Category: Parenting

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Toddlers Are the Best Antidote for Modern Life

I just posted a short video of Mary Tyler Toddler eating a plate of fresh cherries and raspberries with this caption, “In light of all the muck you scroll through on social media, I thought that 30 seconds of XXXXX eating might make it all more bearable.”  IT SEEMS TO BE WORKING.

This morning, after a brief period of high chaos caused by me forgetting that it was the one day a month our cleaning team arrives at our back door at 8 AM to help me keep our dirt and grime to bearable levels (and, yes, I have cleaning ladies), I took the boy out for pancakes.

Sitting across from him scribbling with crayons and reading books somehow made the massive stress I had been feeling, the sense of sheer vulnerability and exposure and panic felt when you hear a key in your back door while you’re still wearing the period stained shorts you slept in the night before, your hair unwashed for five days piled high on top of your head, hoping the mass of curls doesn’t too loudly shout, “I DON’T GIVE A FIG HOW I LOOK.”

I needed to exit that place of shame and stress and Polish ladies tsk tsking so opted to get out of Dodge with the toddler in tow.  IT WORKED.

Toddlers are gurus at living in the moment.  They are zen masters of mindfulness. Toddlers have no shame.  Toddlers  experience stress, but are so easily distracted from those things that cause them dismay, that their stresses are easily forgotten.  Toddlers got it going on.

Toddler

Our world can be so ugly.  Social media tends to magnify that.  We take glee in other people’s sorrows and struggles, we get indignant towards most folks who think or act differently than ourselves, and there seems to be an unending supply of scandals and stories to feed the beast that Facebook created.

You know who doesn’t care about any of that nonsense?  Toddlers, that’s who!

Toddlers have no idea that Amber Rose wears bikinis on balconies or that she likes to poke fun of her old flame’s current wife on Twitter.  Toddlers happily eat their snacks while the moral right tear apart Caitlyn Jenner while defending Josh Duggar.  Toddlers thrive on routine and comfort, security and consistency, not fresh blood.

Toddlers have so much to teach us all.  And lucky me just happens to have one right by my side for most of the day, every day.

And I totally get that not all is well or easy in Toddlerville.  There are only so many times I can read “Baby Animals” before my eyes glaze over and when Mary Tyler Toddler kicks and screams every time I try and wipe his face, I don’t feel very mindful or zen, but I would take a toddler over a Kardashian any damn day of the week.

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A Letter to My Sons on Mother’s Day

Hey Boys,

Sunday is Mother’s Day.  I know this because I have been to the mall three times in the past few weeks (through no fault of my own).  You can’t walk past a single shiny window without being bombarded with the certain way to make your mother happy come this Sunday morning —  BUY THIS.  Mom needs that.  IF YOU LOVE HER, YOU WILL SPEND A LOT OF MONEY ON HER.

MD1

MD2

MD3

Rubbish.

I wanted to let you know you are absolved from having to purchase me some or other fancy gift to commemorate this day.  You are young now, but I don’t want you growing up thinking a day like Mother’s Day is all about the bling, the shine, the bows, or the boxes.  It’s not.

A new Coach bag is not the thing that proves your love for me. I don’t need or want diamonds or a tote filled with nine scented candles.  A spa day away is lovely, to be sure, but don’t believe for one moment that I deserve that for mothering you.

I won’t speak for all mothers, but I will speak for me.  Raising you two is my honor, my joy, my sacred duty, my gift to the world.  If I do it right, you will grow into kind, compassionate, empathic, loving, productive citizens.  If I do it wrong, and know that I will make many, many mistakes along the way, well, I am sorry.  When you’re all grown up and shaving, I hope I can say I did my best.

Mothers don’t need stuff or things from their children to understand they are loved.  I see it almost every day from you two.  When you fight with one another for space on my lap while sitting on the kitchen floor.  Swoon.  When you follow me around my Dad’s wake with a box of Kleenex, just in case I start crying again.  Sigh.  When you grab me by the scruff with your not yet gentle toddler ways to pull me in for a kiss. Ouch, followed by Melt.

I know you love me.  Giving me something that a shiny store window tells you I need doesn’t ever mean that you love me more or better.  Never get things confused with feelings.  Believe me when I say it is enough to be loved by you.

