Halloween, another year

A bird is cawing aggressively outside my window. My tubby cat is next to me on my favorite couch, on his back, legs splayed, purring. I have just sunk into these cushions for a couple hours of stillness and work.

Yesterday, as the Mueller news spilled forth, I grabbed our pole saw from the garage and took to our trees with nervous energy to burn. My arms are fatigued today, in a good way, but all the limbs that scraped across our house in Sunday night's rainstorm are now piled in the driveway, and Papadopoulos has pleaded guilty, and I slept soundly last night for the first time in too long.

Today is Halloween, Oliver's favorite day of the year. He is dressing up as Sputnik -"not the probe" he told his friends- and as I packed his costume last night, I smiled. Sputnik is his favorite character from one of our favorite books ever: Sputnik's Guide to Life on Earth. You all should read it regardless of your age. Oliver convinced my mom to, and she has found it utterly delightful and dear.

It is not a spoiler to tell you that some see Sputnik as a dog while others see him as a man clad in kilt, sporran, aviator hat, and goggles. It is the latter version that Oliver will be in today's school Halloween parade and tonight for trick-or-treating. He is supremely excited, and I have to say that we pulled the costume together in grand fashion. 

Jack is going as the Joker. "The scary Joker from The Dark Knight," Mom, "not the one from the Michael Keaton Batman." You got it, buddy! So as to look extra authentic, he has been growing his hair out for weeks now so that we can dye it instead of his wearing a wig. 

"I don't know how you women deal with all this hair, Mom. It's driving me CRAZY!" I do understand. This is the reason for ponytails.

This morning, Facebook sent me photos from Halloween four years ago. Both boys were Captain America. That choice always struck me as funny as neither is terribly keen on any of the Marvel superheroes, a fact that'd have told you as readily then as now. Maybe the shields were too appealing to turn down. I don't know. But they were darling.

four years ago.

And I'm flabbergasted by how much bigger they look today. And how much older they are and act. What four years in the life of a child often is. 

A few weeks ago, Jack lost a molar. I'd forgotten to tooth fairy that night so the next night, after Tom and I got home from a dinner party, I attempted to sneak in and replace tooth with two dollars (interest, you know). 

Jack was still awake so I sent him to the bathroom to re-brush his teeth as he'd clearly been snacking on Cheerios. How that child sleeps with Cheerios, in dust, crumbled, and full forms, in his bed is beyond me, but whatever. Anyway, as I was fumbling with the bills and the tooth bag and Jack's pillows, he walked back in, and I was sure he'd busted me, and I'd not finished the job, and so I said, "Sweetie, I have some news. I am the tooth fairy."

He started crying, and then I teared up, and we got into bed together. Jack was eleven in July. It is infinitely dear to me that he still believes in Santa and was 50% on the Tooth Fairy and wants to cuddle on a daily basis. 

"Mom, I was pretty sure you and Dad were the tooth fairies, but it's just sad, you know?"

"Absolutely, honey. It is so sad."

"But, I swear I caught Dad tooth fairying one night."

"Well, you may have. The thing is, sweetie," (and here I decided to appeal to his rational science side which is almost all of him) "it does seem a little odd to pay you for a physiological function. Like, your baby teeth are going to fall out. That's normal and optimal. So essentially, we've been paying you for a bodily process.”

At this point Jack laughed. Hard. "Mom, do you still have all my baby teeth?"

"Of course, honey. Do you want to see them?"

And so we went to my closet and opened my jewelry box and lifted the tray and took out the small clear blue plastic Container Store box in which were nestled all of his teeth. Some were cracked, some were slightly bloodied despite all the rinsing I'd done, some were sharp, others more blunt. We looked at each one, and as he fingered old incisors, he slipped one arm around my waist, and said, "Do you believe in Santa, Mom?"

"I 100% believe in Santa, honey. Do you?"

"Yes," he replied. And I kissed the top of his head and then walked him back to bed. Oliver refuses to give his teeth to the tooth fairy (Jack once said, "Oliver, don't you want the money?" to which Ol replied, "It's not all about the money, Jack." and I am still dying laughing over that and also, YES!) so frankly, I don't know what he believes. But Jack won't say a word, and again I look from above and think, my gosh, my babies have turned into such mature young men. 

I'm not sure Oliver would have worn a kilt in the school parade even two years ago. The likeness to a skirt would have probably made him balk, worried about what peers may have said or, more concerning, thought. I am so proud of his growing confidence in himself. He is so much like me, and his confidence, like mine, is and will continue to be hard-earned. 

