New England Mamas

Lawn Seats

My daughter was a well-traveled toddler. 

At 11 months, she spent a week or so in Holland.  The first three days were m-i-s-e-r-a-b-l-e, to the point that, by the third night, I turned to my husband and announced, "I am walking home tonight.  Enjoy the rest of your vacation."  But after that, she figured out the whole jet-lag/time-change thing and was a delight. 

We took trips to the beach, trips to New York, trips to the Maritime Provinces.  We went to concerts, and art museums, and aquariums.  We visited family.  We did stuff.

My son?  Not so much.  Second-child syndrome attacked, though it really wasn't about the birth order.  When he was born, I was a full-time doctoral student and my husband was a high school teacher.  We were brokety-broke-broke-broke.  We were also living in an isolated town over in western New Hampshire, cute enough to look at but more than an hour from anywhere else.  Even back in the day when a tank of gas wasn't a major investment, driving anyplace meant a full day trip, not a quick trip in and home before naptime.  It just didn't happen.

And then, last summer, things started to change.  We realized we could afford the little trips again, and that, having moved over near the Seacoast, we were within easier reach of more stuff.  It's still a bit remote, but less than half the distance to Boston and a good trebuchet could get you to the beach from here.

So we went camping, and we started paying attention to the touristy stuff and the opportunities that came through.  And this weekend he's going to his first big-name concert.  Never mind that, by this age, Emily had already seen Blues Traveler, Duncan Sheik, Seven Mary Three, Godsmack and the Barenaked Ladies.  (Not all at the same time.  Can you imagine?)  Jacob, at three, is starting a little bit late, but I think that the Dave Matthews Band is a good first concert for anybody.  At any age.

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Cross-posted at One More Thing.

Score One for the Seacoast Growers Association

HE SAYS:  I have the whole summer off.  I want to start a garden in the back yard.  We should eat more vegetables, and they'd be organic, local, you know.  Trendy.  And cheaper than the grocery store, right?

SHE THINKS:  Oh, you silly man.  You have no idea how much work a garden is.  Simply getting the ground broken and tilled and ready is a big project, not to mention measured out and somehow fenced or otherwise protected from the small creatures that inhabit the yard - and that's just the children.  We don't even know what kinds of animals are in the neighborhood, except for cats.  And cats are bad in gardens, because they like to deposit cat droppings therein, which are not nicely compostable and helpful like, say, cow droppings.  We'd have to start from plants, not seeds, because of how far into the season we already are, which will be much more expensive and high-maintenance.  And we're traveling or having company every weekend but two this year.  When will we have time to do the silly things like watering, weeding, thinning out?  By the way, we're planning to move next summer.  The back yard is already not very large, and adding a garden plot could make it seem smaller, not to mention being a lot of work for something we'll only use for one season.  There's space for a vegetable garden near my dream house, I just know it.  And a good, healthy blackberry bramble.   Here, we don't have the space for storing canned goods, so we'll waste untold quantities of zucchini and the lettuce will be wasted on you anti-salad savages, anyway. 

SHE SAYS:  Good idea.  Or we could just make a habit of going to the farmer's market once a week instead.

HE SAYS:  Hmm.  OK.

A Soccer Mom Walks Into a Bar

Last night, for the first time in several months, I was able to go out to the Monday night knitting group at a bar a few towns over.  I used to attend regularly, and then Willem's class schedule got in the way, so we comforted ourselves with a smaller gathering at my house to watch cheesy television and bang small pointy sticks together with string.  But the school year is over, and despite my tendency toward low-grade social anxiety and plain old inertia, I do enjoy getting out and being part of the group.

So I packed up and headed out, with a quick stopover at Emily's softball field to deliver winter coats and gloves to the kids, because there's no reason to assume that, by May 19, the weather would actually be warm enough for outdoor activities.  I arrived at the bar right around 7:00, and was the first of the group there.

It turns out that only myself and Gretchen actually showed up last night.  I'm fairly certain this was not evidence of a conspiracy.  And it's just as well, because our normal table, the only one with decent lighting, was coopted by a man and his MacBook, and no amount of subtle glaring and telepathic messaging convinced him to get up and leave.

Instead, I took a seat on one of the couches surrounding a coffee table at the front of the bar.  The couches are low, with the kind of long, overstuffed seats that make you lean way back and consider napping; not what I would choose when I expect people to want to sit up and reach their drinks on the table, but this is not the only example of how things would be different if I ran the world.  I'm coping.

