Skinny jeans

Me, age 39

My friends tell me that their pre-teen daughters are pitiless when it comes to dishing out unsolicited fashion advice.

Caroline and Jane, my nine-year-old twins, haven’t started tearing apart my wardrobe, but I’m bracing myself for the day it begins. I anticipate that their input will be brutal.

My friend Jody, for instance, says, “I have an 11-year-old, but her attitude at times is more like that of a 15-year-old. She goes from being my sweet little girl to a scary person I don’t even know.” Jody explains that her daughter’s most common critiques of her outfits are, “Um, NO, Mom,” and “That looks too old lady.”

Amy’s daughter is 10. She’s been giving Amy grief all summer, asking her, “Mom, why do you always wear jogging shorts and a T-shirt?” Amy, bewildered, responds, “Because it’s hot outside and I’m spending the day picking raspberries?!”

Mari says that her 12-year-old often tells her, “Mom, your boobies are showing too much.” But, paradoxically, she’ll also complain that Mari’s work outfits are totally boring.

Sara, whose daughter is only eight, says that she’s already started offering suggestions about her style. “She says things to me like, ‘I’m not sure I like that necklace with that top,’ or ‘You should wear this dress instead of the one you have on.'”     

I’m quaking in my cute little ballet flats (which I swear are cool) as I imagine the criticism I’ll receive in the not-so-distant future. But in the meantime, I’m doing just fine when it comes to getting dressed, thank you very much! In fact, striving to be “on-trend” (as they say on Fashion Police), I’ve decided to give skinny jeans a try.

Skinny jeans are a stretch, figuratively and literally speaking, for someone as short and roundly-assed as I am. I always gravitate to boot-cuts or flares because they create the illusion that I’m taller and more proportioned than I really am, whereas skinnies make me look like an inverted triangle in a profoundly unflattering way.

However, I recently found a decent pair of skinny jeans that I think look all right on me. I feel a bit hippy – OK, a lot hippy – but I’ve summoned every shred of self-confidence to wear them for my sister’s birthday party tonight.

With apprehension, I ask my daughters for their feedback. To my delight, they actually approve of the skinnies! They tell me I look awesome. I’m glowing; I feel like a million bucks.     

As I head for the door, eager to depart for the evening, I encounter my six-year-old, Owen. He eyes my new jeans and leans in for a hug. As I kiss his sweet head and tell him goodbye, he starts rubbing my thighs.

“Um, buddy, what are you doing?” I ask.

With his response, Owen single-handedly demolishes all of my poise and assurance while revealing that he might be my toughest fashion critic after all.

“Mmmmmm,” he says, oddly enraptured by my ample curves. “I love your legs, Mommy. They look so fat in those jeans.”

Vice

Me, age 13

My mother looks an awful lot like a corpse.

She lies flat on her back on the family room couch, covered with a brown afghan. She is utterly still and makes no sound. To reassure yourself that she is alive, you have to get right up in her face to feel her breath on your cheek.

But we don't get right up in her face, because it’s her afternoon nap and we dare not bother her. Unless, of course, the house were to catch on fire or one of us incur an injury requiring stitches – then it might be both prudent and acceptable to nudge her awake. But not today. Today is business as usual.

My three-year-old sister Annie is watching TV, just feet from my mom, but she has the volume turned down so low you can barely make out the songs on Zoobilee Zoo. How many years will it take her, poor thing, to realize that most human beings watch TV with the volume loud enough to hear the conversations between characters?

My five-year-old sister Emily is riding around the house in her little plastic fire truck. Normally she mercilessly bangs the bell attached to the truck, but she doesn’t do this when my mom is napping. Instead, she pretends to mercilessly bang the bell, which is amusing as well as impressive, since it requires a colossal degree of self-control for a kindergartner.

I am in the kitchen with my 11-year-old sister Lizzie. I struggle through math homework while she bakes cookies. The fact that she is able to bake cookies without making a sound is remarkable. Less remarkable is the fact that I need to ask my mom an algebra question but will have to wait a few more minutes until this hour of hushed, suspended reality comes to a close.  

Speaking of which – I hear a rustling in the family room. My mom gets up. No longer a corpse, she comes in the kitchen, pours herself a glass of wine (red in winter, white in summer, white zinfandel every so often for kicks), and begins the evening portion of her job as Mother. This evening portion consists of but is not limited to the following tasks:

• Reminding Liz to wash her cookie sheets.
• Telling me she has no clue how to answer my algebra question.
• Greeting my dad, who is home from work.
• Making dinner, feeding us, refereeing our arguments, wiping up the table, telling Emily to quit banging the bell on her fire truck, loading the dishwasher, sweeping the floor, helping us get ready for bed, tucking us in, making a few phone calls on behalf of the Wilson Elementary PTA, folding laundry, and packing our lunches for tomorrow.

