Motherhood is Not for Wimps

Last night I made this with red beets and garlic greens. Today, the farmstand only had golden beets and regular garlic.

The red beets have better color, but the golden beets may be just a little tastier. The garlic greens are definitely superior in this dish to the regular cloves. So here’s the recipe:

Beets (enough)
Bunch garlic greens*
2 ears corn
1 package fresh pasta sheet
Splash of white balsamic vinegar
Salt and pepper to taste
Parmesean cheese to taste

1) Remove roots and greens from beets and then boil beets until just soft. Drain. Use fingers to wipe off all peel, chop beets into chunks.

2) Chop garlic greens into 1-inch chunks. Slice knife down raw corn cob to remove kernals. Reserve any of the milk that comes off the cob.

3) Slice rolled past sheet into rounds and then unroll them. You should have long strips. It’s fine if they’re uneven. Start a large stockpot full of salted water to boil.

4) Saute greens in butter until just carmelized. Add beets. Cook until beets are completely soft. Add corn and olive oil as needed.

5) Boil pasta. When it’s almost ready, add a ladle-full of the pasta water and a spalsh of vinegar to the vegetables, then add al dente pasta and cover and let steam over low heat. Stir, season as desired. Serve with Parmesean, if desired.

* Garlic greens are the top of the garlic plant. The white cloves are the root and the greens spring up through the tops. Farmers thin out garlic plants and have lots of those greens left, which are an annoyance to them and a treat to eat. They’re delicious grilled with a little olive oil and butter.

Dear Renny’s New Muver,

Hello. I have been told to expect you shortly. Ren informs me that you are beautiful, you sing nicely, and you serve sugar three times a day.

God love you.

I thought it might be helpful to leave you with a few important tips:

1) Let’s be real, sugar three times a day will hurt you more than her, so you’re going to want to keep a stash of other staples on hand. But don’t bother. All she eats is rice.

2) Her time out corner is in the kitchen next to the bench. If she laughs at you during time out, the scotch in on the floor next to the microwave.

3) When you realize the time out doesn’t work, your next best bet is to take something away. The Closet of Taken Away Things is upstairs in the bedroom. Rumage through there, see what I’ve taken away, figure it hasn’t worked very well and see if you can get creative.

4) Don’t worry, she can’t actually pierce your eardrums with that wail. At least, I don’t think so.

5) Whatever it was that you thought you heard her say but she couldn’t possibly have said because she’s only three? Yeah. She said it.

6) Are you a Next Generation girl? Okay, remember the Borg? The Enterprise crew figured out that the way to fight them was to set their phasers to modulate their frequences. But each frequency would work only twice before the Borg adapted. That’s Renny. Each trick you’ve got is good once or twice, and after that, toss it away. She’s over it and you.

7) Don’t laugh when she leaves her bed and comes out with a blanket on her head and only her feet showing. You’ll pay for that one, trust me.

8.) She has one of the great golden hearts of the Universe and it is easily shattered. If you break it, I will hunt you down.

Three children. Thirteen hours. Just me. We ate pancakes and went to the gym, and then registered for ballet and swim classes. We went home for snacks and a little rest, then to the Farmer’s Market.

Dinner, tubs, bed. And I even got a load of laundry in, made supper for Cute Husband and me, and got all the dishes finished. And I ache almost not at all.

But Ren’s still awake. She is engaged in her favorite evening activity — taking everything out of her closet and spreading it around the floor.

I peek in and she scampers into bed and puts a blanket over her head.

I remove the blanket and bring her chin up.

“If you continue this,” I say. “You will be sorry. You can do what you want, but if I have to come back in here, I will make sure you are sorry you made that choice.”

She shoves a fierce face against my nose. I push her back gently.

“You do what you want,” I say. “But do you believe I know how to make you sorry?”

No, I don’t, she mouths.

But there’s fear in her face.

