DotMoms

Do as I say, Not as I do

By Laurie

Insomnia.

I battle insomnia in fits and starts. Currently, I am sleeping well. I hesitate to say, “sleeping like a baby” because anyone in her right mind knows babies are erratic and often problematic sleepers.

Sometimes, I am saddened when I begin sleeping well. The insomnia adds hours to the day and there’s precious quiet time to do stuff. My bathroom sparkles at 3:30 a.m., my expenses tallied, meals planned, winter clothes taken out.

A few weeks back, the night before Max’s first day of second grade, I was proud to have the children clean and bedded by 8 p.m. As I tucked him in, Max told me he was feeling a little ambivalent about the day ahead. He had laid out his clothes, bow tie and all, requested his lunch (quesadilla) and prepared his backpack.

At 8:20 he called me in to his room. “Mama, I can’t sleep.” Those words are such a trigger for me. There’s something wrong, some anxiety, malaise, illness. I tell myself that his difficulty is not a genetic trait. He will, in fact, sleep. It’s just that dreaded ambivalence.

I sit down next to him, snuggle a bit. We talk about his first day. I ask him if he’s tried counting sheep. “Of course, mom. I’m already up to 218.” I am surprised by the number, I’m even more surprised by the fact that he knows the counting sheep routine. Honestly? I don’t think I’ve ever counted sheep, so I don’t quite know what to tell him.

“What do the sheep look like?” I ask, stalling for time, for an answer.

“They look like. . . . sheep, mom.”

Of course they do. “Are they lining up to jump over the fence?” I inquire. He scrunches up his nose, opens his eyes a bit wider.

“Huh?”

“What, are they just all lined up and you’re counting them?”

“Yeah..." he fishes.

I throw my hands up, “No wonder, Max! They have to jump over the fence. They sort of take a running start and jump over the fence. Count them mid-jump.”

He humors me. How do I know this? Why do I try to pass this off as the missing link? I don’t know, but I do.

Max is asleep when I check on him again.

When I begin a bout of insomnia again, I wonder if I will count sheep. Will they leap the fence or will they pay the bills, scrub the stove, and put in a load of laundry? I’ll let you know. It’s my missing link.

Laurie Nardone lives with her two boys in Beverly, MA.

In the company of women, in the company of boys

By Laurie

There’s a popular song on the radio right now – “Where’d you go / I miss you so / Seems like it’s been forever / since you’ve been gone.” In my house, we marked a one-year anniversary recently. I’ve been a single mother for that long. It’s been one year since Lisa helped me teach Max how to ride a bike without training wheels, since Carol made sure the kids had some fruit with breakfast, since Sue double checked their sunblock, since Laura helped us plant tomatoes at the birthday party. You get the idea.

In a one-parent household, there are things that slip through the cracks. There’s not often the follow-up that you get in a two-parent household. You find yourself writing notes to yourself instead of having someone say, “did you remember this?” You have the dialogues with yourself, or if you are incredibly lucky, with yourself and a handful of friends. One year in, I am embarrassed to say that I didn’t realize I was one of the lucky ones.

Max and Oz have a family that not only includes their mother and father, separately, but a whole network, a village as it were, of people who have been trying to offer that help since there was a heartbeat in my uterus. In retrospect, I realize that the nuclear family tends to isolate itself. Mine did, anyway. Mom, dad, children. Each is the go-to first, and while there is something charming about this, something of the illusion of self-sufficiency, I now see what we were missing: a web of groovy chicks who we kept at bay for years. Last summer, they got tired of me having the dialogue with myself.

Once you are open, of course, you welcome the flood. Elaine reminds me to eat, Kit is the master of stillness, Angela sends art, Pat sends vibes, Libby is practical and honest. Max and Oz have infinite models for living well and living kindly.

I know my family is not unique but its configuration is new to me. And what I was missing! Since I realized that I would be the mother of boys, I felt the honor and the burden of raising men. And while my lovely boys have strong male figures in their lives at both mom’s and dad’s, there is something special to me about the wall of women, who are helping me raise my sons and helping to raise me.

