Falling

After my mom died, I fell headfirst into an ugly, nasty depression. It started slowly - spurred on by a rocky patch in my relationship with B, I started having panic attacks. While I brushed these early episodes aside, my freak-outs got significantly more ferocious, and by the end of my second year, I spent most of my time escaping into sleep. When I did manage to pull myself out of bed, I skipped work or class, obsessive-compulsively calling B just to 'check in' (because in my paranoid, cracked out universe, I was convinced that he had been in a horrific car crash, or kidnapped by aliens.) When I wasn't calling and calling and calling (or emailing and emailing and emailing) B in the throes of frenzied fear, or crying hysterically on the phone to my best friend BFF, I would sit on the couch with a frosted blueberry pop tart, or a bowl of ramen noodles, and spend some quality time with my friends, Moesha and Maury.

Since my final exams failed to address why Moesha was on punishment (again) or whether or not "in the case of 11 month old Billy-Bob Jr., Billy-Bob, you ARE NOT the father(!!!)," my grades inevitably tanked.

And, ashamed of myself, I sank deeper into a fugue state.

So, fast-forward two years - dark circles under my eyes, perpetually exhausted with myself, and scared of the ever-deepening shadows.

And then, B decided one day that he was going skydiving with a group of friends. Fearing for his life (as usual), I decided to go too, because in my paranoid, cracked-out universe, I actually believed that if I was there, too, I could catch him if his parachute didn't open.  

Really.

So, I pulled on a drab olive green jump suit, signed a form agreeing that in the event of an accident, I wouldn't come back from the dead and sue the skydiving company, and squeezed a pair of heavy protective goggles over my head.

Then, tethered to my tandem skydiving instructor, I got on the plane.

I remember the hollow howl of the wind next to airplane hatch as I waited to free-fall from 13 thousand feet above sea level. I remember how the clouds hung below us, scattering patchwork shadows on the farm land over two miles down. I remember a leaden sense of inevitability weighing down on me -- as if stuck in a nightmare, my arms and legs moved against my will, while my mind shut down in fear, and my heart stalled in my chest.

And strapped to my instructor, armed with two parachutes and a prayer, I tumbled from the plane.

I fell through the clouds, smelling the sea, tasting the tang of terror as hot tears pooled in my eyes. I fell and fell and fell, the gold and green ground racing toward me faster and faster and faster. I fell and fell and fell, the wind roaring against my face, a primal scream louder than my own.

I fell and fell and fell.

And then, with a mighty whoosh, the instructor pulled the lever and our parachutes opened.

We glided through the darkening sky, the clouds above us stained pinky-peach and purple. The air gentle and warm against our faces, we floated softly through the deeping dusk.

And for the first time in ten thousand lifetimes -- since my mom left me -- I felt safe within myself.

I felt free.

Once I fell through the clouds the world below seemed a lot less terrifying. 

A Tale of Two Mamas

Once, there were Two Mamas. 

There was Mama Then - scared and shriveled, washing her hands for the 112th time in an hour because she accidentally brushed up against the rose bush in front of her neighbors house, while making a mental note to tell her neighbor to trim the fucking thing because plants have germs and may be poisonous, who never had time to meet a friend for coffee because not even GOD was qualified to babysit, who measured life in "what if's".

And then there was Mama Now - too tired to plan ahead, lifting her babies up to smell the roses in front of her neighbor's house, who is more than happy to ask the sympathetic homeless man in front of Coffee Bean to keep an eye on her kids while she orders a double latte and chats with a friend, who lives her life in "so what's?"

Mama Now kicked Mama Then's ass because Middle Ground is for amateurs.

But Saturday morning, Mama Now sat down to blog about what an awesome mother she is while M watched Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire and Little Homie played on the floor.  With the germs.  Mama Then would have thrown a shit fit, but so what?