I think this is one reason I've tried to embrace Halloween. It's never been a holiday I much love, but it is important to Ol. It is important for his self-expression, for exploring ideas and identities, for trying things on both literally and figuratively. It's also about the candy and the fun and about "scaring people," but all that is just the tip of the iceberg.

He said to me earlier this month, "Mama, I know you don't love Halloween but you work so hard to make it so much fun for me. Thank you."

As I so often am with Ol, I was floored by the depth of his thought and awareness. (And I was profoundly touched). I know adults who don't reflect and perspective-take like my eight-and-a-half-year-old does. 

For those who will go trick-or-treating tonight, be safe and have fun. I am still hoping that at some point I get to stay home and hand out candy, but this year is not that time. Instead, I'll be walking with Joker, Sputnik, Bane, and whatever Ol's friend is dressing up as, and feeling as if the world will be alright if always we have such teams around us.

Happy Halloween!

A national suture

I have six sutures snaking across my upper back. The stitches look to have been sewn with navy blue fishing line, pulled taut and tied off into a grimace atop a fleshy ridge. Tomorrow they’ll be removed. By all accounts the wound has been beautifully closed by skilled hands. But really, what does that mean? Does it mean it will heal well? Look pretty on the surface? Smooth and soft, demure like a slight smile?

So much of life is never what it appears to be. Marriage is more constantly challenging, motherhood more regularly enervating, driving times but estimates failing to take into account traffic, other drivers’ skills or lack of, accidents, weather.

Our “president” is even worse than he seemed at first, a greedy buffoon with bad hair, bad ties, orange skin, and dubious business success. He is, in fact, a truly horrible, greedy, mean narcissist who still has bad hair, bad ties, orange skin, and dubious business everything. He is a bigot, a racist, a liar, and a fraud.

It has been hard to be back here. Hard to return to swastikas and white supremacists and the pardoning of a man who unabashedly targeted minorities and made them suffer. It has been almost impossible to watch our “leader” make equivalent the neo-Nazi racists and those who peacefully (and even less peacefully) opposed them. There is no equivalent. None.

It has been hard to watch brave men and women who've fought in our military be suddenly banned from service because they are transgender. It has been sickening to hear bullshit claims that their medical costs are too much of a burden to this country, not worth their courage and service, when in fact our military spends five times that amount on Viagra and our deplorable “leader” has already spent more on personal travel.

The stitches itch something fierce and the skin around them is raw and red, irritated by the bandage adhesive keeping them slicked with ointment and padded and covered.

The country aches something fierce and so many are raw and red, furious and exhausted by the fight since our birth, since the Civil War, since emancipation, since suffrage, since battles for Civil Rights and Women’s Rights and reproductive rights and LGBTQ rights. Like the worst sort of full circle we have a "leader" - with bad hair and bad ties and orange skin and the meanest streak - who wants to take us back to before, to the time of our birth. To the time when only he and men who looked like him, potentially minus the orange skin, could succeed or even hope to.

Friends and family and millions of strangers spent the past few days battening down for and enduring Hurricane Harvey. It has been a Katrina redux to watch Houston flood. And our “president”? He pardoned a racist crook, banned willing and brave service members, and tweeted a book review on the day the rain started to fall. As if that imbecile reads anything booklength or not about him. He flew south during the campaign although he was asked not to. He’s barely said boo to Texas, a state that handed him its electoral votes, since Friday and might go visit on Tuesday.

While in the Netherlands I got to spend time with a friend there. She was lamenting her daughter’s nearly-six-week summer break; summers are tough for working parents. Who watches their children? Where? For how much? I said, I understand, we have twelve weeks.

Summer is now officially long in the tooth. I’m sick of it. The next eight days will be a slog, an uncomfortable fishing line grin snaking across the remains of August. The rose-colored summer break is at once marvelous and not at all what it appears to be.

And yet this is life. There is a PE uniform to buy (late) and braces to be set and schedules to be made. There is the weeding of the garden, the removal of all whose season has passed, the extra love given to all who persevere in the blurry pages between summer and fall. Perhaps we’ll get some more tomatoes, squash, and melons. But the arugula is long gone, the peppers and okra now wisps of hope. The birds have stolen all of the berries, and I have stopped fighting them. For this year at least.

