Category: Slice ‘o Life

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Trading the Gin Bottle for a Baby Bottle

Did you ever have one of those mothering moments where you’re stopped cold in your tracks with the realization that, “Oh my God.  I am a mother.  His mother.  Her mother.  Their mother.  WOW.  I am a MOTHER.”  I don’t have them often, as I’ve been at this parenting thing since 2005, but every once in a while, that sensation kicks in and when it does, it packs a punch.

It happened most recently for me last Saturday night.  I was at an old friend’s home unexpectedly with my two kiddos in tow. Our husbands were heading out for a Bulls’ game together and neither one of us had yet met the other’s brand spanking new baby.  We were well past due, so decided to make an early evening of it.

I call this gal my “Fancy Friend,” well, because she’s fancy.  Not uptight.  Not snooty.  Not condescending.  Fancy.  She and her family live in a massive high rise unit right on Lake Michigan and the views will just bowl you over.  I feel privileged just being in their beautiful home.  The first few times I was pretty certain I would break something and never be invited back.  Well, I did break something, of course, and I’m still allowed in, so that tells you something about my Fancy Friend.  She’s a gem.

We all visited together and traded the appropriate ooohhhsss and aaahhhhsss over our respective babies — my boy born in September and her girl born in November.

After the husbands left we settled in and fed the babies.  It was around dinner time and we decided to order in.  Exhibit A of motherhood struck me. Any delivery would have to be fast, as I wanted to get the boys to sleep by 8, and satisfy a young child and a toddler in addition to us two tired moms. Dominos FTW!

Exhibit B struck me when my Fancy Friend joked that her wine glasses were dusty from lack of use.  In my house, wine is served in juice glasses.  I justify that by claiming it’s how all wine is consumed in Italy.  But my Fancy Friend, there, she knows how to entertain proper.

I have been to some epic parties at her home.  Epic parties.  Parties so good that you talk about them years later.  Parties so good that I will remember them fondly when I’m old and in a nursing home.  Parties so good that when I post about them on the Facebook, my friends who live in the suburbs have to pick their jaws up off the floor.

Yes, they were that good.

When we needed a night out during Donna’s cancer treatment, these were the folks we went out with to forget our troubles.  When my husband turned 40 and I threw him a surprise birthday party with a Mad Men theme, these were the folks who hosted, with the husband even going so far as to don a tuxedo for full effect.  These are the folks who hire bartenders at their parties so that their guests are as comfortable as possible.

Epic parties with Fancy Friends are the best parties ever.

But here we were, and what struck me was that with two babies in our arms, two little ones roaming at our feet with toys splayed out throughout the living room, foam tape wrapped around every sharp edge as far as the eye could see, eating Dominos pizza and drinking wine out of dusty glasses, we were both happy as freaking clams.

There is nothing fancy about babies or toddlers or four year old little boys. There is definitely nothing fancy about Dominos pizza.  Motherhood sure as hell ain’t fancy.  But it is fun and fulfilling and doesn’t require you wear Spanx or high heels.

Life changes.  My life has changed and my Fancy Friend’s life has changed, too.  That’s the way this whole life thing works, when it’s working.

Image courtesy of my Fancy Friend.
Image courtesy of my Fancy Friend.

Part of these life changes means that there are fewer (like not a single one) hangovers.  That our fatigue and lack of sleep is caused by late night feedings instead of wee morning drinkings.  Motherhood is the kind of life change that makes you realize the bar in the living room is the perfect height for a second diaper changing station.

It happens.  Motherhood changes you.  There are simply fewer gin bottles and a massive number of baby bottles.  Isn’t that lovely?

Happy New Year to you.  It has and continues to be my absolute pleasure and honor to write these posts and have you read them. Thank you for that and may 2014 only bring blessings your way.

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I Am a Mom

This is part of the ChicagoNow Blog-a-palooza challenge.  Once a month all bloggers are given a writing prompt at 9:00 PM and instructed to write our little hearts out until 10:00 PM when all involved post simultaneously. Here is today’s prompt:

Write about something you learned or experienced since you woke up this morning.

