i once was a girl

I haven’t been mistaken for a girl in a while. People trying to get my attention who don’t know me call me ma’am, lady, miss, or hey you tired looking female person. I’m no girl, and most days I’m good with that.

But I very much cherish the show “Girls.” I think it’s moving and totally unexpected. The characters remind me of all the curious, honest and narcissist New Yorkers I know and love — evocative combinations of some of my most favorite people. The writing and acting are both spot on. For better or worse, this is how girls who like each other talk to each other. “Girls” perfectly showcases how being in your 20’s is an exhilarating but equally horrifying time.

The show and creator Lena Dunham have been getting some great reviews, but also getting slammed for various reasons. From nepotism to the lack of racial diversity amongst the characters, to it being depressing, to the fact that these spoiled characters need to “Get a job!” I am confused by why people seem so pissed of about the show. I don’t really want to defend myself for liking it. People who don’t want to watch it or want to complain that it only got made because of Brian Williams and David Mamet are bitter and shouldn’t watch it. But they’ll miss hearing an amazingly formed voice bend around some serious funny. I’ve listened to a lot of interviews with this girl/woman and she is a girls’ girl, in that she has an open mind and is willing to put herself out there in ballsy way. And one of the most awesome things is that she’s not on TV because she’s hot. She’s on TV because she’s smart, funny and fearless.

(Ok, so I guess I am defending it).

But really, how great was it on this most recent episode when Hannah was at the doctor and they called out her weight (and it wasn’t 111 pounds), and she said something like: “Actually, I had my belt on.” I mean, who hasn’t thought or even said that?! And the humorless doctor/nurse was perfect.

The characters are so talky and therapized and 70’s Woody Allenish! I love the way the Allison Williams character is so pretty and poised and has the good entry level job and so therefore is the responsible one making the STD and abortion appointments at the women’s clinic, and of course has the really cute doting boyfriend probably also with a great job who probably just got his first book deal or whatever at age 25. And yet, she’s unhappy and unfulfilled and annoyed with Jessa (the British one) for being so Joni Mitchell-ish and getting to wear floaty pants and floppy hats. While Jessa is miserable and caught up in her own novelistic drama that she created by being irresponsible and self absorbed? And Hannah’s job interview where she let herself get comfortable and flirty enough to make a rape joke? Cringe-worthy in the best “Louie” way.

Far from being a flip show about people who are unlikeable, I think “Girls” is really deep and emotional and trying to get to the root of what it means to be an independent person in the world, flailing around trying to figure out what you think everyone else already knows. Dunham elegantly shows us how women put up with a lot of terrible things in relationships in order to have a few pathetic grasps of good feeling that come from being desired or desirable – I’d say that’s something a lot of women can relate to. It definitely struck a chord with me.

“I almost came,” Hannah says hopefully, after having silly, disappointing sex – because that’s exactly what would have happened in that situation. She’d convince herself it was ok because he got off, and even offered her a sports drink afterwards. And then she’d go talk it over with her friends on a bench with some frozen dairy treat made from questionable chemicals. And then, the vapid friend, the one who might be in law school and still wears Juicy sweatsuits, would whip out some stupid book similar to “The Rules” and quote from it earnestly. Yep, pretty much.

I love this show because it reflects a moment in a time that is so fertile with material, but also so heinous to live through. I’m so relieved to be out of there personally, but grateful to artists/thinkers “wunder”whatevers like Lena Dunham. I’m so excited to hear more from someone this young and this good.

YOU GO GIRL.

friends with kids

Have you seen this movie yet? Jon Hamm and his sexy ass frat guy hotness? Awww yeah.

What? Erm. Sorry. Ok, yes. So this movie “Friends With Kids” takes place partially in a Brooklyn village neighboring mine and contains verbatim conversations I’ve overheard from my colleagues, the Brooklyn parent people. The supporting characters are exaggerated versions of folks in my world, so it’s funny, sad and cringe worthy because the behaviors are so familiar. The haggy and angry mothers bitching at the clueless or confused dads. The needy kids who don’t seem appealing because they aren’t yours. The judgment by the pre-breeder main characters of the have-breds and vice versa read like parenting blog comments come to life on screen.