I shrug and walk away. I have a good feeling about it. If it doesn’t work, I’ll be putting her on the bathroom floor, alone, until she’s weeping from sleepiness. It’ll suck, but it will make her wish for her bed.

I check back five minutes later and she is passed out in her bed, blanket to her chin.

Mark this on your calendars: it is the Day I Frightened Ren.

And did laundry.

Did such a small, anonymous little girl ever have so loyal a following?

Thank you all for your notes, your prayers, your good wishes. It does mean a lot.

Eden’s weight is climbing slowly. Her liver enzyme numbers are not radically changed. So the plan is to give it time. Let her weight come up, let her spend a summer in the sun with her sisters, with giggles and naps and snuggles, and see if that doesn’t make everything tons better. That’s my plan, anyway.

We will continue to weigh her, but unless she stops gaining again the little thing gets a break from needle sticks for a while. She’ll do a repeat blood panel at the end of the summer. Our hope is that it just needs more time to go down, and that it will be over and we will never quite know what it was.

I think I will experience a lot of dread the night before we stick her again, the night after when I wait for the results, the following day, waiting for the phone to ring. But I am glad for the respite between now and then.

A check, which becomes a little cash. A call to Sunbeam, which becomes an untethering. A Google search for “Cape Cod Bed and Breakfast” — which becomes a send off.

Cute Husband and I grab our fuzzy chicken-legged baby and escape.

We hit the road after 5:00 on a rainy Saturday afternoon. We find Dennis Port off of Highway 28. The scrub pine thins out, grass gives way to sand, and houses climb higher on their stilts until finally we can peek around one and see … ocean.

I stick my toes in the cold wet sand while Cute Husband checks us in. I dip Edeny’s toes, too.

We are Hungry, and we ask where we should eat, and the woman says Italian? And we say — Are you kidding? And she says, seafood, then — you need to go to the Ocean House.

And we do, even after we see the menu and the price list that puts little holes in the pits of our stomachs, but this is an Escape so off we go.

It is about two blocks down the street. Serendipity.

We find the dark-wood paneled lounge, with tall windows peering out to gray ocean, just like a living room I once knew long ago. I consider the ache, but we do it anyway, and after a martini it aches less.

A lightning storm out to sea, cold vodka, and a bento box appetizer with seafood wrapped and fried, layered, chopped raw (FYI ahi tuna works with buttered popcorn, don’t ask me how).

I saw the lobster on the menu and tried to talk myself out of it. $45? And all the work is done for you? Puh-lease. Just pop those bad boys in the ole kettle for a bit, at $5 a pound. Besides I am a New England drawn-butter girl, and this sounds a little too fancy-fancy for me.

But Cute Husband makes me, and he orders the cod special and I save a bit of my martini and when the lobster arrives it is stacked, shelled, on a pile of jasmine rice.

Four sauces — one of them drawn butter — come in behind it in little squares. I slice into the lobster — pillowy and succulent, bring it to my mouth and it’s like a sea cloud and I may never boil another lobster again. (The chile, garlic cream and lemongrass squares? — Swiped clean. Untouched: the greasy puddle of drawn butter.)

I order the lemon coconut cake. We chat about celebrity deaths, the stock market and Great Houses Past. The coconut cake arrives with a chocolate spoon artfully posed in a pile of cream, with a shadow of itself sprinkled in cocoa on the plate below.

The bill comes — a week’s-worth-of-groceries bill– and we pay it and that’s when the server notices Schmoopy tucked into the sling, one foot sticking out, and congratulates us on our skills as new parents and we thank her without telling her how much practice we’ve had.

An ocean walk in the dark and then clean sheets, a puffy comforter. Chicken-Legs tucks in between us, up to her chin, “Guys this is great! We gotta do this more often!” She snores all night long.

Breakfast-by-the-sea, eggs and coffee and pastries and a rain-spatted window.

A text from Sunbeam, “I have work covered. No curfew for you, be free!”

“YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY!!” I text back (with just that many A’s,) and we hit the road and go South, just as South as we can go, driving and talking about lobster and the weather and Why Anyone Cares What Religion Anyone Else Is.

We stop in Chatham and then at the National Seashore and we try not to kill the cyclists or ram the bad drivers and we consider when we will have children old enough to go kayaking.

We find Provincetown and park and load the Schmoop into the sling and walk. It is a Portuguese festival because, apparently, this little crumb of the world is steeped in all things Portuguese and gay counter-culture.

Breeders. We are out as Breeders, with our mini-van and spawn in a sling, looking for coffee.

We have arrived at the Blessing of the Fleet (Serendipity!) and follow the parade to the Harbor — dancers and ship’s crews and a trolly full of backup for whatever God you want to pray to.

Two Yankee sailors and an Invocation.

A “critter tour” — you can take a boat out to pick up funky things from the sea bottom. We didn’t do this, but want to come back with the rest of our spawn.

I spent this trip figuring out how much I could cram into one cell-phone picture, with a baby in a sling.

This is the coolest store in the entire Commonwealth. They sell: lobster traps, old anchors, American Airlines First Class dinnerware, wedding gowns. And men’s underwear.

A local stained glass shop:

My new hero. Ellie — singing her heart out in a silky baritone.

I ask her permission to photograph her, and she says “yes” and I think: wow. To stand on a sidewalk and sing and know who you are amid the gawkers and picture-takers. I have less to be gawked at about — I am pedantic, vanilla, suburban — and I’m not that brave.

Lunch. The man at the parking lot told us the Mayflower Cafe was where to go. After asking him, we decided he looked sketchy and we didn’t believe him and then we go there anyway and realize when it comes to local, Sketchy is often Right On.

We eat clams — mine fried, his steamed — and drink more cold vodka — mine a martini, his a bloody Mary — and talk about gas prices and auto repair and Whether Our Lives are Hard or Easy.

People passing in the window peer in at our baby and wave to her and talk about how freaking adorable she is.

And then we drive home in a light gray rain. The pine scrub grows closer together, sand gives way to grass and then asphalt and then we are on the highway at foreign exits that grow closer to familiar exits until they are really familiar ones until they are the old comfortable worn ones and we turn off and then we are down a pretty green road and find a little tilty-floored farmhouse nestled in trees draped in honeysuckle, with beach towels drying/getting rained on on the front lawn.

“DADDDYYY MOMMA!!!”

Man those kids are freaking cute. Sunbeam looks intact. She slept with them in the big bed, she says, and after they tucked in the Fleet of Dolls the only room left was stretched across the foot, which was fine. I hope she found the extra blankets and pillows.

They ate biscuits and chocolate and made art and tomorrow they want to go to the fabric store and the Terror Tot indoor playground and a movie. We laugh and say “yes, yes yes!”

And we catch eyes over their heads, and clasp hands and squeeze and it’s really really good to be Home.

***

By the Sea Inn, Dennis Port, MA
http://www.bytheseaguests.com/

Ocean House
http://www.oceanhouserestaurant.com/

Provincetown
http://www.provincetown.com/

Mayflower Cafe
http://www.mayflower-ptown.com/

“What was the best thing about Ducky?” Mare asks. Two years have passed, and I am gratified: Mare still remembers her.

“She was amazing at loving people,” I say.

“What does that mean?”

“I mean that love is hard work. And she worked at it harder and better than anyone I know.”

“And that’s why you named me after her?”

“Yes. And to love her back. So that she knew I was hers, you were hers.”

“Didn’t she know that?”

“She knew that. I wanted her to know that I knew it, too.”

Mare frowns.

“When you have kids, Mare, you never really know what they’re going to be, but they’re your kids and your responsibility and you love them and care for them anyway.