I sat down alone, got myself a glass of Riesling (and felt appropriately smug and grown-up to have been able to order a wine by name and not promptly spit it back out).  When I returned to my couch, a young man - perhaps 25? - had taken a seat at the couch opposite me.  We exchanged the eye contact and nod, like you do, and I started knitting.  Gretchen appeared shortly afterward, and we chatted.

It took me a while to realize that the guy on the other couch was paying a lot more attention to me than to his magazine.  No-pages-turned sort of attention.  And then he started making small talk, about the music and the weather and the strange little bar dog - a springer spaniel, small but not puppyish, who seemed to feel right at home - who wandered over and curled up next to me on the couch, because we all know how much I love dogs.  Later, he started talking about the beer he was drinking, and how good it was, and it was clear that an offer to buy me a drink was imminent.

Let me be perfectly clear: I am not a person that gets hit on in bars.  I don't even go to bars very often, but when I do, I bring myself.  My almost-31-year-old, 20-pounds-overweight, mother-of-two, married-and-boring, pleasant-but-not-beautiful self.  I'm not unhappy with the way I look, and I don't dress provocatively or in a way intended to draw attention.  I'm just me, and that's fine.  And me is not a ruthless sexual weapon.

Beyond appearances, my whole life centers around work - which I very rarely discuss in public - and family.  I dropped Willem's name in conversation frequently, not as a warning to the guy on the couch, just because he features so prominently in my life that if I tried not to include him, I wouldn't have much else to say.  I talked about the kids.  And just in case I wasn't sending off sufficient Married-Boring-Mom vibes on my own, Gretchen was going out of her way to use phrases like "your husband" in conversation, as well.

So it was all very strange.  Not uncomfortable, never inappropriate or offensive, just strange.  I think I rolled with it pretty well, and I was prepared to decline a drink from a stranger because somehow that sends off a certain implication that idle chatter does not.  It never became an issue, because once it was clear the rest of the group was not meeting that night, we left to go to Gretchen's and watch cheesy television and bang small pointy sticks together with string.

But it was odd, and if there had been a way for me to ask, "What are you doing?" without sounding freaked-out or offended, I would have.  Because I was neither freaked out nor offended, but I was curious and a little baffled.  I'm so out of practice that I didn't even realize it was happening, at first.  My harmless-flirting muscles have atrophied through disuse.

This is OK with me.

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Cross-posted at One More Thing.

Sports Personalities

Springtime in New England... the grass begins to take on a faintly greenish hue, the weather only dips below freezing a few nights a week, the birds' feet have thawed out enough to allow them to bombard the birdfeeders with a desperation that is simultaneously sad and hilarious. 

It's also the time of year when outdoor sports become a possibility.  It's not a comfortable, fun excuse to run around in the warm sunshine just yet - that's June - but it does provide the option of sending your children outside in light clothes without risking a visit from Social Services. 

When my daughter was four years old, she fell out of her twin-sized, regulation-height bed onto her carpeted floor and broke her collarbone.  Snapped the sucker right in two.  That put a damper on her ability to participate in any activity that might include physical contact for several months, and it put a damper on my willingness to let her risk that sort of activity for several more.  Then we got caught up in the frenzy which is packing and moving across the state, and thus she was five before we ever considered signing her up for an organized, team sport.

She had already taken beginner swimming lessons, and would continue to do so, but we wanted her to be a member of a team.  There were so many things she could learn: camaraderie, cooperation, patience, shared objectives, small-fish-big-pond...  And, with a little luck, a smidgen of grace and physical self-confidence, both of which her mother lacks in significant quantities. 

So we talked it over, her father and I, and very quickly landed on soccer.  Minimal equipment to start, straightforward rules, the cuteness of a cluster of toddlers bonking off each other on a pretty, green field.  Emily got all dressed in her t-shirt and shorts, shin guards and sneakers, and off we went.

It was a smashing failure.  Emily, for all of her intensity and forcefulness of personality, is not a physically aggressive kid.  In many ways, this is a good thing: we've worked hard to create a violence-free household and we don't want her to push and shove her way to the front of every line.  But in soccer ways, she's too passive; she falls back away from the ball, doesn't run toward her own goal, flinches whenever another player gets too close.  She never scored one goal, the whole summer season, and when asked what her favorite thing was, she replied, "Sitting on the sidelines drinking juice." 

