Tears

You know sometimes, you read a post, and the comments are all, “you brought me to tears, that was so ___” and I always figured that for hyperbole, maybe a figure of speech. But then I read something about how women on average spend 2.5 hours a week crying, and wondered. Is crying really that common? I was pretty hysterical when I realized my cat, Tang, who just died, was so sick, and I had cried a bit (maybe about ten minutes?) the night before the surgery for my miscarriage.

In fact, I can tell you about every time I’ve cried at least since getting married: when my rabbit was killed; a bunch of times during all the infertility stuff; the newborn phase, mostly for breastfeeding reasons; and weaning. That’s it. Evidently, compared to most people, that’s not a lot.

I understand each tear contains the hormones related to the emotional upset, and shedding them releases your emotional burden (I’m glad this is a blog and I don’t have to find a citation for this assertion–but I read it somewhere respectable enough). It’s possible I just don’t get as emotional about things as others, but more likely that I’m just not showing it. I’ve had enough therapy to realize that it all stems from my problems with my mother. With her, my way to assert myself was nonchalance. Whatever, mom, it doesn’t matter what you say. I was all about the sangfroid.

Husband can’t stand this about me. When we’re arguing and I’m being condescending about his upsetness instead of being hurt myself, he thinks it means I don’t care about whatever the topic is, or his feelings. That’s not true, but I also can’t let myself show any vulnerability. The way I was raised, showing your feelings was the quickest way to get them pummeled further. So now, for the most part, I do sadness as anger, and injured feelings as brittleness.

I’m trying to teach Little Girl it’s okay to be sad, but I know actions speak louder than words. Maybe her father–who is never afraid to show his feelings–will be her guide there.

Sometimes daddies are too far away

The season is winding down and so this week was the locally famous children’s singer’s last. The shows start at 8 PM, way too late normally, but I made a bedtime exception this week for Little Girl. The stage was a semi-circular platform underneath an ancient oak, and children sat cross-legged there with the parents on benches down a few stairs from the stage. Little Girl isn’t the type to separate from mommy easily, but she got into the music (when she wasn’t digging in the sand at my feet) and got up on stage (still facing me), pinwheeling her arms in her own self-taught dancing style, occasionally attempting splits and somersaults. (She later got several compliments on her moves.)

The singer has been working this gig for more than thirty years and it really showed. He was full of snarky comments about the posters the children had made, their endless delight in the ABC song, their regional accents. He made a lot of jokes about beatings and spankings. I’m not saying he wasn’t funny–to adults–or that the children didn’t enjoy the songs, but his attitude was weirdly off. It wasn’t really a patter that I’d want Little Girl much exposed to.

Or maybe the bad taste left in my mouth after the performance resulted from another Bad Tourist Parent episode. While most of the little kids dutifully sat and watched, another young girl, like mine, felt compelled to move to the music. She was pretty independent-minded and wandered the stage a bit in her pretty pink dress and pigtails (and occasionally the singer would show his irritation with her through some sarcastic remark about ADHD), and at one point moved towards the pretty blinking lights of his sound system. He turned and yelled, “Don’t you touch that!” and went back to his song.

This little girl reacted just like my own would when spoken to so sharply by a stranger and she froze, stuck out her lip, covered her face in her hands, and started sobbing. The crowd waited and soon started murmuring, “Where’s her mommy?” while looking around, watching for someone to come up and rescue her. No one came. I couldn’t take it anymore–it was heartbreaking, and it was just as if it were Little Girl were up there. I was close, so I popped up, lifted her, and brought her back to my bench on my lap where Little Girl waited.

“We’ll find your mommy, it’s okay,” I told her, as I continued to look around for the girl’s caregivers. Another lady beside me said she thought she’d seen the parents earlier in the evening and she looked about, too, but still no one was coming to fetch the scared toddler. The poor pigtailed thing started to ask for her mommy, and just when I was about to carry her to find a police officer, a pissed-looking guy came up, put his arms out for her, and said, “You didn’t have to go get her.” But I did. I couldn’t let that poor dear be scared and humiliated all alone on the stage when her parents obviously weren’t coming anytime soon. Where had he been, anyway? The bar?