“When you’re a stepkid you lose that sense of safety. Your parent is partnered to someone new, and you’re expected to love that person, and if you do or you don’t you’re betraying one parent or the other. And you’re always waiting for someone to throw you back if you don’t behave.

“Ducky was Dad’s stepmother. Technically — and I HATE this word — my stepgrandmother. But we never thought of it that way. She was my grandmother. When she married your Great-Grandad she took on his kid. And his kid’s kids, and their kids. Her standards were impossible, but on some level it didn’t matter because she’d love you the same whether you met them or not. All she really required was that we be polite. And she never once looked at us and said, ‘You’re a jerk, you must get it from that other woman,’” I laughed, and Mare laughed, too.

“Tell me a story of Ducky,” Mare says. She settles into her seat.

I think and then reach for a favorite. “Your Granddad — my Dad, that Grand Man - he was a very tough boy. He loved sports and he was very competitive and good at it. One sport he loved was hockey.”

“I play hockey!”

“Right. Well, this was a little different. This was a bunch of aggressive young men on skates going after each other with sticks. He tended goal, which meant sitting there getting pucks launched at his face all day long.

“I am quite sure Ducky hated it. Ducky did not approve of violence or aggression and in a lot of ways didn’t find men to be very sensible.

“So it confused Grandad that she showed up to the games. She never said anything, just sat there and watched.

“And then one day he was playing one of the biggest games of his career– I don’t know which one, but it was big. And this one guy — we’ll call him Jim Jones — he was Grandad’s defenseman and all season he was making work for Grandad, letting these pucks get by him and it was wearing Grandad out and he was really starting to get mad about it.

“So it’s the big game, and they’ve almost won, it’s down to the end … and Jim Jones lets another one go by. Last seconds of the game.

“And the next thing Granddad knows, he’s hunkered down, and the entire opposing squad is coming at him with sticks and the whole season hinges on his stopping that puck.

“Ladies didn’t shout at hockey games back then, Mare. And Ducky didn’t shout as a rule. And she did not swear. But she saw that squad go down toward her boy, and she stood up and screamed, ‘GOD DAMN YOU JIM JONES IF IT GETS PAST HIM IT WILL BE ALL YOUR FAULT!’”

Mare grins. I know she is imagining the Ducky she knew — tiny, dignified, wrinkled — standing up and hollering like that.

“She knew the whole time? How important it was and what was going on?”

“Yep. She just showed up, shut her mouth, let him do his thing. She didn’t really approve, but she didn’t need to. He was hers and it mattered to him so she showed up.”

“Did Granddad stop the puck?”

“He did. And his squad won the game, and they carried Granddad off the ice on their shoulders, and she stood watching the whole thing in total bewilderment.”

Mare has enjoyed the story — her hero grandfather and great-heart namesake.

“She always asked after my other grandmothers,” I say quietly. “ And I knew it was because she wanted me to know there was no price of admission. I could and should love the other women who claimed me, and that wouldn’t make me any less hers.”

I feel a stark loneliness for her that has never really gone away, and I know now never will. A badge like the scars of childbirth.

“And I’m hers, too, right?”

“Yes,” I say. “You are hers. You would have been anyway, no matter what. But I think she had a lot to do with the mother you have, and I wanted her to know I would never forget, so I asked her permission and gave you her name.”

Mare considers this, with her crystal eyes and great big heart. I think how feelings are ephemeral, but true love is eternal — and only if you work at it.

I was raised with the idea that motherhood was a lesser occupation — even that it was the ultimate oppression of women.

I understand why I was taught that. I was the granddaughter of a mini-suffragette (Ducky) and a woman who managed a PhD at Harvard while serving as single mother to three daughters (Grandma). So it was important to them, to their children, and then to me, that women be educated and freed of the bondage of enforced motherhood.

Then I went to an ancient New England prep-school — the same one that Grand Man went to — that had been gender integrated only fifteen years when I got there. I was being educated by women who had fought for the right to be educated themselves.

