, yet so gripped by her sadness that she just couldn't stop sobbing and saying horribly awful things, that I never realized just how small and vulnerable she truly is?

All I could do was cry with her, apologizing.

Forty-Four came down to see what the commotion was about and just stood over us, glaring down at me. He later chastised me for crying in front of Eight, standing by his belief that it's too scary for kids to see their parents cry. He said she was just in a mood and the gist of the rest of that "conversation" was that I shouldn't have indulged in her alleged "mood."

Maybe I've expected my children to understand too many things that were far beyond their comprehension. Maybe I've been a little harsh here and there because my own private, non-child-related things are pressing on me.

But even if I screwed up in some ways with my kids, I stand by my own belief that they can know their parents are humans and as humans, we are imperfect. Parents make mistakes and should always apologize when they do. There is absolutely nothing wrong with showing emotion to those you love, whether big or small, or with asking for forgiveness, no matter who you are.

I learned a lot in my almost-two weeks of being Ol' Forty. A friend recently told me there's always room for improvement with everything and I applied that to this situation. Certainly, I can always improve my parenting skills and with Eight's confessions and insights about how she feels about things in her life and how she feels about me at times really opened my big, green orbs. I learned that even my child can humble me and that she can also be quite profound. I learned that I have a lot to learn.

That scene will play in my head forever, I am sure. It will serve as a reminder of many things:

- My kids can be exceptionally deep and thoughtful. And everything they say should be considered.
- While they need to be loved and entertained, I still stand by my children needing to learn and respect adult/child boundaries.
- Even if my kids are frustrating the shit out of me, I need to step back and make sure my responses are appropriate and based on their actions and behaviors - not based on anything else.
- The unconditional love we give them is fully reciprocated. Eight told me I was the best mother and how I am never, ever wrong.

But in the end, even if have a wonderfully articulate child, even if I have tried to explain the unexplainable to her in the past and have to learn not to anymore as she is still just a little kid, I still had to make sure she knew and understood that I am human and fallible (of course, in smaller words).

"Mommy was wrong," I told her. "Please forgive me."

And she took my face in her little hands and did.

Cigarettes and Paco Rabanne....

I remember certain things about my dad: how he wore the ugliest boat shoes ever; how soft his silver hair felt; how he liked to eat his eggs mixed with potatoes and his tuna fish soaked with tons of lemon juice. He drank only coffee and water when he wasn’t drinking scotch, he loved watching the Rocky Horror Picture Show, and every once in awhile, I saw him reading a book, which made him seem more interesting to me for some reason. I remember the rock paper-weight I painted for him was in his top bureau drawer along with all the other things he probably forgot were there, he owned too many pairs of white socks that nobody ever wanted to match up and roll into sock-balls, and he smelled of cigarettes and Paco Rabanne.

However, going fishing with him when I was a little girl probably remains my most significant memory because those were the only times I actually spent time with him at all. We’d wake up at some ridiculous hour, maybe 4:30 am, pack up our bologna sammies, a thermos of water and some chips, and then get our poles together for our day on the water. We’d pull into Freeport’s Nautical Mile while it was still dark outside, unload all of our stuff, and bring it onto the boat we’d spend half the day on. Then we’d go find a stool at the counter in the greasy diner where we always ate our before-fishing breakfast of eggs, toast and home fries. By the time we were done eating, the sun would be up and the morning actually looked like morning.

We’d settle into our spot on the party boat, defrost our spearing and squid and wait to depart. I always felt awkward being alone with my dad because I really didn’t know how to have a conversation with him. But by the time the boat pulled away, that awkwardness dissipated. My dad would talk about the buoys, and how the captain knew where to anchor and just anything about fishing in general. I’d ask him questions and he’d always be happy to provide the answers. By the end of each fishing trip, I had a lot of fluke in my bucket and a new appreciation for the kind of relationship I could have with my dad.

Until I became a teenager, that is, and I eschewed fishing trips with my dad for nonsense time with my friends, trips to the mall with my boyfriend, or simply the allure of my warm bed. I was too cool and too busy for my dad, or so I thought, and as an adult looking back now, I would bet my eyeballs that he probably felt at least a little bit deserted and disappointed.

As kids, we all think our parents will live to be gray, shrunken shadows of their youthful selves so how could I have known I should have ditched my friends in order to hurry up and make memories with my dad because he’d be dead by the time I was nineteen? At almost 40, I don’t have nearly enough memories of him to be at peace with his death. He missed too much:

…my first experience at college, even if it was only Nassau

…walking me down the aisle and dancing with me. To this day, it’s too hard for me to watch anyone dance with their fathers.

…the joy of being a grandpa. After suffering with 4 females his whole life, he missed enjoying 2 grandsons and one princess.

…holding his oldest daughter’s hand through brain cancer and survival, and holding up his wife, as well.

… seeing all three of his girls as women, watching us stumble through life, picking us up when we fell down, cheering us on when we deserved it or simply because we needed it. And boy, do I need it now.

…teaching his grandkids how to bait a hook and how to tell when it was a fish or a crab biting the line.