The film is primarily about how people with (small) kids have a hard time keeping love and sex and even “like” in their lives after the invasion by the littles. How some couplings survive the stresses and remember why they wanted to do this, and how some simply cannot. And asks the question: can the disintegration of passion in a relationship with the addition of kids to the mix can be avoided with some type of creativity? Also, where do the kids fit into all of this? They will, after all, eventually be people someday as well.

Ironically, I wanted a break from the stresses of my own Brooklyn first world problems, so I went to see it in the middle of the day, alone. And I’ve been chewing it over ever since. The film really captures that it's difficult, impossible even, to understand what it’s like to have a family, until you do. And once you do, you can’t imagine choosing that prior life without them – even though you miss your old life desperately and kind of dread and often resent the overall scary responsibility of the day-to-day new family version. (And by “you” here I mean “me.”)

It also got me thinking about navigating friendships. Childhood friends, pre-kid friends, work friends, mommy/daddy friends, new couple friends, — so many complicated friendships emerge and disintegrate as we settle down and spread into a community.

I’ve always had a lot of friends and felt confident in my ability to nurture these relationships. It has been important to the idea of my best self that I’m a person who puts friendships first and is considerate of others’ feelings and needs. But with the complexities of small people who rely on me, demand my mental and physical short and long term focus, I’m finding certain friendship situations to be challenging.

It makes sense. We all have our own craziness going on. We are at the center of our own lives, obviously, and as empathetic as I want to be towards others, it’s my own crap I have to face when I have the time to confront it. It’s an obvious concept that everyone has some mania brewing on a given random day when you see them in an elevator. And yet, I forget.

So after a few confrontations with friends in the past few weeks, and feeling like I’ve disappointed others, I’m trying to figure out how to move through these yucky moments. I need my friends. And they need me. We are tied together by history and nostalgia and commitment, and we need to wrestle and fight to keep these bonds strong. Friends with older kids, younger kids, friends with no kids. We are all doing our best for each other.

fun on a stick

Nothing says sexy like a man and wife holding black leather satchels and twin Muji umbrellas, walking into a Toyota dealer to test drive a Prius wagon.

It’s like the opening to an urban legend told round the fireplace where the couple gets kidnapped, or the beginning of an embarrassing joke your uncle tells at Passover – just add a rabbi and some lightbulbs.

But for me and Evan, it was Thursday.

11th Avenue in Manhattan, roughly between 48th Street and 55th Streets is a bizarre corridor, where a slew of car dealerships occupy giant showrooms within walking distance. There’s also Larry Flynt’s Hustler club, some gross delis, and the studio where “The Daily Show” is taped. It’s a creepy and random area, especially on the dreariest, Marchiest day fathomable. But a good place to go look at cars if yours dies, mostly because you can take the subway there. Also, if you hang out on 11th Avenue long enough it feels like you are on drugs.

Oh, the fun we had, strolling in and out of dealers, waiting interminably while car salesmen said indecipherable things to us, then driving up the Westside Highway and back down West End Avenue in several vehicles. It took 7 hours. We ate no meals. We drank coffee and ate almonds and bananas instead, not wanting to pause in this disorienting experience of entering a building, talking to a guy, then waiting and driving and waiting and peeing and waiting. It felt like we were running a marathon of boringness. We talked to guys named Joey. We talked to guys named Darnell. We talked to guys named Chang. We admired waterfalls in the Range Rover area. We watched salesmen circle the floor like lions, and receptionist ladies with clickety-clackety nails flutter behind counters. We saw fake plants, fake marble, and real fish tanks. Our sinuses experienced new heights of air freshening.