But somewhere around the time Harry was battling the grindilows in the Enchanted Lake, and M was sucking her thumb and looking a little scarred for life, I glanced down and noticed that Little Homie wasn't making any noise.  And, he looked scared.  Not scared by the grindilows who were trying to drown Harry but really scared.  Like eyes bugging out, mouth opening and closing like a fish flopping on a pier scared.  Mama Then erupted like a bat out of hell , and the laptop crashed to the ground.

He was clutching a piece of paper - something so innocuous, so mundane, and so incredibly deadly when you're seven months old and cutting SEVEN teeth at once.  He wasn't breathing.  He wasn't breathing.  And the paper had a big piece torn out, still wet around the edges.

Yeah, well, even Mama Now could have figured this one out.

I pried open his mouth and saw a white fibrous mass covering his throat.  Time hiccuped.  It was like the oxygen was sucked out of the room, and all I could hear was a vacuous roar in my ears. With my index finger, I swept the inside of his cheek, praying - really praying -- that I wouldn't push the clump of wet paper further back.  He was starting to shake, and his eyes were blank.  But I was not going to let my son die while M divided her attention between Harry Potter battling for his life against the grindilows and the real life drama playing out on the floor.


I felt the paper pulpy against my finger, and I popped it out.

Little Homie gagged, wretched, and spewed milk and sweet potato all over the floor.  And then, with an angry wail, he breathed.   

He breathed. 

And when M came over to investigate, Mama Now let her play in the vomit while I held my baby boy in my arms and realized it was probably about time for Mama Then and Mama Now to meet in the middle and work out a truce.

For the sake of my kids.

Mother Lion

Two year olds and teenagers aren't all that different. Both  lack sound judgment, can be incredibly emotional, and often demonstrate a deep fascination with car keys. While I watch M testing the boundaries of her independence in our baby-proofed living room, and learning that it's fun to ignore her parents -- especially when we tell her not to play with the electrical sockets -- I experience flashes of deja vu as I remember my recalcitrance as a teenager. My poor, beleaguered parents: I never listened to their advice, no matter how well-intentioned or sound, and sometimes (ok, most times) I payed a hefty price while learning from my mistakes.

While I think breaking away from your parents may be a universal phenomenon, from my experience, the tension in my family was primarily between my mom and me.

Case in point:  On the first day of "living in the dorms," I watched my dad pull the mock-Tiffany lamp out of a cardboard box, and I saw the familiar worn brown fuzz of my childhood teddy bear which my mom must have packed when I wasn't looking. Tucking in the green blanket, my mom patted the bed, "when I first went away to college, my mom made my bed!, " she said as she looked up at me with shining eyes. Supposedly, our eyes never get any bigger than they are on the day we're born, but beneath her blue bandana which covered the skimpy patches of her chemo hair-do, those brown eyes seemed larger than I had ever seen them -- it was as though she were desperately trying to signal me without words, while knowing that I would ignore the meaning of her message.

The sadness I felt scared me, and hot anger roiled in to block the fear. I don't know where my rage came from, but it had grown familiar and comfortable. I had behaved like a caged wild-cat whenever I was with my mom since her diagnosis a few months before, and I wanted her to leave my dorm room and let me start my new life.

And she did. But as we said our goodbyes, she bent down and bit my arm. Hard. I yowled in pain as I felt her teeth sink into my flesh. Later, after she and my dad arrived back at home and called to wish me goodnight, she explained, that 'thats just what mother lions do when their young leave the pride." Her teethmarks left a scar that I still wear to this day.

My mom died just as I was learning how to crawl out of that bitchy, breaking-away phase of young-adulthood. But before we could forge a new relationship based on tolerance, mutual respect and understanding, she was gone. And I was left wounded, afraid, and metaphorically curled up in the fetal position once again, not quite sure how to finish finding myself in a world without her. I never imagined being a mama without my mom around, and sometimes -- ok, oftentimes -- I feel her absence, raw and gaping, more painful than her sharp teeth tearing into my skin.

How we Tried - and Failed - to stay Neutral

This post is in honor of my friend, K, who found out today that her Baby Bun is a boy!

