Traveling Monkeys

I’m in the guest bedroom of my paternal grandmother’s condo, sorting clothes for the girls to take to my maternal grandparents’ house while we hold vigil, when I hear my Grammy answer the call. “Ohh,” she says. “What time?” And I know. I take the phone and tell my dad we will be there within an hour.

Maggie is eating breakfast outside on the patio, alone with her thoughts in the sunshine. Tom is watching her quietly from the living room. She tips her face and the sun catches it, highlighting her golden wispy hair, and she smiles up at something I can’t see; the hand of the wind tips her chin to the light.

My grandfather has been gone for thirty minutes.

**********
My Nana’s house is lousy with Apple products. Between the funeral home director and the assorted out-of-towners, there are at least a dozen iPads kicking around and a half-dozen more iPhones. I share the obituary I wrote and the director makes quick notes. Other decisions are made. The logistics of death are exhausting, even with his wishes known and plans in place. People come and go: hospice, the funeral home, various clergy. Plans are made and changed while babies are chased outside. At some point we choose an urn for my aunt, my grandfather’s sister, who had died two days prior. “Has that happened before?” we ask the director.

“Not brother and sister. Spouses, sure. Often we will see both spouses within six months.”

No, I think. Please. No.

**********
The lilacs bloom in May, along with all the other flowers, and at some point I go out alone to collect various prescriptions and medications for relief and other errands. I set the radio and forget it as I repack to move from one relative’s home to another and get nasal spray and buy another pack of diapers and the song “100 Years” comes on the radio and that’s it. I forget about all of it and pull the rental car over next to a bush of lilacs and I cry and cry and cry, tears pouring off me like the rain gushing off the lilac buds outside.

“Are you okay? Your nose is pretty red,” my dad asks when I return.

“I just blew it,” I say. It’s the truth.

**********
One of my aunts has a sibling in the graphic design and video business and the family has spent hours compiling a slideshow of photographs of my grandfather for the service. It plays without sound at the wake; any soundtrack would have been drowned out in the raucous affair. There is so much laughter and catching up with old friends and long-missed family. It’s exactly what a wake should be: a noisy, happy occasion remembering a life lived to its fullest. Later on I tuck the prayer card with his photo into my passport. I don’t really have firm beliefs, but it can’t hurt to have a former pilot watching out for us when we travel.

**********
“I’m wearing flip flops to the service,” my Nana announces. We nod. If anyone can carry off sparkly FitFlops at her husband’s service, it’s her. She’s earned it. Tom and I sit apart from the family in case we need to escape with Moira if she cries. My pregnant cousin holds down the family supply of tissues, which we need when the slideshow starts. It is set to “Somewhere Over The Rainbow/What a Wonderful World” and that pleases me; it’s so pretty. I keep it together until I see a shot of my grandfather holding Maggie that I had never seen before, and again with a wedding shot from 1956: young love, everything before them. A love, and a life, in bloom.

**********
August 29, 1937 – May 7, 2012. Repose en paix.

Hey guys, remember when I said people who bed-share with their kids are crazy? Remember that? Remember how we laughed?

…Ha.

“Judge not, lest ye be judged” is only half-right. “Judge not, lest the great boomerang of karma swirl back on you and lodge in your bum” is probably more accurate. Moira, it seems, is a snuggler. And not your garden-variety hug-and-kiss enjoyer, either. Oh no. Moira puts the “attached” in “attachment parenting.”

Oh, sure, she’s already cut two teeth and tries desperately to get up on all fours to crawl and by all accounts seems desperate to just flee already, and that is just crazy to me. Maggie was over six months old before she even thought about turning over and it was another ten months after that before she deigned to walk. She just didn’t care, and why should she? There was at least one tall slave around to carry her from Point A to Point B at any time. Moira wants movement and forward momentum, and she wanted it yesterday. The idea that my youngest may achieve mobility before the summer solstice has become quite chillingly real. She’s into everything and into everyone’s business, grabbing and groping, and I fear that her constant daytime motion is going to get the best of Maggie’s patience.

"YOU'RE TOUCHING MY BLANKIE WHY ARE YOU TOUCHING IT STOP IIIIIIIIIIIT!"