So I’ll be glad when the tourist season is sewn up, though it’ll mean the end of The Perpetual Beach Vacation, and that, for company, we’ll be left just with the retirees. I overheard the dullest conversation between two of them today wherein the old guy detailed what yard work he had done that morning, in what way, with what equipment, for how long, and then moved on to what he would have done had the rain not started, and where he likes to buy his gardening supplies, and how he knows what to select, and how he decides to–OMIGOD I felt so sorry for his date, who sadly, and mutely, was probably just happy to have the attention of one of the few men available in her age bracket.

Speaking of men, Husband hasn’t even been gone half of the two weeks of this current trip, and Little Girl is already kind of a wreck about his absence. “I’m sad about my Daddy,” she tells me, and strangers (I can’t imagine what they make of that), often. “I want my Daddy come home.”

Unbalanced

When Husband is abroad for weeks at a time, I frequently get emails like, “Place sucks, everyone is an idiot,” followed by phone talks that consist largely of his venting about his unhappiness about his work. Meanwhile I am torn between sharing what we’re up to with not wanting to make him jealous (e.g. “We went to the playground and then rode the free trolley around and then did some window shopping and then danced to some live music and then fed the turtles under the bridge and then walked on the beach with the dogs, and that was all after 5 PM!).

Everyone he’s surrounded by is really into this macho work-is-everything attitude that’s anathema to Husband. I mean, he’s brilliant and hardworking at what he does, but at the end of the day he wants to put it aside, go home at a reasonable hour, and be with me and Little Girl (if he’s here), or take some pictures, or play on the internet, whatever. But whenever he’s not working at home, and particularly when he and his co-workers are all in Europe, he has to put in 12-hour days and then several more each evening at bars, at restaurants, hanging around with these men, most of whom he not only is tired of seeing all the time but doesn’t even like to begin with. This evening (his time) he had to go out with the big wigs, despite plans he was excited about to photograph an abandoned mine, where they boasted about all the birthdays of their children they’d missed, made fun of the mere 38-hour work weeks of the staff there, and shared wisdom like, “You can always get another wife, but you can’t get a new career.”

Being the main money-maker around here, Husband just has to put up with that crap for now. But I’m not sure what he’s more excited about with regards to relocating: being closer to his family, or having an excuse to quit his job.

Since last we spoke

Hey! We’ve been busy. Sometimes when you leave it too long so much happens and then it feels impossible to parse it all. I’m sure you know what I mean. Here are the salient details:

The trip back to where we just moved from was mostly successful. The resort relaxing, the friends entertaining. We did not close on the house, however. Somebody screwed up the paperwork. But we signed power of attorney over to the realtor on this matter so when it’s ready to close–by the end of August if people can find time to do their jobs–we won’t have to go back, since it’s a long trip and anyway Husband is in Belgium until Labor Day.

The Swedish Embassy is moving extremely quickly with my application for residency. They contacted us with two questions: Where will we live? What will Husband do for work? (I have to say I am peeved that no one seemed interested in my career plans.) We were also told that an interview would be unlikely, given the length of our marriage. Husband of course finds this rapidity to be a relief; for my part, as the move gets more and more imminent, I feel a mixture of regret about leaving the US and excitement about the new adventure.

Our dogs were very, very bad for our pet sitter, the fourteen-year-old girl across the street whom I’d engaged to walk them when we were gone. They escaped from the kitchen one night, ate the litter box, became ill, and shat in various rooms of the house on fine needlepoint throw rugs. They even managed to stain the hardwood floors. And while we were gone my mother decided to come to town–thank goodness we’d cleaned the house and done the yard before leaving town–and she and the handyman, who was around trying to fix the roof leak, couldn’t get the dogs to stay penned up either as there was a thunderstorm and apparently there was this chaotic scene where the dogs kept eluding them, escaping out either end of the galley kitchen, vomiting intermittently. Goodness.

Pudding has been mourning her dead brother. In the middle of the night, she cries and yowls in the dark living room. I go pick her up and bring her to bed with us and pet her until she relaxes enough to rest. It’s beyond sad. She’s been talking a lot in general, partly because, as I’d promised Tang on his deathbed I’d give Pudding salmon, she’s now quite keen to have wet food every evening, and also because she’s always been a talker, and now she has serious questions for me.