So I was imbued with the idea that I was better than motherhood. That I was worth more. That I owed it to all of them to be more than just a mom.

And then Along Came Mary. That blue-eyed milksweet girl who gripped my hand when we nursed, whose eyes followed me faithfully wherever I was. Whose screaming little body would settle against me in a minute, no less upset, maybe, but so relieved to be with me.

My career never ever mattered to me in the same way again.

Don’t hate me for saying it. I’m not saying it’s what you should be, or that it’s the only geniune Motherhood around. But for me, it was the truth. All I wanted to be was Mary’s mother — and then Ren’s, and now Eden’s. Thousands of dollars of education rattling around in my head and what I have loved best in all the world isn’t watching a Congressman deliver my speech on the House floor –it is seeing the three of them in a pile of pink — the wide-eyed baby confused and game, Ren devilish, and Mare patient and doting.

Cute Husband and I are barely keeping it together. One way or the other, we’ve been in a state of mild fear since this last kid was born. She seems fine, but our nerves are raw and we want answers and none are forthcoming. Add sleep deprivation and the usual challenges of life and things are tough at La Casa Loony Tunes.

What amazes me is how the kids keep us afloat.

Mare has made a design, for a special club she and Ren are building. It is intricate, amazing, with tunnels and hidden doors and even a menu. (Lunch? — Vanilla milk, cookies, meringues, watermelon, and Tootsie Rolls.) The design is penciled into seven pages of white printer paper.

Ren is in love with language. She found a Handy Manny toy that speaks Espanol to her and she speaks back to it. And she’s the same little shit she’s always been, hiding cookies in her car seat, never taking no for an answer about anything, manipulating complete strangers into giving her things.

And Edeny. Sweet little Three. Nurses with snorting enthusiasm, softest cheek in the world. The beginnings of blonde fuzz on her head. Wide, trusting eyes.

They don’t know that Cute Husband and I are in a little mini-hell. That in my sleepless irrationality I sometimes fight tears for no reason. That Cute Husband would give anything for a pause button so he could just take a day off.

They don’t know because they keep us afloat. Mare with her penciled papers and Renny with her babbling and Eden with those eyes — Oh! those eyes!

This ship can’t go down and fear can’t run our lives and whenever I start to think it might, I look at them and marvel at their hopefulness, their innocence, their unbridled love of life. I want to protect that as much was I want to protect their little bodies.

For Father’s Day, the girls gave Cute Husband a button that said, “Go ask your mother.” He wore it all over town and people laughed and we laughed, too, and I thought how very goddamned lucky we are.

Mare enters my room, sobbing. I am sorting out the oil bill, a sick cat, and waiting for callbacks from Eden’s doctors. They’ve been in the toy room most of the day watching movies.

And I’ve got itchy bites all over myself.

“Renny hurt my feelings,” Mare weeps. “She asked me to do something and then I did it instead of watching the movie and then when she saw it she said I did it wrong but that was because she didn’t tell me how to do it,” she gulps and sobs. I beckon Ren.

“Ren, your sister’s feelings are hurt,” I say.

“Well, it’s just that … Mare, you messed it all up.”

“WAA!” Mare says.

“Ren, when your sister’s feelings are hurt, we have to talk about that, first. It’s okay to talk to her about things you don’t want her to do, but it isn’t okay to hurt her feelings.”

“But … Mare, can you not do it wrong? When I ask you to do stuff? Because that makes me sad, sad, sad,” she starts spinning in place. “Sad, sad, sad … and den I get mad, and I’m sad, and my project looks bad and it’s all your fault …”

Mare and I lock eyes and I laugh. Then Mare laughs.

“Ren,” she says.

“Can you take all da tape off it?” Ren asks, hands on her hips. “Da tape looks bad.”

“You didn’t tell me where to put it!” Mare answers in total exasperation. “It’s your fault!”

“Yes I did!”