Dammit.  I have not left the house today.  I did manage to change clothes, though, but that was sort of a bonus and not really intended.  I was standing in the downstairs hallway, just outside our laundry room, and realized I had been wearing the exact same clothes since Monday.  Today is Wednesday. That’s over 48 hours in the same fleece and Lands End stretch pants, and yes, underpants.  Ugh.  I stripped naked in the hallway and added them to the mounds of laundry, already separated, just waiting for me to take it to the next laundry level.

What in the hell has happened to me?, I thought to myself, standing naked and shivering in the cold hallway — I’m such a mom cliche.  Like a bad mom cliche.  And then it hit me:  I am a mom.

Whoa.

When in the Sam Hill did that happen?

Well, technically, it started about 8:10 AM on the morning of July 20, 2005, when my oldest child was born.  But that is when I became a mother, not necessarily a mom.

Those are different things, you know.

Today, all day, throughout the day, were these kind of, sort of LOUD announcements that I am a mom.  Standing naked in the pile of laundry was one.  An obvious one.  Doing dishes three times today was another.  Feeling stretched between my crying, hungry baby and my little boy home sick from school with a fever was in there.  Seeing my hair pulled back in a ponytail was one, sure.  Oh, yeah, and there were those piles of Christmas boxes needing to be brought back downstairs and no one to do that but me.

Mom, mom, mom, mom, mom.  “MOM!  Can you put my juice on a coaster?!”

I honest to goodness never aspired to motherhood.  In fact, I think I was the least maternal woman I knew.  But things change, and so did I.   And now, right now, being a mom is the most important thing I do.  It is a repetitive gig. God love motherhood, but it is mind numbing at times.  The dust and the dishes and the laundry and the bed making.  I about want to scream some days.

But then a baby smiles at me in a way he smiles at no one else.  And I swoon.  And find the strength to wash his bottles and bibs.  Again.  And again.

Today, late in the day, really, the baby was sleeping and my boy was comfortably watching television.  I crept downstairs to tend to that laundry, still in progress.  For the first time in hours (days?) I was alone.  No one in my arms, no one clinging to my neck, no one asking for a snack or art supplies. I took in a full breath and moved the laundry.

Rather than cart the clean laundry upstairs to fold and put away, I opted to fold it downstairs.  It felt luxurious, that folding of laundry all alone.  I clicked on the television and those Real Housewife bitches (who you never see doing any damn laundry — real housewives, my ass) kept me company for the 20 minutes it took to fold the bibs and burp clothes and towels and boxers and super hero t-shirts.  Dare I say, it was relaxing, those twenty minutes of solitude and laundry.

As I made my way up the stairs, I heard a whimpering, a sniffle, a padding of footie pajamas on the hard wood floor.  Is that Mary Tyler Son, I wondered?

It was.  And he was scared and crying and looking, suddenly, not much bigger than his three month old brother.

“Mom, where were you?  I was worried,” and then another round of fresh tears burst out.

The poor honey.  I dropped the laundry, scooped up the boy and cradled him in my arms just like I would the baby.  You don’t really get the chance to cradle four year olds much anymore.  I soothed him and assured him and apologized profusely.

“Mommy’s here, pie.  Mommy’s here, sweet pea.  Mommy’s always here.  I will never leave you.”

I am a mom, a MOM, dammit, and these little people need me, rely on me, worry to the point of tears when they don’t know where I am and think I have left them all alone on a cold winter’s day.

That is some serious stuff, my friends.

So today I learned, that I am a mom.  And I have the kids and laundry and dishes and dust to prove it.  I am a mom.  That makes me one damn lucky lady, laundry and all.

Laundry

 

 

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Christmas Memories

Tick tock, tick tock, folks.  Christmas, that most stressful/joyful of holidays, is only a week away.  Hop to it, am I right?

Not me.

I get reflective this time of year.  Things are winding down, a new year is about to begin, another year is ending.  I miss the people I love who have died.  I think a lot about all the years that have passed, all the Christmases that have come and gone.