Now that summer’s almost done, about which I am rather broken up, I finally learned that we could have been using the three community pools around here all this time. The jellyfish are out now and I looked into getting a pool pass for a few weeks when I discovered that was unnecessary. So now we get to do truly awesome things like play in a large, nearly empty pool with old oaks overhanging, listening to restaurants’ live music, where Little Girl swims like an otter (she can really move underwater; the only thing she can’t do is not drown, i.e. come back up to breathe, so usually I have her in a vest), and then we can hop in the car or on the bike and go to the ocean for a romp in the waves.

Oh, and Little Girl turned three!

A mobile society

When moving, I was particularly sad about leaving our friends. But they’re making it easy on me: I guess I started a trend or something, because two of my best and oldest friends in the area are now both moving away themselves. To Ohio, coincidentally. It makes me feel better about going away and not seeing them anymore since now I wouldn’t be seeing them anyway.

In related news, I have realized that I also know two people who live in Qatar of all places. That’s kinda weird, isn’t it? One from college, one from grad school.

My Swedish relatives like to comment on how Americans move around so much. They think it’s rather remarkable, and are faintly disapproving. But I believe there are two kinds of Swedish people: the kind that stay in their hometown forever and never even visit abroad, and the kind you meet in hostels all over the planet. Most Americans seem to fall in the middle. We’re more like serial monogamists when it come to geography.

What about you? Where are some exotic places people you know have gotten off to? And you?

In therapy, in court, and in second grade

I was about seven the first time I was sent to talk to a therapist. My parents, having divorced not long before, were in the middle of one of those epic visitation court battles that make you wonder how it’s possible for so many people to be so irrational, and then you remember the lawyers are getting paid so they don’t have much incentive to calm things down. I gather my mother suspected my father of abusing me in some way and wanted proof so she wouldn’t have to let me go stay with him for six weeks in the summers in Alaska.

It’s never been clear to me exactly what she had against that–I do know she was stridently alarmed about the hitchhikers he would pick up with me in the car, and now I can hardly blame her. And it’s true that in many instances over the years it became clear to me that my father’s desire to lay down parental law was quite lacking, either through philosophical opposition, cluelessness, or apathy, which lead to some rather inappropriate situations, like taking me to “entheogen conferences” (aka drug parties for aging hippies) in the Marin Headlands and then letting me, at sixteen, date a 35-year-old civil engineer I met there (before this anecdote disturbs you too much, let me assure you that he didn’t take advantage of me, and I was absolutely complicit in any smoking up and making out that may have ensued). But she couldn’t have known all that then, though clearly she had her inklings, and wanted to do her due diligence.

The therapist asked me what kinds of games I played with my dad, and I listed the normal stuff: kite flying, reading books, taking walks, visiting friends, playing horsie. “Can you tell me more about ‘playing horsie’?” “Uh, yeah, my dad gets on all fours and I ride him, or climb under.” You know, duh, lady, horsie. I could tell from her reaction that she didn’t think playing horsie was nearly as fun–and innocuous–as I did. She was also obviously displeased to learn that my father didn’t take me to church–not surprising, since the therapist was less a mental health professional than the counselor at my mom’s church. But in the end she concluded, rightly, that nothing untoward happened with my dad. I wonder how that was for my mom: Yay, my child isn’t being abused! Crap, I have less ammunition against him!

As part of the court proceedings I was asked to speak privately with the judge. My mother had coached me on the reasons I was to give as to why I did not want to spend more time in the summers with my dad. Nobody ever asked me what I actually thought, so I’m not sure I ever really considered the question myself, but judging from my vivid memories of talking with the judge–sweating with nerves, sitting straight up at the front of the high-backed chair wearing the water blue moiré dress my mother’d made for me to wear in a wedding–I don’t think I was very convincing with my monologue: “Um, I want to swim at the Country Club, and…go to Vacation Bible School…uh…” and in the end my dad won the visitation battle.

My mom kept saying she thought he’d paid off the judge, or that her lawyer was too old to be competent, but I think the judge did right. And it couldn’t have hurt that these reasons I parroted were lame ones not to have a relationship with my father. I also believe, in retrospect, that lamenting to a black judge in the deep south that I wouldn’t get to spend enough time at the white-only Country Club pool couldn’t have been a smart way to bolster my the judge’s empathy for my mom.