…seeing his granddaughter at her first dance recital, being dissed by her dance partner but taking control to a roomful of applause.

…seeing his grandson –my son - on stage dancing like nobody’s business, shocking the shit out of everyone, especially me.

…watching me make that monumental walk across the Hofstra stage at almost 40 years old, finally earning my Bachelor’s Degree.

Admittedly, this blurb is pretty random and is basically just a self-serving recognition of my mistakes as a kid and my sadness at those realizations as an adult. It’s frustrating knowing I have to make an effort to remember his voice and how very few times I spent alone with him. I hate knowing I’ve spent half of my life without him and how I forgot what having a father is like. I hate the fact that I will never be able to know what kind of relationship I could have had with him as a grown daughter, instead of only having memories of being a young, selfish teenager.

I know there’s nothing I can do because, even though I hate to say this, but it is what it is. I suppose if anything at all, the tiny consolation of having a few memories will have to carry me through.

At least until they fade…

Have a Magical F****** Day

Whoever said that Disney World is the happiest place in the world where dreams come true never went there with my two kids.

Let’s start at the beginning:

My kids have been begging me to visit Grammy Sixty-Seven for years. Camp was ending with three weeks of nothingness looming before them so I said, why not? I booked the flight, packed three carry-, ons, and waited for our day of travel.

I white-knuckled it about two hours into the Jet Blue flight before finally ordering a small bottle o’ calm. My $6.00 friend-in-a-bottle soothed my rattled flying-nerves enough so that when we landed in steamy Ft. Lauderdale, I felt ready for the week ahead.

Or, so I thought.

It all started off pleasant enough: we were greeted by a thrilled Sixty-Seven and her side-kick, Forty-Seven. We had some dinner, had some drinks, and settled in. The following day was spent by the pool as my skin sizzled and the kids swam with Auntie Forty-Seven.

What to do tomorrow? I thought. Surely, we can’t just swim every day. We can swim at home in NY. So, I informed Sixty-Seven that the next day, we were packin’ it up and heading out to see Mickey and friends.

The next morning I was greeted by two very unhappy looking people that resembled my children. We threw the bags in the trunk, brought a bag of snacks for the three -hour ride, buckled up, and headed out.

The ‘are-we-there yets’ started as we pulled out of Sixty-Seven’s parking lot.

Thirty-Nine: “We’re going to Disney World, damn it. It’s fun!”

Tired mumbles and Nintendo DS noises responded.

Now typically, I don’t drive anywhere that’s not just a quick jump onto the Meadowbrook or more than a half hour away, never mind driving in an unfamiliar state for three hours with two children and a mother who has no highway experience. Oh, and not a written direction in sight.

Thirty-Nine: “Do you know how to get there?”

Sixty-Seven: “Yeah, sort of.”

Just know that this came from a woman who can find anywhere in the US by taking side roads but yet, (as I found out the last day of Disney) needed to write down four words of direction on a scrap of paper just to get to the street out of the resort. “Turn right on Victory Lane.” Anyway…

The driving part turned out to be simple- straight down the Florida Turnpike- but the drama in the backseat conjured up an image of my dead father yelling at me, Forty-Two, and Forty-Seven on the way to our yearly summer visits to Montauk. My eyes were bulging and the veins in my head pulsating; all I needed was an unfiltered Camel hanging out of the corner of my mouth.

Thirty-Nine: “Shut up back there. I’m not driving three hours to Disney for you two while listening to this shit the entire ride there.

Where’s a bottle o’calm when you need one? Why aren’t they excited to go on the fucking Mad Hatter’s Tea Ride? Whose stupid idea was it to go to Disney?

When we got to our All Star Music resort, everyone was walking around, smiling brightly while handing out Mickey Mouse stickers and Disney pins. Everyone who greeted us was optimistic that we’d have a magical day. When we departed the Customer Relations area a half hour later with reassurance that my five-year old hopper passes were still usable, and with twenty five stickers and four My First Trip to Disney pins, their voices echoed behind us to have a magical day. The idea of having a magical day seemed unfathomable to me since these people hadn’t been in the car ride all the way there, but I wanted to believe I would.

When we got there, I decided that magical seemed too strong a word to associate with our day so far. As I forced Twelve to go on the Mad Hatter’s Tea Ride, all I hoped for was to have an unviolent day, or just a day that didn’t include law enforcement, hair-pulling, name-calling or medication of any type. We sat down and I immediately asked Twelve not to spin fast, since I’m old and had more potential to vomit. Twelve spun the fuck out of the tea cup anyway. I yelled. Seven got dizzy. Twelve got pissed.

I wobbled off and headed to the Haunted Mansion, telling Seven it’s fun more than scary. She seemed good with that, seemed being the operative word.

As we finally got to the black doors that we waited twenty minutes for, standing in four individual pools of sweat, Seven tore away in fear. I couldn’t help it: all of Magic Kingdom heard my rage over her cries of terror. We plunked our asses down outside, my inner, immature-self refusing to talk to an uncontrollably crying, yet apologetic, Seven. I envied the people coming off the ride, all happy with their stupid Disney dreams coming true. But when I saw little three and four-year olds coming out completely unscathed and without a hint of fear in their eyes, potentially scarring them for life, I pretty much folded my arms, stomped my feet, and pouted while I waited for my other brat to come out.

