He is an unusually good boy at other people’s houses. He is the one the other mothers want to have over to play with their children. At other people’s homes, my child does not suck the energy and air out of the room. He does not do the same annoying thing over and over and over until his friends’ parents ask him through clenched teeth to stop doing it. But at our house—comment se dit?—he fucks with me. He can provoke me into a state similar to road rage.
I have felt many times over the years that I was capable of hurting him. I have not done this yet. Or at any rate, I have only hurt him a little—I have spanked him a few times, yanked him, and grabbed him too hard. Through grace and great friends and sobriety, I have managed to stay on this side of the line, sometimes by the skin of my teeth, and, I should add, so far. But while I honestly grieve for injured children, I know all too well how otherwise loving parents have not been able to toe that line.
It’s godawful to get so mad at your child. It’s miserable whenever it happens, but at least it makes more sense when they are babies and you are awake night after night. When Sam was a colicky baby, it was one thing to discuss my terrible Caliban feelings with friends because I was so exhausted and hormonal and clueless as to how to be a real mother that I believed anyone would understand. No one tells you when you’re pregnant how insane you’re going to feel after the baby comes, how pathological, how inept and out of control. Or how, when the child is older, you’ll still sometimes feel exhausted, hormonal, clueless. You’ll still find your child infuriating. And—I will just say it—dull.
A few mothers seem happy with their children all the time, as if they’re sailing through motherhood, entranced. But up close and personal, you find that these moms tend to have little unresolved issues: they exercise three hours a day, or they check their husbands’ pockets every night, looking for motel receipts. Because moms get very mad; and they also get bored. This is a closely guarded secret; the myth of maternal bliss is evidently so sacrosanct that we can’t even admit these feelings to ourselves. But when you mention the feelings to other mothers, they all say, “Yes, yes!” You ask, “Are you ever mean to your children?” “Yes!” “Do you ever yell so meanly that it scares you?” “Yes, yes!” “Do you ever want to throw yourself down the stairs because you’re so bored with your child that you can hardly see straight?” “Yes, Lord, yes . . .”
So let’s talk about this.
One reason I think we get so angry with our children is that we can. Who else is there that you can talk to like this? Can you imagine saying to your partner, “You get off the phone now! No, not in five minutes”? Or to a friend, “Get over here, right this second! The longer you make me wait, the worse it’s going to be for you.” Or to a salesman at Sears who happens to pick up a ringing phone, “Don’t you dare answer the phone when I’m talking to you.”
No, you can’t. If regular people spotted your hidden, angry inside self, they’d draw back when they saw you coming. They would see you for what you are—human, flawed, more nuts than had been hoped—and they would probably not want to hire or date you. Of course, most people have such bit parts in your life that they’re not around to see the whole erratic panoply that is you. But children, my God—attending to all their needs is so physically and mentally exhausting and unrelenting that our blow-ups may be like working out cramps in our legs.
The tyranny of waking a sleepy child at seven a.m. and hassling him to get clothed and fed in preparation for school means you’re chronically tired, resentful, and resented. In this condition, while begging him to put on socks, you are inevitably treated to an endless and intricate précis of Rugrats.
This is how Sam started telling me about one ten-minute patch of school day, while I was trying to watch the news: “So Alex says she didn’t draw it, and then she goes like she did draw the picture herself, and then he goes like, ‘Oh yeah,’ and then she goes like, ‘Yeah, I asked her to but she said I had to,’ and then he goes like, ‘Oh, yeah, riiiight,’ then I go . . .”
I am not an ageist: If, while I was watching the news, Jesus wanted to tell me in great detail how he runs the fifty-yard dash, I’d be annoyed with him, too: “See, most kids start out like this—the first step is a big one, like this—no, watch—and then the second is smaller, like this, and the next—no, watch, my child, I’m almost done—so see, what I do is, I start like everyone else—watch—but then my third step is like small, and the next one is bigger, so like, this P.E. teacher who sees me do it goes, ‘Whoa, Lord, cool,’ and then she goes . . .”
