For a long time when our son asked when we would get some place or when his food would come at a restaurant or when he would start to like school, my partner would answer with “soon, sweetie”. About 18 months ago, at age 5-and1/2, he said in a very adult voice:
I think of this every time someone says soon lenders will start lending again. Soon, the job cuts will abate. Soon, I will get to retire.
Soon, soon, soon
I guess it is cool that scientists are mapping the human genome for clues to diseases and male pattern baldness. But somewhere in the human genome there is some combination of molecules (or whatever) that causes children never to want to go to sleep at bedtime and whine, “are we there yet?” within 5 minutes of starting a journey. Because children are born knowing how to do these things, I want the scientists to find these traits on the map of the human genome.
How come every child knows how to whine, “are we there yet?” when on a long car ride? Genetic hardwiring is not all about the color of one’s eyes and the shape of one’s nose.
It’s Saturday, July 2007, I am on the phone with clients and at my computer on a Saturday morning, trying to close a deal by Monday or Tuesday.
It’s Saturday, July 2009. For the last two hours I have been lying in bed next to my son watching cartoons. More TV time than he gets in two weeks, but it’s the summer and he had a few emotional days at camp (hormones and growth spurts). Cartoons are violent and weird, but those two hours hugging my child and tickling him during commercials were a little bit of heaven.
There is an upside to this downturn, as long as I can afford the apartment and the TV. Do you think that a yurt in Central Park can have wifi?
A child’s hug is the best tonic for a lousy day at work. If you don’t have one, hug your neighbor’s child (especially after a bath, because they are clean and smell better).
Too many bugs in nature. But I braved the wilds of Rockland County for my son.
I went to camp for ten summers. I loved camp, notwithstanding my current aversion to the bugs and inconveniences of the natural world. (I need a NICE bathroom.)
So, having loved camp so much, I was game for all of the activities. My son wanted to relax after a hard day of having fun and lied down in the grass. My partner took pictures of him lying down. I got involved in a soccer game (and gracelessly tripped over the ball) and then played parent-child basketball games (even though my child was on the sidelines chilling out). And I ran to get the cherry italian ices for us that the camp gave as a parting snack. I overheard a father asking if there were lemon ices because the cherry kind stained permanently. I saw a woman in white pants (great idea for an evening at a camp) get splashed with cherry ices being eaten by a nearby child. It seemed to happen in slow motion, with love music in the background as the white and the cherry collided in a loving embrace. Ok, the woman and the child who was not her daughter — not so much loving happening there.
Our son wore most of his cherry ices on his clothes and on his face. The neon quality of the coloring made it a handy tracking device as we boarded the buses back to the city.
Today is visiting day at day camp. Ok, it is visiting dinner, really.
I still remember my parents coming for visiting days when I was at sleep away camp. I remember the summer my mother went gray. It was 3-1/2 weeks since I had seen my parents and I wondered who were those odd people waving at me. Maybe it was my mother’s gray, my father’s checked pants and white shoes combo or the red keds (the really wimpy kind — not the now-preppy-cool kind) my mom wore. It was probably the whole picture that made me weak in the knees.
Luckily, my son saw us this morning so the trauma should be muted. More later.
So I am not only becoming my mother, I am becoming my grandmother.
You may remember seeing old Jewish ladies like her. They had heavy accents and would offer you a “gless of tea in a kup” (because in the “old country” tea was served in glasses, but “vee know that here, in Amerrrica, dahlink, vee poot tea in a kup”).
They carried heavy shopping bags full of things. In fact, those shopping bags were so ubiquitous that they were called “Jewish luggage”. Which gets me to my point. This morning, I couldn’t seem to find any of my fancy shmancy bags in which to shove some of the daily detritus of my life. I spied a small Dean & Deluca shopping bag (note to self: remind family that this is not a eatery for recessionary times). So in went my blackberries (yes more than one), gym clothes, bills I need to pay, etc. Off I went to my fancy shmancy job at my fancy shmancy office with my shtetl style bag.
Some things must just be in our genes. From generation to generation. . . .
I am not my son’s biological mother. My partner is. There are distinct advantages to being genetically irrelevant: no worries that the less-than-stellar genes I carry (recessive, of course) will transfer to my son. I can say that he is adorable and that he is smart, because I have nothing to do with those. The down side is that I don’t see my mother in him and she was such a positive life force.
I live the nature/nurture debate. I think humans are born hard-wired and nurture doesn’t change that. Nurture can create a safe, loving, encouraging environment so that a child’s better impulses, desires and dreams can flourish. That’s my job. It is hard sometimes because there is something about the biological connection that is primitive and similarly hard-wired.
I worry about my place in my son’s life. I have a piece of paper — court ordered adoption. I am legally and financially as responsible for him as is any biological parent. But that is no bright line upon which to stake my parental claim. Certainly if family were decided based on “blood” relations, I would lose. Court order sounds strong but it is paper and in “rock, paper, scissors,” I would lose to the scissors. So, it can’t be that strong.
I know I love him and he loves me. That’s the tie that binds. The rest shouldn’t matter. But until love is the litmus test for family, I am glad I have the piece of paper.
Dear Mom:
Tomorrow is your grandson’s 7th birthday. You died one day shy of his being six months old. That means today is 6 and 1/2 years since you died. I can’t believe it. There is no “moving on” after your death; there is only “moving with” your memory and wishing you were here. Next to the computer is a picture of you holding him after his bris and I am sitting with you on your left. The person on your right (unseen in the photo) said something tremendously stupid because I can see it in your eyes. But I know that look — you were measuring your response to an inane statement. In fact, I have that same look on my face in the picture. Genes are amazing things, except you would have responded with something perfectly diplomatic but to the point. I would have responded like Larry King did when he interviewed Jean Harris (who killed the Scarsdale diet doctor), “so, you’re a murderer”.
You live in me and as I age I look more and more like you. This comforts me. But I need for your grandson to know you or know about you, so he can appreciate the remarkable person who was his grandmother.
I tell him about you all the time. I use those Yiddish phrases that you used with us when you cupped our punims adoringly. Sometimes, I tell him what Grandma would have said if she were alive because I want him to have a sense of you. So if he does something funny or wonderful or if he needs comforting, I tell him what you would have said to him if you were alive.
A few months ago, we were all in a cab after visiting Dad. I buckled up and put your grandson on my lap and “strapped him in” with my arms forming the “Grandma grip” (which he knows comes from your legendary strong grip on your children’s arms when crossing streets). The cab stopped short and everyone else went flying (though, thank G-d, no one was hurt). Your grandson was safe in the Grandma grip. That is the image of you I want him to carry with him — the strong, protective love that endures even though you are in Heaven.
I wonder if you would like my blog and would send the link to all of your friends. I wonder if you would comment. You would probably send me direct tweets that said, “be nice” in that slightly chastising way you have. You would worry about Sarah Palin’s daughter being so young to have had a child and tell me to be gentle about that. But, you needn’t worry. I, too, feel that the world is too much upon her. It is her mother who makes me crazy(ier).
Mom, this is not getting easier. And I know you would say to me, “my poor little tsatskele, if I could have this sadness for you, I would.” And that’s the catch: so much more to mourn.