I’m over at Making the Moments Count Today. Please go read the letter I wrote to Grace, and then poke around and read some more of Amber’s beautiful, honest, lyrical words. I love her writing and her frank and poetic portrayal of life with two tiny children.
Thank you, Amber, for hosting me!
Today dawned bright and cold. Matt is in Asia, so it is just Grace, Whit, and me this weekend. Grace woke me up and then returned to her room to read (okay, fine, play with her new dsi) so I could wake up slowly. Whit slept until 8:30 (possibly a record). Already: delightful. After waffles and bacon for breakfast the children watched cartoons while I began wildly throwing things away. I’m almost finished with The Happiness Project and so far the idea that has the most traction with me is the empty shelf. I woke up desperate for my empty shelf.
After an hour of work, six Goodwill bags, and three trash bags, I have two empty shelves! Hooray.
Late morning, the three of us headed to Grace’s gymnastics lesson. Whit watched his favorite cartoon, Avatar, on my old iphone while I watched Grace (she looked over to make sure I was watching her with a frequency I found both touching and disconcerting). It’s amazing to me that after only three classes she can already do a competent cartwheel. Amazing, mostly, I think, because it reminds me of how old and competent my child is. When did this happen? As I’ve said before, I often find myself wondering when the real mother is coming home.
A huge treat: Burger King chicken nuggets for lunch. Wow does that make these children of mine happy! They are still playing with the plastic toys they received with their meals.
After a short rest we went to the Museum of Fine Arts to meet one of my dearest friends and her two boys. We sang along to Kiss 108 songs on the way there (top 40) and Grace awed me with her every-single-word knowledge of every single song. When does she learn this stuff? I don’t spend enough time with her in the car for it to be from that. She clapped and exclaimed when the Kings of Leon song “Use Somebody” came on and my first thought was: my daughter is cooler than I will ever be. I watched her in the rearview mirror, gazing out of her window and mouthing the words, and I swear I could see her 15 year old self in her 7 year old face. My heart tugged.
Then the true genius of Fake Mommy me made itself apparent. I parked in a parking lot right across from the MFA entrance I have always used, and urged the children to leave their coats in the car so “we” (read: I) didn’t have to carry them around inside. But then I took us out the stairway right by the car and exited onto a totally foreign street. “Let’s go back inside!” cried Whit, already shivering in his tee shirt in the 31 degree day. I tried the handle. Locked. Awesome.
We finally figured out, after a couple of tries, where we were. We had to walk around a long block to get to the museum. I swear I was winning Mothering Gold Stars from every car that passed, as I wandered aimlessly with two coat-less children on a frigid day (so cold that the friend I was going to meet had deemed it too cold to go skiing – where they would have presumably worn coats). Relieved, I steered the kids to the entrance by the parking lot (now that we had reached it through 10 minutes of walking). Oops. I guess that entrance is now closed.
Another long city block later, we finally stumbled into the museum lobby. Both kids were absolutely breathless with laughter about what a silly mother they had. I laughed with them, grateful that such small things bring such joy, amazed by their pink cheeks and good cheer. We explored the museum for a solid hour and a half, which is about the limit of both a four year old’s attention span and, incidentally (and not impressively), my own.
The highlight of the museum visit for the children was no doubt the sweet snack they enjoyed in the basement cafeteria. We braced ourselves for the cold and jogged back to the parking lot, one child holding each of my hands. They giggled so hard we had to keep stopping. Who knew that a coat-less run on a winter day had the potential for such hilarity? I’m glad I found out.
Driving home, Whit noticed that the Charles River was frozen solid. He stared out his window at it in and his visible amazement made me smile. Then Joni Mitchell’s Circle Game came on, which both kids know because it’s on the (short) list of songs I play (all the time). I listened as they both sang along, quietly, and felt a huge swell of gratitude and sadness. A quote rose to my mind, popsicle-stick-like: Everyday life is laced with miracles. My eyes filled with tears and I thought: this is it. This is what I keep writing about. I am here now.