The next summer, then, we cast about for a different team sport.  Emily loves, loves the idea of being on a team, and had experienced the same sort of dementia that I'm having now, when I want to have another baby and have forgotten the frustrating and disappointing aspects of the whole process: "Soccer was great!  I loved it!  It was so much fun!  I was really good at it!"  Self-esteem is not a problem for this child.

After some discussion, we collectively agreed that perhaps she would have more fun in a different sport, and our next attempt has been softball.  She's now in her second season there, and it's going ever so much better.  Softball allows her the physical space she needs to be able to concentrate and not feel intimidated, but still has the team spirit and practice times to help her focus and build some skills that I can't teach her.  I'm not in love with the league, what with the surprise last-minute fees and righteousness of some of the other team parents, but it's working for us.  For now.

We went through a similar trial-and-error process when we wanted to give Emily an outlet from some of her creative energy, of which she has plenty.  Dance lessons were not a success, because, well, she is her father's daughter.   (Have you seen that man dance?)  But art lessons have gone over very well, and provide for a good wintertime activity.

And now our son is almost four and is entering into the sports mindset, himself.  We're starting with soccer, again, because he insists that he wants nothing but.  He's a far less aggressive child, personality-wise, than my daughter, so it will be very interesting to see whether he is physically more self-confident.  I'll be sure to stock some extra juice for the sidelines, just in case.

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Cross-posted at One More Thing.

 

Walking with Really Large Robots

To further our efforts to create an unrealistic sense of the world, we took the kids to see the "Walking with Dinosaurs" show at the Verizon Wireless Arena in Manchester, NH on Saturday.  Last month's expedition included the Harlem Globetrotters.  Just as soon as we can find a play or show that involves truthful politicians or live-action accounting practices, we'll buy tickets to that, too.

With both the Dinosaurs and the Globetrotters, they put on a decent performance and the kids enjoyed it.  Well, with the Globetrotters they were mildly amused but not enthralled; with the Dinosaurs, their heart rates hovered above 120 beats per minute and they were able to sustain a constant state of slack-jawed amazement through the entire two-hour performance, with a slight break during the too-long pterodactyl flight simulation.  Both were decent shows, and fun family outings , so I can't regret the days out... but neither was quite the mind-blowing, family-bonding experience it could have been.

The Globetrotters tiptoed on a fine line between a story of good old-fashioned rivalry and showmanship, with a tendency to err on the side of theatrics.  I'm not sure my kids even realized that the Washington Generals were there, much less that they were representing an opposing team in an actual game of basketball.  There was just so much ball-spinning and shorts-yanking that the idea of the game was completely lost, which leads me to wonder why they even bother with the storyline.  We all would have been perfectly happy to watch a however-long display of long throws and goofy pranks, without needing to crowd the floor with twice as many players.  The whole thing was especially beyond the attention span of my three-year-old, who was more focused on the cotton candy in the hands of the kid three rows ahead than on the action on the floor.

There was also a sense of disjointed chronology amongst the whole thing.  On the one hand, you havd an old-time goofiness and harmless silly pranks, and on the other hand you have emcee's leading the crowd in "Soulja Boy" and making reference to Beyonce. 

Then you have dinosaurs.  Very detailed costumes and robots wandering around with minimal storyline and maximum roar, so that part was good.  Though they tried to throw in some science, which kind of missed everyone there: those of us old enough to appreciate the science were busily watching the remote-control operators and appreciating the sets, and those young enough to believe that these dinosaurs were as real as Big Bird were too young to understand the science.  I didn't feel like the narrative really enhanced the show, altogether, particularly because most of the audience has a hard time understanding the concept of "next week," much less "millions and millions of years."

But the dinosaurs blew my children's minds.  Even the just-turned-eight-year-old, who spent the week prior lecturing her three-year-old brother about how, "They aren't real, you know.  They're just fake.  Just people dressed up like dinosaurs, or statues, or something."  Even she bought into the show, which really was the whole point.

From the Outside

I spent several hours early Sunday morning at my workplace, the Emergency Department of a local hospital.  I do mental health assessments: crisis and placement evaluations for people who are suicidal, homicidal, psychotic, anxious, depressed, unsafe in some central way, confusing or overwhelming for their loved ones, really anything and everything that isn't quite medical in nature that might land someone in paper clothes and a room without a television for several hours.  I know the codes to the back doors, how to find the non-generic soda, which doctors are better and which are better avoided. 

But on Sunday, I went in the front door, and checked in at the front desk instead of ducking in the back. I was wearing sweatpants and a hoodie, my hair unbrushed, eyes bleary.  I wasn't working on Sunday; I was hurrying in with a wheezing, barking, panicking three-year-old with, as it turns out, pneumonia. 

