When did i get like this.., p.20
When Did I Get Like This?, page 20
Seamus, at least, still plays the dinnertime thumb game with great gusto:
SEAMUS: My day was bad? ’Cause it was waining. And it was gweat? ’Cause it was hot dogs for wunch.
He is nothing if not succinct, but these brief summations are to him the most important details he could wish to share. He is too young to want to hide anything from me. At least I hope so.
Sometimes Seamus has a hard time falling asleep at night and will sneak back out to the living room long after David and I assume all of our children are dead to the world. When he staggers into the living room, jammies askew, squinting at the light coming from the television, we usually lead him back to his bed pretty quickly. But one night recently I let him lie with me for a few amicable minutes, holding him tight as David flipped through the channels. When David looked over at us from his side of the couch, he was moved by this picture of domestic devotion.
DAVID: Seamus, don’t you have the best mommy?
Seamus thought about it for a moment.
SEAMUS: No.
ME: Excuse me?
SEAMUS: No. You are not de best mommy. In anudder house, there is pwobby a mommy who is gooder.
DAVID: Seamus, that’s not nice to say.
SEAMUS: But it’s twue. You still a good mommy. You’re zust not the best mommy.
He snuggled back into my chest, quite contented.
What could I say? He was so obviously, totally right. Even if his candor was tough love, I could also see it as a precious resource, a dying light. As long as Seamus still told me the honest truth, and as long as I could still tell him stories to keep him safe, he would still be a child. So I squeezed Seamus tighter, smiling even at his conjuring of some other, gooder mommy, because at least it meant he was still, for a little while longer, fully mine.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Unaccompanied Mother
One Sunday evening last fall, David was in our bedroom packing for a weeklong business trip to Los Angeles while I was in the kitchen feeding the three kids their dinner. They all had their peas and carrots, they all had their cups of milk, and all three of them were eating. Happily. It was one of those strange and rare moments when I had, for just a moment, nothing in particular to do. My cell phone was sitting there on the counter, and when I picked it up, I saw a voice mail message from early that morning that I had not, until then, had time to notice. I pressed play and held it to my ear to listen.
“Amy, I have to leave the country,” my then-babysitter Jenny said in her plummy British accent, though her voice sounded small, and distant, and not really like her. “My mum is sick and I’m on the next flight home to London. I don’t know how long I’ll be gone, I don’t know what to tell you, I have to go.” Click.
Jenny had been our babysitter for only three months. She was Mary Poppins come to life. I kept telling David she was too good to be true. (Since we would never see her again, it appears I was right about that.) I put down the phone, watching my three children eat their wagon-wheel pasta with their fingers—Connor was five then, Seamus four, Maggie barely a year—and while I was concerned for poor Jenny, I was more concerned about how the hell I was going to get through the next week.
I am often alone with all three kids. Because David works twelve-hour days, I handle getting all three kids up, fed, dressed, and out the door in the mornings, and most of the time, I am the one ushering them through Max and Ruby, teeth brushing, and edifying bedtime stories on the downslide to nighty-night. But this is not really alone. Rare is the full day and night where there is neither husband nor babysitter nor weekend birthday party to keep some percentage of my children out of my hair for a couple of hours. Now the celestial bodies had aligned David’s travel, Jenny’s unexpected absence, and the preschool fall break just so, creating an eclipse of six days’ duration where I would be on my own with my children.
I was a little panicked by the prospect of that much solo parenting. I could also see that was kind of pathetic. This was something any mother worth her salt should be able to handle. My mother managed all six of us when my CPA dad went underground for tax season. My grandmother herded eight without breaking stride. If I went ahead and had three children, I should be able to handle them all on my own for a week, right? If only to get back in touch with my masochistic side? “Just accept you won’t get anything else done,” David advised me as he packed his socks. It was good advice. For the foreseeable future, I would not write, or check my e-mail, or apply moisturizer, or sit down. I would be on duty.