Seven: “Boo-hoo. Boo-hoooooooooooooooooooo”

Thirty-Nine, close to tears and forgetting for a moment that I was, in fact, an adult: “It’s my favorite ride! It’s NOT scary! STOP CRYING!”

(I know one of you out of my small reading audience is saying what a mean, horrible bitch-of-a-mother I must be. To you I say… shut the fuck up). Onward….

After what seemed like an unmagical eternity in hell later, Twelve and Sixty-Seven came back. I dragged Twelve back onto the twenty minute line, and finally got my ridiculous ride that was now tainted by my guilt. The fun had already been sucked out of it by Seven. But Sixty-Seven took her to see the parade anyway while I jumped onto the moving, little black car, and swirled through the Haunted Mansion with the hitch-hiking ghosts, simultaneously reminiscing about being on that ride with my dad, Forever Fifty-Two, thirty years ago. It made me forget what an asshole I had been to my annoying, yet pathetically cute, sobbing child, even if just for a few moments.

By the time we got off, Sixty-Seven looked drippy and irritated. Apparently, while I was trying desperately to find a second or two of enjoyment, Seven had been displaying her infuriatingly strong, and obviously heat resistant will to my mother. According to Sixty-Seven, my child glared at her through a mass of oh, I don’t know, one million people closing in around her, seemingly unaffected by the fear of getting lost or snatched up. I mean, really, I can totally understand her crazed fear of scary fake corpses in a fake haunted mansion while her mother would have held her hand. I mean, that is way, way scarier than standing in the midst of millions of weird, sweaty, smelly strangers wearing mouse ears.

After yelling at her to obey her grandma and giving my people-are-crazy-and-can-snatch-you-away-forever speech, we left the area to find some other kind of torture. My mother and I walked around grumbling how we were both shocked that my kids seemed to be the only ones on the planet that seemed to hate Disney. I replayed everything in my head from the night before to that moment, trying to see where I went wrong when I offered to take my kids to a fun place. I had prodded them into the car that morning, excited for them, and for me. I felt like a good Mama, trying to make the last of their summer break fun, happy, and enjoyable. I had been intent on overcoming my fear of driving three-plus hours on an unfamiliar highway in an unfamiliar state, which I did, and I got us all there in one piece, thank God. But almost from the moment we saw that sign welcoming us to Walt Disney World, Where Dreams Come True, I saw only misery on their faces and heard nothing but complaints.

Anyway, the day continued like that. All day. All fucking day. And after cursing and yelling at unruly children in the happiest fucking place on earth, my former tingly feelings about being a good Mama dissolved into, where did I go wrong and why are my children so ungrateful?

We flew around on Aladdin’s ridiculous carpet for all of thirty seconds, grabbed a $40 freakin’ basket of chicken fingers, but, alas, we at least all finally agreed that The Pirates of the Caribbean was acceptable to all of us. The Buzz Lightyear ride was the hands-down winner of the hateful day, which we topped off with A Small World.

As we were leaving the park, Twelve and Seven decided that they needed snacks. Succumbing to the pressure of non-stop whining, I spent $6.50 on an ice pop, an ice cream, and a small dose of just shut the hell up. Then I just watched as the ices melted down their arms anyway.

Vendor: “Can I get you something, too?”

Worn and Weary Thirty-Nine: “No, thanks.”

Vendor: “I’ll give it to you free, just because you’re a great mom.”

Huh?

Now, venom is sooooo not allowed in a place where princesses and happy, yet, ginormous mice, dogs and ducks wander around inviting joyful children to join them for photo-ops, but I had been feeling venomous all day. But just because you’re a great mom sounded so nice, so welcome, so completely Disney-ish and an unexpected departure from the nasty crap I had been hearing all day. He didn’t whine when he said it, or complain about anything, nor did he sneer at me. And this, coming from a complete stranger who didn’t know that I was on the verge of cursing out my children several hours ago. This, from a guy wearing a ridiculous get-up forced on him and others like him throughout the park who normally I’d be laughing at if I had any more venom left, but strangely enough, in that moment, I didn’t. The exhaustion of defeat had just about dissipated, all because some dude in a red and white striped costume offered me a free $4.00 cup of soda and a pleasant, if totally unfounded, compliment.

Thirty-Nine, (totally allowing this stranger’s kind words to seep into whatever part of my spirit had not been crushed, which was miniscule): “Um, a Diet Coke, please?”

He handed me my drink and I walked away, ignoring my arguing children and their sour, red, melting faces. The fact that he didn’t have any alcohol handy to spike my beverage somehow didn’t even bother me, either. My lip twitched. I almost smiled.

Maybe I left Disney without having a “magical day” as I was oft told to do, and maybe my dreams didn’t come true because they were crushed to death by my children’s utter dislike and disappointment, but at least I didn’t leave there dehydrated.