“No you didn’t!”

“I was going to!!”

“Oh!” Mare says, her ears perking up. “I love this song!” Edelweiss is playing. They scamper off. I am left with a phone, a pile of bills and a quizzical expression.

And I itch.

Yesterday morning Dr. Button showed me Eden’s digital chart.

I hadn’t wanted to know before. But this was her two-month appointment, she was wide-eyed and adorable, up six ounces, and we were jovial.

Stripes of yellow run horizontally across the chart. The key on the footer shows a yellow bar and an equals sign and the words “Abnormal/panic.”

“Panic,” I laughed. “It says ‘panic.’”

“And I followed it closely,” he responded. “I panicked.”

We both laughed again and then he let Mare and Ren listen to Sissy’s heart with the stethoscope before he departed with a wave and a “See you in two months!”

The girls followed me into the corridor like little ducklings, and I, their proud Momma duck, grinned my thanks as the scheduler booked us for August and the secretary told us how good Eden looked.

We went to the lab and Mare and Ren held her free hand for the needle stick and she screeched and then wept and then it was over. “Thank you so much,” I said to the staff who had seen me through nine heel sticks and three arm sticks. “Here’s hoping we don’t see you again for a long, long time!”

“Get lost!” they replied, handing Mare and Ren a giddy bounty in gloves and masks and stickers and lollipops. “Goodbye, good riddance, don’t come back!!”

And then I didn’t get the phone call that night. And nothing the next morning and nothing that whole day and then finally the phone rings and it is Dr. Button himself.

Damn.

“It’s not where we wanted it to be,” he says. And we’re back where we were. More tests, and consultations with specialists, more questions and wondering and guessing and not knowing and waiting and thinking it’s all fine but not knowing for sure.

“I’m sorry, it’s not what you wanted.”

“It’s not what anybody wanted,” I say.

I make dinner. We eat. Cute Husband puts the girls to bed, I rent him a movie. I hate the movie and take a shower.

And under the hot water the slow persistent anxiety that has ebbed and flowed for the last months breaks free in a violent panic.

I can’t breathe. I can’t stand it. Since Eden’s birth a million babies have sickened and died. None of those kids deserved it, none of their parents could stand it. I beg for mercy, the gift that is unearned — please let it pass us. Let my baby be okay, I’ll do anything.

And for the first time in the six years I have had children and the five I have been writing this blog, I have nothing to say except that I am terrified.

It’s finally here — that time when the good stuff is everywhere in the markets, fresh and green and relatively affordable. Piles of green and vibrant red and even rich purples and sunshine yellows. Summer eating is simple, fresh, unadorned.

A few weeks ago I asked the Food Whore what I should have for dinner. I’ve been asking her that for years. “What should I have for dinner?” I say and she pops back with something and then I go figure out how to make that.

“Polenta,” she said a few weeks ago.

“Poly-who?”

I know what it is — a corn mush of sorts, from Northern Italy. I’d just never had it or made it before and couldn’t begin to imagine the best way to go.

“And vegetables,” she added.

I experimented, looked through a couple of Italian cook books, and then hit the market for what vegetables appealed.

I knew plain polenta would not be for me, so I used my favorite aromatics of onion and garlic, cooked it in brothe instead of water, and added a lot of fresh parmesan cheese. Unfortunately Schmoop in the snugli isn’t a fan of the running food processor so tonight I had a chunk of un-shredded cheese left. I decided to chop it and add the chunks. The result was devestatingly good.

I’ve made this dish three times now, with a variety of vegetable combinations. Tonight I sent the girls looking for herbs in the garden and they brought me back basil and parsley, which went beautifully well.

The end result was colorful, lush, delicious. I did not add a protein. The polenta is a complex carb and the veggies are, of course, veggies. You could easily add chicken if you wanted to, but I loved it without.