After David left for the airport on Monday morning I gave the kids a calm and loving speech on how there were three kids but only one mommy, and how everyone was going to have to step up his or her game. Maggie just stared at me, gumming her frozen bagel in her high chair, but she showed uncharacteristic nap flexibility with the boys’ school pickups and drop-offs. Seamus had to miss his gym class because Maggie napped then instead. Connor followed through on his pledge to be my Big Boy Who Would Not Whine. All three of them, I must say, were troupers.
And yet, it was I who was great. By telling myself I was in an extended sort of X Games Mothering Competition, I managed to get through the first five days without becoming Bold Mommy even once. I made eye contact and spoke in a low, firm voice, even when all three children were crying at the same time. I breathed deeply while Connor sobbed, fifteen minutes past bedtime, about how “not tired” he was. I remained calm when Seamus covered his palms with a uniform coat of his orange poop, like a pore-tightening clay mask. I even kept it together when Maggie crawled in the shower with me at 5:45 A.M. with my makeup bag in her hand, and dumped all its contents out in the running water. I felt that my execution had been flawless. On the wave of this rather excessive self-confidence, I decided to finish my unforgettable performance with a double axel/triple Salchow combination sure to catch the eyes of the mothering judges: I would fly to Florida for a long weekend with all three children, unaccompanied by any other set of capable hands.
Admittedly, this ultimate challenge had been thrust upon me. Our tickets had been purchased long ago, David had always planned to meet us there, and Jenny, who was supposed to travel with me and the kids, was not returning my increasingly urgent text messages. But after how I had performed all week, I felt ready. I had actually flown solo with the kids once before, and survived, and had been amazed by the attention we received along the way. “Oh, sweetheart, you have the best mother I have ever seen!” the TSA agent had said, chucking baby Maggie under the chin before returning to her usual surly self with the passengers behind us. As my ducklings and I deplaned in Florida, the pilot was so impressed by the boys’ behavior that he let them stick around to see the cockpit.
It was one of the few times I have felt my hard work as a mother was actually seen and appreciated. Fathers receive adulation like this all the time. If David has more than one of our children under his care for more than three minutes, people line up to tell him what an incredible father he is, even if I’m only in the restroom. But mothers hardly ever get this kind of attention for doing what is considered to be merely our job. After all, if we are good mothers, it’s not even supposed to be hard for us. But flying alone with three children? That gets a mother noticed, and so I was looking forward to this day of travel just a tiny bit. After the week I had had, I deserved a pat on the back.
I was humming as I strapped the children into their car seats at 7:15 A.M. the next morning, before zooming off to the airport with the following items carefully organized in our carry-ons:
six diapers
four bottles
a change of clothes for Maggie
sweatshirts in case the plane was cold
blankies for all three children
a dizzying array of nut-free sandwiches and snacks
Ziploc bags and plastic shopping bags (for diaper messes and end-of-flight trash organization)
DVD player (in case the in-flight TV malfunctioned)
backup battery (in case the DVD battery malfunctioned)
an entire Velcro’d sleeve of age-appropriate DVD viewing options
four sets of headphones
paper
crayons
stickers
books my kids hadn’t seen before
and my secret ingredient: an ongoing collection of the crap my kids get in party favor bags and at fast-food restaurants, saved carefully for just such an occasion.
We had enough supplies to last a fortnight’s delay on the tarmac. Even if I would need almost none of it, experience had taught me that preparation is the best prevention. Packing these bags was my finest hour.
When we went through the security checkpoint, I had to remove everyone’s shoes, including Maggie’s tiny Robeez, which are soft baby shoes for babies who do not walk yet and that do not, strictly speaking, have soles in which a terrorist might hide an explosive device. But I digress. I left my new jacket behind at the X-ray machine but kept track of all three kids! As I strolled to the gate with Maggie in her sling, pulling our carry-ons behind me and over both shoulders, my sons walking calmly alongside me holding on to my belt loops, I drank in the admiring stares of the travelers going the other way on the people mover, and I thought, Damn. I am good at this.
