The Downside of the Loftbed

We hear it from the moment our baby boys are born. Older people (and even younger people with older kids--who always end up feeling like older people) seem to love to tell us mothers of little boys that they'll grow up and leave us someday. My sister in law used to say she wanted daughters 'because they never really leave their moms.' It all kinda creeps me out, like there's some set rule out there. It's odd to think that my unique little baby boy could ever just become one of those grown up guys these women love to tell me about.

What a love affair it's been with this little boy! And to top it off he was kind of shy and preferred to be with me, hanging out, with us, in our living room, at home, than anywhere else. He wouldn't even take a class that didn't involve a parent being right by his side (we settled on rock-climbing, with his father spotting him). Of course we'd roll our eyes like everyone seemed to think we should and complain about his lack of independence, but frankly I didn't find anything wrong with it, plus I was perfectly content to hang out with him at home as well.

A few years ago his shyness morphed into an extreme self-awareness--almost like he was watching himself be a little boy, instead of just being one. By second grade he started to ditch us at the corner, half a block away from the school building. It was heartbreaking to watch, especially since I knew that he was aching to be with us. But I totally got it. I remember not wanting to be seen with my parents when I was a teenager. Sure, it was happening to him sooner, but the feelings still seemed the same--hyper-awareness of who he was in the eyes of the other kids, and a need to appear to have separated from his mom.

I stopped reaching for his hand when we'd cross the street. I stopped ducking back into his classroom to tell him things, I stopped waving hello to him if I saw him with his buddies in the school yard. Of course I'd keep my face open, waiting to return any gaze he'd send my way, but I wouldn't initiate anything. I respected his need to create his own little existence.

In our home he has the tiniest little bedroom at the top of our stairs. His two younger sisters share a larger room, and my husband and I have a medium sized room in the back. His room was so small that his door would bump into his bedframe when we opened it, and you had to sit on his bed to get the right leverage to open any of his dresser drawers. At one point, in a fury of adding things like floor-to-ceiling bookshelves and other desperate space-saving measures, we realized that if he had a loft bed that ran parallel to his back wall, he would have an entire room to play in, to celebrate all this new independence.

Some great workmen from Queens designed and built a really high bed, with a ladder leading up to it, and a built in desk underneath. When their work was done we all painted it, and the walls, a Shrek green. His favorite color. His room seemed enormous. The door opened all the way, he had his own little universe under the loftbed (he can stand straight up underneath it)--with his desk and his globe and his drawers and his chair and his desklamp. A little green paradise!

And then it came time to say goodnight. And I stood below him and watched him disappear up the ladder--almost like Jack climbing up the beanstalk. By the time he got to the top and pulled his barefeet off the ladder and onto the bed he looked teensy and very very far away. I tried, on a couple of occasions, to climb up with him, but the ladder was too vertical and while going up wasn't a problem, I had a genuine fear of getting in the right position to climb back down again.

The best I can do now, when I go in his room to say goodnight, is to reach up and grab a toe and wiggle it and say "I love you kiddo,' or something lame like that. There's no such thing as snuggling up with him, lying in his bed reading to him, or even stroking his forehead if he feels sick, or waking him up with a kiss.

Why didn't anyone tell me about this?

To make matters even worse, he's now a self-assured fifth grader, who will reach for my hand on occasion, even when his friends are around. Who wants to snuggle up and read, who wants me to come on his class trips, who gives me spontaneous hugs. I'm aware that this might be one big last push of closeness because he's sensing all the growing up that's just around the corner. But whatever it is, it's really there, and it's really great, and yet this crazy loftbed just makes some simple parenting moves feel impossible.

His loftbed makes him seem very very far away, which is kind of too bad since pretty soon he really might be really really far away, but right now he isn't, but still, he is.

Teller No, Teller yes

this originally appeared on nycmomsblog on December 11, 2008

This time of year is tricky, what with all the online shopping and packages that can never be received during regular daytime hours. I'm always either playing 'tag you're it' with the UPS and FedEx guys--scrawling notes on the backs of their slips with sharpie and rigging them to the door so they won't blow away but will be noticed by them on their return, or playing hide and seek with these same clever deliverymen who will sometimes take pity on me and find crafty places to hide my packages. Of course it always takes me awhile to think to read their handwriting, usually I just assume I've missed the package yet again. One guy leaves my boxes down in the stairwell (a dramatic word for the two steps down) of the garden apartment. Another guy sneaks the package between my garbage can and our neighbor's stoop, which makes me nervous because that's where we put recycling, sometimes, when our inside area overflows. Of course they only do this sometimes, and most of the time I just have to hope the planets line up and someone will be here to receive.