Even though I’d always imagined having a daughter, nine months before The Girl was born, as soon as B and I watched the tell-tale second line emerge on the pee-soaked stick,  we were absolutely positively certain that the little creature inside my uterus had a penis -- in fact, we were so sure, we immediately started referring to the baby-to-be as a "he." When people would ask "do you know what you are having?" I would launch into a whole explanation of why we were proof-positive our fetus was a 'he-tus:'

After all:
1. It looked like I had a basketball under my shirt -- I was carrying low and out in front.

2. My morning sickness, while present and accounted for, was not debilitating. Smelling Chinese food and coffee made me gag, but I didn't throw up at all.

3. Miss Cleo from the Psychic Hotline promised me 'Child, dat bebe is definitely a boy.'

Still, we were eagerly anticipating our 20 week ultrasound, when Dr. Feel Very Good said we'd probably have a definitive answer. We even decided to make a party of it, and invited BFF, my Fairy Godmother-in-Law and my dad to come with us for the appointment. Along with the importance of checking on the development and the health of our baby, we also wanted carte blanche to say "Ha ha. Told ya so!" to the naysayers who thought we might be having a girl-child.

As soon as I lay down and Dr. Feel Very Good put the probe on my belly we knew that we might be in for a big disappointment: There, up on the screen, our little fetus was yawning. Yes, they can do that in utero. Brat.

As it turns out, fetuses have sleep schedules just like the rest of us, and our scan happened to fall right in the middle of Nap Time. While we could see the baby shifting gently in the amniotic fluid, it seemed unlikely that there would be any somersaults, tumbles, or changes in position.

Dr. Feel Very Good took all the necessary brain/heart/stomach/kidney measurements, and then moved the probe down to where the baby's genitals were. Access denied: Our little fetus was sound asleep and 'his' ('her?') legs were crossed in a display of modesty.

Anyway, sensing our palpable disappointment, Dr. Feel Very Good and prodded the little creature for a few moments, but the babe didn't budge. Finally, perhaps jolted by my plaintive cries of "Move your ass" and "Spread 'em!" the baby twitched, and for a split-second Dr. Feel Very Good got a peek between the legs.

"Hmm... Well, I'm pretty sure it's a girl!" he said.

What? No penis?  We were shocked.  After all, Miss Cleo is, like, never wrong!

Everyone seemed eager to jump on the "It's a Girl!" bandwagon, and we found ourselves drowning in pink onesies and ruffled dresses. As the baby girl clothes piled higher and higher in the dresser, we faced a two-part dilemma:

1. In general, I was not a fan of pink. Yes, I'll admit that the sugar and spice was ever so nice, but I had always thought of myself as one of those uber-hip mamas who would defy the male/female paradigm and dress her kid in cool, gender-neutral onesies with snarky comments like "I Just Spent the Last 9 Months in Solitary Confinement" or “Party At My Crib”

2. We were still not 100% sure that our fetus didn't have a penis. And dressing him in frills against his will might give him a little too much to bitch about with his therapist some day.

We were able to get the gender issue partially resolved before The Girl was born: Several weeks after our inconclusive ultrasound, Dr. Feel Very Good wanted to take another look at the baby just to measure the amniotic fluid because I had been freaking out about decreased fetal movement.  Well, modesty was clearly a thing of the past as this time around our little one left nothing up to the imagination. Baby legs akimbo, we could all clearly see the 'equal sign' or 'bun-burger-bun' markings of a labia.

For those keeping score - Modern Medicine: 1. Miss. Cleo: 0.

Still, I held on to my plan that our baby would wear a lot of gender neutral outfits, and so, I shopped accordingly. When The Girl was born (clearly without boy-bits) I spent her first few days dressing her in white cotton newborn T-shirts (courtesy of BFF) and green, yellow and brown onesies that practically screamed neutrality.

But all of that changed when she was less than a week old.