I apologize that there is no photo. I am working out how to reliably post pictures to this blog. Until then, I’m going to continue to write about food and hope you’ll forgive me for the lack of images to go with it.

P.S. FYI the girls won’t eat this. Ren eats peas and rice and Mare picks out the vegetables she finds least offensive but won’t go near the polenta. So I can’t plug this one as kid-friendly.

A Pile of Vegetables and Polenta, Inspired by the Food Whore

Polenta
1 tablespoon minced onion
3 cloves chopped garlic
4 cups chicken stock
1 3/4 cup polenta grain
Parmesan cheese
Salt and pepper

1) Sauté the onion in a large, heavy-bottomed sauce pan until soft. Add garlic and cook another minute or two.

2) Add chicken stock and bring to a boil. Add a dash of salt.

3) Pour the polenta in slowly, whisking rapidly as you go. Keep whisking until it’s all in and then lower the burner to a very low, slow simmer and leave the polenta there while you make the Pile of Vegetables.

Pile of Vegetables
Couple of cloves of garlic, chunked
At least four of the following, chopped: Squash, eggplant, mushrooms, onion, cauliflower, asparagus, fresh peas, green beans or sugar snaps, spinach, grape or cherry tomatoes, peppers

Dash of balsamic vinegar (I used white, it was delicious)

Fresh leaves of parsley, basil, oregano

Juice of 1 lemon

1 cup chicken stock

1) Saute chopped onion, then garlic over low heat. I add mushrooms right away because they release liquid that helps to flavor the rest. Add the vegetables in batches with longer cooking time items first. (Eggplant, peppers early. Fresh peas or cauliflower toward the end.) Salt and pepper after each addition. Deglaze the pan (add liquid to bring up the stuff off the bottom of the pan) once or twice with vinegar.

2) Once all the veggies are in, add chicken broth, cover with lid and simmer until veggies are tender. In the last 30 seconds of cooking, add a handful of fresh herb leaves. Squeeze fresh lemon juice over all.

3) Turn your attention back to the polenta, which should be hot and smooth. Shred fresh parmesan in, and add a thumbful of butter. Chop a chunk of the parmesan into small cubes and add those last.

Serve by putting polenta down and serving vegetables and pan juices over the top.

I am nursing Eden on the couch in the kitchen when she bites me. Hard.

I yowl and right at that precise moment remember the custard for the strawberry ice cream is on the stove. I stand up to rescue the custard and instead send a glassful of ice water in a wide fan across the floor, ice cubes and all. The custard has become a glob of scrambled eggs floating in curdled milk.

I say my favorite little swear, my precious one saved for the worst sorts of crises. The one that’s so delicious my Dad would never forgive me if I shared it with you.

I say it because it is now six o’clock, I’ve been promising them we would make ice cream all freaking week, I finally got it done and now 8 eggs and two cups of milk are wasted and dinner is so late and I need these kids to go to bed tonight or I will lose my mind and tomorrow will start badly …

“I am so excited for ice cream!!” Mare says in that little I’m-such-a-freakishly-happy-well-adjusted-child-voice.

“Yeah, well … go to the family room, please,” I say.

“But I –!” Mare says.

“MARE!” She goes. I look at dinner and realize it won’t be ready for another 40 minutes. There are no more eggs, and no time to go get some and start another batch. Eden is wailing.

Ren comes out and I send her back to the family room, too, and then Mare comes out again and WHAT IS IT WITH THIS KID who never listens to a word I say any more and is suddenly the queen of the world? — and I send her back without telling her I’ve killed the ice cream and I AM SORRY YOU DIDN’T GET THE COOL MOTHER.

I plate supper. I’m doing it one armed, the wailing infant in the sling, refusing to be soothed by any of the normal crap that’s supposed to work. Mare and Ren are refusing to stay at the table where I have asked them twice to stay.

Holy shit I have three kids.

I get the platter of rice to the table, I set out plates and drop down a pile of napkins.