People who don’t want children roll their eyes when you complain, because they think you brought this on yourself. The comedienne Rita Rudner once said that she and her husband were trying to decide whether to buy a dog or have a child—whether to ruin their carpets or their lives. People without children tend not to feel very sympathetic. But some of us want children—and what they give is so rich you can hardly bear it.
At the same time, if you need to yell, children are going to give you something to yell about. There’s no reasoning with them. If you get into a disagreement with a regular person, you slog through it—you listen to the other person’s position, needs, problems—and you arrive at something that is maybe not perfect, but you don’t actually feel like hitting the person. But because we are so tired sometimes, when a disagreement starts with our children, we can only flail miserably through time and space and the holes between; and then we blow our top. Say, for instance, that your child is four and going through the stage when he will wear only the T-shirt with the tiger on it. With a colleague, who was hoping you’d come through with the professional equivalent of washing the tiger T-shirt every night, you might be able to explain that you were up until dawn on deadline, or that you have a fever, and so did not get to the laundry. And the colleague might cut you some slack and understand that you simply hadn’t had time to wash the tiger shirt, and besides, it’s been worn four days in a row now. But your child is apt to—well, let’s say, apt not to.
They may be drooling, covered with effluvia, trying to wrestle underpants on over their heads because they think they’re shirts, but in the miniature war room of their heads, children know exactly where your nuclear button is. They may ignore you, or seem afflicted by hearing loss, or erupt in fury at you, or weep, but in any case, they’re so unreasonable and capable of such meanness that you’re stunned and grief-stricken about how much harder it is than you could have imagined. All you’re aware of is the big windy gap between you, with your lack of anything left to give, and any solution whatsoever.
Friends without children point out the good news: that kids haven’t, thank God, taken all their impulses and learned to disguise them subtly, because it’s wonderful for people to be who they really are. And you can say only, “Isn’t that the loveliest possible thought you’re having?” Because it’s not wonderful when kids ignore you, or are being sassy and oppositional. It’s not wonderful when you’re coping well enough, feeding them, helping them get ready, trying to have them do something in their best interest—telling them, “Zip up the pants, honey, that’s not a great look for you”—and then, under the rubric of What Fresh Hell Is This? the afternoon play date calls and cancels, and there’s total despair and hysteria because your child is going to have to hang out alone with you, horrible you, and he’s sobbing as if the dog had died, and you’re thinking, “What about all those times this week when the play dates did work out? Do I get any fucking credit for that?” And it happens. Kaboooom.
It’s so ugly and scary for everyone concerned that—well. One of my best friends, the gentlest person I know, once tore the head off his daughter’s doll. And then threw it to her, like a baseball. I love that he told me about it when I was despairing about a recent rage at Sam. While I’m not sure what the solution is, I know that what doesn’t help is the terrible feeling of isolation, the fear that everyone else is doing better than you.
What has helped me lately was to figure out that when we blow up a
t our kids, we only think we’re going from zero to sixty in one second. Our surface and persona are so calm that when a problem begins, we sound in control when we say, “Now honey, stop that,” or “That’s enough.” But it’s only an illusion. In fact, all day we’ve been nursing anger toward the boss or boyfriend or mother, yet since we can’t get mad at nonkid people, we stuff it down. When the problem with your kid starts up, you’re really beginning at fifty-nine, but you’re not moving. You’re at high idle already, yet not aware of how vulnerable and disrespected you already feel. It’s your child’s bedtime and all you want is for him to go to sleep so you can lie down and stare at the TV—and it starts up. “Mama, I need to talk to you. It’s important.” So you go in and muster your patience, and you help him with his fears or his thirst, and you go back to the living room and sink into your couch, and then you hear, “Mama? Please come here one more time.” You lumber in like you’re dragging a big dinosaur tail behind you, and you rub his back for a minute, his sharp angel shoulder blades. The third time he calls, you try to talk him out of needing you, but he seems to have this problem with self-absorption, and he can’t hear that you can’t be there for him. And you become wordless with rage. You try to breathe, you try everything, and then you blow. You scream, “Fucking dammit! What? What? What? Can’t you leave me alone for four seconds?”
