The New Normal

It’s been a long time since I’ve written here. For a reason. Life has happened, and death has happened, and change has happened. Big change. It almost feels like my blog was the “before” and now I’m standing here in the “after.”

We are now a family of four. I am a single mom of three young children who lost their father to depression and an inability to cope with certain realities. I am a widow, grieving the loss of her husband but also acknowledging that I never really knew him fully. He didn’t let me. I spent ten years wondering why I wasn’t making my husband happy, and ten years wondering what was wrong with me, and how I could make things better for him and for us. Then I stopped trying, because trying was too much. And then he killed himself.

So now it is me and the kids, and our story is very different but also very much the same. Our daily routine is hardly changed. I do what I used to do. Get up. Get the kids fed and dressed and lunches packed while pouring 24 ounces of coffee down my throat as quickly as possible. In the afternoons I pick them up and feed them like a short order cook and bathe them and make sure their homework is done and get them in pajamas and talk to them about their days and sit with them while they fall asleep in their beds. It’s a steady stream of busy-ness, but it’s ok. I am now EVERYTHING for the kids. I am the bread winner, and the cook, and the cuddler, and the handyman, and the rule-maker, and the joke teller, and the bill payer, and the listener, and the mediator... I’m EVERYTHING. And that’s ok too, it is just different, and it has taken me six months to embrace this new normal.  It’s only sometimes overwhelming.

What is more overwhelming is knowing that by no fault of their own, my children lost someone who they depended on being there for them for a long long time. What is more overwhelming is that the children’s memories of their father are already fading. When I asked Ember about what she remembers about Chris just the other night, she said she only remembered a few things, and that it seems to her like daddy was maybe all a dream. When Oren had to talk about family in his class the other day, he said family is that his dad died. 

What is astonishing in all this is that the kids are doing incredibly well. They are thriving at school, they are not developing nervous habits or acting out in any unusual ways, and they are really just happy kids, laughing and playing and adjusting so beautifully to our new life. I learn from them every day. I observe them, and their ability to accept change, and their ability to continue to be themselves, and I aim for that same thing. I care for them, and they teach me.

This is our new life. It is me and my three children: my sun, my moon, and my stars.

Teaching My Son to Not Be Like the New President

Yesterday, as I drove Oren and Erez to daycare, I had NPR on the radio. I don’t often listen to the news on the daycare commute because I am nervous about the kids picking up on bits and pieces of information that might not be age appropriate, but with everything going on – Trump’s first press conference, the leaked dossier, etc., I was overly curious about what was going on in the news.

Of course, the words “President-Elect Trump” were spoken on the radio within seconds of my turning it on. And Oren, ever the curious child, asked me when Trump was going to become the president. When I told him Trump would be president within the next few weeks, Oren looked thoughtfully out the window. Then he looked at me and smiled.

“Trump says girls are PIGS!!” he said, and started laughing.

I hadn’t told Oren that Trump had called a woman a pig. He had heard it from a girl in his preschool class back in September, when the campaigns were heating up. From that point on, whenever he has heard Trump’s name, he has the same reaction: Trump says girls are PIGS!

And I have had to have the same conversation with him. Over and over and over again.

“Oren,” I say, “It was absolutely wrong of Mr. Trump to call a girl a pig. That is name calling, and it hurts people’s feelings.”

Oren looked at me. He GETS it, but he still doesn’t seem to REALLY get it. He’s four years old. To him, saying the words “poopy” and “fart” is REALLY funny. He thinks calling people animal names is funny, too. He doesn’t understand that the word “pig” and “cow” are used to degrade a person and make them feel fat and shameful.

 “Oren,” I continue, “There are some words that SEEM funny, but they aren’t funny, and people use them to hurt other people’s feelings. If someone called ME a pig, I would be really sad. Would you want someone to call Mommy a name that would make me sad?”

Oren shook his head.

“Sometimes, even important people can behave badly, and can do mean things. Even the president.”

And that is the end of the conversation. For a while. Until the next time Trump’s name is mentioned and Oren remembers that Trump said girls are pigs.