Laurie Nardone lives with her 7 and 4 year old boys in Beverly, MA.

My Children, My Gurus

by Laurie

Apparently, my 3-year old son, Oz, was a sage in his previous life. I’d venture to say he’s a sage now, though most mothers waver between sage and satanic spawn as their offspring’s descriptors. Anyway, Oz-as-sage is a result of him sitting at the side of my bed one early spring morning.

It was early spring; it was also early, early – 5:30 or so. He held a small vase of daffodils, a bartering tool and subsequent reward at the grocery store the previous evening. I spied, not letting him know I was awake, though as with most of my conscious time, I was only half-awake, lingering in that simultaneously lovely and anxious mother-sleep, that constant awareness of the babies.

Oz knelt before the vase and whispered to one of the buds, “You are doing a great job growing.” He leaned over and kissed the flower, and I smirked at his unabashed joy and lack of affectation. It took everything in my power not to co-opt that moment, not to make it part of my experience – to spring up and inquire, “What did you just say?”

It’s difficult at times to think that my sons’ experiences are not somehow about me, reflective of my own experiences, that they are not messages for me. Co-opting, though, is inevitable. I listen and watch them model their beings. I don’t need a guru, a spiritual teacher. I may need a therapist, a housekeeper, a personal assistant, but guru is off the wish-list.

***

Max is seven. He and I were at the pediatrician’s. I was “elsewhere,” somewhere wrapped up in wondering about the past and worrying about the future. Max flipped through a chapter book, a little advanced for his reading skills. He wanted to know what the book was about. I was silently, begrudgingly annoyed, spinning off on my wonderings, my worrying. We looked at the pictures on the cover of the book, and it suggested a tale of time travel, one in a series of books that think they are creatively teaching children about historical events. If we travel back in time, friends, we might know all about the Civil War.

Max, it turns out, was elsewhere too. “Mama,” he said to me, “I wish we could really go back in time.”

“What time would you choose to visit?” I asked him.

He shook his head, “I mean I wish I could go back into my own life to fix my mistakes, so I could do them over the right way.”

I tried not to let too many beats go by, but I was at a loss. Eventually, I told him, that life is such a series of cycles and repetition that even though we don't get to travel back in time to the exact moment of our missteps, our regrets -- our lives continually present situations where we can keep trying to make the mistake right. I was teaching myself this lesson as I spoke it to him.

Max looked at me and said, "Then I guess we're pretty lucky." Indeed, I am.

Laurie lives with her mischevously charming 3 and 7-year-old boys in Beverly, MA.

My X and My Ex

by Laurie

My friends tell stories about their dreamed-of weddings, their perfect children. These are dreams they’ve had since childhood. Girlfriends pictured the dress, the centerpieces, the honeymoon, the band. Inevitably, their dreams can be found lacking. They mourn their absence.

I never saw myself married. Never with children. Instead, I was That Girl, living in New York City with her rather pathetic but somehow loveable boyfriend, Donald. My dreams are lacking too. I mourn its absence.

And now that I live in the suburbs and drive what some teenage friends refer to as a mom-car, I am both confounded and moved by the reality of my life. My boys, three and seven, are funny, smart, intuitive, and just like their father.

I loved their father, but I do not love him anymore. I love my children. Period. End stop. I love, love, love my children. They are my life and my death, my sunrise and sunset, they are my reason for getting out of bed. But they look just like they father. I do not love him.

How to resolve this? How to come to the space in my mothering that enables me to feel all encompassing everything-ness for these stunning boys when they so remind me of someone who decided he didn’t love me anymore?

We look at pictures. Me and the girlfriends who have gathered so protectively – and fearfully – around me. They are all thinking it, but I am the one who needs to speak it: they look like him. The women agree, mournfully, cautiously. My ex is no longer himself, he is unlike the man I fell in love with, we all agree. But still. My boys have his eyes, his talents, his posture. I think of this constantly. I think of it not-so-much.

They are creatures who are new and improved – my ex, with my X. A dream made manifest.

Laurie lives with her mischievously charming three and seven-year-old boys in Beverly, MA.