But the worst thing is to come home and find the vomit colored beige-pink slip from the post office several blocks away. Did they pick that gross color on purpose? How much different would it be if the slip was a pretty green, or a mango-yellow?

Of course once I read the fine print and realized that it wasn't just a plea to come try to find the package at the post office but rather, an invitation to a dialogue about how I might want them to attempt to redeliver it, even those ugly slips didn't seem so bad. I'd simply sign the back, stick it back on the door (again with clever rigging since it has no stickiness on it), and wait for the Post Office guy to bring it 'round again.

This morning however I got an email from Amazon stating that my post office had attempted delivery of my package (full of 'word combination locks' for my children--one of whom is anticipating a locker in middle school next fall, and the other of whom has taken up ice skating and so will need to become familiarized with the lockers at Wolman Rink, and the third of whom will need one just because the others have them) but that no one had been here to receive it (duh), and that it would be waiting for me at the post office.

This was confusing to me because I didn't expect the package for another few days, and because I never received the little slip notification from the post office.

After I dropped the kids off at school this morning I did a few errands and then attempted to return home only to find that my entire street was being blocked off for tree pruning. So when I set out to find a parking spot on another block my mind was doing its usual calculations about how I could maximize this unexpected extra mileage. I remembered the package at the post office.

I drove over and parked nearby and braced myself for what would no doubt be a really long and angry line. At one point my post office was rated 'worst in the city' and I heard a rumor that it was rated 'worst in the country,' but I never found evidence that that study had been done. There's no organization whatsoever, and long lines are often compounded by the fact that people who've gone to fetch something (like an ID) tend to be allowed to barge back into the building and go straight to the next available window ahead of the people in line. Sometimes the package slips are handled at the regular windows, and at other times, just as I'm about to get my very own teller, some new 'packages only' window will open up and I'll find myself forking over my slip along with about seventeen other slips and then they just come out in whichever order the grumpy teller deems fit.

When I got there there was no one in line. Hallelujah. I had no slip but I did have ID so I figured there'd be no problem. The woman however, wasn't interested in taking me at my word that I'd gotten an email from Amazon, even though I knew that the combination of a package with my name and address and my ID with matching information should have sufficed.

"We have a new system, since four weeks ago." She explained. Great. I needed the tracking order. A 'fine' escaped my clenched jaw and I turned to leave, visualizing the next hour or so, of looking for a parking spot, printing out my Amazon email, returning to find that dreaded long line, etc. All of this was feeling extra emotional to me since we only found out (yesterday!) that my four year old won't have school tomorrow, so my second day 'off' of the week wasn't going to resemble a day off at all (so much for slipping into a movie theater for a half price matinee while the kids were at school).

As I approached the door I found myself wishing there was some way to get that tracking number without going home and just as I was inventing a little handheld device that could access the internet it dawned on me...I already had one of those! I've had this Samsung Blackjack II now for about a month and despite the fact that it's been fun to check email on the fly (and depressing to realize that I don't get that many interesting emails), my main issue with it has been that I don't get reception in building where I teach three days a week--seems at&t doesn't work, t-mobile works fine, and Verizon works in all areas, even the basement and the elevator. So I've owned this little at&t device but because of the at&t poor-reception complication it hasn't felt like a life-saver yet.

Until today.

I whipped it out, and within minutes I'd called up the Amazon email, followed links to the tracking page, and was writing the tracking order down on paper for the teller, who seemed a lot friendlier this time around.

She was able to locate the package (eventually) and even called me 'sweetheart' as I left. There were tears in my eyes as I left, but not the same kind that I'd fought back moments earlier when I'd turned away in defeat, cursing the inhumanity--distraught at the fact that I could prove who I was and where I lived but that that wouldn't hold a drop of water in the face of their new and impersonal 'numbers only' system.

So an enormous personal victory today at the post office. Hard to believe I'd ever write that sentence. Anyone who lives in this part of Brooklyn would understand.