And I was.
Lots of outside skating because the weather is cold. Lots of pink cheeks and runny noises clomping into the clubhouse on their skates in search of chocolate chip cookies.
Whit is the star of the week and I am irrationally proud that I was able to download the LEGO font and use it for his name on the poster.
One Saturday Grace, Whit and I bundle into full snow gear for an outing on the T. We ride to the Common, play on the snowy and tongue-stickingly cold metal climbing structure until we are too frozen. Then we go to Starbucks for hot chocolate. Somehow seeing Grace walking down the street holding her own Starbucks really gets to me.
Whit’s 4th birthday party – a way to combine a robot obsession with freezing cold weather – aha! Robot bowling. All the children received tee shirts with an (adorable) orange robot printed on the front
Grace’s dream for MLK day: That everyone has food
Celebrate Whit’s 4th birthday by watching the Inauguration on TV with my Dad and my children. I cried when they played Simple Gifts, remembering as I always do, my dear grandmother Priscilla who loved it.
I write a letter of apology to Grace and Whit after suffering from my first migraine and losing an entire weekend. I didn’t want them to have to see me in pain, didn’t want to seem weak or to have them doubt my health and continuing presence.
The video of Rosa Sat was widely circulated, and made me cry every single time I heard it.
Visit to the ER to have Grace’s face glued shut where Whit broke the skin by throwing a robot at her.
Dona Nobis Pacem
I was driving the children home yesterday evening when they started asking me about Christmas. It was a dark, rainy night and the car felt like a little self-contained universe, moving through space. Grace and Whit wanted to know all about Christmas and why we celebrate it when we do. I floundered with some general answers about the virgin Mary and the manger. Grace told Whit confidently that Christmas was “When baby Jesus was born.”
He then asked, “So why are there presents?” Grace immediately replied, a withering note of duh! in her voice, “Because it’s a birthday celebration.”
Whit thought about this for a moment. And then, “But why do we get presents if it’s his birthday?”
He managed to stump both of the wiseass women in his life with that question. I don’t know. Do you? I did change the subject to remind them that Santa has nothing to do with the official religious meaning of Christmas.
Then Grace took Whit’s question and with a blinding ability to switch sides that will likely make her a great debater, said, “Well, Jesus can’t really have presents anyway, since he is not alive. He’s up there,”
“Where?” Whit asked.
“Up there,” I took my eyes off of the winding, wet road to glance back and saw her shrug her shoulders and cast her eyes heavenward.
“Well, he’s not really dead, though. A lot of religion is about waiting for him to be reborn,” I offered, immediately wondering why I said that (and remembering my friend who famously told her daughter about the birds and the bees at length. When the story was finished, the daughter hesitated and asked if there were other ways to make a baby. The mother plunged into a description of IVF. The daughter furrowed her brow in thought and said she thought that sounded like a better way to do it). I think bringing up Christ’s resurrection was akin to mentioning IVF. Factually true but unnecessary to bring up at this level of inquiry. Damn.
Grace began peppering me with questions from the backseat. What is resurrection. What do you mean he will come back? (I had “he will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead and his kingdom will have no end” running through my head – oh years of weekly church you did your work!) How do we know? When?
This is far from an area of expertise for me. I talked about how he was not “really human” but “divine” (necessitating a sideline into the definition of “divine”). Grace finally interrupted me, saying with finality and no trace of irony, “Something smells fishy about this, Mummy.”
Um, yeah. I fought back a giggle, thinking about how in this humorous conversation we were tackling some of the biggest questions of faith and religion. The conversation paused and you could hear Josh Groban singing “Oh holy night” in the background.
Grace asked, “What is holy?”
I answered, “It is like divine, anything to do with God,” thinking as I spoke how insufficient this answer was. Thinking: this moment is holy.
Grace responded, “Like the night I was born.” Where that came from I have no idea. Out of the blue, a searing bolt of truth.
“Yes, Gracie. That was a holy night.”