In addition to her physical maturity, Moira is just freakin’ huge. She wears 12m shirts, 9m onesies, and 6m pants. (She’s built sort of like an inverted triangle.) She’s so strong, and hungry! Always hungry, that one, with her happy nursing and double helpings of applesauce and can you maybe mush a banana for me, Mama? These chins aren’t going to grow themselves. (No sweet potatoes, though. Those were rejected with an audible “Ptooey!”)

But back to the bed-sharing. All this activity makes for a tired, tired baby, but her brain is still trying to crawl and go! Dammit, go! so her sleep is thrashy and restless. During the day she conks out easily in my baby wrap or while we’re in the car, but nighttime is problematic for her. She flips herself onto her stomach and then flips herself back and fusses because she didn’t really want to be on her back, and won’t stay swaddled. Somehow that on top of the teeth-cutting and agitation and I don’t KNOW, OKAY, I’m TIRED–coupled with the path of least resistance resulted in her landing in her favorite, favorite spot: directly mashed into my side.

I resisted. Oh, how I love to sleep on my stomach, legs and arms akimbo, on top of a feather bed and under a heavy down comforter. None of that is safe if you’re sharing a bed with your baby. The feather bed went. The down comforter is pushed down to my knees. I cling to the edge of the bed, and my little barnacle sleeps like a stone while my arms and legs atrophy from lack of movement.

And can it be that I enjoy this? I do. Nothing in life is permanent, and few things are less permanent than babyhood. It’s not a habit I want to continue into toddlerhood but for now, while she needs it, it’s fine. Watching my last baby sleep (as I am even as I type now) safe in my bed, perfectly comforted, totally and absolutely assured of her mommy with her hand pressed against my chest and her toasty legs against my stomach is, despite my various discomforts, such a peaceful experience. Tom and I will have the whole rest of our lives to annoy each other with our cover-stealing habits after we’re done banding together to get the little interloper some decent rest.

Babies. They sure know about Stockholm Syndrome, eh?

Moira’s peace and reassurance is so total that she can let her brain turn off and get some real sleep, and I think I finally get the paradox of why bed-sharing and such is said to actually build confidence. She has all the love and cuddles a growing baby could want, and by God, that child is thriving. So we’ll keep on. “Sleep on your own!” is not a parenting hill upon which I am prepared to die–whatever gets all of us the most sleep is what we’ll do.

But I still think that sharing a bed with multiple kids is bonkers and please, feel free to join me in preemptive laughter because now that I’ve committed that to text, I suspect Maggie’s going to jump back in the mix at any moment. At least Maggie can be trusted not to pee on my favorite sheets.

Thanks to Pinterest, I’ve been bitten hard by the crafting bug. I’m a visual person so all those ideas and tidy pinboards are like virtual catnip to me. A few weeks ago there was a pin on creating flower stamps with the bottom of a soda bottle–dip the bottle, press on to paper, voila! A pretty, five-petal design. We did a few and created a cherry blossom branch for my grandparents, with Moira’s footprints climbing the branch. And then, the madness overtook me. I decided I wanted to make a Large Piece Of Family Art, suitable for framing, with input from all four of us, and I wanted it to be a lush, full tree. Leafy! Full! Lotta sap! What better way to celebrate the springtime–literally and figuratively–of our blossoming young family than with a collaborative design of nature in the birth stages of its cycle?

Clearly, I had gone ’round. Fortunately, I took a few photos along the way. Naughty, naughty language and occasional blasphemy ahead.

Step 1: The roots

Select a piece of foam core from the art store. Make sure to go two or three down the stack so you don’t select one that’s been subjected to the abuses of other customers. Get home. Notice scuff marks. Yell “Fucking hell,” because that piece of beaten-up foam core cost 5GBP, which is, like, $1000 USD after the exchange rate. (Not really.) Pencil out your tree.

Do you need a stencil? No. Just make some damn branches. Even I can do this and I once got a D on a drawing in junior high because I made “disproportionate hands,” like, MAYBE SHE JUST ATE A LOT OF SALT THAT DAY, who gives a 12-year-old a D IN ART? I digress. Make some branches. Paint over your pencil marks with watercolor. I used the a $2 Crayola watercolor palette and a Melissa and Doug toddler-grip brush (this is not the Corcoran School, y’all) and layered brown, yellow, and orange. For, y’know, depth. Or something.