While carrying her back to the car after her first doctor’s appointment, a woman exclaimed "Oh! What a handsome little fellow!"  Yeah, you'd think that I'd be thrilled that the gender-neutral clothing was doing it's thing and shattering expectations vis-a-vis the male/female paradigm and blah blah kumbaya, but no. I was not amused. As soon as we got home, I tore off her 'Cute as a Bug' brown and yellow onesie with the little bumblebee on the front, and dressed her, instead, in a delicate pale pink dress with daisies on the hem. While I guess I could have glued a big sign to her stroller reading "MY DAUGHTER HAS A VAGINA," I figured that dressing her pretty in pink (and purple, and soft aqua, and pale yellow) was far more lady-like for my magical baby girl.

Flashforward a little over a year, and The Girl is clearly just that. The Girl.  Even though her elfin ears make her look like Ross Perot’s love-child, with her rosebud lips and wispy curls, she is delicate and fairy-fair, a whimsical child with dainty hands and sooty lashes.  And when I offer her a choice of clothes to wear -- shirt and pants vs. dress -- she inevitably reaches for the frills, plucking at the gauzy fabric, twirling around in circles like a ballerina as soon as she’s dressed.  But  still, even in her ribbons and lace, she plays in the mud, and loves her trucks and trains as much as she enjoys cradling her stuffed animals and dolls.  And this makes me happy.

(Over)sharing... Again

I make no secret of the fact that after M was born, I spiraled down into a nasty-ass depression that lasted for 3 long months. The cocktail of hormones, sleep deprivation, and sheer New Mama terror proved almost deadly, and for a very tense few weeks, I thought about killing myself. I had this fantasy of slitting my wrists – down the street, not across the road – and taking a bath in my own blood and freshly squeezed breast milk. The only thing that kept me from doing this was the knowledge that I couldn’t pump enough breast milk to freeze for M, and – God Forbid – she had to have formula. Over my dead body!  Oh, wait.

But I was supposed to be happy. And so, each morning I got up and put on a smile that never quite reached my eyes, and I faked a new mama glow the way porn stars fake orgasms.

But when I started weeping midway through my postpartum exam – yes, while my legs were in the stirrups – Dr. Feel Very Good gently brought up the topic of Post Partum Depression.

“No, I’m fiinneeeeeeeeeeeee,” I blubbered, using the corner of the drape covering my Lady Business to furtively wipe the snot dripping from my nose. “I just have a case of the Baby Blues. I’ll be ok if I can just get some sleep”

Um, yeah. Only Tom Cruise \would believe I didn’t need meds.

Dr. Feel Very Good smiled gently and explained that sometimes the Baby Blues can be more serious. And when this happens, you need more than a good night’s sleep to make it go away. So, he referred me to a shrink, who referred me to Zoloft, and we all lived happily ever after. The End

Ok, so it wasn’t quite that simple, but things did get better.  M started to become more like a baby and less like a chicken. I was too exhausted to wake up every hour to check to see if she was breathing, so I accidentally managed to actually sleep when she slept. And then, either the meds kicked in, or the hormones began to even out, or both, but at last, my feelings started to make more sense.

But then, somewhere in the beginning of my second pregnancy, the goblins came back -- niggling, little shits, clawing and scratching at the outside of my sanity.  Hungry little fuckers.  And while it would probably have been safe to go back on Zoloft, my thoughts were doing the 'what if' dance, so I did the next best thing:  I started writing.

And I'm still here.

Write at Home

Before I was born, my mom spent two years in the Peace Corps. She volunteered in Robert Kennedy's campaign. She worked for the Western Center of Law and Poverty, and served as Chief of Staff for a California Congressman. She was an activist, and an intellectual, and in July of 1981, she became a mother. So, she decided to make a monumental job-change and exchange her high heels for sneakers.

My mom's work-shift started at daybreak -- long before I woke up to the moan of the foghorns, and the smell of coffee brewing in our teeny-tiny house in Venice, California. While my dad showered and shaved, I'd stumble to our dining room table, where she'd bring me a cup of mint tea, and a bowl of Quaker Oats Maple Brown Sugar oatmeal. While I ate, she'd sit next to the open window, sipping her coffee and smoking her third cigarette. The laundry was done, and folded neatly. Lunch -- usually a salami sandwich with extra mustard, a Capri Sun, a baggie of sliced carrots and cucumbers,  a hard-boiled egg, and sometimes a brownie -- was already tucked away in my neon pink backpack. While we waited for whoever was driving carpool to BEEP BEEP BEEP the horn, my mom would quiz me on my multiplication tables and ask me who I was the most excited about seeing at school.