We waited until the last minute to board the plane, because contrary to popular opinion, I think that people traveling with small children should be the last to board the tiny metal flying box from which there is no escape. The boys stayed pressed to the plate-glass window counting the duffel bags entering the cargo hold until final boarding call. I was pacing with Maggie, who was very fussy and kept refusing her bottle. But then again, it was past her nap time. As we boarded the plane together, I saw the panic in the eyes of those passengers seated near seats 4A, 4B, and 4C. These people don’t know me, I was thinking, or my kids. When we land, they’re going to stop by our row just to tell me how unbelievably well-behaved my children were. After all, that was what had happened the last time.
Plus, now that we were aboard the plane, the hardest part was over. Connor and Seamus would not be heard from again once I adjusted their headphones, because we were flying JetBlue, which streams the wonders of Cartoon Network and Nickelodeon directly to the seats of children lucky enough to fly their jocular skies. Three or more hours of cartoon viewing, interrupted only by a nice lady inquiring whether they would like chocolate-chip biscotti or Doritos Snack Mix? This was Elysium for any lad. All I had to do was coax Maggie down for her nap, and then there was a leftover Us Weekly in the seat-back pocket calling my name.
By now Maggie was way overdue for her nap; she cried all through takeoff and would not take her bottle, no matter how many times I proffered it. She was still whimpering by the time the seat belt sign went off, so I got out of my seat to stroll up and down the aisle with her in the sling, certain this was all she would need to nod off. I jostled her up and down, which she usually enjoyed. “Huuuhhh,” Maggie cried gutturally, and as we approached the front of the plane, she let loose a torrent of vomit, washing over her, me, and the sling that bound us together.
The two flight attendants, still chatting in their jump seats, looked at us, jaws agape. “Oh my God,” one said in a low voice. As Maggie continued vomiting, I stepped calmly, calmly, into the tiny bathroom, as if I had known this was going to happen; looked at myself in the mirror; and said, “Keep it together.”
I wet a wad of paper towels and cleaned the both of us off as best I could, then returned to our seats, where I pulled out Maggie’s spare outfit and spare sling. I changed her and put the smelly clothes in one of the Ziploc bags. Since I had left my jacket behind at the security checkpoint, I turned my sweater inside out so the throw-up stains wouldn’t be as obvious. And the boys, although I had to climb right over them to do all this, never even looked up from SpongeBob.
I sat there thinking, My God, I just handled this. And it wasn’t even that big a deal! I am the Mother of the Year! Then Maggie looked up at me, retched, and cascaded a fresh supply of throw-up all over both of us, the seat-back table, and everything I had just changed her into.
Now we were attracting some attention. The woman in 3A turned and peered at me through the crack in the seat accusingly, as if I were somehow causing this horror. Why is this lady letting her baby throw up right behind me? she was clearly thinking. Just stick her in the overhead compartment! Maggie looked up at me, sweaty and jaundiced, also wondering just why I didn’t do something about this. The flight attendants, who could see me (in row 4) from where they were sitting, looked aghast at both of us but just sat there. I had to ring the call button in order for one of them to approach, with her scarf over her face.
“Can I, um, have some paper towels or something?” I said.
She just stared at both of us.
“I’d, uh, get them myself, but I have a puddle of vomit on my lap,” I added helpfully.
She came back, threw a pile of gray single-ply napkins at me, performed a Lysol-spraying vogue in the aisle, and beat a hasty retreat back to the front of the plane.
Now, imagine this whole thing happening four more times.
Please consider, if you will: I was flying to Orlando. Some flights on that corridor probably have a 1:1 child-to-adult ratio. If, even once a year, one child on one flight vomits everywhere, because babies do not know they are about to throw up, nor that they should ask their mothers to retrieve the airsick bag intended for such moments, the airline might want to have something more substantial than the tiny bits of scratchy, reconstituted wood pulp they provide with our miniature cans of apple juice on offer as a cleaning device. There wasn’t even a roll of Bounty aboard, let alone some Ajax and a sponge. The flight attendants weren’t about to clean it up, they were making that eminently clear, but I would have been glad to, had I had something to do it with. Instead, I had only a meager pile of generic-brand facial tissue with which to battle the onslaught of Maggie’s puke, which geysered anew every twenty minutes or so.