Take a moment to refill your coffee mug and join toddler in mourning the loss of Ms. Ladder Truck, whom you purchased along with the foam core as a treat for your toddler two days ago and those darling wooden toys from the craft store don’t stand up to jack shit, do they?

Should have gone with plastic.

Step 2: The leaves

Bust out your yellow and green Crayola poster paints. Swirl them a bit for interesting color application. Don’t go too crazy, now. Stop and note toddler’s outfit.

Strip off Nana-made mariachi-on-acid Koosh-ball sweater, because you haven’t the first damn clue how to stain-treat it.

Place paint in front of her. Wait. Remember that this is the same child you had evaluated for sensory issues and who hates slimy textures (but who joyously eats dry rice from her sensory table, and remind yourself to go buy some inedible sand for that damn thing). Do an example handprint for her. Wait again. Dip her hands for her and stamp on paper and be impressed with her cooperation. Be extra impressed when she does it again herself. Have wet towel ready for when she asks “Please to Mommy to wipe hands now?”

Fill in remaining white space with own handprints.

Step 3: The trunk

Get youngest out of bed.

Youngest is cranky because new teeth are assholes and her mouth hurts like someone’s hot-pokered her gums. Dress her like a rainbow elf to cheer you both up and be sure to select baby pants without feet. Mix up brown paint with hints of orange and yellow. For, y’know, depth.

Subdue baby with pacifier laden with homemade teething paste that smells like Christmas but looks like boogers.

Employ youngest’s feet as a human stamp up the trunk.

Question wisdom of wrangling 16lb-five-month-old covered in paint while wearing favorite sweater. No matter; you’ve come too fucking far. Let dry. Marvel at your little one’s rainbow elf outfit.

Step 4: Involving Daddy

You may have noticed that my husband has been absent thus far. This is because I am a control freak and on the advice of my inner lawyer/therapist, our marriage is better off if projects of this sort are left without cooperation until the last minute. Have Daddy repeat step 2 to make grass at the bottom of the trunk while you end to the Sadface Elf and her Teeth of Doom.

Step 5: The accents

Add a few smaller branches to keep your tree from looking like an octopus. And now: this is SPRING, BIATCHES! LET’S GET OUR BLOOM ON! Decide your tree will be a mountain laurel, kind of, if you squint. Husband informs you that a mountain laurel is a shrub and further, a blossoming flower tree wouldn’t also have lush green leaves–those come after the blossoms in summer time.

Hide his body. Nay-saying twit.

Reconsider adult life spent in condos.

Mix up purple and pink paint for further toddler handprinting flowers throughout the leaves. Yes! LOOK AT THOSE FRESH AND BLOSSOMY BASTARDS.

And then…oh, then… You’re going to make footprint butterflies.

This requires both adults and four small feet. If you were smart you’d have done Moira’s earlier but if you were smart, you would have just had made macaroni necklaces and had done with this nonsense.

[Real-time commentary redacted for inappropriate content.]

We got one footprint butterfly from the child who’s too young to struggle.

Maggie has opted for a bluebird handprint instead of adorable toddler feet like you wanted but IT’S NOT UP TO YOU. You have merely the illusion that you have any control over her, this process, or child-rearing in general. Enjoy it. Let it happen. Refill your coffee mug with Bailey’s. It’s gonna be okay. It only looks a little like the bird was raised near a nuclear reactor.

BAWK!

See?

Step 6: The aftermath

“It is finished.” – Jesus

Date and sign the tree. Make any necessary apologies. Next week you will deliver it to the framer, who will cock his head and pretend that it looks very nice and not at all like some pile of poorly-applied paint from the commissary. Prepare to pay an exorbitant amount after arguing over the color of the mat. Decide in the end…it really was worth it.

Fin.

Dear Maggie,

Three years and only three visits to the emergency room–and one was just croup! Friend, we are doing all right.