I can’t imagine my mom not doing these things, just as I can’t imagine her not taking a nap every day.

Perhaps there’s a connection between the two?

Me, age 33

“So,” Dr. Kate looks at me with empathy. “Is the Xanax helping?”

I assure her it is.

Until now, I haven’t ever taken anti-anxiety prescription drugs, but things have shifted in my world. Last month we adopted our son, Owen, from South Korea. At nine months old, he has had a difficult adjustment, sleeping fitfully in one- to two-hour spurts. He wakes up screaming, which has had me on edge and in tears, unable to get any rest myself.

Although my husband is struggling too, his challenges are physical. He is exhausted, and he has literally pulled a muscle in his back from carrying and bouncing Owen for hours to get him to settle down.   

For me, I wish it were as simple as a sore muscle, made better by taking two Advil. Instead, my issues are mental. I have been panicky and fretful, wondering how I’ll successfully raise Owen and my twin three-year-old daughters into adulthood. My worry has taken over so that I’ve lost all perspective.   

After prescribing me Xanax for the last few weeks, Dr. Kate is meeting with me today as a follow-up. I tell her that I am starting to feel like myself again. “I take a Xanax at night to help me stay calm so I can try to sleep, even if it’s only for a few hours,” I tell her. “Then, when I get up in the morning, I immediately drive to Starbucks so I can caffeinate myself in order to function.” 

“Well, if your two worst vices are Xanax and Starbucks, I think you’re going to be OK,” she says benevolently. “In fact, I think you’re doing a terrific job of surviving. Whatever it takes for you to be the best mom to your kids right now, let’s just go with it.”

I leave the lovely Dr. Kate’s office with a spring in my step. Although I’ve never thought of myself as someone with a vice, I don’t mind, because I’m going to be OK! I’m doing a terrific job!

My mom had her nap and her glass of wine; I’ve got Xanax and Starbucks. Surely we can’t be the only mothers with vices? I conduct some research among my mom-friends, and I feel encouraged when 100% of them admit to having one or more of their own. I am touched by the diversity of their vices, which include:

§         Thirty minutes of alone-time every afternoon

§         A cleaning lady at least once a month

§         Vodka

§         Chocolate

§         A professional organizer

§         A ten-minute shower each morning

§         Yoga

§         Girls night out

§         Online shopping

§         Manis and pedis

§         Massages

§         Exercise

§         Sugar

I’m deeply relieved to know I’m not the only one who needs a boost to get through the day. (Perhaps I need to branch out a little and experiment with other vices? Some of them sound like fun.)

In the dictionary, there are a few definitions listed for “vice,” and they’re pretty harsh, ranging from “an evil, degrading practice” to “a serious moral failing.” The only one that comes close to describing the vices we have as mothers is “a flaw or imperfection.” Isn’t that the heart of the matter? None of us is perfect when we step into our mom shoes; we all have our shortcomings and struggles. If a cup of strong coffee or, better yet, a strong cosmo can help set things right, then I agree with Dr. Kate. Let’s just go with it.  

Recovery

Jane, age 3

 

“I can do this,” I whisper to myself as my husband and I buckle Jane into her car seat on a dark and frigid January morning. “Really, I can do this.”

 

I have been dreading this day since we brought home our twin daughters, Caroline and Jane, from China when they were 10 months old. Upon returning from our adoption trip, we headed straight to our pediatrician’s office, where Dr. E thoroughly examined every square inch of their little bodies. Things were going fine until he peered into Jane’s ears. “Now, what’s this?” he murmured. What was what?     

 

After Dr. E looked more closely, made some phone calls, and referred us to a pediatric ear, nose and throat specialist, we learned that Jane had suffered from chronic and untreated ear infections in China. These nasty infections perforated her eardrums so badly that she was left with virtually no eardrums.

 

Our specialist has scheduled the first of a few surgeries: a tympanoplasty to reconstruct Jane’s left eardrum so that she will have a good shot at normal hearing. It sounds good on paper, but the surgery is complex and time-consuming.    

 

Today is the tympanoplasty, and we are on our way to the hospital.

 

Have I mentioned I am terrified of hospitals?

 

Never mind that. I have vowed that I will hold myself together for Jane’s sake. I will be dependable, even if I am frightened! I will be a rock of strength!  

 

In our hospital room, I watch the nurses prepare Jane for surgery and my knees start to shake. But I hide my discomfort from my daughter, who herself is remarkably calm. When the nurses gently wheel her off to the operating room, I fight off waves of panic. Why did we ever think this was a good idea?

 

My husband and I wait more than three agonizing hours for Jane to come out of surgery. When at last a nurse comes to fetch us, I am wild-eyed. She takes us to the post-surgical recovery room, asking along the way, “Have you both eaten breakfast?”

 

“Yes, of course," I say.