Membership does, indeed, have its privileges, and the fact that I'm at least on the periphery of the in-crowd amongst the staff meant that we were whisked directly to a private room and seen by the head of the ED.  This is not to be taken for granted on a holiday weekend - even if we don't have a booming Jewish population, locally, there is still more quality-slash-crazymaking family time and alcohol consumption on Passover than a non-holiday - and a full moon, which hospital staff persistently believes causes more incoming traffic.  It was a busy night, with people in the hallways, and while I do admit to some guilt at our special treatment, it wasn't enough guilt for me to decline the opportunity to get away from the crowds. 

After the initial exam and the x-rays and the nebulizer and consultations, the doctor came back in with a diagnosis and discharge instructions.  He looked at me oddly, and finally said, "You know, I wasn't sure it was you, coming in.  I recognized the name, of course --" [we are the only Lastnames in the phone book, always] "-- but I think of you as 22 years old, just out of school.  I had no idea you had a child."

I thought he was kidding.  I have never, in my life, ever been accused of not looking my age.  This is not upsetting to me; maybe someday I'll want to look ten years younger than my actual age, but I've always been content at the assumption that I'm a bit more competent and mature than I actually am.  But he insisted, he really believed I was barely out of training, just starting in the world.  "I guess I would have known you were at least in your mid-twenties, because you've been working here for a while, but I just never pictured you as a mom.  No offense."

I half-laughed at him.  "My daughter just turned eight."  I could actually watch the thought process happen, as his mental image of me aged a decade in seconds.  I sympathized a little, because I know how it goes: you get to know someone in a certain setting, and you forget that they're not always there.  It's similar to the assumption that many of my husband's high school students carried, that he slept under the desk at night and ate chalk for breakfast.  They were always surprised to see him outside of school, like he was getting away with something.

This whole interaction took all of 30 seconds, and yet it has stayed with me.  More than anything, it makes me a little sad.  I want people to see me as more of a mom; I want that lifestyle.  I want to be home more than not, without timesheets and badges and a résumé.  I am grateful that I have a job I can do well, that I have a good reputation amongst my coworkers and a sense of making of difference in the world.  I just don't want to be 22 anymore; almost-31 is better.

Snickering as a Form of Discipline

A week or so ago, my husband was finishing up our first-of-the-season meal on the grill.  It meant sweeping snow off the back step and finding the grill accessories wherever we'd thrown them in the fall, but we were just so desperate for a taste, literally, of summer.  And you're darn right it was worth it.

He had already called the kids in several times, and in true-to-self form, my son had hopped up and started scampering for the house, while my daughter announced, "Hold on," and proceeded to try to cram in three or four just-one-more-things before coming inside.  Husband decided, instead of bargaining with her or even engaging her in another round of negotiations, to just roll his eyes and come inside, himself.

Three-year-old Jacob then turned around and said, to his almost-eight-year-old sister, "Emily, just get in the damn house."  In precisely the same tone and inflection his father might have used.

It's just not even worth trying to responsibly suggest an alternative way of delivering the message when you're giggling.

Soon

I've been horizontally, not-just-a-cold ill for a little more than a week.

Now, I'm all in favor of a good, rollicking illness story.  But this has gone on long enough that I'm just tired and a bit defeated.  Waiting for a day when I just don't feel crappy.  Losing the battle against the guilt as I watch my husband pick up the slack in the household so that the children aren't wandering aimlessly around the neighborhood in their underwear, begging for table scraps and pulling the wings off of flies, or whatever aimless wanderers do with their time.  Tired of myself.

But since yesterday, my spirits have been a bit lighter.  Because I let myself do something I very rarely do; an infrequent indulgence, usually avoided because of the inevitable shock of reality when I'm done.  It just feels so good in the moment, and then, when it's all over, there's just this flat, bleak awareness of reality that descends upon my being with the weight of a thousand... heavy things. 

Not this time, though.  This time, the high has lasted a little longer.  The buzz hasn't been harshed by the vagaries of daily existence, at least not yet.  I'm even considering doing it again soon.

What was it?  My clandestine thrill, kept secret for so long and now bared for the world?  Do you really want to know?

I was searching for my dream house, online.

Grazing through the realty websites and compiling a list of my favorites, after painstakingly comparing lot sizes and number of rooms, school districts and proximity to beaches.  Considering zoning laws and potential for the creation of a B&B, once I've taught the kids how to make a bed properly. 