At one point we walked into Nissan to compare a Murano to a Rogue, and a Scenario to a Sierra, or perhaps it was a CZX 65 to a ZW 3.14. A very shifty Latina man with the loudest “rhumba” ring tone I’ve ever heard hustled us over to a “pre-owned” version of the car we were looking for, and then promptly trotted off. As we sat in the smoke encrusted car from 2009 wondering where the hell he had gone, he reappeared with a signed head shot of Liza Minelli from 1990. “That car belonged to her assistant!” he exclaimed triumphantly. “She used to do errands for her in that car. Only 300 miles on there!” We tried to imagine what would make him think that Liza Minelli’s dry cleaning would interest us. We wondered if he had different head shots for different people – and did we look like Liza fans?

And then we decided it best to go.

There was Johnny, the spiky haired knuckle dragger with the spray tan and giant diamond earring at Chevy/Jeep/Chrysler. He wove us through the most enormous lot filled with cars being parked and repaired, and then couldn’t find that damn Chevy Equinox. He swore it was just there! It was like his white whale SUV. After almost getting hit by a minivan (never!), we thought it best to go.

When you get married, it’s the best you’ll ever look — all fancy and fabulous and glamorous and fun party party. But so much of being married is doing really boring adult shit in ugly and depressing places. Signing forms and figuring out numbers and making sure the dishwasher gets unloaded. And I think, I hope, if you’re still laughing and trying to figure out how to recover conversationally when a 22 year old sales guy is sitting in the backseat while you are trying to merge, tells you that he flipped his own SUV at 5 am after drinking and falling asleep at the wheel, well, I think you’re good. You’re still having some kind of an adventure, finding the funny in the terribly dull and weird. As mind numbing an adventure it is – you’re in it together. And it’s strangely awesome.

So, technically, you’re a boring yuppie with your stupid raincoats.

But still totally sexy.

we are all the same

The other day we were all at this kiddie enrichment place. Z takes ballet there and they have free “open play” in their beautiful gym facility, which we try and take advantage of in order to justify the silly money we pay for classes there. That means getting online weeks in advance to reserve spots for the two of them, and then getting up there by 9ish on a Saturday morning, something we are not fabulous at doing. I always swear I’ll get the diaper bag ready the night before. The same with getting Z ready for school during the week – packing her lunch and laying our her outfit before she goes to bed. Say I’m gonna. Don’t do.

I’m frenzied on these Saturday mornings — grabbing 4 different satchels and cramming snacks, Ziploc bagged sippy cups and ballet clothes into to each one of them, not eating or drinking a thing besides 3 cups of coffee, and feeling like a complete freak for not being able to get my act together by 9:00 am – given that I’ve been awake for hours. This whole ritual kind of sucks, and I would say 7 out 10 mornings E and I end up fighting about who is winning the most annoying spouse contest. But once we get to the place and the 80’s hits are pumping, the kids start frolicking and E goes out and gets coffees and bagels, all the hustle is worth it. Both kids get an activity before noon when we have to get back for M to lunch and nap, and then it’s the reward of chill time for the rest of us.

This Kiddie Club is a funny scene. It’s a posh crowd, and many of the kids have names that for some reason irk me, which I won’t name here in case you have also named your kid Schmoopie or Schmoopae, but let’s just say on a morning that I’m feeling cranky, the names and inevitable tantrums, plus the sing-songing voices of the parents can wear on a gal.

Which is what happened the other day. My irritation did not stay at home with the breakfast dishes, strewn about clothes and plastic toy chaos, but travelled with me to kiddie enrichment place. I truthfully don’t know exactly why E and I were publicly hissing at each other about who got to eat their bagel sandwich, getting napkins wet with coffee cups that still had coffee in them, and who was or wasn’t chasing M into the toilets over and over, but there we were. Certainly not our finest moment.

Seething, I sat down to eat my cold bagel sandwich, and a woman I had seen carrying a wild haired toddler while trying to corral a second child in and out of a coat, stroller, leotard, etc, came running up to me breathlessly, plunked a business card down on the table and said: “We have to hang out. We have the exact same life.”