Was two terrible? I don’t have anything to which I can compare it; you’re my first, after all. Aside from worrying that you had a developmental disorder (you don’t) and wondering if you would EVER POTTY TRAIN, MY GOD (you did, in the course of about a month) we had a good ride. Except for the first month after Moira was born and you decided that because we had usurped your role as One And Only, you were not going to eat. We got through it and you had a double-helping of pasta with cream carbonara sauce tonight. Go figure.

And you are a phenomenal big sister–generous with your blankie and your toys to a degree I would not have believed. Moira’s begun snatching at toys in your grasp and I fear a curse of violence is about to rain down on our hapless house, but for the moment you’ve always treated her with your patented mix of wary caution and kindness.

Preschool has been wonderful for you in that regard. You aren’t interested in groups of kids and need a lot of time to warm up. That’s totally fine. We aren’t all extroverts. You have begun to make friends with a select group of kids that you’re used to seeing; this is largely due to your collection of fabulous hats. Thanks to relatives who LOVE seeing your style, I don’t think you wore the same cap to preschool for the first two months of the winter term. This independence and willingness to wear anything that pleases you has gained you something I never expected you would have: you, my love, are POPULAR. Kids love you and your hats. I’m told that your pretty face (and objectively, my dear, you are quite stunning–particularly your gray-brown eyes and ink-black lashes) is probably a big part of it but I like to think your steadfast independence draws people in. You simply do your thing with absolute confidence, and kids are drawn to you. Adults too. Maybe it’s also the tone of your voice. Everything you say is a song; every syllable has a lilt and squeak. You don’t speak so much as you sing and you don’t walk when you can dance. You have movement and liveliness at the cellular level; your joy and rhythm are ever-present. You delight and charm when you want, and you walk away when you want, and sometimes you throw your anger out in huge bursts when you want, but you sing always.

Ah, that independence…thankfully it only goes so far. For a baby who wasn’t much on cuddling, you have turned into one heck of a snugglebunny. Every night we finish the day when you ask “Can you snuggle up to Mommy?” (Your language skills, while quite advanced, haven’t quite mastered all the intricacies of pronouns and it’s too adorable to correct.) You love sitting in my lap for stories–your favorite thing–and you’ll sit under a blanket with me as we pursue whichever book holds your fancy. We started your first chapter book this year: Winnie The Pooh. Now you love to ask me if we’re hunting Woozles while we take our walks. Your imagination is incredible. For my sanity and yours I maintained daily “quiet time” even after it became laughably obvious that you were only going to sleep in the afternoon if you were sick. You’ve never been a great napper and gave the practice up for good shortly after we moved, but you’ve never had a problem filling the hours by yourself. May you always have a woozle in your brain to hunt when you find yourself without anyone around.

It’s been mentioned by a few people who knew me when I was small that your fierce, FIERCE independent streak and need to have something be YOUR idea before you do it is some kind of payback and retribution for my parents. I hate that kind of attitude; it makes it seem as though the storyteller didn’t actually like you much as a kid and that they think you were so rotten as to deserve to have a kid just as rotten, when the truth is that I don’t see these traits as bad at all. You NEED to be independent in this world; you NEED to stick fiercely, FIERCELY, to your values and your ideals in order to thrive. Flexibility will come with maturity and nurturing; teaching it to you is part of my job. As I said when you kicked that doctor and screamed “No! You don’t touch me!” to a strange authority figure, it will be so much easier to teach you context and compromise than it will to teach you spirit.

And baby girl, you do have spirit. Oh yes…yes you do. You sing and prance and you are bright and electric and bold. You are high-definition life in color. When you’re around, the rest of the world is brighter too.

I love you so much, Margaret Kelley. Welcome to three. Happy birthday, my love.

My first trip out of the country was Aruba in 2001. My, but those were heady days: you could frolic a hop-skip-jump away from South America without a passport in a country that was still only known for being pleasantly warm and not for Dutch trust-fundies murdering blonde students. Our adventures were almost solely confined to the beaches and resorts, however, so my first true experience in culturally-different travel was England and Scotland in 2002 on a high school tour.