Plus my dad was really fighting to be with me; sure, he’d moved nearly as far away as possible, to Alaska; sure, he (reportedly) was extremely tight-fisted with child support and didn’t pony up for any extras, like piano lessons; sure, he didn’t help pay for college. But to his credit my father has always tried to spend time with me; has always written me long letters every week, called me for long talks, been there for me emotionally in the same way I can always rely on my mother physically. As parents, my mom and dad are yin and yang. On the whole I treasure the time I had with my father, and value it as an antidote to my mother’s completely opposite style of upbringing. I’m grateful the therapist and the judge didn’t find a way to stand in the way of that.

Noted

I take back my disparaging comments about nannies on vacation. THAT IS A BRILLIANT IDEA, particularly when it evens out the adult-to-child ratio. We had a wonderful time with our friends here; so much storytelling and laughing fits and games. We’re both sad our friends had to go (for Little Girl, this means the identical twins, whom I can now tell apart so well it seems unbelievable to me that other people think they look the same, and their insanely patient-for-small-children’s-games nanny; and as for me, their hilarious mom). Compared to the twins, Little Girl plays very much more independently, which isn’t a surprise. (No, this isn’t code for “she sucks at sharing”.) But through necessity, she’s really good at creating elaborate, narrated interactions and activities for her toys.

Hello little horsie! That’s gonna go in my house! Oh, my house! (singing) hm, hm, hm, hm (runs to other room, comes back) I got my house! My house goes right here! (can’t get it to open like she wants) My house not listening! Not listen to me. Oh, it’s open now! Daddy horsie! (sing song) Go in the hou-ouse!

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Some people were just letting their kid climb the ancient oak tree in our front yard. I had to chase them off. I mean really, tourists. Is this how you act at home?

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There are a lot of older people living here, and so often the women have these lined, pinched, angry looks fixed upon their faces. It sort of seems like their sour expressions froze over the decades. It makes me so aware of how I am holding my facial muscles–I certainly don’t want to end up with a permanently pissed off look. Besides, I think I read just the act of smiling makes you happier. Just like how anticipating laughing improves your mood.

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Husband will be back from Europe tomorrow, and then we’ll be here a couple of days, and then we’ll be back in our old city for a few days for the house closing and to see friends, and then we’ll be back here for one day, and then he’s off to Europe again for two weeks. Several friends have invited us to stay with them in Atlanta, but we may end up in a hotel to keep things less complicated. What would be better for Little Girl do you think? She’s never been in a hotel. What do you do with a little kid at night in a hotel, anyway?

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Speaking of whom, next week she turns three! For a while there she was daily going on and on about how it was her birthday, and how she wanted cake, so to calm things down, we baked brownies and called it cake, and she hasn’t mentioned it since, thank goodness. Before we moved away, our friends threw her an early birthday party, so we may actually just let this slide past without much fanfare. Or, you know, any.

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I miss my cat.

Oh Tang

Yesterday I had to put my cat, Tang, to sleep. Normally I’d tell you the whole story but I’m too sad. Basically he was old (14), and suddenly really, really sick. He was a fine orange kitty, handsome and relaxed, and he slept with me every night, and he loved being scratched, and I so very much miss him.

Here his sister, his litter mate, is sitting with him in his last hours.

My new niece

Recently Husband’s little brother’s teeny tiny wife gave birth, one week late, to a perfect baby girl, Saga, who weighed nearly ten pounds. Laughing gas and a vacuum extractor were involved which I think is pretty typical from Sweden (at least it’s been the story with both sisters-in-law so far). She looks just like her father except she’s got her mother’s distinctive nose. She likes to sleep and eat. You know, the normal stuff. Living in Sweden as they do, her parents have literally years of maternity and paternity leave to divvy up and take like they will from their typically Swedish jobs at a state-run daycare and Ericsson. They’ve just bought their first home and move in next month, and have scrapped their crazy plans to renovate the kitchen immediately, what with the tiny human they have now.