This used to be a private thrill for me, until I looked up from the computer screen and remembered that I have no business shopping or planning.  We were in a decent, structurally sound, modern house in a safe, quiet neighborhood.  The kids are happy in school, I've got a solid job, my husband is plugging away at his doctorate.  It couldn't matter that this house is soulless, a carbon copy of a dozen other houses in the neighborhood and, at 37 years old, among the older homes in the immediate area.  I couldn't dwell on the bone-deep cold that emanates from a slab instead of a basement, the constant sense of claustrophobia in a house with wildly insufficient storage, the wary bafflement that develops when your electrical system is so unpredictable that you suspect the house was wired by vandals.  This was our reality, and it was a good one, and I didn't allow myself the extravagance of thinking ahead, to our next house, our dream house on the ocean where we would move after my husband was done with his voluntary servitude in academia.

But yesterday, I realized that, a year from now, I need to have written-down plans with realtors and movers.  I need to start the checklists of inspectors and doctors and schools and the billions of other details that go with moving.  Because, assuming that everything goes as planned - and somehow, over the past four years, it has - then we'll be moving back to Massachusetts in the summer of 2009.

It should, with some luck and minimal unforeseen circumstances, be our last move for a very long time.  And that dream house, with lots of bedrooms and words like "walk-in" and "hardwood," the one within walking distance to the ocean, should actually be within reach. 

Only a year.  I can make it a year. 

Isn't retail therapy amazing?

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Cross-posted at One More Thing.

Fooled You

Oh, look, it's April Fools Day.  Fan-tas-tic. 

Sometimes, I see jokes that are actually pretty funny.  Go check out Gmail's login page today, for instance.  Cute, amusing, harmless.  I'm all for jokes, because your short-term sense of goofiness seems to be a reasonable trade-off for my slightly longer-term sense of amusement.  I'm even willing to switch sides and look like an idiot once in a while for the sake of a successful joke.

But to me, there's a crucial difference between jokes and pranks.  Jokes are cerebral, a temporary brain-bending to cause some surprising new combination of neurons to fire.  Pranks are physical, and are typically aimed at making the recipient feel stupid.  Not goofy; stupid.  Embarrassed, or self-conscious, or just... foolish.

It's amusing to me that I have such a strong feeling about this, because I was never cool enough to get pranked, growing up.  I was the  nerdy kid, with the big plastic-framed glasses and the almost-mullet, the slightly mismatched clothes and no idea how to get from my house to the bottom of the hill because my face was buried in a book as soon as I got in the car.  I was both above and below notice for pranks; it simply didn't occur to the other kids.  (I did get my fair share of name-calling and bullying, but that was an equal-opportunity sort of event, not limited to April 1st.)

As an adult, I've been careful to articulate my feelings on physical pranks to anyone within striking distance, as it were.  Just, don't.  I include things like uninvited snowballs and fully-clothed splashing in this category.  There's a time and a place, and those are often elsewhere for me.

I don't want to completely rob my kids of the delight of a well-made joke, and have tried to help them recognize the difference between lighthearted silliness and a mean-edged prank.  One year, April Fool's fell on a Saturday, Willem's day to sleep late.  Before he got up, Emily very carefully stacked all of her stuffed animals up against the bedroom door so as to create a small soft avalanche when he arose.  In response, Willem waited a while, and then scooped them all up and tossed them in the (dry) bathtub and sent her in "to take a bath."

So let the foolishness reign, however it floats your boat... but if your boat floats in a sea of pranks and embarrassment, I'll pass.

Priorities

I'm back in New Hampshire today.

It's cold here.

There are two feet - really, I checked - of snow standing in my front yard.  Four-foot snowbanks.  This is actually a one-foot improvement from the last time I saw it, a week and a half ago.  I'm back at work today, sitting in an uncomfortable chair at an uncomfortable desk and resenting that the Powers That Be have reorganized my employment priorities, without considering silly things like logic or if-it-ain't-broke, because I'd rather be at home on-call.  My kids are hyper and clingy, as though I might just disappear at any moment even though we gave them lots of prepration and information before I went away.  My husband is now willing to express a lot more of his fears and reservations about my vacation, which I appreciate because I had many of my own, but I also wish he'd shared because who needs to deal with that stuff alone? 

Just a big, fat pile of reality waiting here for me.  Ready or not.