In case the girls ever ask me what the most intimidatingly secure facility I’ve ever been in was, I’d have to say Logan Airport about 7 months after 9/11. MassPort was compensating, y’all. Anyway, part of the trip included a brief jaunt to Edinburgh, home of the Fringe Festival, fried Mars bars, and more bars, pubs, and clubs than I was able to process. The drinking age was and is 18, and I was as drunk on the power of the legal purchase as I was on those ill-advised screwdrivers I chugged in the days before I knew that hard ciders were where it was at.

I maintain that it was no accident that our chaperones chose a hotel that trip had both tartan carpeting AND wallpaper. Even at 18, at the peak of my life’s (fool)hardiness and fresh-faced exuberance, I was powerless to handle the effects of melding plaid home fixtures in a full spin and had to be funneled into bed by my then-boyfriend and former English teacher while being fed sips of water by my poor put-upon friend as the plaid openly mocked me.

It is also no accident that Dignity and Deanna both start with D, for I am full of it. Obviously. I have no photos to share because a) all I had was a film camera In Those Days and b) are you kidding me?

Ten years has passed since that April trip. I’m considering which excuse I’ll give to not attend my 10-year reunion, should one be held. (I’ve narrowed it down to “I see all you nutters on Facebook every day” and “I live in Europe now [extend pinky].”) That boyfriend and I have married others; the English teacher has retired. I no longer feel that tartan laughs at me–only with me.

And last weekend, I went back to Edinburgh.

This time, I consumed perhaps one beer incrementally by stealing sips of Tom’s and a Scottish cider (strawberry, very summery!) over four days–breastfeeding, you know, and carbonation of any kind seems to give Moira gas. My parents came to visit; it was their first trip across the Atlantic and we had full itineraries. We complained of minor knee pain and sore feet and did review panels of the revelers walking outside our apartment windows–an apartment suited well to the needs of six people, two of whom were under the age of three. I saw Edinburgh by day, carrying my four-month-old in a carrier or sometimes pushing my almost-three-year-old up hills in her stroller. And on the second night I stayed up with an unsettled, teething baby and was so tired from her that I slept like a stone while others were kept awake by the pulsing bass of Friday’s party beat.

It was wonderful. Both trips were wonderful, and so dramatically different that they might as well have been taken by different people.

Although, I suppose, they were.

Touch. Listen. See. Smell. Feel.

We set out on our walk to do these things: examine the spring grass, take fresh air into our lungs. The park down the road is perfect for such excursions. It’s a small strip of land enclosed by privet with a few trees and shrubs and lots of open grass. Technically it’s a private park for the surrounding residents, but nobody has turned away our raggle-taggle band yet. With Moira strapped to my chest, I let Maggie go on ahead. She climbs to the top of a pile of sticks and leaves a careless landscaper has left behind, the wood damp and mulchy in our noses. I keep my distance; while I’d love to point out every robin’s nest and budding branch, she needs the independent play more–she needs to take it into her senses and leave my side. How many piles of dirt were in my two-year-old childhood? More, I fear, than hers.

Walking back along the road, we pass a house under construction and a laborer smoking a cigarette. While I find the smell of the chronic smoker disgusting, I actually find the odd puff of smoke pleasant. It reminds me of my father; a bit of cigarette smoke in a working-man’s truck, Old Spice, cut through with Barbasol. He’s not a cologne man, but that was how I knew him when I was small. I finger my keys as I watch Maggie run ahead and think of how I always knew my mother was there, keys jangling when she came to pick us up from this activity or that. How long did she carry that one leather brown purse? A year? Five years? Even after nearly twenty years of chronic sinus problems, I know when a leather purse has held original Trident; mint on suede and the metallic hint of keys on a simple fob and I know my mother. When Maggie is following her children through the park, how will they know her? What secrets lie in Moira’s scent for her babies to follow?

And how will they know me? The smell of coconut oil on my hands as I rub their skin? A compelling bitter roast from my ever-present coffee mug–no sugar to sweeten my cup? And what words will these smells carry? What will they feel, see, hear when the past calls to claim them? The good with the bad, surely–my best intentions are not always equal to my sharp temper, despite my constant struggle to keep it in check. I have never–will never–laid hands on my children in anger, but sharp words do escape. They’ll carry that with them like the vanilla notes of my favorite perfume.