“Is it rice or couscous?” Mare asks as I run back to the kitchen for carrots and green beans, all the while toting a child who is howling as though someone she’d never done a thing to had bitten her on the nipple.

“Momma,” Mare scowls at my food, the meal I have labored to produce for her this fine afternoon. “Is this rice or couscous?”

I don’t even know how to answer, can’t wrap my mind around it, just want this night to end. I go back to the kitchen for drinks. Cute Husband is on the deck getting the pork chops off the grill.

I turn around and Ren is back in the kitchen.

“Momma, is it rice or couscous?”

And that is when Momma goes super-nova. Really. She folds in on herself and then allllll the little atoms that make up her entire person spatter out across the Universe, followed by a shockwave of sheer destruction.

“Sit in time out!” I tell her in a voice that make her go immediately.

“DIDYOUPUTHERUP TO THIS?” I spit at Mare. She nods her head “yes.”

“I told you both to stay at the table!”

“But I just wanted to know if it was rice or couscous!” she whimpers.

“GO!” I say. “Sit over there and do a time out.” She hasn’t done a time out in about a year. She slides miserably over to the spot on the floor I have pointed to. It’s near a curtain, so she wraps herself up in it and starts to shake.

I am a big fat asshole and I know it.

A few minute pass. I work on quieting Eden. Babies, I think, are too much a part of their mothers to be soothed if their mothers are stressed. She refuses to settle, which fires me up further, which doesn’t do much for her, either.

I ask the bigs to come sit with me. Mare hides in the curtain. Eden is still wailing and I am wondering what life would be like as a Congressional aid with nine years’ experience.

Cute Husband comes in with the pork, the girls sit at the table silent and sad, and Ren asks meekly, “Daddy, is it couscous or rice?”

“Couscous, Baby,” he says.

Just like that. He answers the freaking question. And they both nod and start eating.

It bubbles out of me, from down in my gut where all that stuff is. From the same place that just by whatever grace of God won’t let me stay too sad for too long, won’t let me take myself too seriously.

I start to laugh.

How absurdly simple. He just answered the question. Of course. Now why didn’t I think of that?

“Are you okay, Liz?” he asks.

My family — all blessed four of them — are staring at me. I have finally lost my mind and they are there to witness it and it isn’t fun.

Which strikes me as even freaking funnier so of course I am laughing some more.

Mare is in the tub before she will speak to me. We are two hours behind schedule, but I know the tub is important so I have drawn one and put nice soap in it and she lets me scrub her hair and then I say,

“You’re mad at me.” I let a long pause go by.

“The time out was unfair,” she says, and it is the start of my daughter addressing me person-to-person, defiant and hurt and holding me to account for the decisions I have made for her.

I think she is right. And I think she needs to be apologized to. But I also think she doesn’t really want to be that right, yet.

“I overreacted,” is the most I will give her. “But you pushed me to it. You pushed all day and you have been having a hard time doing what I ask the first time.”

“It’s the first mistake I’ve ever seen you make,” she says. Her eyes are full of tears, and I see fear lurking behind the anger.

“Oh, that’s totally not true,” I say. “I burned the ice cream a good twenty minutes before that.”

She laughs.

“And let’s not forget how many times we’ve been late to school. Or, good grief — your lunches. Let’s not even talk about how many times I’ve been late with that, right?” she smiles.

“We all make mistakes, Love,” I say. “It’s possible that I was stricter with you than I needed to be, but you absolutely drove me to it. You need to take responsibility for that and work harder to do as you are asked the first time, okay?”

She scowls. The anger is a relief to us both, but it breaks my heart. I silently rinse her hair, grieving that I have disappointed her. Wishing I could put my arms around her and tell her how sorry, tired, overwhelmed I am and ask her to forgive me and love me again.

I marvel at the bad decision I made to be so angry at her, and how the very same mind and heart responsible for that figured out how important it was to let her be angry back.