Now this is certainly something I have fantasized about doing. Seeing another mom who looks or seems or sounds a certain way, it is tempting to want to be pals with this person. I have plenty of friends and acquaintances and people to talk to from all facets of my life – some parents and some not, but for me there is the lure of this person out there in the universe who is your momfriend soulmate, who is cool and honest and not weird and competitive, you have no baggage with and perhaps your kids are exactly the same age and on the same schedules?

We don’t like to think so, because it dilutes our coolness or our specialness, but we are all just archetypes acting out rituals that parents have been doing forever. Maybe we vary in socio-economic status and the modern trappings that go along with having families, but here in our Brooklyn village we do appear to have similar lives. We have struggles and victories that matter, that are not trite or surface. But we also have the same annoying conversations about where to eat lunch and who is going to take the boots to the shoemaker, and worry about how much time we let our toddlers play with our phones. Of course some of us have deeper problems and secrets, but on a Saturday morning at 10:10 am, we are mostly just trying to get though the day without losing our minds.

What had this woman seen or heard that gave her the chutzpah to want to connect with me in this way? I actually love that she noticed that we were probably being ridiculous, and that the whole idea of a kiddie enrichment place is kind of ridiculous, and that by laughing and noticing and reaching out, she was making her morning a little better.

My interest is piqued. I think I’ll call.

s.w.a.k.

My whole life I’ve been prone to emotional triggers brought on by songs, smells, textures, and tastes, so it’s no surprise I’ve folded these tendencies into my relationship with my kids and my own memories of childhood.

I’ve written some about the overwhelming nostalgia bath I’ve been taking since Zoe started kindergarden this fall. It’s been amazing. Today, when I was at her school for lunch duty, I took her and another little girl to the bathroom. They took me “the secret way,” from the basement level cafeteria to the girl’s room on the first floor. Through their chatter with each other, their expressions and in their excited two steps at a time climbing, I could viscerally recall my own elementary school and the journey from the lunchroom to the bathroom — the exact way the cafeteria smelled, the smooth concrete banisters against my hand as I ran up the linoleum stairs to the steamy heat of the girl’s (and the mystery glimpse of the unfathomable urinal through a door crack in the boy’s).

The lead up to Valentine’s Day today was epic, and Zoe has been vibrating with excitement. She was thrilled with her outfit of dark pink tights, light pink skirt with hearts, and white shirt with hot pink flowers. She spent the past five evenings under my tutelage, making valentines for every kid in the class – and really caring about how each kid would react to the size and sparkle of the stickers and the different colors of heart shaped balloons and flowers she was customizing for each one. I just loved it. Having recently discovered my inner scrapbooking soccer mom nerd (or, how fun it is to shop at Michael’s Craft store – a formerly suburban pleasure paradise now available to us New York City residents), we just sat there at her little table, cutting and coloring and sticking stickers, listening to Fiona Apple and discussing Eli’s favorite color versus Lina’s. Here was something I always loved doing when I was younger, something relaxing and creative and fulfilling we could finally do together. It totally rocked.

I used to feel a constant pull toward eras I never lived in, careers I’d never have, places I’d never live. I feel less that way now. Part of that must be finding my way, hopefully, or else realizing aspiration is never ending. Maybe that’s why memories are flooding in now – because I’ve accepted that now my real job to make things as sparkly and pink as I can for my kids, just as my own parents at roughly my age sacrificed a lot of their own middle years to make things exciting and textured and full of joy for me and my sisters.

Its funny to feel like now I’m the grownup comes up with the ideas and the adventures, and also the one who says the things like: “I’m turning that television/IPad off right this minute if you keep ignoring me when I ask you to bring your dish to the sink!” Some days it’s so much damn work to make all the decisions and keep the momentum going, but when I think about how much it means to Zoe to sit down and color with the set of 140 markers I picked up – and how much of a charge it gave me when my own mom bought me a similar set, I’m really feeling that sparkly Valentine’s love.

happy + sappy = saphappy

Last week something unexpected occurred. I woke up every morning in a perfectly calibrated emotional state: energized, calm, grateful, and content. The realization of which led to something I’d describe as elation.