And this is not me being a mommy martyr.  It’s a lesson I am trying to teach you both that things, fancy and expensive things, are never to be confused as compensation for caring for you.  I am all for gifts and symbols of your love and affection for me, but those gifts and symbols need not have dollar signs around them, your love and appreciation measured like a litmus test by how fancy the packaging is or how much your Dad shelled out.

This year and every year, if you want to treat Mother’s Day as a special day for me or an opportunity for you to show your appreciation, I will welcome your efforts with open arms.  Please, in fact, do!  Everybody loves days set aside where they get to feel special and loved.  Like birthdays or holidays are for you.  I am no different.  I would love a special day where I feel your love and appreciation in extra measures.  There are so many meaningful ways to show your feelings that don’t involve money.  Think about that.

Alright, kiddos.  That’s my lesson for the day.  I love you.  I know you love me, too. How lucky are we?

xox, Mom

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You Are My Sunshine

You are my sunshine, my only sunshine 
You make me happy when skies are gray.

There is not a mother or child in my orbit that does not know the lyrics to this song. My guess is that even reading those words above, you are singing it, on tune, inside your head.  It appears coded in our DNA somehow, an act of love like a kiss, a hug, a sweet caress on the cheek. Singing it and hearing it is a rite of passage in caring and being cared for.

You’ll never know, dear, how much I love you
Please don’t take my sunshine away.  

My mother sang it to me.  She had a sweet voice, gentle, warm, nothing flashy, but it got the job done.  Hearing it made me feel loved, held, and cherished.  In March of 2004, days after bleeding out from an undiagnosed brain tumor in front of a slot machine in the unlikely Biloxi, Mississippi, her children gathered around her hospital bed and sang it to her.  A primitive act of love and fear.

The other night dear, as I lay sleeping
I dreamt I held you in my arms

It is an unlikely song to sing to a child, a babe in your arms, isn’t it?  The loss in it is brutal and naked.  It is written as a song for lovers, but has been co-opted by those who care for us first, our parents, our first loves.  Love at first sight has never been as intense as that between parent and child.  Lovers come and go, but, in the natural order of things, parents stay, their love unconditional.  In a just world, that is how it should be.

When I awoke, dear, I was mistaken
So I hung my head and I cried

I cringe when I find myself in a setting with music and children and, invariably, this song finds its way into the repertoire of some overly cheerful performer who has the audacity to switch the lyrics up, masking the pain and loss, swapping its glorious humanity with some nonsense about lollipops and rainbows.  Blasphemous drivel that underestimates the capacity of children to learn and know that life can be hard and people may leave us.

You are my sunshine, my only sunshine 
You make me happy when skies are gray.

Like my mother, I sang this song to my daughter. Like my mother, her name was Donna.  Like my mother, she died of a brain tumor.  Like my mother, she heard these words countless times, sung with love and heartbreak, from one who loved her most in the world, me.

You’ll never know, dear, how much I love you
Please don’t take my sunshine away.

It is impossible to convey what it is like to hold your child in your arms and on your lap, sing these words to her, knowing what she does not know, that she is dying.  Your sunshine, despite your pleas and prayers, will leave you, ferocious gray skies in its wake.  Your sunshine will go and your arms will ache and now you sing the words to yourself to recall those times you sang those words to the girl you loved most.

When you hear these lyrics, no matter where, you will sometimes find yourself telling a stranger, the now sad and awkward stranger devastated by your confession, that you sang that song at your daughter’s memorial service.

One time, you will hear that song in the middle of a Wiggleworms class, surrounded by mothers much younger than yourself, not yet broken by life and loss, and you will cry, then sob, remembering the girl you sang it to first, and you will feel badly and a little embarrassed for a moment, but then you won’t, because you don’t care, you stopped caring when you started grieving.

Another time, just a few months after your second sunshine named Donna died, you will walk into a tiny little shop in Northhampton, Massachusetts with your mother-in-law and see this on the wall:

You Are My Sunshine

And your mother-in-law, the one who first sang these words to the man you love most in this world, will see it, too.  And she will buy it for you, cost be damned, and you will cry together in that little shop in Northhampton, and then, a few weeks later, a slim cardboard box will arrive on your doorstep and you will open it and hammer a nail on your living room wall and hang the words that mean so very much to mothers and children everywhere, reminding you of your own mother and your own child you love dearly, the ones who left you, but who brought an intense and lasting sunshine to your life.