On a cold dark night, she put her foot down

I am tired today. Have been since I awoke. Last week was long; jet-lag, dealing with the kids' jet-lag, readying our old house to go on the market, illness, prepping Jack for his camping trip, welcoming an exhausted (but happy) Jack back from his camping trip, telling Oliver about Percy, preparing to tell Jack about Percy, digging out my winter parka and sadly putting it on. 

I am tired and I have felt increasingly constricted, folding inward as if trying to shield myself from one.more.to-do. I have not read the paper, the laundry is not folded, undercurrents of rage and dismay are coursing through my veins.

Not rage at any one thing, but rage against life's relentlessness and a dismay about that fact. The rage that comes from being overtaxed and underhelped. From feeling cold. This is a familiar feeling for many. It doesn't worry me, it doesn't put me off when I see it in others. I understand. But I don't like it.

What bothers me most about these shadowy pits is that in them, I lose elasticity. I can sense the way my posture changes, the way my usually glowing face darkens as if under the shadow of a pregnant storm cloud. 

I stop feeling expansive and generous. My sense of humor goes AWOL. I want to shutter, close for the season, throw huge swaths of stuff and obligations out, and start anew tomorrow or next week, after I've burrowed in a flannel blanket and wrung the chill right out. 

I don't have anything for you tonight except these truths. That in the face of overwhelm and waves of Legos and bobos and joy and a fourth trip to the DMV and more laundry and whining and dust bunnies and freeze warnings in April, hunkering down is a very fine option. 

Refusing to help with baths or "watch me, watch me" one more time tonight and instead cooking a good meal (this one-pot chicken and sumac onion dish really is so very good; go me!) to share with Tom is how I put my foot down today. Tonight. A small action, a needed one. It starts again tomorrow.

chicken with caramelized sumac onions and israeli couscous

"If he's happier..."

Oliver had just finished his cinnamon toast and started in on his scrambled eggs when he innocently asked, "When is Percy coming home, Mama?"

Bleary-eyed from nausea and a fitful night of sleep, I fumbled briefly and paused.

Jack won’t be home until tomorrow; is it wrong to tell Ol first? Should I wait for Tom? Oh, how I have been dreading this, but oh, how I want to cross this threshold.

I sipped my tea and glanced at my darling boy, wearing only super hero undies and smiling as he speared egg with a Lego spork he outgrew years ago. I took a deep breath, put my tea gently on a coaster, and said, “Sweetheart, Percy is so happy with Suzanne. Do you know that she makes him meatloaf every day and that they sleep together?”

I watched as the brightly-colored utensil arced slowly toward Ol’s plate and felt my heart break as my boy started to understand where I was going with my lengthy answer.

“Suzanne is very happy too, Ol. Her pugs died last year, and she has been lonely for a dog to love. Percy is lucky to get to live with Suzanne.”

I watched as the spork landed on the china plate dusted with cinnamon sugar and a rapidly chilling yellow-orange mound. I saw my boy’s eyes fill with worry and the first tears, watched him take a deep breath and bravely ask, “Is Percy going to stay there, Mama?”

“Yes, precious. He is. Daddy and I feel it is the best thing for him. We couldn’t love and care for Percy like he needed and deserved, but Suzanne can.”

My arms opened as Ol scurried around the table to my lap. He and I always feel so in sync. Like when we’re walking and our hands find and clasp each other’s tightly, even when our eyes are on the path ahead or the sky above.

“But why, Mama? Why? I do not think this is the best decision. I love Percy and I want him here.” His tears wet my pajama shirt, and I struggled to hold him in a way that didn’t allow his sweet tush to feel like a pair of pile drivers into my thighs. Vomiting for hours really screws with your muscles.

Neither Jack nor Oliver has ever known life without Percy. I forget that sometimes; that Percy came first, and the boys after. The kids never seemed terribly connected to Percy, didn’t hang on or try to sleep with him, didn’t talk to him in the ways some children do with their pets. And so while I knew they would be sad, I wasn’t sure how that anguish would show itself.

Ol and I sat together for a long while. He cried and snuffled, and I kissed and comforted. And then I gently reminded him about school and his field trip and suggested we get dressed. I emailed his teachers and was lucky to find that a dear friend was Ol’s group chaperone today; loving eyes were on him.

At pick-up this afternoon, he seemed buoyant, and I took him for a frozen yogurt date. I let him get an absurd amount of toppings, hoping some extra sweet would ease whatever pain might be coursing under his beautiful surface. One of his friends was there, with her grandmother and little brother, and Ol whispered, “Mama, would it be nice if I asked them to come sit with us?”