When I'd come home from school, the house was redolent with the fragrance of dinner. Sometimes, she'd make her famous spaghetti and meat sauce, other times, chicken kabobs, or salmon croquettes. When I had soccer practice, or art class, or Hebrew School, my mom drove, and we'd listen to classical music in the car while she'd fill me in on the latest murder mystery she was reading each night before bed. On evenings when my dad had late-meetings, she would prepare finger sandwiches, and we'd dine daintily like royalty. And sometimes, in the still of the night, when even our cat, Nebbie, was snoring gently, she'd wake me up, and we'd sit by candlelight on the front deck, drink chamomile tea, and eat squares of dark chocolate. We would whisper ghost stories while surrounded by the powerful stillness of midnight.

Still, when asked what she did for a living, my mom would never describe herself as a Stay At Home Mom. Instead, she would tell people that she "worked from home." You see, during the day while I was gone, she would take her coffee and her cigarettes out to the little shed behind our house, and write childrens’ books at a well0worn library table from the 1920‘s.  Along with managing the house, cooking, cleaning, and just being home in case I needed her, this was how she financially contributed to the family. And more importantly, this was how she nourished her creativity and kept her sense of self happy and alive.

When I started to think about having a family -- even before I met B --- I knew that I wanted to follow my mom's example and (if, financially feasible) "work from home." And so, B and I have tried to make it happen: He waltzes off to work every day, and I stay home with M and Little Homie. But still, you can only sing “The Wheels on the Bus go Round and Round” so many times before going absolutely ape-shit crazy.   Between power-struggles over bath time, scrubbing splattered sweet potato from the floor and walls and -- how did this happen?-- the ceiling, and spending more time with my iRabbit vibrator than I do with my husband, I wonder how my mom made it all look so effortless.  As  much as I love my family, some days I feel like I stumbled into somebody else’s life.  A life of sneakers and sandwiches, of early mornings and sleepless nights.  And it was in one of these moments after while listening to M beat her toy xylophone to death for 15 minutes  while Little Homie screamed at a decibal that dogs in Canada could hear (and wishing I had a screwdriver to jam in my ears), that I began to  fully appreciate how important it must have been for my mom to have her creative identity. Certainly, I don’t know how I would survive without it, which is why I’m writing through to the other side of midnight.  Again.

Just Another Saturday Night

On Saturday night, B and his mama went for a delicious dinner at Akasha in Downtown Culver City.  While the two shared a bottle of J. Keverson and some Carpaccio and discussed Important Things, my dear friend, C,and I decided to take M and Little Homie to Barnes and Noble in the Westside Pavillion.

In theory, it could have been a lovely evening for the four of us.  But Mother of the Year over here forgot to pack snacks.  And diapers.  And Percoset.  I did manage to pack my lipgloss and mirror because I clearly have my priorities straight.

Really, the 12 minute car ride itself should have made us turn around:  Little Homie spent most of it screaming like a pig gettiing raped in the ass, but it was Saturday night in LA, and no matter what, I was determined that C and I would hit the town. Even if hitting the town meant leaving the kids in the car and cracking a window.   Even if hitting the town included an infant and a toddler.

We screech to a halt mid-whine -- "Mamaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa meeee boboooooooooooooooooob.  Mamaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa meeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee boooooooooooooob"  -- is on perpetual repeat courtesy of M.  Yes she is still nursing.  Welcome to my National Geographic Magazine nightmare.