I Love You But...

this post appeared on nycmomsblog.com on November 16, 2008

I love my family. My husband, my kids, my sister, my in-laws, my nieces, my nephews. I love my dad. I love my mom, my sister... I love my friends. But on the first Sunday of every November, every year, as I stand on the sidewalk just around the corner from my brownstone, I am struck with the realization that I probably don't love them enough.

For My Dad With Cancer! screams the permanent marker scrawled across the back of some NYC Marathon runner's purple shirt.

Running for My Mom!

In Loving Memory of (fill in the blank)! And so on and so forth.

The NYC Marathon becomes a blur of fast-moving, dedicated, people who love their families more than I love mine.

As I stand there applauding and shouting out the name of every person who bothered to draw their name out of tape on their shirt "Go Lucy! Great job Robert! Lookin' good James!' I feel like less of a human being. Do I even have a heart?

Probably not.

It's possible that the voice in my head that doesn't want me to work out is stronger than my capacity to love the people in my life. The few times I've tried to run more than a few blocks (and of course, I have to be wearing the exact right no-bounce bra--one that's earned 5 barbells in the Title Nine catalog--or I can't even attempt to dash across the street) my head is filled with this:

Oh, come on. Give it a rest. What's the point. You hate this! It'll never be over. This is going on forever. Nothing about this is good. Everything hurts. Just stop, why bother?

Stuff like that.

So family members and friends, I've said this to you every November, and I'll say it again. I will be so sad and sorry for what happened. I'll miss you more than I can ever explain. I will be filled with grief and I will pull the curtains closed and eat chips and dip in front of the television for months. I'll shave my head, I'll get a tattoo. I will go to a thousand dark movie theaters and sob away, in between milkduds. I will be unable to get out of bed.

I might consider moving to the Seychelles and starting over. And I might consider going about my life, business as usual, but with a hole in my heart, eyes that will never see the same way, and a brain that will be forever altered. And I might consider doing something heroic in your honor. But training for and then running twenty-six-point-something miles? Forget it.

I'll draw your name on my shirt. I'll wear that shirt all the time. I love you, everything I do will be for you. But I won't do that.

His Sister--His Beard

I leave in a few minutes to take my daughter to see High School Musical 3. I'm dragging her ten year old brother along with me.

Actually, that's what he's hoping it looks like. In reality, we chose the 6pm movie time so he could come. The 4:40 time we originally chose would have clashed with baseball practice. And he wouldn't miss that for the world.

Poor guy, having to schlep along to see HSM3, right? But that's life with a little sister.

And he's pretty discerning about movies. He actually didn't want to see Wall-E this past summer, and Journey to the Center of the Earth came close to not being, I don't know, man enough? for him. He's more of an Ironman, Hulk, Dark Knight kind of kid.

But he does tend to gravitate towards the TV in the afternoon when the girls are watching Hannah Montana. And as the chief DVR-operator in the family, makes sure to tape High School Musical and other similar movies when he finds that they'll be coming on. Then he usually hounds his almost less-interested sister into watching them with him. Come on! he'll scold, we have to watch this before it gets erased! Once it's on, she'll drift away here and there, but he remains glued, blaming her for making him watch it, but glued nonetheless.



I remember growing up with a sister and being very intrigued by boy stuff. This is definitely one of the perks of growing up with opposite sex siblings. Maximum curiosity-satisfying. My poor son has had friends--boys with older or younger brothers--show up to play with him, and then watched in horror as they've gotten drawn into games of house, or family, or gotten sidetracked by Polly-pockets. Of course now that the boys are all ten they're officially uninterested in the girls' things. Officially uninterested, that is.

Unofficially? Who knows?

Last night he reminded her that the movie was opening today and then whumped in the car this morning when he found out we were aiming for an earlier show that would begin while he was still at practice. He acted like we were over-planning and, in a very casual slightly annoyed voice with the perfect tone of put-outness, suggested why don't we just all go together tomorrow or something? For logistical reasons, she and I decided to stick to the 4:40 plan, and I dropped them off at school. But as the day went on I started to feel bad for him. When would he get another chance to see High School Musical 3? When would the 'ugh they made me do it' moment happen for him, if not tonight? So I picked up some 6pm tickets, and I'll spring it on him at the end of baseball practice at 5:30.