WTF is that about?

It took me by surprise. My go-to mindset since having Miles 19 months ago has been one of desperate tiredness and constant overwhelmdoom. Of course I’ve had laughing jags and felt pride and joy and love for my family and friends during that time, but mostly I’ve been blindsided by the exponential difficulty of upping the family ante from one to two children. It took a good long while to feel like I wasn’t freaking out ALL the TIME, and I certainly haven’t felt “relaxed” or “content” in a while. We’re talking like 18.5 months.

Last week Evan kept saying, “I can’t believe how pleasant you’re being,” which of course made me feel awful about what a Crabby Crabstein I must have been for the last bit.

Mostly, I credit this new excellent mind state to a good few weeks of getting enough sleep. It’s so ridiculously simple how much this can help a parent’s sanity that it’s trite and boring just to write that sentence. I mean obviously, humans need to sleep without getting woken up every few fucking hours for months on end. I was starting to get pissy at everyone in my path as the sleeplessness folded into itself night after night – bleeding into day after day. Because how could I be angry at sweet little Miles for torturing me at night for this long? It was easier to be irritated with Evan for breathing, my daughter for stomping her feet in all of her five year old-ness, my babysitter for being unclear, work for being slow, myself for not eating well, drinking more than one glass of wine at night and not going to sleep early.

Through the tiredness, I’d been working on the concepts of being grateful and present and feeling blessed for as long as I can remember – trying to calm myself and not stoking my own anxiety and ramping up the internal drama. I knew theoretically how lucky I was to have this family and this good life but somehow knowing wasn’t enough. I wasn’t feeling it, and trying to feel and believe it has been work for sure. Wrestling, trying, chewy, workity work. And then, something (nothing?) clicked into place last week and it was like all the therapy and the yoga and the analyzing were finally working. WORKING!

The same week, something else major was peaking. My friend David is enjoying massive career success right now, and last week the television show he made aired on MTV. The lead up to it has made me insanely proud and excited for him. I believe my people call it “kvelling.”

A few years ago, Dave decided to switch careers from advertising to writing. Not an easy thing to do, especially because he was already successful in advertising – he had made many hilarious commercials and was highly regarded as a writer and creative director. But he went for it – he sat down, wrote a funny book about finding yourself in your twenties, and then worked like crazy to have it optioned into a television show. I wouldn’t say he made it look easy exactly – there were lots of ups and downs throughout the process of the book being made into a TV show now on MTV (called “I Just Want My Pants Back”). But I never doubted that it would happen. He’s just that kind of person with that type of drive and talent. Smart, funny and lucky, with an amazingly supportive wife and people around him who wished him well, because he’s a good, menschy funny person who can find the absurdities of life and distill them down to good jokes in like two seconds. It’s just so cool that this is happening to him and his family. I am just seriously jacked up about this.

So on top of feeling good finally personally inside my brain and body, even if it's just about being well rested enough to appreciate it, and even if it's temporary, having such a pure kind of happiness for my friend on top of it really feels fantastic.

Sometimes it’s easy to be happy. Hopefully, it won’t make me tedious.

sh*t brooklyn moms say

http://www.mallorykasdan.com/2011/audio/sbms.mp3

something i wrote and produced based on the silly sh*t i hear.

the new "new"

The last 11 days have been nonstop family time. And while I’m totally exhausted from the non-stop-ed-ness of it, the planning and the packing and trying to keep them occupied in airports and restaurants, there’s something lovely and special about the self-contained capsule of vacation together time. I loved looking over on our flight the other day and there we all were, four of us clumped into three seats, all looking at some kind of screen, gobbling snacks. I love turning around from mission control (shotgun) in our car and seeing the two of them sleeping with abandon in their car seats, cozy with their blankets. The feeling of seeing all my lovies confined to ten square feet of space somehow warms me – like we’re as present as we can be in this adventure, barreling into space together.