After we park and get out of the car, C holds M's hand and I carry Little Homie under one arm while pushing the pink Snap N Go with the other because God forbid he should sit in his stroller like a normal baby.  C and I walk through the parking lot as though it were a landmine full of hidden dangers we could only half anticipate. And thankfully, C is a total badass when it comes to wrangling a toddler - we met while teaching preschool, and I've always admired the way she talks to children.  She manages to keep them safe while empowering them - it's a tricky balance that I'm always trying to master. 

As soon as we get to Barnes and Noble, M perks up.  "See see book!  See see book!"  she chirps as she takes off running.  C runs after her, and I run after C.  And then Little Homie starts screaming again - that nails-on-a-chalkboard shriek that makes me want to stick a screwdriver through both ears.  So, I ditch the stroller and purse with C, and slip off to the bathroom to feed the boy.  Yes, I actually nurses in a scuzzy-ass public bathroom.  Sitting on a toilet. It's special bonding time for us. 

Mid-suck and mid-stream, I think I hear C say "no, the escalator is not a safe place" so I pull Little Homie off the tit, tuck myself away, zip up my pants (If you judge me, I will squirt you in the eye) and I bolt out of the bathroom.  With Little Homie squawking and squirming under my arm, I scan the children's book area, but M and C are no where to be seen,  and my heart starts beating like a tom tom.  I hear my cellphone chirp -- that tinny, mechanical rendition of Hava Nagila I downloaded for $2.95.  Since my phone was supposed to be in my purse, and since my purse was supposed to be with C,  I follow the sound until I find my phone lying next to the Harry Potter books.  "What the fuck?"  I say in my not-so-quiet voice, while another mama shoots me a dirty look. "No, really.  How the hell did that get there?"  I ask, teetering on the edge of hysteria as worst-case-scenarios -- most of them involving alien abduction -- flicker through my mind.  Another dirty look from a different mama.

So,  with the dexterity of a stoned Sumo Wrestler, I bend down, grab the phone, and  notice my wallet lying a few feet away, and while I reach for that I drop my cell phone.  And then as I reach for that, my nursing bra unhooks, and my boob flops out.  Hold up:  This isn't the Superbowl and I'm not Janet Jackson.  Alas.   Still, there is only so much you can do while holding a wriggly six-month-old, so with my teeth, I grab the clasp of the nursing bra, and somehow, tuck myself back in.   Then, I stick my cellphone in my mouth, grab my wallet and bounce Little Homie on my hip as I follow a trail of several other items -- a pack of chewing gum, a note pad, a pen -- fallen from my purse.  But, my terror mounting, I don't even bother to pick them up. 

While the rational part of me knows that M is probably perfectly safe with my responsible and loving friend, I still feel sweat prickling under my arms.  My mind is swimming - no, drowning - in Very Scary Thoughts, and I can't stop hyperventilating.  (By the way, hyperventilating takes a lot of skill when you have a cellphone stuck between your teeth, but I've got the whole panic attack thing down so I'm good.  But then the phone starts ringing, and I can feel Hava Nagila vibrating through my teeth.)

"FUUUUCK!"  I yell, which comes out a lot more like "FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUH"  But the tween looking at the Twighlight Books, knows exactly what I said.

"Ooooh, you said a bad word."

"Tuh shih"  I answer. 

 I drop the wallet, snatch the phone out of my mouth, and answer.

"We're by the Self-Help books,"  C tells me.

Figures.

"Oh, and I think she might have pooped."  She adds.  

I put the phone back in my mouth, pick up the wallet, and hurry to the psychobabble section.


I smell them before I see them:  But never before has baby shit smelled so wonderful, because all that matters is C and M are safe -- M is in C's arms, and my empty purse is dangling at an absurd angle from C's wrist.


"Don't ask."  she laughs.


"Hi mama!  Poop!"  M says.  "See see Elmo book"  she adds while handing me a small cardboard Sesame Street book.


"Ok, where's the nearest bar,"  I announce as I belly up to the cash register with Elmo book M chose.  "Mama needs a drink."

"Do you really need a drink?"  The clerk asks snidely as he rings up the purchase.

"Oh no.  What I really needs is some crystal meth,"    I say "But I'll settle for a beer."