Quietly, of course.

I won't say what we're doing in front of his buddies. I'll just let him complain about it in school on Monday with all the other boys who have sisters. Poor guy.

Average Joe Lane

originally on nycmomsblog, summer 2008

I was watching the Olympics from my hotel room in Florida and noticed a guy named Keith Beavers from Canada preparing to jump in the water to swim in some competition that ultimately resulted in Michael Phelps winning another gold. This Beavers guy had an Olympic Rings tattoo on his bicep (or tricep?)--somewhere on his upper arm. He clearly got this tattoo in excitement about participating in the Olympics. You go guy. Good work, must have been a long hard road to get here, etc. etc. etc. Of course, the race began and he was in lane 2 and he ended up coming in 8th and it's hard NOT to watch and think--hmmm, kinda slow.

Of course this guy's not slow! Of course he's an incredible talent. But we'd just been shown this piece about Michael Phelps' 'genetic superiority' (a phrase that made me cringe as they broke down his parts, "dinner plate sized hands," size 14 feet that "may as well be flippers," the legs of an average man, the torso of a really tall guy...)--and, frankly, everyone else seemed kind of regular after that. Even the guy who ended up being the 8th fastest 200 meter individual medlier in the world.

Which is why I'd like to propose the Average Joe Lane.

How slow do the other swimmers look when the winner blows past them to the finish? Michael Johnson used to make the other guys look like they were stuck in mud or like they thought the race was over half way before they got to the finish line. You kind of felt bad that they even showed up. And let's face it, the guys in the outer lanes in the swimming pools look like they're just there as filler. Wouldn't it help put things in perspective (for all of us couch potatoes, eating York Peppermint Patties while watching the Olympics) to see how fast the average guy could run? swim? I don't know...throw a shotput?

I'm not suggesting that there be regular guy lanes in all the events. It clearly wouldn't make any sense in gymnastics--though it could be awfully entertaining. I've heard that the average American can do zero chin-ups. Does that mean that for every American who can do one there are about a dozen that can't do any and for every American that can do twenty there are two thousand that can't do one? (I'm in the can't do any category, by the way. Full disclosure, and all that.) I imagine an average American guy attempting to do the rings in the gymnastics competition and basically just hanging there from the rings yelling 'ouch' the whole time. I suppose watching Meredith Viera flop around on the gym equipment at Chelsea Piers while Shawn Johnson looks on supportively and amused comes close, but again, I don't need any help realizing how difficult those balance beam moves must be. I get it. I can't even stay on the tightrope in the wii fit game. It's hard, we know.

I am suggesting there be a regular guy lane in any sport with lanes. Any straight up race, that'd be a good place to start. Let's say the lane had a sponsor; we could have the Starbucks Average Joe Row, or the Doritoes Regular Dude Ditch. My sister came up with the La-Z-Boy Lazy Guy Lane. That has a nice ring to it. People could win the chance to be in the lane by tearing off labels or scratching off that silver film with a penny.

Perhaps the Average Joe could be plucked from the crowd minutes before an event. It's important that there be no opportunity to train for it. Average Joes finding out they were about to board a plane to China would be given a pretty broad packing list (swim suit, sneakers, sports bra...) and it would be great if the person could have average measurements or something. But that might be asking too much.

As much as I've been into watching these Olympics (and I never think I will be, it always sneaks up on me), it's not the gather-the-family 'round the tv opportunity I'd hoped it would be since the time difference with Beijing puts all the fun stuff on way after the kids have gone to bed. Having an Average Joe lane would really change it I think. It would, at least, make that Beavers guy seem more deserving of those rings on his arm.

In one swimming event, the announcer said about one of the faster women she doesn't like to do the hard work if she doesn't have to (explaining some rare necessary surge on her part). Hey, me neither! That's why I'm not an athlete, that's why I'm not in the Olympics. I'm like that swimmer, I tell myself, as I pop another snack into my mouth.

See? It's really really easy to sit and watch and feel kind of like 'maybe I could do that if I liked doing hard work.' And it's thoughts like that, coupled with my thinking that the 8th fastest guy in the world is a little slow, that make me realize that I could use a little perspective.

From my couch, in my air-conditioned hotel room, on my beach vacation, far from anything that resembles hard work.