So it’s pretty sweet. However. After the unnecessarily stressful and busy build up of the Hanukkah/Christmas/New Years season, 11 days without our beloved babysitter, and almost two weeks of the smaller kid waking up every night several times, its nice to be back to a moment where I can just sit quietly and collect my thoughts and write some things down and maybe take a walk without worrying that I have to get back to relieve my husband as he watches both kiddies.

I do like the special times but much prefer the regular days, routine, and doing what we always do. I like the normal.

And now, onto the new. New year. New goals. New anxieties. So how to calm the constant adrenaline and the need I have to be always be moving and doing? How to balance wanting MORE, being better, thinking big with being content and feeling lucky? I’d say my biggest challenge is how to find the joy and not see the stress. So I’ll be working on that. If you have ideas about how I can chill the f$#k out, do let me know.

marewidge

I’ve been struggling with why I care about the whole Kim Kardashian wedding/divorce situation. I’ve never seen her show, and have desperately tried to avoid knowing about this glittery lady and her glossy lips. Some facts have seeped in, of course. I know she made a porn tape, has a gaggle of sisters, and a super fantastic publicist. But when I read unavoidably about the money spent on her recent wedding and the family’s endorsements being timed to hit right when her E! Spectacular was airing, and then her announcement to divorce three weeks later, I felt all self righteous, ranting about Republicans and all my gay friends who have been unable to marry, and the hypocrisy of celebrities marrying and divorcing with less care than they put into their photo ops coming out of Starbucks. Its not like I’m unaware of PR and what celebrities are willing to do for it, and the hollowness of this culture that gives these idiots a platform. So why did this particular incident push me over the edge into cranky Andy Rooney (RIP) territory?

I got married seven years ago in October. I imagine it was something like producing a Broadway show, complete with drama from the Producers (my parents), strong opinions from the talent (mostly me), and all the various folks that take part in a production of that magnitude (hair and makeup, dresses, tuxes, catering, Pilates instructors, media coverage). My husband and I laugh that we will never look or feel more like B or C level celebrities starring in our own reality show.

Seven years and two kids later, daily life is a long way from lighting design and calligraphy, and more like a life insurance ad set in our cluttered home on a weekday morning at 7:30 am. It strikes me as odd, and almost embarrassing that we made such a spectacle of our wedding day. Because now I realize how little the wedding experience mirrors the actuality of being married! It’s every day after the wedding that your union really needs the love and the high fives for making it through each day, each year.

The day of your wedding, you have no idea how much your partner might annoy you when he natters on about his iPhone, or how much you’ll annoy him by wanting to gossip about the parents at the school fundraiser. After the wedding, when your best friends (and random people you had to invite) are flying home, the champagne bottles piled in the recycling bin and “Play That Funky Music White Boy” echoing in your head, its down to dealing with your spouse’s habits, the possibility of growing away from each other, and the myriad of situations a marriage can, or can’t endure.

I’m thinking about this a lot as I watch so many couples around me split up. Its too complicated to try and create a trend out of people’s pain and the reasons why marriages don’t work out, but I do think that the emphasis our culture places on “your special day” to feel like a princess (or Prince) is somehow misplaced. Maybe the intensity and support from your community that happens during the planning of the wedding weekend can be dispersed somehow, so couples can get some love a couple of years in — when they really need it. Like periodic mini weddings: hugs, pep talks, advice, and real models of what it means to make difficult moments work. And gifts. I’ll take a new blender seven years in for sure. After a harrowing discussion of whether we can afford private school, whether our son ate a battery while we weren’t looking, or planning a time to fool around when someone isn’t sleeping on an air mattress on our floor, I could definitely use a blender for the distraction.

Its great that your college roommate gave a killer toast at your wedding about how awesome of a friend you are, and that your husband’s brother was able to articulate something he’s never been able to say since. But wouldn’t it be great if he could come over and read his remarks when you’re fighting with your husband of three years because of something ridiculous like he forgets that Sunday night is bill paying night? Or something less ridiculous, like you think you might be attracted to your best friend’s husband. Or your best friend’s wife.