Although I was obviously aware a baby was on the way, when she was finally born, the sadness totally surprised me. I mean, I was supposed to be having a baby, too. Part of the reason I had wanted to get pregnant last winter was, semi-consciously, because V was. She’s always said she wanted to time her first baby with my second, a sort of shimmery, pretty idea that proved too perfect for real life. First she miscarried, then I did. But now we both have little girls. And after my initial reaction, I’m very happy for her, for the whole family, that this new little person we’ll get to watch grow (and whom I do not have to wake up with in the night!) is here. She and Little Girl have visited over the webam several times already, and as Saga snuffles in her sleep, couched in her father’s arms, my girl likes to sing her melodies that eventually all turn into “Twinkle twinkle little star.”

Other people are weird

Happened upon another wandering small child out by the lagoon today while we were taking the dogs on a bike-run (this means Little Girl and I are on the bike, she in her special little seat, and the dogs run alongside us, leashed; looks crazy but works great, at least until they get tired, poor lazy things.) The kid, five years old, said she was waiting for her mom to come back from the beach, who did indeed show up. Nearly 10 minutes later. I mentioned the alligators, and she was all, “Oh, I heard they don’t bother people.” Right, so you are not worried about tempting them by allowing your tubby, juicy little kid to linger along the shore? Plus, what makes you think it’s a good idea to let your child be all alone in an unfamiliar place by open bodies of water to begin with? Tourists, sheesh.

Husband’s in Belgium again, but this week promises to be exciting, as some of Little Girl’s favorite people, identical twin girls, are coming on a visit. With their mother. And their nanny. This is something I truly do not understand, but my friend insists she simply cannot care for the girls, who are nearly three, at any time before 9 AM. Wow, must be nice. Do you think I can use the nanny too, and go see a movie?

…huh. I can only come up with two anecdotes illustrating other people’s weirdness? Must be a good week then. Or boring. Six of one!

The joys of neglectful parenting

Huh, strange things happen when you are too absorbed in cleaning out the closet to pay attention to your small child.

Why yes, those are my underpants.

And is she…wearing a Swedish-themed baby’s onesie on her head? While putting all her toys in the retired hamper? On the porch? With the bird-seed holder basket from my wedding? I see.

Road trip

It’s a three-hour trip between to my mom’s along back roads in rural South Carolina and Georgia. Tumble-down shacks, house fires that leave only lonesome fireplaces, cars brown with age. But also high corn fields, so much sky you can see a rainstorm miles away but where you are it’s all yellow, tiny white churches, dense pine forests, long enticing driveways to abandoned plantation homes. I love it.

When I was eight, my dad and I drove from North Carolina to Alaska. It took weeks, and a lot of the time I was sprawled in the hatchback with My Little Ponies flying against the backdrop of the rear windshield. I remember North Dakota as a chant: “rocks and trees, rocks and trees.” For several days we were stuck in little Fort Nelson, British Columbia, due to an avalanche, where we scored the very last hotel room in town and discovered the humongous pool complex the place had rewarded itself. It was the first time I’d been in a sauna. We lingered in Chicago, we ate biscuits and gravy in Indiana, we posed with totem poles in Alberta. We mostly camped.

When I was 15, we enjoyed another epic road trip through the southwest. I remember sleeping in the desert on top of the car, freaked out about snakes, lightning on faraway mountaintops; prostitutes’ graphic fliers in Las Vegas; the haze of the Grand Canyon; the jet skis on Lake Tahoe.

Recently, I wondered if you could drive from Sweden to Africa. Just curious. For all practical purposes you can’t, and you definitely shouldn’t, but it’s only 1 day, 9 hours according to Google maps to Cadiz. That’s nothing! Our diagonal trip across North America was pegged at 3 days, 1 hour of straight driving. Shit, you guys, when we move, I can drive to Spain! And it’s only 16 hours, 41 minutes to London! Rome: 21 hours, 34 minutes. Oslo: 3 hours, 53 minutes (closer to us than Stockholm in fact). Paris: 15 hours, 24 minutes. Istanbul: 1 day, 21 hours. If I were crazy enough, I could drive to motherfucking China! Awesome! I mean, obviously we would fly or take the train generally, but my brother-in-law recently drove to Croatia (20 hours, 19 minutes). It can be done. Sometimes people go the slow way.

Just imagine the sights.