Maggie stops ten feet behind and I cajole her into following me, promising her stars–pasta stars in sauce, from a can, a convenience lunch treat she gets when I’m feeling lazy. My creative urges are legion, but almost never extend to food preparation. Highly processed food with the guilt-easing “organic” tag is fine now and then. Even the promise of such a treat isn’t enough to break her concentration: she has focused on a young tree, freshly planted, still supported by a planter’s post. The world around her ceases to exist as she wraps her arms and then legs around the trunk. I take in the curve of her back and the length of her fingers, seeing how every inch of a toddler is built for exploration. Every molecule in their bodies radiates vibrant purpose. Extending a long, curled tongue, she leans in and licks the bark.

I say nothing. For her, I’m not even there. Nobody is. She uses her focus to discover a tree as new to the world as she, exploring the world in all the ways a child knows how. It would be impolite of me to intrude.

Moira stirs on my chest; my baby, my love. I whisper to her, as I always do and know I shouldn’t, to stay little and small and next to me forever. I have to stop doing that, because I know perfectly well that it’s such an unfair thing to ask–she will march on without me, and best that she do so with no guilt or remorse about leaving her mother’s side. One day she’ll be conquering wood piles and looking at trees with her sister, and I’ll have to be content with the memories of how I saw them, felt them, knew them when they were small.

Five thoughts not individually worthy of a full post:

1. Geraldine told me she thought I looked like Jennifer Lawrence and that night I dreamed I was in The Hunger Games, except we were all rather flabby. What’s with the excessive realism, dream?! My subconscious doesn’t think I’m badass, huh? I’LL SHOW YOU…right after my morning scone. Wait, what?

2. Speaking of badass, or potentially just “bad,” I have a list of tattoos that I want to get during my next trip to New Hampshire. My first four were done by the same shop and I feel like permanent inking is just not the sort of thing you want to shop around. There’s the one I want for the girls, the labyrinth for travel, and a poem by Guillaume Apollinaire. The poem is going to go on my side in order to remind me when I’m 70 that there was once a time that I liked my side enough–after two babies, no less–to want to gaze upon it often.

3. That’s assuming I make it to 70, and Tom and I made it official: we have wills and guardians and all that stuff wrapped up in a neat little legal package. Maggie will be three next month so, um, yay for procrastinating not coming back to bite our children in the ass? The caveat that I would like my ashes interred in a Chock Full O Nuts can whilst I await commingling with Tom’s ashes was not put into writing, but Tom has his orders. Otherwise, my ghost will spike every romantic effort he makes after I’m gone until he decides to act right. Hmm, failed porn title: Paranormal Cockblock.

4. The thing currently shaving years off my life is the four-month sleep regression. Parents: at four months of age, your baby is going to turn into a jerk. Yes, even your cute one. Especially your cute one. Developmental milestones and perhaps the onset of teething will screw up their sleep patterns and feeding habits just when you were starting to feel okay again. It is cruel and horrible and you just have to grit your teeth until it’s over.

WHY CAN'T YOU DO THAT DURING THE NIGHT?!

5. I GOT NEW BOOTS. My calves, while strong and handsome and capable of mighty feats of strength, are not what you might call “feminine.” For years I have searched for a knee-high boot that would fit around them without special alteration or the insertion of elastic panels by a professional cobbler. Boots seem to measure for a 14″ calf, whereas mine are around 16.5-17″. For you, Dear Reader, I shall pray that you never know the insupportable indignity of clicking the “wide shaft” search parameter on shoe retail websites or the desperation that leads you to ask your gay DJ friend if he knows any drag queens who might offer shopping tips. But amazingly, Uggs does make a standard boot in addition to those sock-like canklemakers that are their bread and butter, and now I own very classy knee-high black leather boots with a solid tread, furry lining, and that only pinch at the top a little tiny bit and that match every dress and pair of jeans that I own. It’s my springtime miracle.

And just for fun, a photo: Maggie tucking her little sister in for a nap, mere moments before she collapsed on Moira in a fit of huggy toddler joy. Moira only pulled her hair a little in the ensuing struggle.