Now your child feels infinitely safer, much more likely to drift off to sleep.
Good therapy helps. Good friends help. Pretending that we are doing better than we are doesn’t. Shame doesn’t. Being heard does.
The fear is the worst part, the fear about who you secretly think you are, the fear you see in your child’s eyes. But underneath the fear I keep finding resilience, forgiveness, even grace. The third time Sam called for me the other night, I finally blew up in the living room, and there was then a great silence in the house, silence like suspended animation: here I’d been praying for silence, and it turns out to be so charged and toxic. I lay on the couch with my hands over my face, shocked by how hard it is to be a parent. And after a minute Sam sidled out, still needing to see me, to snuggle with me, with mean me, needing to find me—like the baby spider pushing in through the furry black legs of the mother tarantula, knowing she’s in there somewhere.
ten
hard rain
Everyone has been having a hard time with life this year; not with all of it, just the waking hours. Being awake is the one real fly in the ointment—but it is also when solutions come to us. So many friends died or got sick this year, watched their children go through terrible patches, or lost a lot of money, but on top of it all, like a dental X-ray apron, was the daily depression of life under the Bush White House. “It’s hopeless,” my boyfriend muttered now and then. One of the savviest political and spiritual people I know said recently, “We will be at war in Iraq for a long time. It’s that simple. Resistance is futile.” But I decided it was only nearly impossible, and I’ll take nearly impossible over futile any day.
Veronica said, in a recent sermon, that you can keep bees in jars without lids, because they’ll walk around on the glass floor, imprisoned by the glass surrounding them, when all they’d have to do is look up and they could fly away. So, I thought gamely, we’ll look up, we’ll get off our asses, or if we are like bees, off our glasses. But this friend who said resistance was futile, who is usually a crabby optimist like me, was terrorized. She was trying to imagine the end of life as we now know it, under a paranoid right-wing government.
She was talking about life in shelters and caves.
Now, this would not work for me. Shelters would be bad enough—a dinner party is already a real stretch—but I don’t even remotely have the right personality for cave dwelling. I need privacy and silence most of the time. Also, I hate stalactites. They make me think of Damocles, cave-camping.
Like most people I know, I stepped up my do-good efforts in the weeks before Bush took us to war in Iraq—I spoke out against the war, registered voters, went to demonstrations, sent money to environmental groups, signed petitions, went to visit old people in convalescent homes, flirted with old people on the street, read The Nation and Salon, sent more money to the ACLU, Doctors Without Borders, Clowns Without Borders, the Middle East Children’s Alliance, the Global AIDS Interfaith Alliance, to anyone who helps kids and poor people. And I planted bulbs, which is a form of prayer.
But the jungle drums grew louder, and nothing seemed to help. What could possibly help during this administration? God only knows. But in any case, we should try to stay on God’s good side. It’s not hard. God has extremely low standards. Pray, take care of people, be actively grateful for your blessings, give away your money—you’re cool. You’re in. Nice room in heaven, flossing no longer required—which is what will make it heaven for me. Oh, I mean that, and Jesus.
And then, the rains began again.
I usually welcome the rain, when I’m tired and stressed. Rain suggests that you should go inside, rest, try to stay dry. The scent of rain is fresh and earthy, clean and woolly, of leaves and dirt, wet dogs. We get whiffs of our animal smells, of feet, sweat, and the secret smells of the earth, which she often keeps to herself. Rain gives us back something that has been stolen, a dimension we’ve been missing—our body, and our soul. Your mind can’t give you these. Your sick, worried mind can’t heal your sick, worried mind. Well, maybe your mind is lovely and pastoral and you do not suffer from paranoia, hypochondria, a bad attitude, and delusions of victimized grandeur. That is very nice, but we don’t want you in our cave after the bombs fall, because you are going to annoy us to death.