“Oh, yes, sweetheart, that is a fabulous, kind gesture.” And so he did, and we enjoyed their company, and I smiled upon my little boy who is both simple and complex, young and old, placid and feisty.

Afterwards, as we pulled up into our driveway, I heard Ol’s voice from the backseat. “I have so many happy memories with Percy, Mama. It didn’t make sense to me this morning, your decision, but it makes sense now. If he’s happier…” As he trailed off, I glanced in the rearview mirror, dumbstruck by what a seven-year-old had just said.

We got out of the car, and I knelt on the ground and pulled Ol to me. “Oliver, you are an amazing child, and I am lucky to be your mother.” And for the second time today, we just stayed there, as if a mother-child sculpture cast in an ephemeral moment but one that could represent so many of the small moments mothers and children share.

There are times that motherhood is the opposite of this memorable, moving bliss; times I very nearly hate it and all it demands and asks and takes; times in which I am so fatigued that I’m not sure I’ll be able to give for another hour, another day; times in which I miss having time.

But too there are experiences like those I had today, where in a child I see such courage and wisdom, where in that child’s understanding of an event I am able to better understand my own understanding of that same thing.

Our brief exchange in the driveway this afternoon felt profound. I can’t explain it better than that. A little boy received some sad, surprising news, carried it with him and processed it all while visiting the National Portrait Gallery and being fully present there. All while enjoying his friends and recess and our fro-yo date. All while acting chivalrously too.

The tears came again tonight, as they so often do when darkness and tired seep in. I held him tight and answered his questions and softly but firmly said that the decision was final. We turned on an audiobook, and before I could blink, he was immersed in the science mystery Einstein Anderson had begun to solve.

“Goodnight, Ol. I will come check on you later. I love you so much.”
“Goodnight, Mama. I love you too. I hope you feel better soon.”
~~~
This post is inspired by:
my need to write and remember this day with Ol;
this week's Finish the Sentence Friday prompt "The things I've seen this morning...", hosted by Kristi Campbell and Leanne Russell;
and my 40 in Forty series. Today's bit of wisdom: listen to some of that which comes from the mouths of babes.

Tired with a side of anger

I guess it started this morning when we all awoke in a hurry. The boys' school conferences started at 7:30am, and I still needed to pack lunches. Tom, who arrived home last night at 11, was funked out and tired. 

It regularly galls me how much slack the women of the world pick up and manage every.single.day. How much mediation and support and love and lunches and phone calls and pediatric forms and organization and so forth so many men cannot do, will not do, do lazily or never even consider doing.

And sometimes, it fucking exhausts me.

I went and paid the floor refinishers who finally were able to remedy the flooded family room situation. I went and dealt with the painters who, I later found, got paint on the cherry cabinets. I packed those damn lunches and later picked up the child with a cold and sixty minutes later the child without a cold. I organized dinner, both of them. I provided the hugs and comfort when the boys cried upon hearing that their old rooms had been painted over (this was after my second trip to the old house today).

Today I am tired. Tired of being strong. Tired of feeling like the fucking sugar plum fairy of emotions and to-dos and everything besides making money.

I'm tired of being ogled by a painter the other day and feeling a bit worried because I was alone with him and his crew in our new house and he kept asking odd questions.

I'm tired of feeling sad about Percy and like I let him down. He is so loved now, but when I see his little face, I feel awful.

I'm tired of fucking winter and the snow we're supposed to get tonight. I'm tired of days off of school and rude people like that "greeter" at the gym who could not hate everyone more and lets you know it.

I'm tired of stupid asshole, racist, destructive Donald Trump and his equally abhorrent peer, flaccid-penis Ted Cruz. Because I am tired, I don't give a crap about just having told you all that Ted Cruz always reminds of a flaccid penis and a mean one at that.

I am tired of obligations- the wrong kinds, not the right ones. Tired of the dirtiest politics ever that have nothing to do with the well-being of this country or its people but everything to do with individual narcissism and greed.

I felt so sad today while at the old house, picking up the glow-in-the-dark planets and stars that once decorated Jack's ceiling and looking carefully enough at Ol's walls to just make out the green stripes I'd painted for him. I felt so sad when I walked around the yard and saw all the plants and bulbs I've loved and tended over the years coming up earnestly. We won't get to enjoy them this spring.

I realized that I've been so busy that I've never said a proper goodbye to that wonderful home. Tonight that goodbye was foisted upon me.

I stuffed my pockets with planets and stars and our old spare key and a few more knick-knacks. And then I came home to tell the boys, and we all cried together.