I took it all upon myself, I know.  Because I made a choice to prioritize other aspects of my life over my husband and children for a few days, and I didn't have to do so.  I could have stuck to the routine, kept everything normal and predictable, walked the straight and narrow.  I also could have gone on vacation with them, enjoyed it immensely, and then simply returned home with them to settle back in as a group.

Instead, I chose to go on vacation with them, and then send them home by themselves and go on a second vacation with my mother and sisters.  To a third-world country, with no internet or cell phone access (both of which I could have paid for, but, again, made a choice not to), thereby rendering myself as completely absent and removed from my closest family members, from my heart, as possible.

What kind of mother am I?  What kind of person, to do such a thing?

I can remember, in my pre-child days, an aunt and her husband who had two children together (and even got married to each other, after an extended breakup, before the second was born).  They had a relationship that apparently worked for them - still does, I suppose, since I believe they're still married though no longer an active part of my life - and one of its key points, in my 12-year-old mind, was the fact that they took separate vacations.  "I won't do that," I swore.  "When I get married, it will be because I've married my best friend and want to do everything with him.  I won't want to travel separately or do things without him."

Turns out, I was right about that middle sentence.  I did marry my best friend, and would be happy to do everything with him.  But I also have interests he doesn't have, relationships he doesn't share, and sometimes those other things pull me in a literally, geographically different direction.  I've become a mother who sometimes takes vacations with someone else while leaving the kids home with my husband. 

Last year, it was Paris.  And that was an unequivocally wonderful, exciting, interesting trip, and if the kids had gone along we'd have found a way to make it work for them... but they're children, and as such I don't expect them to have my attention span for museums and palaces and catacombs and yarn shopping.  Rather than impose my interests upon them, sublimate my interests to theirs, or compromise both, we found a way to let them continue with their daily lives while I went and played overseas for a while.  I relied entirely on my husband's capability as father and adult, and didn't leave a single list, or note, or instruction to follow.  They ate and played and slept and went to appointments as he saw fit, not as I saw fit, and it went perfectly fine and bumpy and different and normal. 

This year, it was Jamaica.  Less a trip for me, myself, and more reflective of my mother's interests.  Which is fine and good, because I don't want to be a leader of a group, just a member of a family.  The trip itself was not unequivocally anything; there were moments that will stand out as highlights of my whole life, and moments that left me as scared and stressed as I have ever been, and sometimes those two things happened within hours of each other.  My husband and the kids did great once again, even though this time I couldn't do a daily late-night check-in online.  They functioned without me.

I think that's part of what this is all about, this solo vacationing.  Showing them that they can function, because of all the just-in-cases and you-never-knows in life.  Letting them be physically separate from me for a short time, to start to develop a sense of self and independence in small, safe doses from an early age.  Demonstrating to them, as well as to myself, that motherhood can still involve personal priorities and an outside life without abandonment or neglect. 

It can't be an easy lesson to learn.  We all struggle for Time With Mom, I think, on some level.  Even when Mom is not a good, or safe, or caring parent.  I see it at work all the time:  The child or teenager who insists that they hate their mother, while peeking sideways at her to make sure she heard them say it, watching for her reaction even as they prepare to deny it.  The children of abusive and frightening mothers, clinging desperately to her leg as they are removed from the home.  The adult who never knew his or her birth mother and insists that they had a fine upbrining but still defining themselves as fundamentally different, with a question mark where many others have a period.  Motherhood matters, even in its absence.  Even when it matters in a bad way instead of a good one.

So I understand that my kids are inevitably going to push and pull in and out of a relationship with me, craving my attention even when, sometimes, they'll reject it.  They were born into a household in which, despite all of my myriad faults and imperfections, we've created a solid and safe family environment.  I can be serene, or even a bit smug, in my sense that their struggles with me, their quests for independence and dependence and identity and interconnectedness, are all normal things.  But "normal" does not imply "easy," and having Mom gone for five days when they would rather have her home is going to be hard on anyone.  They missed me, and I do feel guilty about that, even knowing that I will certainly take more childless vacations, even while they're still children.

I wonder when they'll know that even as the lesson is hard to learn, it is also difficult to teach?  Because it does hurt, knowing that I'm letting them down and focusing on myself and my relationships with my own mother and sisters.  Knowing that I was selfish enough to spend time and money away from the people that I will always unhesitatingly refer to as "the most important in my life."  Wondering, as always, with everything, what the difference will be between the messages I want to send to my kids, the intent behind the actions, and the messages they actually receive, the interpretations they make. 

It's complicated stuff, this parenting.  Who knew?

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Cross-posted at One More Thing.