It poured.
Hard rain makes a mess, but it also fills in space we usually walk through without even noticing. It makes the stuff we can’t usually see—air and wind—visible, and a lot of what we can see catches light. We get wet and cold, and then we get to dry off and be warm again. But with this rain the power started going off and on, and food went bad, and black grosgrain ribbons of ants arrived, and the winds picked up, and suddenly everything was whapping at us.
The storms made life feel like a cyclotron; everyone was mildewing and emotionally ragged, and war was breathing down our necks. At church I heard that the Marin Interfaith Council was sponsoring a peace rally. At this point it was hard to imagine going to the store, let alone into the rain to protest possible war in Iraq. The universe was pulling out all the stops—torrential rains and power outages for days—and it made me crazy, especially when acquaintances would enthuse about how they were enjoying the lack of electricity, how close together it was bringing their families. (Thank you for sharing, but you can’t be in our cave, either. You and your families will have to be in solitary, with your little board games.)
It didn’t stop raining, and the wind didn’t stop blowing, as if there were too many flies and they were beginning to bother the skin of the universe. The universe was flinching and flailing. And you couldn’t fix anything. All you could do was help people. You could set up MASH units in your own life, and tend to people through the sacrament of cocoa and videos, and you could send money, and pray. Things were taking their course—I hate that! But you had to let them. I tried to slow down. Then I needed to nap so often that I concluded I had leukemia. Everyone had had such worry and muffled tension for so long, and the exhaustion of held breath, and I felt rashy and overwhelmed, like Harvey Fierstein with poison oak.
The Marin peace march was to be a candlelight vigil. I was frantic to be alone and curled up in bed reading The New York Times. I didn’t think anyone would show up besides the loyal leaders of Marin’s churches and temples and mosques, putting feet to their prayers.
But then I noticed through the windows that it was barely raining and the wind had died down. Some shafts of sun trickled through. Without overthinking things as usual, I got into my car, drove to San Rafael, and pulled into a parking space.
The rain had stopped. I could see a crowd gathering for the march—old and young; middle-aged people
with whom my brothers and I had gone to school, who marched against the war in Vietnam and cleaned up oil spills in Bolinas; babies in strollers, dogs in rain gear. It was noisy, and I know a small-town peace march of a thousand people won’t change anything, but I swear I could hear God in Her big-mama guise. She said, “Get out of the damn car already.” Still, I sat there. I wanted to go back home, and get it together first—get anything together, even dinner for Sam. Was that too much to ask? But here’s what Veronica said during the sermon on bees: God doesn’t want or expect you to get it together before you come along, because you can’t get it together until you come along. You can spend half of your time alone, but you also have to be in service, in community, or you get a little funny.
I got out of the car and walked toward the crowd. The grass was wet and my shoes got wet, but I’d forgotten: You can get wet, it’s okay. Our parents said, “Don’t go out in the rain, you’ll catch your death of cold!”—as if we’d catch dreaded Japanese river fever if our feet got wet. But our parents were wrong. If you march against war when the war is for shitty reasons—oil and reelection and profit—your shoes might get wet, but maybe fewer people will die in Iraq. Somebody handed me a candle. I found an old schoolmate, friends of my parents. I found my pastor, and other people from my church.
It didn’t rain again until the march was over. Two thousand of us eventually gathered, and we milled around until night began to fall. Then we lit our candles and marched, talking and singing. When I said I was hungry, someone gave me a hard butterscotch candy. It was so biblical I could hardly bear it. I couldn’t see the front of the procession, it was that far away, and I couldn’t see the back. It looked like a Bob Dylan concert. The march was quiet, both somber and joyful. Marchers made plans to meet in San Francisco on a day of mass national demonstrations. This was the happiest I’d felt in a long time. Later that night it rained again, soft, slow, silvery rain, but I was at home by then, warm and dry. In the morning when the sun came up, the light of the new day was faint and clear.