Unfortunately, this is a conversation I think I am going to be repeating many, many times in many different ways over the next four years. I think about Oren evolving from a four year old preschooler into an 8 year old grade school boy all in the era of Trump, and it scares me. As his awareness of the world around him grows, and he is more mindful of news and politics and our country, I know I am going to have to continue to run interference between our president’s words and my son’s interpretations of those words. I am going to have to have to continue to explain that our chosen leader doesn’t always say nice things, doesn’t always treat people with respect, and doesn’t always lead by example.

As we ready ourselves for the inauguration next week, I find myself filled with concerns I never imagined myself having. How am I going to teach my children to respect others, show kindness to their peers, to speak with empathy, and to exhibit restraint and care, when their president is unable to do so?

My Happiest Baby is the One I Have Had the Least to Do With

When Erez was born back in February, I was a little worried. After the relatively relaxed and blissful week long stay in the hospital, we transitioned home, and he almost immediately started exhibiting colicky behaviors. He would cry for hours on end and there was little I could do to console him. I would walk/bounce him around the house, make soft shush-shush noises in his ears, give him gripe water, gas drops, and whatever else I could find that would possibly offer my boy a little solace.

As it turns out, it was a formula issue. I felt guilty enough for not breast-feeding my baby boy, having breastfed my other two kids. Knowing that formula was giving him serious issues and discomfort KILLED me. Figuring out which formula worked for Erez quickly became my number one priority.

And I DID find a formula that worked for him. Once we made the switch, it was only a matter of two or three days before my unhappy newborn transformed into a happy baby. Since then, Erez has become our HAPPIEST baby. His resting face is “smiley face”. He is always giggling and cooing, and on the rare occasion when he DOES cry, it is always for a very valid reason.

I should be thrilled, right? I mean, my baby boy is AMAZING. He is the kind of baby parents dream of having. He is the Gerber baby, only happier. He seriously has a personality that inspires me, and he is only six months old.

So what’s my issue?

My happiest baby is the one I have had the LEAST to do with.

I went back to work exactly 8 weeks after Erez was born. I felt like I had to. I liked my job, and I didn’t want to lose it. I didn’t want to have to go through a whole new job search to find a job I liked LESS.

So, as a full-time working mom, I see Erez briefly in the mornings and in the evenings, and get to spend a good amount of time with him on the weekends. I cuddle with him in my bed at night. But that is it.

With my first born, my eldest, I worked only part time and pretty much attached her to my hip for the first year of her life. I wore her in slings, held her incessantly, breastfed her on demand. With my second son, I took a year off from work so I could be with him ALWAYS.

It’s not that they were UNhappy babies. But they were not THIS happy. They were never as happy as Erez is, every single day of his life.

I know that babies are born with their own personalities and all, but this happiness situation has caused me to seriously question how much of an effect my attachment parenting had on my other two kids. Maybe it negatively impacted them? I am a huge advocate for breastfeeding, but did breastfeeding make my other kids LESS happy?

I know Erez loves me. He looks for me in a room, he reaches for my hair or my face, he smiles (of course!) from ear to ear when I pick him up at daycare in the afternoon. But I am not the center of Erez’s universe, the way I was for my other two. His life does not depend on me the way theirs did. I am not his food source, his transportation, and his constant playmate the way I was with the others.

Here’s the thing. Right now, I am at a place where I don’t WANT to be totally depended on. I kind of feel overwhelmed with momhood. I occasionally feel the urge to run away from all the responsibilities that come with being a mom. I have seriously been craving “me” time, and have been wanting to rediscover the part of me that is not a mommy, that has been pushed to the backburner over the last six years. So why, when I am craving more independence, do I still wish I was so much more important to my baby and so much more a factor of his happiness?

Like many people, I like to feel needed. I like to feel valued. I like to feel deeply loved. It makes me feel big and great and purposeful.

I truly hope I can experience those feelings with Erez. I hope I can learn to embrace his happiness, not as a sign of what I may have done wrong with my other kids, but what I have done right with all of them. I hope I can see it not as a result of me having less time to love him, but as a result of him feeling loved despite our limited time together. I hope I can take pride in his happiness, rather than using it to question my own value.

I hope I can feel all those things. I’m just not there yet.