As a parent now, I am the one responsible for helping my sons make their first Christmas memories.  I want them to be happy memories, joyful memories, loving memories.  So, I do what I can, suck up my grief and sadness, and get about the work of “making memories.”

For me it is work, always has been.  Along the continuum of Scrooge and Merry Martha Stewart, I fall somewhere left of center, inching dangerously towards Scrooge.  But I try.  I do.  And the trying helps.  It’s best for my kids and, no doubt, I could try even harder and it would be even better for them. Sigh.

This year, I find myself thinking a lot about my Donnas — my Mom and my daughter, both buried now, dead from brain tumors that took them too soon.  I think about my childhood Christmases and my eyes well up on an almost daily basis right now.  Water works, folks.

One thing that helps when I feel sad and weepy is just to embrace it.  Wallow a bit.  Feel all the feelings.  So here they are, a few of my memory snapshots that have me weeping this year.

  • I remember the potent smell of dust and must as I stood behind the heavy draperies in my childhood dining room looking out the windows up at the night sky on Christmas Eve, scanning for Rudolph’s bright red light, guiding Santa to our home.
  • I remember the Christmas I had chicken pox and spent the whole holiday in pajamas, separated from my brothers, sisters and cousins.
  • I remember Midnight Mass and how very crowded the parking lot was and walking into church up way past my bedtime and my breath, visible in the cold, stretching out in front of me.
  • I remember the year I proudly wore burgandy colored knickers, Calvin Klein brand, bought in a flight of indulgence on my Dad’s part, after telling me about the knickers he wore as a boy.
  • I remember how incredibly stressed and short my Mom would be trying to corral all us kids to clean up our holiday loot before the guests arrived and how all that stress and shortness just disappeared as soon as the door bell rang.
  • I remember being the youngest of four kids all piled in my parent’s dark bedroom on Christmas Eve, feigning sleep, anxiously waiting for Santa to arrive.  The doorbell would sound five, six, seven times, my Dad’s voice would boom out, “HO, HO, HO!  Merry Christmas!”  A few moments later we were allowed to run down the stairs to a living room full of Mom, Dad, Grandma, and our two nuns/aunts, settled around the sofa and the tree surrounded with wrapped gifts.  In just a few minutes the gold carpeting would be littered with scraps of gift wrap and smiling faces.
  • I remember licking the homemade crochet bell ornaments made by my Baba (Croatian grandmother).  They tasted like sugar, year after year, as she had dipped them in sugar water to help the fibers harden.
  • I remember the sound of the tea kettle, calling us all to the kitchen table on Christmas Eve, sandwiched between our gift opening and our Midnight Mass sojourn, for cookies and cheer.
  • I remember the artificial tree, well past its prime, that challenged anyone who tried to construct it, just one more year.  I remember the toy blocks, red and blue squares, that we had to nudge in between the tree and the silver screws that barely did the job they were charged to do — keep the tree from falling over.
  • I remember Baby That-a-Way and Tiffany Taylor — both Christmas gifts and the only dolls I ever played with my whole childhood.
  • I remember being at a Knights of Columbus Christmas party and entering the whistling contest.  We had to eat a number of saltines and then whistle into Santa’s ear.  The first one to whistle won a prize.  That poor Santa’s ears were flooded with half chewed saltine globs, mine included.  Poor, poor Santa.
Clearly, I was ambivalent about Christmas at an early age. Me and my brother, c. 1973.
Clearly, I was ambivalent about Christmas at an early age.  Me and my brother, c. 1973.

I could go on, but I won’t.  My own tree still needs trimming, my boy is home sick with a cough and headache, and very soon, the baby will need a bottle.  I’m the Mom now, not the kid, despite still feeling like a kid myself.  There are some memories that need making and as hard as it is, I want those memories to be sweet ones.

Love to you as this Christmas countdown continues.  Feel free to share your own Christmas snap shots.  I will read them tonight over cocoa.