 

“Good. It’s critical to have food in your stomach, because sometimes parents get woozy when they see their children in the recovery room,” she says.  

 

“We’ll be fine,” I retort. I feel like I may or may not be growing pale.

 

The nurse gives me a long look. “If you feel faint, please let me know and we can take you back to your room,” she says.

 

“I’m OK, I promise,” I plead. “I just want to see my daughter.”

 

We enter the recovery room, which contains a long line of sleeping bodies attached to IVs and other ominous-looking tubes. Horrified, I cover my eyes with my hands. I do not want to see this! Patients recovering from anesthesia should have privacy! I am sweating profusely, an unfortunate development that does not escape the nurse’s attention. She’s watching me like a hawk.

 

The nurse guides us to Jane, who lies unconscious on a huge gurney with a gargantuan blood-stained bandage covering her ear and wrapped around her head. My heart breaks into small pieces.

 

“Remember, if either of you feels light-headed, just tell me. The recovery room can be a scary place, and you don't have to be a hero,” the nurse says, fixing her gaze on me again.

 

“Can I please hold Jane?” I ask. I am officially begging.

 

The nurse has me sit in a rocking chair next to the gurney and – in an astonishing feat of spatial intelligence requiring the maneuvering of untold tubes and cords and beeping things – settles Jane in my lap without either of us getting choked by hospital equipment. Finally, I have my precious baby.

 

“I bet it’s wonderful to have her in your arms,” says the nurse.

 

Yes, it’s perfect. Except I am nauseous, have tunnel vision, and can barely breathe. “I think I’m going to pass out,” I manage to pant.

 

“MOM IS GOING DOWN!” shouts the nurse, triumphant. The recovery room springs to action as I wilt. Suddenly there are nurses everywhere, unraveling Jane and her scores of tubes from my arms and rolling me onto the gurney that was just Jane’s. “LET’S GET HER OUT OF HERE!” one of them shouts.

 

A nurse wheels me out and says, “It’s OK, honey. Your husband is with Jane, and everything will be fine.” I quietly faint in the comfort of the gurney’s embrace.

 

***

 

I wake up in Jane’s hospital room, still on her gurney. I think about my desire to be a rock for her and how I have not succeeded. I curl into a ball and began to cry, “I’m a terrible mother. I have totally failed my daughter.”

 

“You are not a terrible mother,” says a kindly nurse (where do they all come from?) handing me a bedpan in case I need to vomit. “You are there for Jane every minute of every day. Let your husband and Jane have this time together.”

 

I pull myself together before yet another nurse wheels Jane into the room. My husband tells me her recovery from the anesthesia was tough, as it can be for many young children, but the nurse points out that he was amazingly helpful in settling her down. He gives me a proud smile and says, “That was my most important moment as a dad so far.”

 

While my unflappable husband strokes Jane’s sweet, bandaged head, I fall into a chair and ponder the morning’s events. Jane has a new eardrum. My husband has newfound confidence as a father. And me? I am a clammy, ineffectual wreck.

 

I had so dearly wanted to rise to the occasion and be a composed and confident mom on this big day, but I haven’t come close. I lost my composure. I lost oxygen flow to my brain. I had to be removed from the recovery room on my daughter’s gurney. “Shit,” I moan.     

 

When your child is recuperating in the hospital, you don’t have the luxury of feeling sorry for yourself, so I try my best to rally, chalking up the disaster to a learning experience I won’t forget. I tell myself that sticky situations are bound to arise when the pep talks we’ve given ourselves as mothers are rendered completely worthless, and we might even have a hard time staying on our feet. But does that make us bad moms? No. I think it only helps us develop thicker skin and more compassion.

 

***

 

I’ve come to look at my disaster at the hospital in a positive light – a light that I hope means something to Jane when she’s older and maybe even a mother herself. The light is this: I love her so much it literally brings me to my knees. Or, if you want to get technical, a gurney.

 

On top of that, it's nice to be reminded that I was right about one tiny thing, even if it didn’t keep me out of harm’s way. Always eat breakfast; you never know what the day might bring. 

 

Substitute infant

He wanted nothing to do with us, that much was clear.

Barely ten pounds and blind in both eyes, the dachshund we had come to adopt wouldn’t even look our way. Not that he could actually see my husband and me, but the dog knew perfectly well that we were there. He also knew perfectly well that we were there to take him home, and he didn’t appear to relish the fact.   

He spurned the dog treats we proffered and started spinning in a circle, head to tail. He looked like a little revolving donut. “Patches does that when he’s nervous,” said the representative from the dachshund rescue. “You do understand that he’s an anxious dog…?” My husband and I nodded. We’d been briefed during our adoption application process: Patches had been bred by people that abandoned him on the side of the road after he was born with eyes that looked funny and didn’t work right.