The flight attendants were exactly zero help. Obviously they resented Maggie for stinking up the whole plane and me for not bringing my own disinfectant, mop, and bucket aboard, but the disgusted stares they aimed at me from their jump seats for the duration of the flight seemed a bit much. There were, I thank the Lord, two angels on board. The lady across the aisle, who had been enjoying two empty seats (one of them Jenny’s) next to her, invited Connor and Seamus over to her side so that they might not be covered in vomit as well. She even put their headphones back on so that their Krypto the Superdog coma could continue unabated (although Connor did look up once, during the transfer, and ask, “What is that smell?”). This lady didn’t ask me before moving the boys, she just did it, and I was so grateful I wanted to hug her, although I am not sure she would have been receptive to that in my current state. There was also the man behind us, who in between Maggie’s vomiting sessions tried to ease her misery by valiantly jingling his change. But Maggie would have none of it. When she was not retching, she could only sob, damp with sweat. (It would be two days or so before I would deduce that Maggie was suffering from rotavirus, which is brought on by contact with fecal matter. Seamus and his self-administered poop paraffin treatment? J’accuse.)
When we at last arrived in Florida, everyone stayed in their seats to let our family off first. This was less an act of chivalry than of self-preservation. The flight attendants looked pointedly away, eyes rolled heavenward and hands over noses as we passed. Maggie celebrated our arrival in the gate area by yakking again, then once more as we rode the monorail to baggage claim. By this point I had abandoned all cleanup attempts: we both had barf on our shirts, in our hair, on our pants. I even had it on my shoes. Maggie was too weak to cry anymore; she would sort of mew, hanging there in her vomity sling, and then let it rip. As we rode the monorail, with me and her and the boys on one end and sixty-five other travelers sardined at the other, no one hailed my mothering skills. No one was even making eye contact. Thank God, each one of them was thinking, that I am not her. And I certainly agreed with them—at that moment, one should have wanted to be anyone in the world but me. I was not the Mother of the Year. I was Sissy Spacek in Carrie, untouchable, covered in gore, leaving behind the scorched earth of her senior prom. All I could do was keep looking straight ahead, heading for the exit.
Perhaps, I thought to myself, I had deserved those flight attendants’ scorn. What kind of mother would fly with a sick baby? Why hadn’t I brought along eight extra outfits instead of just one? In my hubris, I had thought I was ready for every conceivable thing that could happen on that plane, and I was still left unprepared. But holding on to that monorail pole, I realized: being a mother is like that. Again and again, motherhood will throw at me things for which I will feel, and may indeed be, completely unprepared. What will decide whether or not I am a good mother is not whether I am ready for such times, but how I move through the door.
Once the monorail came to its complete stop, I exited with my head held high, Maggie strapped to me, Seamus by the hand, Connor on the other side helping me drag our belongings. I was not the picture of a mother failing. I was a mother valiantly succeeding despite all that had happened. We were not home free yet: we were off to stand in line at the car rental counter before I strapped them in for another ninety-minute ride, along an interstate where I could only hope there might be a Target to purchase some Pedialyte and some new clothes, and perhaps a McDonald’s for two starving boys. But somehow or other, I would find a way. I was a pioneer woman, going boldly where no nonparent would go. In that moment, I was fearless. That’s right, I thought, taking in the stares at baggage claim with pride. I survived.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
But Yes the Mommy
This summer, Maggie has become old enough to express vehement preference on what her bedtime story should be each evening, and whatever story she chooses from the pile, I can be certain it will be from the canon of Sandra Boynton. Ms. Boynton’s deceptively simple board books (suitable for chewing by their very youngest readers) feature an array of cartoon animals with wide-eyed, serious expressions, going matter-of-factly about the business of, say, donning pajamas, or square dancing. Maggie is as obsessed with Boynton’s books as both of her older brothers were at her age. This may be because I force-fed them down all three of their little throats, but how could I not? I find Boynton’s books some of the most appealingly drawn, humorously written, and sneakily thought-provoking literature out there, and I am including books for grown-ups in that equation.