I love being married. My husband is my partner, and he puts up with my flaws and my craziness and I think we truly fit. I have pride in the fact that we are constantly communicating and doing what we can to keep ourselves happy and committed. But being married is hard as hell, and married people can use all the help we can get. Not people desecrating marriage – cheapening, and turning it into a stupid, fakey-icky, cheesy brand you can buy at K-mart. And so that’s why I’m so annoyed by Kim Kardashian, I realize. Because I’m actually protective of this fakkaktah institution. I care about it. I believe in it. I’m actually not as cynical as I thought I was – I’m a softie and I believe in love and I believe in marriage. I even believe in weddings. That’s why I cry at every single one.

an audible sigh

You leave your toddler for one minute to answer an email in the bedroom, and the next thing you know you’re sitting in the pediatric emergency room discussing the length and width of a AAA battery and if said toddler could get it down his tiny little esophagus without choking.

Dude. That is so not relaxing and not at all how I wanted to spend my Saturday.

And that’s the crux of it. That from one minute to the next, with these little buzz kills running rampant through your lives, things have the potential to get majorly hectic up in here. You can’t just give the kid an old remote control to distract him so he stops eating the remote control you need to actually control the television remotely and is a lifeline to your relaxing 22 minutes at 9 PM where you laugh or cry or feel sexed up (HBO and Showtime). No! You must remain vigilant at all times, assuming that he will take the top off the remote and that there will be one battery in there when you get back to him. SO WHERE THE FUCK IS THE OTHER BATTERY? (Not metaphorically, but really. Where is it? Because they did an X-ray and it wasn’t in his body).

Are you loudly exhaling or oy veying right now? Because you can bet your ass I am sighing and oy veying almost all of the time. There’s this sonic icloud in my ipod of a brain, a chorus of bellowing, worrying, ululating mothers and fathers everywhere, who audibly sigh and oy vey their stress about random accidents or the very possibilities of random accidents. Just turn up the volume, its definitely playing.

Parents of small children are broken people and bloody exhausted, yes yes, yes. We know this. But for me, its not the physical lack of sleep and the energy burned to run after them and schedule their lives and meals and the cleaning oh Jesus the cleaning that is the real problem, though sure, those parts can suck. I’m referring to something more psychic here. At the heart of my anxiety in general is how quickly something could shift from moment to moment and change your life forever. This is why I’m terrified of car accidents, and planes crashing. My terror lies in thinking about the seconds just before the crashes when everything is normal, regular, routine. Kids watching a DVD. This American Life on the radio. Carguments between you can the GPS lady.

Thinking about the dangers and trying to brace for them fully is debilitating and probably why I never properly baby proofed my home. Because you drop one dime out of your pocket and then what was the point of all that stupid, ugly plastic shit and double stick tape you bought at Buy Buy Baby? You can’t just sit back and relax when you have kids, seemingly ever. You’re up out of that chair sister, because if its not one danger stage, its another. They stop putting things in their mouths? They can still choke! They don’t run into traffic? An out of control cab can still hit them. You keep them on a leash? Cancer.

And that is why, when you look at pictures of yourself 10 years ago, everything looks so much better. The lines are smoother. Your smile is easier. You are physically younger, and maybe you had more time to get your hair colored and put on some concealer, and more money to groom your brows. But really, it’s about the look in your eyes now when you’re photographed. You’re smiling with pride, or with joy, but there’s an inability in those eyes to think only of your own needs and desires. And there’s that flicker of fear, always present, that changes you beyond description. Most days I am so happy I have this family in my life to love. But the worry about something happening to them is what ages my face and my eyes, and my heart.

And so, we left the ER on Saturday relieved that there was no news, feeling likely there had only been one battery in that old remote control. Yes, we had probably taken the other out to put in one of our daughter’s 8 princess flashlights that also take AAA batteries. Right. We shook our heads at the wasted day, swore to be more careful, more vigilant, and wondered about the little boy in front of us at the X-ray line who we overheard had eaten staples. Oy vey, we said, and we sighed. Audibly.