I didn’t fault Patches for avoiding us. Since being rescued, he had lived at three foster homes and was wary of new people. I wanted to pick him up in my arms and whisper in his ear, “We’ll love you and take care of you forever, please give us a chance.” But I didn’t know how to pick up a dog. I was afraid of twisting one of his tiny legs or bending his tail.  

OK, before we go any further with this story, I’m aware that a question needs to be asked: As someone who had zero experience with dogs, why would I want to adopt a dachshund who was blind and spun in circles?  

Was I crazy?

Sadly, no. I was 29 years old and consumed with worry after my husband and I had tried for a year to get pregnant, failing each time. After grappling with the reality that parenthood would not come easy for us, we found ourselves at a crossroads. We were investigating our options and weighing our choices, hovering in a lonesome gray area where our future looked indistinct.     

The only thing I knew for sure is that I was desperate to be a mother. And if I couldn’t yet be a mother to a child, I would be a mother to a dog. A dog would be my substitute infant! My project!

The idea of Patches became my lifeline as I moved from sorrow to a sense of purpose. I researched dachshunds. I bought dog toys and dog treats and a dog bed in a durable yet handsome plaid fabric. I was ready to be a dog-mom.

Only, when my husband and I took Patches home on his adoption day, he was not ready to be our dog. He cowered and refused to eat. And then he started pooping.

It’s as if he became un-potty trained overnight. He pooped in our kitchen and in our bedroom. He pooped everywhere. And then he spun in circles through the poop so that his paws created an exquisite and foul-smelling pattern across our hardwood floors. He pooped for weeks. And weeks turned into months.

I didn’t yell at Patches (really, how can one yell at a special-needs dog?), but I was livid. One day I decided that I was ready to send him back to the dachshund rescue. The next day I admitted if I sent him back to the rescue I would again be a non-mother, with no one to take care of.

I was wholly out of my comfort zone with Patches, but giving up on him didn’t feel right.

Instead, I gave in. I stopped muttering profanities under my breath. I bought more cleaning supplies. Patches pooped, and I followed with my mop.

But something vital was at work. Patches started to eat. He no longer cowered. He chewed the pillows on our couch as if to say, “These are mine.” In our backyard, he stopped turning in circles and started chasing after squirrels, as well as a blind dog can do. I watched in delight as his windshield wiper-like tail flicked back and forth. He was happy. Even a newbie dog-mom like me could see that.

Soon after came a morning when Patches wriggled onto his back in the soft grass, his stubby legs sticking straight up in the air. It took me a second to realize that he wanted me to rub his stomach. I rubbed his stomach gently, and then, hearing what sounded like a blissful purr, I rubbed his stomach with vigor.

                                                                                                                 

That moment in the grass proved to be pivotal for the two of us. It wasn’t about words or expectations or my needing a small creature to care for in my childlessness. My hands showed Patches that he could trust me, whatever losses he had suffered. And his softness on my hands made me realize that it was him that I needed right then, not a project.

And what happened next is this: we grew to love each other.

As every dog-mom knows, it’s not difficult to fall in love with a pup who quakes with joy when you come home after being gone for an hour, or even five minutes. He started doing this whenever I walked in the door, and I found myself elated.

Suddenly without disgusting floors to mop, I had free time to discover how much fun he could be. We played tug-of-war with his squeaky toys, and I spoiled him with treats and clandestine bits of bacon.

Along the way, my husband and I somehow started calling him Mookie, and it stuck. He responded to his new name, and my husband and I puffed up with pride, sensing that in this act of being named by us, Mookie was, finally, our own dog. He was ours, and, just as important, we were his.   

I have been blessed with such love in my life, but my bond with Mookie was singular: it proved to be the most hard-won love of all. It went on to affect nearly all of the significant relationships I have with actual human beings, because Mookie taught me the value of abiding, of being present – to my friends, to my husband, and above all to my children – in whatever moment we find ourselves.

I have long believed in the power of words, but I learned from Mookie that sometimes words don’t matter. What does matter is being patient and constant, and not throwing in the towel (or mop, in my case) when things get muddled.

For eight years, Mookie was the heartbeat of our home. He ultimately helped give my husband and me the confidence to build our family as we went on to adopt our twin daughters from China in 2004 and our son from South Korea in 2007. We were able to muster up the courage to bring home our precious babies from the other side of the world because – well, because we had adopted Mookie and lived to tell the tale.

Mookie certainly gave me a good head-start in my mothering. Having no shared language with my new babies, I remembered the importance of simply being present to them. Steady and unwavering, I was completely theirs. We spent hours together on the living room rug, loyal Mookie by our side. There was no agenda except to get to know and trust each other, which we accomplished through lots and lots of touch.

Funny enough, I found that my babies loved having their stomachs rubbed.

Lucky for all of us, I was already a pro.

RIP Mookie

September 2011