I will try to find my way back to activism but also to the simpler things that enable me to better care for myself and my family. This fight is going to be a long one, and we all must both protest and pace. It will, potentially, take generations to undo and heal some of what Trump has wrought. But he is not the only one to blame.

This country has never adequately reckoned with its racist birth and past and the ways in which those old tentacles reach insidiously into the present. That failure allowed such a heinous individual to (sort of) win a presidential election, and if we, white America, do not deal with our wrongs now, we are as complicit as ever in laying the groundwork for another Trump in the future.

Stitches may capably close a wound but talented hands don’t ensure the underlying ill is excised. A lovely scar can mask ugliness. Just ask America.

Some days

Some days feel overcast, even when the sun is shining bright. Some days feel lonely, even when you're surrounded by loved ones. Some days, parenting feels like nothing more than a shortcut to winning yet another failing asshat badge. Some days, marriage feels like a Sisyphean toil.

Some days you return home and find soggy mounds of cat puke dotting your kitchen. You find capellini-sized worms eating through the tight, pink-tipped buds studding the rose bush you've spent a solid year tending; you toss the worms to the ground angrily, wondering if your roses will bloom. You cut open a Meyer lemon proudly plucked straight from the tree you've nursed for as long as that rose and find it to be all pith, the very antithesis of a Meyer's goal. 

Some days, you ponder family that feel like strangers. You wonder what happened last November and if your country will ever heal. You wonder about the rage you sometimes feel, the rage you know others feel, the anger and mistrust seeping into the white space left gaping and sore by shock and concern. You wonder about good seeds and bad seeds and where and when neutral forebears diverged onto paths lit by light and shrouded by dark. You wonder how much light and how much dark you're comprised of. 

Some days you meet an old friend for lunch and shock yourself by sharing things from the depths. You realize that you needed to but that that need is an uncomfortable, suggestive one. You are grateful that even though you rarely see this friend, she was exactly who you needed to share a bowl of fries with.

Some days you curse the invasive clover around whose roots ants seem to like constructing villages, and the bamboo sneaking under the fence separating your yard from your neighbor's. But dealing with them offers an odd sense of peace and accomplishment: from slowly peeling up buckets of juicy white clover stem that seem like an endless highway system coursing between grass and soil, from unearthing and cleaving into so many pieces the deeply entrenched tap root of the bamboo, comes exhaustion and serenity, and I think that order is key. 

Some days you hunker down and inward, willing yourself to rest and notice the tiny bits of beauty that really do beckon from more corners than you can count. Some days you put on a dress and new sandals and mod earrings and immerse yourself in a sea of activity and interaction because sometimes, getting out of your own head is the best gift you can give yourself. Some days you challenge yourself to learn or do something new; maybe you make a mistake, maybe you don't. But you are brave and you notice you stand just a bit taller.

Some days are relentless and hard, and then your child cries and needs you to hold him as his tears wet your shoulders and your arms embrace his gangly body. And you are tired and there is nowhere you'd rather be, even if you feel impotent really, for you can't make him better at chess, you can't make him believe he really isn't "the worst one in the club." You can't, but you can hold him as he calms. And you can dry his eyes and kiss his cheeks and offer to make a sandwich and maybe do something so silly, anything, just to make him smile.

Some days you cook three dinners (for various reasons) and you forget to turn the sprinkler off and move the laundry over and wash the cat's injured foot. You're reading to your child and turn the book over to him even though it's a challenging one because your dinner is finally ready and you're hungry. And he flies with such ease and fluency, and you sit there with your mouth agape, beaming with pride at this child who has worked unceasingly and courageously and has gotten it. And you tell him that, and he believes you, and he blushes with the fire of belief and accomplishment, and you would not trade this for the world.

Some days you remember the night you arrived in New York, with one suitcase and no longer enough money to fairly tip the cab driver. He is kind and waits as you ring the bell of your new home. He is concerned when the people who are supposed to answer don't. He sees your concern. You wonder if he knows of your broken heart. He offers you his phone, and you take it with gratitude even though you cannot pay him enough. He waves his hand, "Don't worry."

Some days you go back to New York, the place you found yourself. Really found yourself. And it is still dirty and magnificent and throbbing with life and air conditioners drip from above and kindness and hardness surround you like a maelstrom but once again you find yourself and you return home grounded.

Some days your spouse rubs your shoulders and then unloads the dishwasher right when you need just those things.

Some days you dream big dreams and feel silly about it. Other days you dream big dreams and know you'll see them come true. Some day.